#voltronyurievent

“Cool, isn’t it?” Allura says after they disband.

“Yeah,” Romelle blubbers. She turns to hide her face from Allura. “Cool.”

“I cried the first time they formed Voltron too.”

Romelle whips around at that, her long, blonde locks flying with the motion. “You cry? I mean uh—I’m not crying.”

Allura laughs. She’s so odd.

It’s nothing like how Allura imagined meeting another Altean would be.

Romelle is the total opposite of everything she envisaged.

Alteans are…

Alteans were…

They carried themselves with a lot of pride. There was pride in invention, pride in rule, pride in culture, and pride in conquests. There was a discreet sense of elitism veiled in many minds; to be Altean was an honor. To not be—well, that’s just alright. Alteans carried themselves with an air of sophistication and an infinite amount of self-worth. Allura’s dear friends and cousins were particularly susceptible to the superiority complex that raged amongst upper-class Alteans. It was snobbish and annoying, but well, Allura can’t hold that against them anymore. What use is spite against long eroded bones and ash?

It hasn’t been too long ago for her. What’s a few years versus a few thousand? She was asleep regardless.

Allura refused to let herself chase the idea of finding another Altean after the alternate universe crushed her hopes. It showed her the worst of her civilization, every bitter part that she couldn’t fathom existing. Those Alteans used her lovely language to speak of authoritarian rules  and supreme dictatorship. They spat on her dreams and the civilization she knew. All she could do was cry to Coran late at night.

Lotor brought ruin to her dreams even further. Because Lotor, she let in. Lotor, she showed her heart to. Allura presented her culture’s grandest innovations and secrets of quintessence in hopes of what—bonding with him, another Altean? Showing him the world he missed out on? He didn’t care. He used her. He took her sciences and used it to fuel his power hungry agendas.

Allura should’ve known better. Being Altean doesn’t mean anything. People speak highly of Altean stories, but that’s just at face value. In this day and age, an Altean is nothing more than a currency. How many times has a planet accepted them because of her name and title? How many of them offer help in exchange for pumping their cities with ‘Altean magic’?

The universe doesn’t care about her people or culture. They don’t care about what she stands for. She’s just a walking relic.

Slowly, Altea is being written out of history. It fades away.

“So…” Romelle taps her foot as they get ready to sleep in the Blue Lion after another long day of travelling. She’s dressed in spare paladin sleepwear. Idly, Allura notices that the blue of her clothes match the blue of her marks.

“Did you ever…fight any thieves, or something?” “I’m sorry?” Allura blinks.

“You know, back on Altea.” Romelle gestures as if her question was obvious. “You did a lot of cool things, right? Like fighting thieves and stopping assassinations?”

Allura shakes her head. “Every building on the planet was integrated with an anti-theft software that detected intrusive and unwelcome guests. There was never any need for me to fight thieves”

“Integrated with what?” Romelle brushes her hair. It’s quite long. Confusion is plain on her face.

“Essentially, we had gotten a holographic scan of the entire planet that updated every time—” Allura halts herself. “Are you really interested?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Romelle asks. “You think I know this stuff?”

She shakes her head. “Where do you even get these ideas from? Thieves and assassins?”

Romelle hops into their shared bunk. It’s just large enough to fit the two of them. The other cot, across the room, hosts Coran and the mice. “The stories about you. Children’s tales, I guess. But there were books! I can show you down at the old shop. Or well…” she trails off. “I can’t go back, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” Romelle smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I believe you,” Allura says, “But really, Romelle. I’m not as interesting as those stories you read make me out to be. I was just a boring, regular princess.”

“I don’t think you’re boring.”

“Really?” Allura slides into the bed next to her. She’s careful to maintain her distance. “What’s interesting about me?”

“You’re so…” She trails off. Romelle is staring at her, she realizes. From this close, it’s hard to evade the focus of her eyes. Allura watches her watch her, and wonders what she sees. Is she looking at her scars? They’re thinly veiled, but they still decorate her face. Is she looking at her Altean marks and how they glow at night? Does it remind her of home?

“You’re so strong. You’re never afraid to fight. I’ve never met anyone like that—well, I don’t know too many people, but that’s not the point. I, uh. You always speak your mind and stick up for your friends.”

Allura can’t help but slip a small smile. Romelle is so candid. She speaks all that is on her mind.

“Thank you, Romelle.”

“I wish I knew you back at home,” she blurts out. “Sorry, that’s weird. Ignore that.”

“No that’s—that’s sweet.”

“I just mean that you’re really cool and we could’ve had a lot of fun together. The colony—it’s not Altea, so maybe you wouldn’t love it the same as I do, but it’s really nice. We could’ve played in the creek. Or picked flowers together.”

“Picking flowers,” Allura muses, “That sounds fun. I think your colony sounds lovely.” She doesn’t mention how much her heart cries for it, a land filled with her people. She doesn’t say that she desperately wants to turn around and immediately save them.

Instead, she says: “I’d like to have known you back at home too.”

“Really?”

Allura nods. “We could’ve made fun of the nobles together. You would’ve hated them. And you would’ve loved our parties.”

“Balls?” Romelle’s eyes light up. Her marks glow even brighter.

“Something like that. Lots of dancing and lots of gossip.”

“That’s so fun,” Romelle whispers, “I wish I was there.”

“Me too.”

“At least we’re together now.”

Neither of them mention how all that they speak of has been left behind as they lay in bed together. Opposite worlds that have fallen to dismay and destruction. Allura’s, completely lost. Romelle’s, with still a chance. Allura wants to save them—she wants to bring her world back to her. She can’t cure Romelle’s heartbreak. She’s well aware of that. But those flowers and creeks, her old house, her grasses and farms and even the dumb Lotor statue—Romelle deserves to have it back. At least one of them should be able to return to their life.

And maybe, just maybe, Allura could return with her too.

@voltronyurievent

Below you will find a series of prompts for the week of August 24th to August 30th.

For each day, you will have two prompts. You are under no obligation to fulfill both prompts for the day’s assignment - just one will do! But both are there with the intent to get your creative juices flowing, so feel free to use the prompts as tenuously or strictly as you please. Also, we’d love to see what everyone creates so please feel free to tag us in your creations and we’ll share them on our blog! Alternatively, tag your posts with #voltronyurievent and we can find them there!

Now with all that said, let’s get those creative thoughts a-going! 💜💖🧡

pairing: transfem adashi (she/her for both)

☆ ☆ ☆

It was inevitable, in Shiro’s eyes. They had a few classes together, they even sat next to each other in one. With Shiro aiming for fighter pilot and the other girl in the engineer program, it’s surprising how they’ve overlapped so much. Still, they haven’t traded a word. Yet. But Shiro can’t be blamed for that, she’s busy focusing on class. Not to mention the other girl is intimidatingly beautiful.

So thankfully, it was her that reached out first. In the mathematics class they shared, where they sat next to each other, she asks, “Hey, Shirogane, right?”

“Yeah, I’m Shiro,” she says, over-aware of her body. Her tongue feels too big in her mouth, her hands too sweaty. Would she notice if she wiped them off on her pant leg?

“Did you finish the homework? I couldn’t understand the last question.”

She didn’t know anything past the pale blue sky hanging overhead the colony. Her scope of the universe ended at the height of the tall grasses, trees, and Prince Lotor’s towering statue. All that was taught that existence exists beyond the colony and that this existence is no good. It’s a corrupt thing—a plague. It ate away their beautiful planet with violent bloodthirst. It’s impossible to reach any world beyond the colony, so there’s no point or reason in trying. Nothing good is out there, except for the prince who protects them.

But the myths unravel. They spill out and tangle through the masses like a ball of yarn that has tipped over the edge of a table. They wrap around Romelle and she clings to them with a fervent curiosity. She won’t let it go. These strings of history—they are hers. The townspeople can laugh and roll their eyes. Still, she persists. In the quiet, dimming twilight of a land locked by its horizon, Romelle tells her little brother stories about a princess.

She tells him about her glimmering, white hair that floated down past her waist like clouds. She tells him that she has marks like them, in a dainty pink color. Such a lovely color, fitting for a royal princess. Her skin is a dark, dark bronze, like armor and she’s never seen without her crown.

“How do you know?” Her brother, Bandor, asks.

“I just know! Quiet!”

The details that Romelle doesn’t know, she makes up. Bandor asks her what the princess wears. She creates an elegant gown in her mind and insists it’s her clothes for when the Alteans hosted balls. Frankly, she doesn’t even know if they did that—maybe Romelle picked up the idea from a story book. Her brother is none the wiser. Besides, the princess looks beautiful in the dress she has conjured. Should the Alteans have had balls, it’d be a tragedy if she hadn’t worn something similar.

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

Romelle wrinkles her nose in disgust. “No, stop interrupting.”

She tells Bandor about the daunting tales of the princess as well. How she stopped an assassination with her quick wit and rounded up a gang of thieves that bothered commoners. These myths travelled by mouth, but Romelle fact checked her sources—she spoke to several others about it too and they all agreed with the story she told.

“—and then she hits him with the, the uh, spear!” Romelle stands atop the foot of their shared bed and jabs her arm into the air.

Bandor is tucked in bed with a smile. “What’s a spear?”

“Like those…” Romelle thinks. “Sticks! No…—Oh! Like what we use to catch fish.”

“The princess goes fishing?” 

“No! She uses the spear to stab her enemies.”

“She eats her enemies?” He cries.

“No!”

Like all things grand and feeble, the nights of storytelling come to an end. Bandor leaves her to board Lotor’s mysterious spacecraft. He comes back in a burning escape pod with a heartbeat too faint to revive. He’s asleep forever before she can say more than one sentence. There will be no more bedtime tales.

Two Galra aid her vengeful investigations about Lotor. Galra! Those that have been written into their minds as evil help her while the crooked Lotor is being paraded as a savior. Keith Kogane and Krolia hold her hands with sympathetic gazes as Romelle cries. They anchor her down as her world starts to rot and grey.

She mourns her cheated brother. She hurts for her long dead parents. She laments for the fate of her innocent neighbors and the facade of a safe haven from the war. She cries for a civilization long toppled and a princess that had to bear the loss.

Keith and Krolia whisk Romelle away from her deteriorating colony in their high-fi space ship. They whizz past supernovas, galaxies, and stars—Keith points all of them out for her as they pass by. Still, for the most part, space is empty. Space is so…so dull. The things that are there, the things Romelle once poured over with immense fascination with her brother, exist meaninglessly.

It troubles her to see the open plains of darkness. Where will she go now that she’s left the colony? Romelle can’t go back—she’s a traitor. Lotor will have her head. She doesn’t know anything but the colony. She doesn’t know how to fly, any other languages, any other planets, or anyone but the two soldiers accompanying her. Romelle is homeless. She’s lost, although maybe she has been since the second Bandor’s eyes shut forever.

Krolia tells her not to worry. Voltron will help her. Voltron? The name seems as meaningless as everything else in outer space. There is nothing that can help Romelle.

Then, the ship docks at a beautiful, white castle floating through space. Then, Keith leads them through sleek doors and hallways adorned with the same pink and blue hues that glow under the eyes of her people.

Then, Romelle is guided into an open room filled with suited strangers and she comes face to face with a princess with clouds for hair and dainty, pink marks.

“Lotor is a traitor.” Keith stalks forward with intent. Romelle is still staring.

Because that’s—

That’s the princess.

That’s her princess.

The princess is frozen in shock too. She stares dead at Romelle—only Romelle. Not Keith, Krolia, or the fluffy creature knelt by their side. She can’t fathom what the princess is searching for in her eyes; Romelle is hollow, through and through. She’s left everything behind.

It doesn’t even register to her that Lotor is in the room until another man knocks him unconscious and sweeps him away. The whole room breaks into chaos and Romelle is left stranded. Orders are being shouted and alarms are beeping.

In the midst of it all, the princess comes forward and grasps her hand.

Her palm is unexpectedly rough and calloused. From the spear, Romelle thinks.

“You…” She says, “Who are you?”

@voltronyurievent

Its largeness still creeps up on her, especially late at night when her mind is too restless to sleep. She gets used to it, bit by bit. Her days get filled with mighty adventures that she couldn’t even imagine a simple girl like herself doing. They run away from bloodthirsty creatures and exchange stories around a campfire. Lance and Hunk let her try out their guns. Keith doesn’t allow her to use his sword, but he lets her look at it with a childlike wonder. Everyone answers every question she has, especially the short one, Pidge. They don’t make her feel dumb for not knowing. They don’t make her feel little for not being Voltron.

If the whole universe could be like her new friends, then there would never be any problems.

At the end of their stay on each planet they stop by, the team draws straws on who sleeps in each lion. The arrangements have stayed the same for the most part, but they switch up for the sake of the pilot’s sanity. Sometimes even for fun.

Every time, Romelle clasps her hands together and hopes to remain in the Blue Lion.

She’s been lucky for the most part. For the past month and a half, she’s made herself familiar with the humble cot tucked into the left corner of Blue’s sleeping area. Sometimes she gets sent over to Keith, and she’s slept in each lion at least once, but she’s mainly in Blue. Mainly with Allura.

It’s fun here, with her.

Allura lets her accessorize the lion with trinkets she finds on different planets. Cool rocks line the dashboard, gold beaded strings travel from corner to corner of the ceiling, and coalition posters line the walls. It’s easy to fall asleep in such an environment. It’s comfortable.

One night, when she’s flying with Allura, she brings it up. “I’m always over. Doesn’t that get bothersome?”

Allura looks up from the card game they’re playing on the floor of the cockpit. She looks so comfortable in her pajamas with her silver curled tied up, sitting with her legs folded.

“No, of course not!” She looks at Romelle like she’s crazy. “What makes you think so?”

“Nothing really,” she shrugs, “I was just wondering.”

“Actually, I…” Allura trails off. She bites her lip.

“What is it?”

“I’ve asked everyone to let you stay with me. For the most part.”

That takes Romelle by surprise. Sure, the princess has never shown any disdain or annoyance towards her, even when she asks dumb questions like, How many times a quintant did Alteans shower? Did you eat hot or cold foods? She has always been pleasant with Romelle, but that’s because she’s a pleasant person. Her behavior had nothing to do with Romelle.

At least that’s what she thought.

“Really?” Romelle tries her hardest to keep the glee out of her voice. “How come?”

“I just—” Allura flushes. “I can’t explain it well.”

“Oh, but you’re always so eloquent and well worded. Come on!” In an attempt of casual playfulness, she drapes her elbow over Allura’s shoulder.

Allura whips her head towards her at the motion. It’s a poorly estimated move; their noses nearly knock against each other. She’s so close. Romelle can feel the warmth radiating off her skin first hand. Her breath fans against her face. She can count Allura’s eyelashes and study the angles of her Altean marks.

“I enjoy spending time with you. That’s all.”

“Me?” Romelle exclaims, a bit too loud. She points a finger at herself. “Me?”

Allura looks unamused. “Who else is here with us?”

“The mice! Coran!”

“Coran,” she hisses and grabs Romelle by the shoulders, “Is snoring! Too loud! I’ve been trying to switch him out for ages.”

Romelle giggles. She can’t help it. It’s true—Coran snores like a wailing yelmor. “I like spending time with you too,” she says.

“I know.” Allura gives her a cheeky grin.

Suddenly, a booming noise rattles Blue.

“What was that?” Romelle asks. Allura looks equally surprised.

Then, slowly, everything starts to rise. The cards scattered around the floor tilt upwards. Romelle’s hair starts to float up by its ends. She herself is going up too. They’re flying—or something like that.

“Oh my god,” Allura mutters, “I forgot to turn off the power saving system. The gravity—Blue turned it off!”

Romelle is too busy trying to reorient herself in midair. Unlike Allura, who’s floating around like a fish in water, Romelle flails and twists and turns. More often than not, she ends up upside down. She’s making a complete fool of herself.

“Oh, come here,” Allura says and snatches Romelle by the waist. “There. Now you won’t fly away.”

“T—thanks.”

Her arms are wound loosely around Romelle’s waist. They’re hugging. They’re hugging! Romelle moves her hands with caution. She doesn’t know where to place them, but she ends up slinging them around Allura’s neck.

“This is nice,” Allura says, “You have…nice arms. Good for…holding.”

“Can’t have you flying away either, princess.”

“Yes, that’d be terrible.”

Romelle waits for Allura to detach from her and fix the gravity settings, but time passes and she remains by her side. It makes Romelle wonder, could this be a regular thing for them? Could they touch like this all the time? Could they do more?

Romelle wants more. She knows that for sure.She wants to bury her hands in Allura’s hair and trace the sculpt of her face with her mouth. She wants to hold her as she sleeps. She wants to know Allura, every part of her, every part that she’ll be allowed to.

@voltronyurievent

Allura can already hear Romelle shrieking outside as she exits the blue lion. She had traveled in the yellow lion for the past week. Even though they called frequently enough, Allura misses seeing her. Hearing her voice in person is different.

“Yo, who is yelling at this time of the morning?” Lance steps out of Red and rubs his eyes. “Oh. Romelle.”

“It’s not even early, Lance. No need to be so grumpy.”

A wry smile slips onto his face. “Don’t worry Llura, not dissing your girl.”

“My wh-“

They’re interrupted by the subject of the discussion herself. Romelle runs up to them, panting and out of breath. Why she’s out of breath, Allura has no clue—they’ve just landed.

“There are. So many flowers.” She puts her hands on her knees and huffs. “So many. Here.”

Romelle thrusts her arm out. In her hand is a tightly clenched bouquet of flimsy, freshly cut flowers. Her grip must be crushing the stems. The bouquet is mismatched and lopsided as if picked in a hurry—or in excitement. One thing remains common: all the flowers are pink.

“They reminded me of your mark. Pink,” Romelle explains.

Ever the eavesdropper, Lance whistles. “Smooth.”

“Smooth?” She frowns and inspects her hand picked flowers. “I guess the petals are pretty soft.”

Allura ignores Lance. “Thank you, Romelle. I…I don’t even know what to say. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me! Just take them!”

Romelle looks close to throwing the bouquet at Allura and fleeing. Her face is furiously pink, as pink as the alien flowers, and it contrasts so lovely with her blue marks. Flustration is a good look on her.

“I’ll take it,” Allura says, “But what should I give you in return?”

“Nothing! Bye!” Then, Romelle runs away.

She can’t help but laugh, flowers in hand. It’s such a trivial thing—it’ll die very soon after. It does remind her of herself and the flowers are truly beautiful, so she’ll try her best to keep it flourishing in Blue. She wouldn’t be able to stand Romelle’s pouting face at the sight of the flowers wilting.

It’ll suit the lion’s interior, alongside all the other knickknacks they’ve put up to make the Blue Lion more like a home.

Pink and blue. What a lovely combination.

Day Four: Alien/Flowers