Lance leans forward, peering down at the excited faces looking up at him. "So you want to hear a story?"

"Yes!" The children chorus, nearly squealing with glee.

Lance smiles, glad he can still enthrall his audience, "Okay. I'll tell you a story. A very special story. This is the story of how I died."

The children's faces grow serious and they whisper among themselves, confused.

"Don't worry." Lance promises, "This is actually a very fun story, and the truth is, it's not even mine. This is the story of a boy, named Keith. And it starts, with the sun."

The smiles are back, and the children settle down. Lance thinks he can hear a familiar sigh behind him, but it sounds fond, so he grins and continues, "Once upon a time, a single drop of sunlight fell from the heavens, and from this small drop of sun, grew a magic golden flower. It had the ability to heal the sick and injured. It was found by an old man. You might want to remember him, he's kind of important."

There are some soft giggles about that, but Lance gives them his serious face and presses on, "Well, centuries passed and a hop, skip and a boat ride away grew a kingdom. The kingdom was ruled by a beloved king and queen. And the queen? She was about to have a baby. But she got sick, really sick. She was running out of time, and that's when people usually start to look for a miracle. Or in this case, a magic golden flower."

The children are leaning in close now, worried about what's going to happen to the queen, Lance is quiet for a moment then says, loudly, "Ah!" The children squeal and he smiles, "Remember how I told you that old man would be important? You see, instead of sharing the suns gift, this man, Father Zarkon, hoarded the flowers power and used it to keep himself young for hundreds of years! And all he had to do, was sing a special song;

'Flower, gleam and glow, let your power shine. Make the clock reverse. Bring back what once was mine, what once was mine.'

Alright. You get the gist. He sings to it, he turns young. Creepy."

The children laugh again, at ease now that Lance has both scared and teased them, "The search parties find the flower, and its magic healed the queen. A healthy baby boy, a prince, was born, with beautiful white hair. I'll give you a hint, that's Keith. To celebrate his birth, the king and queen launched a flying lantern into the sky. For that one moment, everything was perfect. And then that moment ended."

Lance makes sure his expression is serious, "Zarkon broke into the castle, stole the child, and just like that, gone!"

The children gasp, some of them are holding hands, Lance pushes his fingers through his hair and

sits down, "The kingdom searched and searched, but they could not find the prince. For deep within the forest, in a hidden tower, Zarkon raised the prince as his own. Zarkon had found his new magic flower, but this time he was determined to keep it hidden."

Lance can hear shuffling behind him, and he knows that his most important audience member is there, so he takes a deep breath, and gets serious about telling the story right, the true way it happened, "But the walls of that tower could not hide everything. Each year, on his birthday, the king and queen released thousands of lanterns into the sky. In hope that one day, their lost prince would return..."

Third Pov~

Pidge runs out the window, and careful  hide within the biggest blooms so that she's not visible. It is times like these that her small size actually comes in handy. Her tiny chest heaves as she tries to quiet her breaths.

"Ha!" Keith throws open the shutters and looks around with narrowed eyes, before sighing,

"Well... I guess Pidge isn't hiding out here."

Pidge titters softly as she watches him walk away, the fool. Suddenly, something wraps around Pidge's foot and pulls her, forcefully, from the flowers.

"Gotcha!" Keith smirks.

Keith just laughs at the lizard, "That's 22 for me. How about 23 out of 45?"

Pidge knows that Keith has a competitive steak a mile long, she mimics the huff Keith is so fond of.

"Okay. Well, what do you want to do?"

Pidge's point her little tail to the outside of the tower.

"Yeah. I don't think so." Keith sits on the window ledge and swings his legs over. Pidge steps onto his knee, the best glare a lizard can manage on her face, "I like it in here, and so do you." Pidge pecks Keith's thigh, hard, her glare firmly in place.

"Ow!" Keith shouts, rubbing his thigh, "Come on, Pidge. It's not so bad." Keith gathers Pidge in his hands and swings back over into the tower. He gently nudges Pidge onto her perch before jumping up and grabbing onto the lowest rafter. Keith swings himself from rafter to rafter until he's close enough to the lever for the top most windows of the tower. Keith gathers up a loop of his, ridiculously, long white hair and swings with a practiced precision, catching the lever and yanking so the windows open and sunlight pours into the room.

Carefully, Keith swings himself back down the the floor, and grabs a broom, he glances at the clock and sighs before he starts to sweep, "Seven AM, the usual morning lineup, start on the chores and sweep 'til the floor's all clean. Polish and wax, do laundry, and mop and shine up.

Sweep again, and by then it's like 7:15."

Pidge whistles along with him from her perch and he can't help but smile as he makes his way over to his book shelf, "And so I'll read a book," Keith grabs the book on engineering, then eyes a few others on physics and astronomy before grabbing them as well, "Or maybe two or three. I'll add a few new paintings to my gallery. I'll play guitar and knit, and cook and basically... Just wonder when will my life begin?"

A little melancholy has slipped into his tone, so Keith forces a smile back onto his face, "Then after lunch it's puzzles and darts and baking. Paper mache, a bit of ballet and chess."

Pidge huffs when he mentions chess, one of the very few games that the lizard has never been very good at.

"Pottery and ventriloquy, candle making. Then I'll stretch, maybe sketch, take a climb. Sew Pidge a dress." Pidge squawks indignantly, outraged that Keith could even suggest such a thing.

Though he tries not to, he can't help but laugh.

"And I'll reread the books, if I have time to spare. I'll paint the walls some more, I'm sure there's room somewhere. And then I'll brush and brush, and brush and brush my hair. Stuck in the same place I've always been..." Keith frowns a little, "And I'll keep wonderin' and wonderin' when will my life begin?"

Keith drifts to the window and leans against the sill, looking up at the sky, "And tomorrow night, the lights will appear... Just like they do on my birthday each year. What is it like out there where they glow?"

Keith turns from the window and looks up at his painting, a stunning representation of the lights, a sight he can't ever forget, etched firmly in his memory. Keith climbs up onto the ledge to get closer to the image, and gently presses his finger tips against the painting version of himself, so close to to his only dream, before whispering softly, "Now that I'm older, Father might just let me go."

Somewhere else.....

The trio slides down the roof, and jumps at the last moment to land on top of the roof of the turret on the castle beside the building they came from. A tall, lanky man leads the two buff and sharper looking men behind him. The leader appears younger than the other two, barely twenty years old, with dark flawless skin and bright cerulean eyes. The other men are large, rough, and dangerous looking. Unlike the first they have anger in their strange yellow eyes, they aren't afraid to do whatever necessary to get what they want.

The first man leads them around the turret roof, carefully, his back pressing against the shingles, arms out to keep his balance steady. He jumps from the turret to another part of the roof, and from there he jumps again, looking cat-like and elegant in his movements. The others are not as graceful, but can follow the path he lays out for them without too many issues.

In a few short minutes they make their way across the roof, to the section that they have been searching for. Despite their success, the first man moves to the edge of the roof, holds the arching stone of the castle and peers out, the entire kingdom spread out before him, "Wow. I could get used to a view like this."

"Tailor." One of the other members of the trio snaps, "Come on."

"Hold on, Sendak." Tailor holds up a hand, his short brown hair flowing in the breeze, "Yup. I'm used to it. Guys, I want a castle."

"We do this job," Haxus growls, grabbing onto Tailor's shirt collar and hauling him over to the open sky light, "You can buy your own castle."

After strapping in, Tailor is lowered into the sky light by Sendak and Haxus. He's not sure how much he trusts the two of them to hold him, but he knows they want the treasure pretty badly, so he's willing to take his chances here.

Grabbing the crown is easy. None of the guards are positioned in a way to see him coming from the sky light. Why would they be? No one should be able to get up onto the roof. Tailor is a good planner though. He has to be, or else he would never have survived this long.

One of the guards sneezes. Tailor sighs dramatically, "Ugh. Hay fever?"

The guy glances over his shoulder and sees him, hanging there, he smiles, totally unaware of what he's seeing, "Yeah."

The guard turns back around and by the time he realizes what has happened, Sendak and Haxus are pulling him through the sky light.

"What? Wait! Hey! Wait!"

The trio makes it out of the city surprisingly quickly, they're across the bridge and they haven't even got a tail yet. Tailor laughs loudly, the feeling of victory pooling inside him, "Can't you guys picture me in a castle of my own? Because I certainly can! Oh, all the things we've seen and it's only eight in the morning. Gentlemen, this is a very big day!"