What they don't know

Part 10

He stood slowly, fingers tracing over the broken stems of the mariposas. His body felt suddenly weightier. Realistically, he knew his mass hadn't increased. Maybe the gravity here was greater? Or maybe he just needed to adjust to no longer being weightless like he had been in the kind-of-astral-plane place. 

He stumbled a bit as he found his feet and started treading the path. It dirt looked just like the packed soil they had along cliffsides back home. It stuck to the ground stubbornly just the time but if he dug his feet just right - along the edges of his shows - then he could tip it up and scatter it. 

This couldn't be a coincidence. Was this place building itself on his memories?

He couldn't help but feel awkward as he trooped closer. The woman was watching him, silver hair swaying in the breeze, but Lance couldn't bring himself to hold her gaze. His eyes flicked away instead to the city. Windows twinkled back at him, shining in the sloping sunlight. When the sun slid off it, shadowy figures peered down at him, hands pressed up on the panes. 

He looked away from them quickly, a shiver running up his back. 

The woman was close enough that he could make out her features now. She looked older - about Coran's age - but the lines on her face were harder, making her seem more stern despite the smile on her face. A pair of red altean marks settled on her cheek bones but they extended down her cheeks, dipping past her lips.

"Leandro, welcome!" Her voice echoed. Lance swore he could hear hushed whispers all around them.

"How do you know that? No one calls me that anymore." 

"No one but your mother. Miriam is a sweet woman, I would love to meet her."

Lance frowned, "Are you the white lion?"

She burst into laughter, the sound spilling out of her unnaturally as if it hadn't been made for a long time. She looked down at him - a good half a foot on her height - through crinkled yellow eyes. Something about her eyes rubbed Lance the wrong way, them being an odd mixture of knowing and condescending. 

"Come inside, Leandro."

"I.. would really rather you called me Lance." Like she said, his mother was the only one that called him Leandro. Everyone else had completely switched to calling him Lance after Alec's disappearance. Alejandro and Leandro were just too similiar

"Are you aware of what this place is?"

"Oriande. The birthplace of Altean alchemy." He muttered it simply, slowly trailing off.

"That is the folktale."

"Folktale? It's not true?" Lance frowned. Allura and Lotor had been so sure of all their findings - from every memory faded nursery rhyme to every cracked cave painting they stumbled upon. Both Lance and Alec had made fun of them at the time but they had believed them all the same. 

Even if they had never quite fallen for Lotor's act.

"Not quite." She led him into the sparse city, the dirt changing to tiles underneath their feet, "It's an exaggerated tale. Oriande was alteans' original home world - before we became alteans."

"This... was where Alteans came from?" 

"Not quite." Lance frowned, almost sighing at the lack of a straight answer, "Oriande used to be a planet long ago home to an incredibly advanced race called the Orians but, as with most rapidly advancing races, they created their own demise."

Lance listened quietly, his eyes drifting past the woman to see a pair of alteans watching him through a window as they tucked into a meal. Were they real?