shining like the stars

58

"Would you like to sit on my lap, Princess?" Lance asked, eyebrow cocked as they all squeezed into the cockpit of the Blue Lion. Keith glared daggers at the back of Lance's head, but it was Shiro's hand that landed on Lance's head, turning his gaze forcefully back toward the forward viewscreen.

"Pay attention to flying," Shiro said in that deadly calm voice that made Keith snap to attention without it even being directed at him.

"I feel like I'm safer back here anyway," Allura said, one hand gripping a long, low bar that ran along the upper inside of the cockpit.

They had abandoned their camp. The ships had blown by overhead, still in the upper atmosphere of the moon but they were too far out to determine who they belonged to. The skin around Shiro's eyes had tightened at their flight pattern and it was Lance who had said, in a more commanding voice than Keith expected from him, "everyone in my lion, now."

Lance flew low, worryingly so, the lion's legs kept close to its body as the dark terrain sped past at an alarming rate. "At least we would have been going downhill," Pidge said, one hand on the belt of Keith's tunic, the other hanging on to the back of Shiro's chiton.

"I don't like the idea of us splitting up," Hunk said.

"Well, it's either that or we forget this whole thing," Lance said. He glanced over at Allura for a second. "Should we just forget it, Princess? I mean, it seemed kind of ..." The expression that crossed his face was puzzled, and Keith banged his hand on the back of the pilot's chair at the same time Pidge yelled, "TREES!"

Without even looking, Lance yanked on the controls, then whipped his head around in time to see that yes, he had managed to avoid the scraggly black branches but behind them loomed a larger tree, massive in comparison to the others, its branches just beginning to spread above the canopy of the rest of the forest. The only thing that saved Keith from going tail over teakettle was his firm grip on the back of Lance's chair; Pidge bounced back into Hunk and Hunk hit the back of the cockpit as Lance yanked the Blue Lion into an almost vertical climb.

"That's the temple of Anaximenes," Allura said — and there was something akin to reverence in her voice, despite the fact that she was now hanging on to the low bar with both hands and had her feet braced to keep from being too badly impacted by the g-forces.

"The tree?" Lance said. "The entire fucking tree?"

"Not the entire tree," Allura said. "Look to its boughs."

As the Blue Lion flew up and around the tree, dodging through branches larger and thicker than the lion itself they saw the Temple of Anaximenes unfold around them. Lance pulled the lion out of its climb and leveled it off, looping back around in a slower, steady curve so that they had a better chance to pick themselves up from the floor and observe it.

The face of the temple was not dissimilar to the Water Guardian's temple, it appeared to be carved out of the living tree, its face in the thick trunk. The tree itself was a very dark green, with lighter green highlights running along its bark; the leaves were a rich violet. The limbs had been woven together thousands of years ago to create a courtyard of sorts, and had grown into one massive, solid platform.

The landing platform clearly usually accommodated a skiff, as Blue landed gently on the pad they all could observe that the temple was nearly devoid of alien presence. "Well, that's not alarming at all," Lance said as the lion settled down to its haunches. "It's morning now, where is everyone?"

A few leaves large enough for Keith to sit on blustered around the courtyard with the Blue Lion's landing. "It's possible that no one visits this temple any longer," Allura said, a frown on her face. "The climb up was most arduous."