Archive of Our Own ^beta

The closer he gets to the house on the hill, the darker the sky seems to become. Leaves crunch underneath his boots, the only sound in the stagnant air, and the wind ruffles his hair and cloak, brisk and cold. The house was abandoned years ago, they’d said, lost when the witch had gone mad in her experiments and disappeared.

(When Lance asked his teacher what ‘going mad’ meant he’d gotten in a lot of trouble, you don’t just ask those things his mami scolded, there’s a stigma behind it and now they’re going to keep asking about you and why you want to know about her and she’s one of those things you just don’t talk about. And so Lance found that the story isn’t a pleasant one, and there was no happy ending for the mad witch in pursuit of knowledge.)

It’s become a bit of lore for their town now, the witch from the house on the hill. Before bed each night, his mami would tell them the stories of the children who wandered too close or didn’t listen to their mothers. The witch may have gone mad, Mami explained, but her angry spirit still haunts her house, eager for the souls of the young little witches who could never rival her power and choose to bother her in her eternal grave.

Lance had always figured his mother’s words to be a story, the kind of tale to tell a child to keep him out of trouble, but handfuls of his classmates disappeared when he’d been growing up, the consequences of dares and misplaced pride, and there could be no other explanation than this witch.

It’s horrifying to think about, and it’s the kind of legend that his town prefers not to mention, but it’s part of his story, now, something he can’t ignore.

“I never believed it,” he tells himself, keeping his voice calm and confident, though his heartbeat is much faster than he’d like, and his palms are sweating. He rubs his hands on his cloak, tries to appear more confident (on the off-chance an angry spirit is watching him). “I don’t believe it,” he continues aloud, though it’s a blatant lie and it’s apparent in his voice and thoughts and the fact that he’s trying to talk to a spirit in the first place.

Despite its age, the house looms tall and strong, its shadows reaching out toward Lance as he makes his way up the steps leading to the porch. The wood has long since faded to a dull color, and there are holes in the roof and side paneling covered up by thick layers of cobwebs. The glass of the windows is much too dusty to make out what is inside, but Lance doesn’t need to see what’s inside to know that he’ll be in there soon enough.

He casts an illumination spell (praeluceuo) and conjures a ball of light to float above the palm of his non-dominant hand, letting it light his path as he moves to stand in front of the door. He flips through the spellbook in his mind to think of the incantation to unlock the door.

“Iltianuam reseriare?” he tries, and he receives no response.

“Apreri venenatistum. . .”

“Resieranda naeniamae!”

His frustration builds, and spells tumble from his lips one by one, more desperate with each attempt, nothing working. The spells all blur together in his mind, spilling out of him without much thought.

But when he can think of no other enchantment to attempt, he lets out a tired whimper. “I can’t go home like this,” he whispers. He can’t remain the weakest of them all, the youngest of seven fated to nothing, meant for nothing.

(a prophecy come true, would it even be considered disappointment or is it simply expectation now)

The door swings open, then, dust and dirt scattering in the air in its wake. He almost screams at the unexpected sound.

It’s too sudden to be coincidence, but what else could it be? He knows his magic is not what opened the door. The sound echoes, and he can hear bats fluttering inside the house, rats and spiders scurrying across the creaky floors, footsteps too light to make an impact.

Lance coughs at the rise of dust, the dry, cold air a surprising change. “Thank you?” he offers, to appease the spirits that might be haunting the house. What if the children who had disappeared are still here, ready to haunt him and strip away his magic and his spirit and take him to join them?

He glances behind him, to check that one of his siblings hasn’t followed and secretly cast a spell, then makes his way inside, determination in his eyes. He said he was stronger than everyone thinks, and he’s going to prove it by exploring the witch’s house.

The house smells of fire under a steaming cauldron, layered with animal waste and the stale scent of an abandoned house (of a decomposed body removed after a century). There is a grand staircase as soon as he enters, and he politely wipes his boots on the fraying musty carpet under his feet. The wallpaper is peeling but there are still shelves and shelves of glass bottles and vials, shattered so shards of glass are littered at his feet, books and artifacts piled on top of each other and scattered across the floor.

It looks exactly as Lance figures it would, but he can’t suppress his shiver upon entering and taking in the sights. It feels as though someone is watching him.

(His mind starts racing and racing—who could be watching him, is it the witch, is it one of his siblings, did his mami follow him?)

He lets his beacon of light glow warm in his hand, surveying the foyer once more before deciding to move forward. “I just need something that proves I came in here,” he declares aloud, letting the words settle in the air to try and calm his nerves. He hears some scratching and clawing in the walls, and his heart hammers loudly in his chest. “Not trying to disturb your spirit!”

The basement probably holds a useful magical artifact, Lance decides. His basement is where they store nearly all of the family’s magical supplies. The most intense of magic is done in the basement, where they are closest to nature and to the souls of the dead now buried. He assumes that the door under the stairs is the door to the basement, and he swallows away his fears and moves forward.

Every step that he takes toward the basement makes a whining creaking noise on the floor, and Lance’s heart rate continues to pick up with each movement. The door itself is nothing special, the handle rusted but intricately designed, and though he knows that he needs to, the idea of touching the door handle is very unappealing.

The dust would make his hand so dirty! And he doesn’t want to risk using a spell to clean the handle when a spirit is most likely watching him (judging him).

But he also knows that he needs to do this if he’s going to prove himself. He can wash his hand later. He uses his cloak to cover his hand and opens the door.

The light from the spell in his other hand is not enough to brighten his path down the stairs, so he takes slow and reluctant steps downward. He hears the stairs wail with each footstep, and he knows his hands are shaking the slightest bit by the time he makes it to the bottom.

“Just visiting!” he announces, taking a small step forward.

He feels the spider web caress his face and he screams.

It almost sounds like a spirit is cackling at his expense, but he’s too busy trying to wipe chunks of disgusting web from his hair and face. The idea that it has touched his bare skin makes him shiver.

“Alright, maybe I deserved that!” he calls out, holding out his ball of light and trying to squint into the basement room. He totally didn’t deserve that!

It’s difficult to make out the different objects in the room, but the way things are strewn about gives him the impression that everything was haphazardly (or perhaps forcibly) abandoned. The chalk symbols drawn on the floor are smudged but still interpretable, and Lance wonders what spell the witch had been in the middle of casting before everything had gone wrong.

He recognizes the combination of symbols for opening a portal, the ancient writings and characters in a circle around the faded pictures. There are other stains on the ground, as well, though Lance cannot determine exactly what caused them, and the way several potions are cracked and strewn across some of the symbols implies that at some point in this ritual, something had gone wrong. Are the stains of potions or of blood?

It makes him strangely sad to think about, as the witch might not have been mad after all. Going mad in experiments is different from going mad with power; the only person hurt here was the witch. One too many of his own spells have gone wrong, too, and if he lost everything the way this witch must have, he doesn’t even know how he would react as a spirit.

(he doesn’t think he’d be a bitter spirit like this witch; he hopes he wouldn’t be like that)

He feels a sudden chill when he steps across the symbols drawn on the floor, and he nearly drops his ball of light.

“Hello?”

He receives no response, and he gives himself a moment to recollect his thoughts and calm his racing heart.

He just needs to find something that is complete and obvious proof that he was in this house, that he is the witch who braved the house on the hill and lived .

Many spellbooks lay open across the floor and on the table leaning against the wall. There are shelves and shelves of more books, data collected and specimens gathered, notes and magics and little signs that someone had really lived here all those years ago. Signs of a person, a witch with feelings and aspirations that were lost.

He runs his fingers across the spines of some of the books, grimacing at the dust under his fingers but slightly exhilarated at the rush of magic he feels from being so close to a powerful being’s spiritual marks on the earth.

Glancing around, he searches for the best object to take that would prove his point and wouldn’t make a noticeable difference in this witch’s spirit’s hauntings. Nearly everything in the basement is broken, though, or too old and dusty for him to even want to touch. He looks past the abandoned spellbooks and broken potion bottles, beyond the ladles and bowls and bones.

Then, he sees it.

It has a silver handle designed to look like curling vines, wrapping up and around the reflective surface of a startlingly clean hand mirror.

Lance looks around again, checking to be sure that no spirits are directly behind him (and that he didn’t miss his siblings the first time and he’s truly alone), and he picks up the discarded mirror from its place on the floor near the chalk markings of whatever ritual had been taking place before the witch had died.

Touching the mirror gives him no sudden rush of magic, no feeling of anything different. He turns the mirror over in his hands, brings the ball of light in his other hand closer to the mirror’s surface. Examining the glowing purple mark on the back, he sees a shape he can’t place. It looks like the letter ‘s’ or the number ‘5’, nothing particularly unique or special, but it is jagged and doesn’t really appear to be part of any language of which he is familiar.

“Can I take this, then?” he asks, not expecting an answer—it would be rude to take such a pretty mirror without permission, and his mami didn’t raise him to be an impolite guest, notwithstanding the breaking in and stealing of a possibly precious magical artifact from a witch who might have died in a magical experiment gone wrong.

He holds the mirror in his hand delicately. It’s heavier than it looks, but not so much that it will be difficult or uncomfortable to carry, and he makes his way out of the house on the hill with no troubles.

In fact, as he heads up the stairs and across the creaking floors to the front door, he’s more than a little suspicious about how easy the process of finding and taking the mirror is. Why is it in such perfect condition? Had the mirror been part of the witch’s spell? What’s going to happen now that he’s taken it?

He can’t think of any spells to cast to prevent an evil witch from escaping the mirror (if she’s even trapped inside, which he’s reluctant to believe considering it is the house itself that is haunted, how could she have been trapped in the mirror). He’s reluctant to bring the mirror near his own house. He needs to prove himself, and inadvertently causing harm to his family is the last thing he would ever want to do.

Dispelling the illumination spell in his palm, as it’s twilight and there is just enough light in the sky, he examines the mirror once more, frowning as sudden thoughts of death and evil witch spirits begin whirling in his head.

He circles the woods surrounding the house for a solid half hour, thoughts running and running and running, before he decides he’ll leave the mirror at the base of a tree. No one would think to look here. It’s a good plan, since he can bring his siblings to the tree to show that he’s found the mirror without having to carry it back to his house, without bringing about any danger. Just in case.

As soon as he discards the mirror, though, he feels strangely empty.

He hasn’t felt this way in a while. When he was younger (and admittedly at his awkward peak of puberty), he’d been close friends with a pretty girl with blonde hair and large, violet eyes. She was sweet and funny and laughed at his jokes and always responded to his interjections in class. She made him feel important and he liked that about her. He liked a lot of things about her. He was absolutely devastated when she crushed his heart and stepped on all the pieces without a single care.

The empty feeling afterward is how he feels now.

“Now is not the time to be thinking of Nyma!” he scolds the mirror, reaching for it and shoving it further into the bushes.

“Who’s Nyma?”

Lance screams.

Who? What? How?

“What the hell?” the mirror demands, voice definitely not belonging to a restless witch who’d gone mad in her experiments. “Who—”

Lance screams again (and he definitely screamed in an attractive way the first time, really), falling backward and scrambling through his vague memories of spells to try and find something to blast the mirror to smithereens. . .

“Stop screaming!” the mirror yells, as Lance screams, “Confineulio! ” with the hopes of destroying the mirror and its possibly evil magic.

Nothing happens.

After he casts the spell, he waits in silence, waiting to make sure the spirit of the mirror is done with whatever it was going to do.

He starts feeling guilty. Nothing implies that the spirit of the mirror is evil, so he shouldn’t just assume. He’s normally a polite person, always welcoming and kind. After a few moments of quiet have passed and his racing heart calms the slightest bit, he makes his way back to the bush and slowly reaches a hand into it.

He feels the smooth cool surface of the mirror at his fingertips, and his heart starts hammering in his chest again. The mirror hasn’t shattered like it was supposed to, but then, not many of his spells had been effective on the house or its objects. It is difficult for one witch’s magic to affect another’s, and he knows that, but the most powerful of witches are able to wield their energy in such a way, and he has goals for himself.

He rummages around for the mirror’s handle, then pulls it out of the bush, holding it at arm’s length before angling it so he can look into its reflective surface.

Mouth dry and heart still beating too fast for his liking, Lance croaks out a shaky, “Hello?”

At first, there is no response. It’s quiet for long enough that he almost relaxes again, before the mirror emits a soft lavender glow and the upper body of a person (and it’s a person with a pretty face) appears in the reflection.

“Are you done?” the spirit says flatly, crossing its arms.

Lance is tempted to scream again, just to spite the spirit, but his throat is still dry and slightly aching from all his shouting. The spirit’s tone annoys him a little bit.

Sure, he didn’t have the greatest reaction initially, but who could blame him, considering he’d stolen a magical artifact out of a witch’s house and the magic mirror had started talking ? The spirit’s voice seems almost condescending, and Lance clenches his hand into a fist unconsciously.

The spirit looks like any regular witch or human would look, with a pale face, large eyes—he thinks of Nyma again and swallows, examining the spirit’s other features—and scowling pink lips. The spirit has dark hair that falls into its face to shadow over its eyes, messy and layered and curling outward at its neck.

Its hair looks like it would be soft to touch, Lance decides, but the style is, for lack of a better word, interesting. He hasn’t seen hair like that on anyone, and though it looks decent on the spirit, he isn’t sure that it would look okay on the people that he knows.

(He knows he’s focusing more than necessary on the spirit’s hair, but he can’t help it. And he’s annoyed that the spirit can sound so arrogant and look so decent when Lance is currently a frazzled mess.)

How is he supposed to show this mirror off as something he’d stolen from the house on the hill? Is it normal to communicate with spirits through mirrors?

“What’s with your hair?” he blurts out, unable to stop thinking about it (or think of something better to say, he’s still a little bitter at being caught by the spirit at such an inopportune time).

The spirit glances down and touches its hair, pouting. “What’s wrong with it?”

Lance feels some of his confidence returning at the spirit’s tone. “What isn’t wrong with it?”

“What isn’t wrong with you?” the spirit snaps back, leaning in closer.

The spirit is indoors somewhere. The walls are slate and dark, lined with bright purple lighting that is enough to highlight the spirit’s face, but the overall atmosphere is still dismal. It’s difficult to see anything else, and Lance can’t determine where the spirit exists. That he can see the spirit’s entire upper body, including both arms and hands, implies that it isn’t another hand mirror that is serving as a communication device on the spirit’s end.

Lance smirks at the spirit, deciding to let its attitude slide in favor of discovering more information. Perhaps he can salvage the situation so he can show off this mirror then forget any of this ever happened. Or maybe he’ll find out something useful and be hailed as the witch who found out the secrets behind the witch of the house on the hill. Either way, he needs to interrogate this spirit, and they’re off to a shaky start.

“The name’s Lance,” he says, raising and lowering his eyebrows.

The spirit is expressive, and its confusion is evident. “Uhh. I’m Keith.”

It’s a surprisingly normal name for an ancient spirit, but Lance nods anyway. “And you’re a guy?”

“Uhh. Yes?”

“I just wanted to clarify!” Considering he just thought Keith was a nameless spirit, it’s best that he asks. He doesn’t like assuming things, which is why he started talking to the mirror in the first place. He doesn’t want to believe the spirit is evil until he has proof that it’s true. “Okay, Keith ,” he starts, lips turning upward the slightest bit at Keith’s expression. “When did you die?”

“What?” Keith looks exasperated. Lance shrugs. “I thought you were being serious.”

“I. . . am?”

“I’m not dead, Lance. Obviously.”

Lance is insulted by the tone of Keith’s voice, but he tries to tone down his reaction so the situation doesn’t get out of hand, though it is nowhere near anything he’d been expecting. “Then what are you?”

“Galra?” Keith rolls his eyes. “Like everyone else.”

Lance hasn’t heard of Galra before, and he finds it interesting that Keith calls himself a Galra. Perhaps there’s a town of these Galrans, and school hasn’t yet found the need to mention them. What kind of magic do they wield? Do they not have magic at all? Still, they must have some semblance of magic for Lance to be able to communicate with Keith through a mirror. The witches of the town are well-known for their magic, and Lance has a lot of pride in being part of them, even if he isn’t quite on their level.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I am?” Lance prods when the conversation stalls and they’ve been staring at each other in silence for a little over a minute. It’s only polite that Keith continue their exchange, even if Keith doesn’t realize that they’re different. Yet.

Keith sighs, then turns away for a moment, glancing somewhere not within the view of the mirror. It sounds like screaming in the background, and Lance shivers in discomfort. A few moments pass before Keith continues, tone clearly placating, “Alright, Lance. What are you?”

“Human, of course!” Lance flashes one of his more charming smiles. “I’m one of the Witches of Matanzas!”

His eyes are wide and shining and purple and they look even more like Nyma’s. “What’s a human?” Keith uncrosses his arms and leans forward in curiosity. “What’s a witch?”

“What’s a Galra?” Lance shoots back, heart skipping a beat at Keith’s expression.

Keith looks confused. “Everyone is Galra. . . but I look more like you than the others.”

Lance opens his mouth to reply (what is Keith even saying, now Lance really wants to know what a Galra is) when he feels the warm rush of his mami’s magic beckoning him to return home. The sky has darkened considerably from the twilight, and he isn’t sure where the time has gone. It’s time for a weekly family dinner, since his siblings have moved away, and he can’t miss everyone’s homecoming, no matter how much he wants to continue this conversation. “I have to go,” he says, shaking his head. “Guess we’ll have to talk tomorrow!”

Keith blinks, repeats, “Tomorrow?”

For a moment, Lance can’t decide whether he should take the mirror with him. Though he doesn’t know the complete origins of the mirror, he wants to show it off now that he’s started talking to Keith and has reason to believe the mirror isn’t evil or a perfectly preserved relic of the witch of the house on the hill. After his mami’s magical call, most of his siblings will be gathered for dinner, and he can show that he isn’t the weakest of all of them, that the prophecy is wrong.

But a part of him doesn’t want to share the mirror just yet. He doesn’t know why, but he does know that he’s good at strategizing, and there’s probably a benefit in waiting and discovering more about this Galran society before turning over the mirror. Showing off the mirror would be a start, but it isn’t enough. He needs to wait.

“Tomorrow,” Lance agrees, turning the mirror so he no longer can see Keith. He places it face down in the bushes and makes his way home, thoughts racing too quickly for him to follow.

“Everything was burning and I needed to put out the fire and rescue the children, but there isn’t really a spell for that.”

His brother Joaquin is visiting, and Lance is excited, of course. Hearing about his family’s accomplishments always makes him proud. His family is helping so many people, creating new magics, changing the world little by little.

“It wasn’t easy, but I had to think back to my intermediate spellcasting class in Havana—taking the basics from there, I came up with a spell that extinguishes flames but also. . .”

Lance tunes his brother out. He doesn’t resent anyone for how he feels. He loves his family, he’s proud of their accomplishments, he’s excited to hear their stories, to say he is related to them, to be the little brother of people so strong and caring.

He just wishes he could do more, could give more. He wants to be more, so he is worthy of them, too.

When Lance was very young, his mami was sometimes too busy for him. Being a powerful witch means there are a lot of demands on her time, and Lance understands that and has always understood. It is a fact of their family.

His siblings are all different ages, so they’re all in varying (successful) stages of their lives—his eldest sister is going to travel to Havana where she and her best friend have been personally invited to practice their magic with one of the most powerful witches of their time; his eldest brother has saved a family from the uncontrolled magic of their youngest child; his middle sister has started schooling and is too advanced for her class; his middle brother has written a new spell.

So much is going on, and Lance doesn’t want to get in their way. He wasn’t old enough for schooling, so he practiced his magic in the field behind his home. The witch next door always kept an eye on him, reporting back to his mami whenever he misbehaved.

She would shake her head at some of his poses and help his movements flow better, teaching him how to pronounce his spells and what to feel when he summoned his magic.

They grow close.

Maybe that is why it hurt so much more when she clutched his arm one day, eyes lost in a prophecy she could not control, mumbling, Nothing nothing you can do nothing.

True to his word, Lance is back at the bushes the next morning. He’s naturally talkative, so he has to bite back his urge to tell his family about the mirror, especially as they all discussed their own accomplishments, the people they’ve saved, the places they’ve been.

As the youngest, there are fewer expectations of Lance beyond just practicing his magic and going to school three times in the week to learn the history of witches and their culture, to understand the meaning behind their magic and their ties to nature. His family doesn’t believe he’ll be as powerful as his siblings—and how could they, when the witch who helped raise him had foreseen his weakness, a fate of nothingness, a boy destined for naught—so they don’t worry too much about his powers wreaking havoc, don’t worry too much about him losing control.

But maybe that’s why Lance is always so eager to sneak out, to run off and discover new things and find reasons to be considered equal to his siblings. They mean well, and he can’t blame them for believing what they do (since he, too, believes it), but he has a hunger to prove himself, now. He needs to prove himself.

He’s going to prove that prophecy wrong.

The atmosphere as he nears the witch’s house is noticeably different than that of the woods near his town, and he hates the churning feeling that builds in his stomach as he gets closer to the edge of the woods near the hill, as he locates the correct bushes where he’d stashed the stolen mirror. He doesn’t have any reason to believe there’s something wrong with Keith or his magic, but the natural environment is leaving signals that he should perhaps heed.

Still, the mirror is as pretty to admire as it had been the day before, with its intricate silver design curving around the shining glass, its weight heavy in his palm as he lifts the mirror to stare at a reflection.

“Keith?”

Rather than his own face, in the mirror appears the room as it had before, dark walls lit by bright lights, no decorations, no people. Keith isn’t there, apparently, and Lance touches the cool surface of the mirror, frowning.

The world on the other side of the mirror appears empty.

Without a person in the scene, the world of the Galra doesn’t feel the same as his town, where even the buildings are bright and lively, where the people make the world feel alive.

Lance hears the sounds of metals clashing, of shouts and grunts and anger. It is muffled, possibly by whatever magic is separating their locations through the mirror, possibly because the fighting might be happening behind the closed doors of the room in the reflection.

“She can’t unlock the curse! Whatever magic the witch placed on him still holds.”

A curse? Magic cast by a witch?

He can’t think of any spells to provide assistance, whether they are fighting or simply discussing, so he moves to sit down and wait more comfortably. He touches the surface of the mirror again, wondering what it is that connects them, if there’s a way to send magic through. No spells come to mind.

Before his thoughts can run and his mind can wander, voices rise, complaining and angry and much more audible than before.

“So we’re stuck here until the curse breaks?” A hollow laugh, loud and pained. “We’re trapped on this—”

“Quiet! He mustn’t remember or he’ll purposely keep us here!”

“What makes it any different than now?”

“ Now , according to the messenger druids, the path has begun.”

Their voices fade with their footsteps, and Lance stares at the unchanging image of the mirror, trying to piece together what he thinks might have happened, what could possibly be going on in the Galra world that caused such tensions to rise. The clashing of metal and of voices might not have been fighting, exactly, but he doesn’t know what to make of this new information, doesn’t know what he can do to help.

Several more minutes pass.

Lance wonders if Keith even remembers they were meeting. Should they have made the plans more official? Is the time not the same in the Galra world? Is Lance going to appear desperate and lonely, for arriving much too early to their conversation, trying to meet Keith when Keith might not even want to meet him?

Something churns in his stomach, unpleasant and unhappy. He swallows and debates tossing the mirror aside, going back to the house on the hill and finding a different artifact, one that won’t interact with him, one that won’t hurt him.

Why would Keith be any different from anyone else?

He sits in silence, allowing his thoughts to overwhelm him, his mind to let loose, his eyes to shut.

“Uhh. . . hi?”

Lance straightens up from the nap he’s falling into, blinking away the sleep from his eyes. He grabs the mirror from the grass, holding it up so he can peer into its reflection. “Keith?”

Keith is now in the view of the mirror, unaware of the length of time he’s kept Lance waiting. “You came back!” His face and his tone are flat and almost expressionless, but there’s something shining in his eyes that makes Lance suspect that Keith might be pleased to see him.

He doesn’t appear to have been doing anything before arriving, and he’s wearing the same outfit as he had the day before, his cloak pinned perfectly straight, his vest just as purple. Lance wonders if there’s a sort of color scheme going on in this Galra town, if that’s what makes them connect with their magic. They obviously have a strange political system there.

They stare at each other in silence for a few more moments. Lance takes in Keith’s appearance, trying to piece together details of who this person is, where he is, why they’re able to communicate through a mirror. Nothing comes to mind.

Keith, for his part, seems to be examining Lance in curiosity more than anything. Lance wonders what the other Galra look like, since Keith thinks he and Lance are the most similar. In terms of appearance, they don’t have much in common—Lance has a longer face, darker skin, shorter hair. He exudes magic and confidence (though how true his appearance may seem is debatable), where Keith seems to be a blank slate.

There’s so much he wants to ask, so much he wants to know. He doesn’t know where to begin, how to start, what to say. He’s normally skilled at talking to people, but he isn’t sure how much Keith counts as a person when he’s a spirit in a mirror.

“Where are you?” Lance decides, though it’s not much of a greeting.

“This is the main ship,” Keith says, shifting on his feet, visibly pleased at the easy question. “They recently assigned this room as my new chambers, I’m not. . .” He runs his fingers through his hair, messing it up further, eyebrows drawn together as though he’s thinking. “I guess you could say I moved here recently?”

“You’re on a ship?” Lance can’t contain his excitement. “I love the water!”

“Water? I’m on spaceship.” Keith frowns, pausing in consideration. “ You don’t look like you’re on a ship.”

“I’m in the woods near my town,” Lance says, gesturing around him, at the creepy trees that signal the close distance of the witch’s house. “We moved here when I was young.”

“Is. . . none of that on a ship?”

“Nope!” Lance pops the ‘p’ sound with a short laugh. “So Galra world isn’t a town then? It’s a ship?” Lance shakes his head. He isn’t sure what a spaceship is, but it doesn’t seem near as nice as Matanzas, as Havana, as Cuba. “You’re a weird guy, Keith.”

Keith snorts. “Galra world.”

They lapse into silence again, thinking. Lance isn’t sure what to make of Keith and these Galra. Has Keith never been in an actual town? Has he only ever been in this spaceship? Lance has never left the area, so he can relate, though he feels like there’s a major difference between his town and this Galra ship, a different political structure, a different type of existence.

“So you’re a witch?” Keith finally asks, when Lance is about to struggle with a random joke to try and resurrect the conversation between them.

“One of the best,” Lance says, smirking. “My family sets the goals of what magic should be.” It isn’t a lie, though he tries to make his tone a lot more prideful. His family sets the goals; he is just like everyone else.

There’s something unreadable in Keith’s eyes, then he shrugs. “But what does that mean?”

Lance has questions of his own, though. He likes talking and doesn’t mind explaining himself, his family, his life. But it’s only fair he gets to learn about this stranger, too. Otherwise, what was the point in stealing the mirror? He could learn a lot from Keith, could maybe find out about the witch. Was the witch Galra?

“Tell you what. Why don’t we play a game of questions?”

“A game.”

“I’ll answer your question, then you can answer one of mine. We’ll learn a lot about each other this way, and it’ll be less awkward.”

“Awkward?” Keith repeats with a confused frown. “But aren’t we just. . . talking?”

Lance waves him off. “Here, I’ll start. A witch is a type of human who can cast magic. I’m from a family of witches, and we all are pretty magical.” He laughs and winks, though Keith still looks confused as he crosses his arms. “Now I ask you a question. What’s a Galra?”

“But what do you mean by magic? Galra druids do magic, too.”

“That can be your next question. You answer mine first.”

Keith looks frustrated. “That doesn’t make sense, though. Why interrupt me when it would be faster to get one subject out of the way and switch to your questions after?”

“The whole point is that you can’t ask all that you want to, so your questions are more meaningful.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

Lance sighs. He’s never argued about the semantics of conversation before, but he’ll make it work. Keith might not want to pose questions back and forth, but Lance is an expert conversationalist and he can manipulate the conversation in his favor. “Fine. Answer my Galra question, and we’ll do it your way.”

Keith stares at Lance in suspicion before nodding slowly and launching into an explanation about people much, much taller and wider than him with large fluffy ears and purple fur and yellow eyes. Some have tails and scales and ridges instead of skin, and it all sounds so fascinating.

Lance isn’t sure what to make of this information. He’s pretty sure Galra don’t exist and Keith is making this up, but magic can do weird things, and maybe the people of Galra world drank one too many potions and didn’t have the magic or ingredients to change back. Still, picturing Keith among these people is strange and a little funny. He almost wants to see one of these Galra in the mirror.

Keith is quick to shoot down the idea. “Galra are. . . violent. There’s. . . a lot of blood here.”

“You sound like a fun bunch. I can see why you don’t think you look like them,” Lance offers with a small smile.

Keith blinks and is quiet for a passing moment, and then he’s laughing so hard Lance can’t help but widen his smile and laugh too.

And suddenly the dialogue is a lot easier between them. There’s a lot to learn about each other’s worlds, a lot to learn about each other. And, whether Keith realizes it or not, they are playing Lance’s game, and their questions and answers create pictures in Lance’s mind that he doesn’t want to forget.

Words flow easily from Lance’s lips, as they always have and always do, but it feels different this time. He doesn’t know why, but it’s nice.

After his first conversation with Keith goes relatively smoothly, they meet again, then again, until their meetings are regular and a necessary part of their days.

(they talk for hours and hours, startlingly easy after that first time, lost in new worlds and new stories and new feelings)

“Witch magic is connected to nature! A lot of our magics and potions require plants or stones as ingredients. Small spells, like this”—he casts a quick anymphiae and pulls a small amount of water from the air, letting it gather at his fingertips—“are based on natural elements, too.”

“Druid magic doesn’t seem like that,” Keith says, crossing his arms. His room is mostly empty, an uncomfortable-looking bed the only piece of furniture Lance can see through the mirror. “Druids chant incantations and gather around the person they’re—”

“You cast spells on people?”

“Does your magic not work that way?” Keith looks confused, and Lance has to reign in his urge to shout.

There’s an unspoken rule of magic, that because it is derived from nature, it isn’t used on other living creatures. Healing spells and potions are different, of course, and even those magics are performed by expert witches who have specialized in that field of magic. Lance doesn’t have an expertise yet, but his older siblings have all specialized in specific elements (and his mother has a specialty in spirit, one of the most powerful witches anyone has ever known).

“What kind of world is Galra world?” Lance asks, trying to tone down. Of course they would have different social mores, they are from different worlds.

“We don’t have a lot of people,” Keith explains. “But druid magic definitely isn’t nature-based.”

Magic is much harsher on the Galra ship, relative to the magic practiced in Lance’s town. And the druids that cast magic don’t seem as pleasant as the witches of Matanzas, with their ritualistic practices and their strange ideas of what they want from their magic and their people.

According to Keith, there is a lot of science and experimenting that goes on with the druids and with their head druid, but he doesn’t have any magic of his own so he isn’t as familiar with the process.

Lance files this information away, planning to ask Pidge about it. For now, he shifts the topic to learn more about Galra society—does Keith go to school? Does he have friends there?

“What’s a school?” Keith makes a face.

Lance laughs.

“You’re weird,” Keith tells Lance one day. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at Lance through the mirror with wide eyes. The mirror Keith uses is on a wall, so Lance never sees more of the Galra ship than the dark room in which Keith resides.

“Thanks,” Lance says, rolling his eyes. He shifts so his hand mirror is leaning against the base of a tree, rolling onto his stomach so he can still see Keith but can also bury his face into his arms on the grass. He knows his tone sounds hurt, and he hates that he is making it obvious. He knows he isn’t the same as the other witches, powerful and strong and clearly meant to be a witch. He doesn’t want to tell Keith any of this yet, he doesn’t know Keith well enough.

Keith doesn’t seem to catch that his words are offensive, continuing, “You’re this really social powerful witch, but you’re the first person willing to talk to me. And we talk a lot?”

Lance deflates in relief, forcing his thoughts aside. Keith is just, as always, terrible with words. “And that makes me weird?”

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

“Probably.”

Definitely. He still wants to find something that’ll show his worth to his family, that gives him the chance to help people. Keith is a bit of a distraction to that, but he can’t bring himself to mind. He likes talking to Keith, learning about Keith and his world. He has his goals, but they can be delayed if it means he can spend more time learning about his weird friend.

Keith nods, seemingly satisfied with this answer. “You’re weird, then.”

“You’re the weird one,” Lance offers with a smile. “You’re the one no one else talks to.”

“I didn’t really think about it before.” Keith runs a hand through his hair, messing it up beyond its usual ruffled state. It makes Lance’s throat dry, the way Keith looks. It should be unfair to look like that. “I wonder why we can talk to each other.”

“Wh—” he clears his throat, “who was in your room before you?”

“They reassigned me after the druids wanted my old room. They did one of their rituals and moved me here because ‘the time was right.’” Keith gives Lance an odd look. Lance thinks it’s a strange coincidence that Keith moved rooms at the same time as he found the mirror, but who is he to judge the dynamics of magic. “You’re the weirdo who started talking to mirrors in the first place.”

“Hey! You’re the weirdo!”

“You’re weird!”

“You’re weirder!”

“You’re weirder!”

Lance sticks his tongue out at Keith, laughing when he sees the confusion on Keith’s face. “What a weirdo.”

“You’re weird,” Keith says again, and Lance rolls his eyes fondly.

“Yeah, and you’re the weirdo who likes it.”

They’re both quiet, staring at each other, at the worlds that surround them. Keith sighs, a small smile on his lips that makes Lance smile back. “I’m happy we’re friends.”

Friends. . .

“Me too.”

“So who is Nyma, anyway?”

Lance feels his face erupt in a hot blush. “Who? Nyma? What?” How has Keith remembered Nyma’s name after all this time? He hadn’t expected the mirror to speak in the first place, and though he’s a little pleased that Keith remembers the details of their conversations, he’s also a bit peeved that Keith remembers this detail.

“Someone important?” Keith looked indifferent at first, more curious than anything when he brought up Nyma, but Lance’s reaction has made him smirk and raise an eyebrow. It’s infuriating and cute and Lance hates it.

“Stop making that face!” Lance regrets saying anything, as Keith now looks even more pleased with himself, and Lance just wants to cover his face with his hands. “She’s an old friend!”

“Seems like more than a friend,” Keith states matter-of-factly. He’s still smirking too much, but he’s talking as though he’s explaining an objective answer to a question Lance asked. It’s the same tone he has when Lance asks for questions about the Galra ship, Galra society. “You wouldn’t be so flustered if—”

“What,” Lance scoffs, trying to will his blush away, “like you haven’t liked anyone before!”

“I mean,” Keith shrugs, “I only like you.”

“What?” Lance’s heart starts beating stupidly fast. Keith did not mean it like that.

I only like you.

I only like you.

I only like you.

“What?”

“What? What? You can’t say things like that, Keith!” Lance shouts, face even warmer than before. As though Lance’s words are a trigger, Keith breaks eye contact, face blushing red as well.

“Oh.”

They can’t look at each other for a solid six minutes, the only sounds they hear coming from the background of Keith’s room, where there is shouting and fighting and a weird clanging and splattering sound. Despite this, Lance also feels like his heart is beating much too loudly, and that Keith might be able to hear it if he tries hard enough.

Lance can’t help the tiny smile tugging at his lips, and he can’t help but notice the same smile appearing on Keith’s mouth.

“Your mood’s been different lately,” Camila says from her seat at the table, glancing at Lance as he fastens his cloak tightly. “Why are you so happy?”

Lance frowns. “What do you mean?”

“No one’s that happy to go to magic classes.” She eyes him suspiciously, at the lunch he’s packed and stored in a pouch at his waist, at his boots dirtied with grass and mud from the woods near the witch’s house. “What’re you hiding, brother of mine?”

Camila is his older sister by a year and four months, though she seems much older sometimes, with how often she leaves to teach magic classes out of town, offering advice and guidance to young little witches from all of Matanzas. She’s home the most often of all his siblings, so he feels closest to her, though he isn’t her favorite sibling.

She’s always willing to listen to him, though sometimes he can tell that she’s too busy for some of his problems since she really can’t relate. He’s tried to stop bothering her with his concerns, but she can still tell that he’s been off doing something unusual, that she’s bringing it up.

“I’m not hiding anything,” Lance says, fondly annoyed. “Just practicing my magic and meeting a friend.”

She nods, and Lance almost lets out a breath of relief before her eyes narrow. “Who?”

“What do you mean who? I have tons of friends!”

“Then you’d have specified who,” she smirks widely, and Lance scowls. Camila’s good at catching him lying, even in small completely harmless situations. He’s good at reading her, too, but he still hates it. Whenever he catches her lies, she’s quick to bring up all the times he’s lied to her.

“He’s just a new friend visiting from—”

“A new friend?” Camila’s smile makes Lance regret continuing the conversation. “He makes you this happy?”

“Shut up, Camila!”

She laughs loudly. “Sure, sure! Go have fun with your friend!”

Lance scurries from the house before she can continue to pester him, making his way to the house on the hill while his thoughts wander. He wonders if he should have said something. He shouldn’t need to hide Keith’s existence, but there’s something strange and mystical about how they met.

What does it mean to be in a world so different, separated by only a reflection?

They’ve had many separate conversations, but he hasn’t heard any Galra speak since the second day. He knows there are Galra there, and he’s curious what they look like, but Keith is insistent that Lance doesn’t see anyone.

He speaks to Lance through a mirror on the wall of his room, one with a similar design around the border of the mirror’s reflective surface (at least, they’re assuming it’s similar based on Keith’s terrible descriptions of ‘winding veins’).

Hearing this only makes Lance more curious, as the mirror must have been there before Keith moved into that room. What kind of enchantment connects the two mirrors, and why? One of the Galra druids must have cast a spell on the mirror there, but the only way that the mirror in Lance’s hands could have been charmed is if the witch from the house on the hill had done something all those years ago.

Thinking about it makes Lance want to bring the mirror back to the house, to see if Keith can say anything about it, if he recognizes anything from it.

But Lance is also pretty content with the way everything is at the moment, and he doesn’t want to ruin it.

He also doesn’t know if he can get back into the house, considering some sort of magic—magic that was not his own—had been what let him into the house the first time.

He shoves his thoughts aside and pulls the mirror from its hiding place, pulling an easy smile to his lips and making himself appear happy and carefree.

Lance falls back onto the grass, holding the mirror above him so Keith sees him splayed on the soft ground. The grass tickles his neck but it isn’t unpleasant, and it smells fresh and makes him feel closer to nature. His magic pulses inside him, and he feels at ease, though there’s still the slight negative aura of the witch’s house nearby.

“What’s your world like?” Keith wonders, lips curving into a soft smile. He’s wearing the same outfit as a few days before, a dark indigo vest over pale violet sleeves, hands covered in fingerless black gloves that reach mid-arm. It makes his eyes seem so much brighter. Lance doesn’t know if it’s normal to spend this much time with someone, to know their clothes.

Smiling back, Lance gestures at the grass and at himself lying in it. “Like this! We try to leave a lot of the natural world alone, so we are as close to our magic as we can be.”

Keith nods as though he understands, but he can’t ever really know, as he does not have his own magic. Still, he always seems to like hearing Lance talk about magic, quiet and attentive, eyes wide and shining whenever Lance throws himself into his explanations and occasional presentations.

“It’s pretty,” he says, leaning back against the wall so he can look at Lance fully. “We’re surrounded by stars, here. Stars and space.”

“Stars are pretty in a different way,” Lance points out.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t mind exploring them one day, if I leave this ship.”

Lance sighs. He can feel the chill of the breeze, the intense atmosphere flowing from the house on the hill. He and Keith talk more days of the week than not, but he can’t bring himself to take the mirror to his home. It’s always on the back of his mind, his desire to prove himself, his thirst for experience, his inability to prove that he’d braved the witch’s house and actually taken one of her magical artifacts. He thinks he might trust Keith, but he is unsure of the origins of the mirror and how they are able to communicate. He doesn’t know enough, and he can’t endanger his town.

He isn’t sure what he wants from the relationship between them, so he shoves these intrusive thoughts aside.

Keith always looks so entranced whenever Lance performs magic, and he knows he shouldn’t place so much importance on how much Keith might value him, but he’s never been the center of someone’s attention, never been so compelling to someone.

“Do that again!” and “What else can you do?” and “That’s pretty cool.” all make him more flustered than he’d care to admit.

The way Keith looks at him, like he’s the most powerful (beautiful) person he’s ever seen, twists Lance’s feelings in a pleasant way, makes him feel light and happy and free. He doesn’t feel like nothing, he isn’t nothing.

They talk very often now, conversations opening doors to stories of the past and plans for the future, and Lance finds himself spilling secrets about himself that he hasn’t even told his best friends.

“They’re so strong, you know?” He doesn’t know why he feels so comfortable explaining this now, but there’s something nice about Keith being willing to listen, about Keith not knowing who his older siblings are. “And then there’s me, the youngest and weakest one. Can’t even break into a haunted house right.”

Keith reaches forward and brushes his fingers against the mirror on his side of the world. There’s such a fond look in his eyes that Lance almost wants to look away, but he doesn’t. He stands up tall, clenching the mirror in his hand and looking determinedly into Keith’s eyes. Keith’s face flushes red at the intensity of Lance’s gaze, and Lance’s expression splutters into a much softer one.

“I think you do things right,” Keith whispers, voice scratchy. “You’re strong, too.”

Keith is normally sarcastic or obliviously curious, so hearing such an earnest tone makes Lance’s heart twist. Keith says some other things, and they sound stilted and awkward yet wholly honest, and though Lance can’t bring himself to believe Keith’s words, he does find some truth in Keith’s expression.

“I. . .” Keith’s face is horribly red that Lance almost wants to laugh at him. “You’re everything.”

Pidge is a human without a trace of magic, despite coming from a family of powerful witches. She does a lot to understand the mechanics behind spells and the connection between magic and nature, so Lance and Hunk often go to her for lessons and explanations despite her inability to actually cast the spells.

Hunk is a witch with a moderate amount of magic—he does magic to heal and provide stability to families and other people, rather than to increase his power. He doesn’t plan on leaving their town so he can take care of his family of non-magical humans, since it is within his power to do so.

Lance considers them his best friends, despite their differences in magic and goals. Lance knows he has the potential to be much stronger if he just practices. He also knows he’ll need to do something amazing to become anywhere near as renowned as his family. His ambitions differ greatly from those of his friends, and it’s something apparent in his aura and his actions.

It’s no surprise, then, that they’re suspicious enough of his constant running around that he wants to tell them about Keith and his adventure at the witch’s house. They meet up one sunny afternoon, and he weaves his story. His friendship with Keith is a lot stronger than he’d ever intended, and he hopes they can meet each other, one day. As he tells his tale, he leaves out the parts about him screaming at the spider webs and freaking out about the talking mirror, so it proves, at least, that he is one of the few people able to make it into the house on the hill and live to tell the tale.

“I would’ve gone with you! What was it like?” Pidge demands, at the same time as Hunk whines, “Man, that’s so dangerous!”

Lance feels warm at their attention, and he tries to find something else to stare at, so he doesn’t react too quickly and say something he doesn’t want to say.

They’re sitting in the field behind Hunk’s house, the sun high in the sky and the grass warm underneath them. The air is getting chillier, but there are some days like this one where the weather matches their moods and the day is pleasant. Lance has a sneaking suspicion that Hunk is more powerful than he lets on, when days like this occur.

“I mean, I’m not too sure why the door opened in the first place, since it wasn’t my magic. That’s something you could look into, Pidge.”

Pidge nods. “The kids who disappeared had to get in somehow. I’m thinking the witch’s spirit might be selective about who enters the house.”

“Then why’d it choose Lance?” Hunk jokes, causing Pidge to snort and laugh. Lance swats at Hunk.

Pidge pulls out an already stained scrap of parchment and a dying pen, jotting down some notes. “What did you end up taking?”

Lance knows he started telling the story so he can’t cut himself off at this point, but, now, a part of him doesn’t want to talk about Keith’s mirror. It’s something personal, their conversations, the looks they share. He sort of wants them to meet Keith, since Keith is becoming an important part of his life now, but he also feels that learning about Keith’s world and figuring out the details of the mirror is something he wants to do on his own. Otherwise, it isn’t really one of his own accomplishments. He doesn’t want to lie to his friends, though.

“Lance?”

“Sorry,” he laughs, “I was just thinking. . .”

“That’s new!”

“You’ve never done that before!”

Lance rolls his eyes and laughs a bit more loudly. “You both are terrible people.” Pidge smirks at him and Hunk gives him a soft smile, so Lance can reaffirm that they’re joking, if their sarcastic tones hadn’t been enough. “I found. . . a mirror.”

Pidge looks positively intrigued, scribbling on the parchment much too fast for her handwriting to be legible. Her handwriting is terrible as it is. “That’s an older type of magic; no one really does spells like that anymore. Were you able to communicate with the witch through the mirror?”

“Why would you even want to talk to her? She eats children!”

“I don’t think she ate the children,” Lance offers with a sly smile, “I think she sucked the magic from their souls.”

Hunk looks horrified at the thought. “Like that’s much better!”

“It’s not,” Pidge says, pushing her glasses up higher on her nose, “but if she’s trapped in the mirror, then maybe she needs a certain amount of magic to get out. Weird she didn’t try to kill Lance, though.”

“No one would want to kill me !” Lance considers Pidge’s explanation. Is the witch part of the Galra now? She should be dead, it’s been nearly a thousand years. “What makes you think she’s stuck in the mirror?”

Lance has only ever seen Keith in the mirror, and Keith occasionally makes references to not leaving his ship, but he’s never seemed trapped, and he’s never seemed trapped in a mirror. Unless Keith is a witch after all?

Could Keith be lying?

“Mirror magic is fickle,” Pidge says, raising an eyebrow at him. “It can give you access to other realities, but if you don’t cast the spell correctly, those realities become your reality.”

“Say reality one more time.”

Pidge gives them both a flat look. “Have you spoken to anyone through the mirror, Lance? Normal magic doesn’t allow communication through mirrors.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because mirrors connect realities, and that’s a magic on its own. They’re portals, reflections of places to go.”

“Magic can affect other magical items, if the initial magic isn’t strong enough.”

“And the witch from the house on the hill was powerful.”

“But wouldn’t the witch be dead already?” Lance points out, shifting the subject. His heart is hammering hard in his chest. Pidge might not know the whole story, but there has to be a reason that he’s been able to talk to Keith that doesn’t involve mad witches and getting stuck in other dimensions. “Or do you think the entire reality got trapped because of her?”

“That’s an interesting theory,” Hunk interjects. “Could one person shift reality like that?”

“I’ve never seen it happen, but theoretically. . .”

“Theoretically, you’re both nerds.” Lance sighs, but he’s smiling to cover his racing heart and his rapid thoughts. Pidge is scribbling fast on her parchment, mumbling things to herself.

“If you’re the one who found the mirror, you might be able to free whoever’s trapped inside,” Hunk realizes slowly, staring at Lance. “The house must’ve let you in for a reason.”

It’s something that he’d considered before.

“Don’t free the witch, though!”

“That sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen.”

“Maybe it just likes me?” he offers, but they’re all looking at each other, deep in thought.

“I’d like to see the mirror for myself.”

There has to be a reason why the door had opened for him, when so many people hadn’t been able to enter the house before. There has to be a reason why he had found a mirror in pristine condition, when everything else in the house is dusty and broken and with little magical value. There has to be a reason why he was able to easily leave the house with the mirror, when so many people had entered the house in the past and had not been able to leave.

(there has to be a reason why Keith is the only Galra who has used the mirror to contact Lance)

Lance feels himself nodding. “Yeah yeah, okay.” He’ll show them the mirror, and he’ll introduce them to Keith. “One day.”

Wherever Keith is, their worlds are strangely different from each other. They’ve met up (can Lance even call his sneaking into the woods to talk to a mirror ‘meeting up?’) too many times to count, now, talking for hours about everything and nothing, whatever comes to mind, whatever they can learn about the other.

“What’s it like, having magic?”

Lance is leaning against the base of a tree, the mirror resting against his thighs while his knees are pulled up not too close to his chest. “Warm,” he says, the first thought to come to mind.

“Yeah?” Keith snorts.

“Praeluceuo!” Lance holds the mirror in his left hand, using his right to conjure a small ball of light. It’s bright enough outside that the light is unnecessary, but the shadows from the tree’s many branches reveal enough.

Keith’s lips have upturned into a small smile. “That’s nothing like what the druids do.”

“My magic has a connection to nature,” Lance explains, clenching his hand to a fist and letting the light die. “I don’t think your ship makes that possible.”

“We don’t have anything like ‘nature,’” Keith agrees, tilting his head in thought. Lance places the mirror back on his lap and twirls his hands, mumbling the next spell to pull a small amount of water from the air. Keith’s eyes seem to light up, and Lance feels his face flush red at the attention and excitement. “We can’t leave the ship.”

He lets the water fall, frowning. “What do you mean?”

Keith shrugs. “It’s like how you’re always there,” he gestures at the tree behind Lance, “we’re always here.”

“I can leave, Keith. I don’t just live in the woods.”

“You. . . don’t?” His tone is either completely sarcastic or confused and really interested, but Lance is more focused on the fact that the Galra all live on a single ship.

“What happens if you leave the ship? What’s out there?”

Their worlds are so vastly different. Not for the first time, Lance wonders how they are even connected, how this mirror lets them communicate when they might not even be on the same world.

“I think you just. . . die?” Lance is about to say something, but Keith cuts him off, determination in his eyes and in his voice. “If I can find a way out of this ship, I’m going to explore space.”

His conversation with Pidge and Hunk flashes back to him, that the witch might be trapped in the mirror, that Keith might be trapped in the mirror.

Lance clutches the mirror in both hands. “That sounds like a stupid idea.”

Keith flashes a glare at him. “What, like you want to stay in the woods your whole life?”

“Let me finish!” Lance shoots a more playful glare at Keith, watching Keith’s face turn a light pink (and ignoring the way his own face flushes warm in response). “It sounds like a stupid idea to do alone.”

Keith stares at Lance blankly, his blush fading. “I don’t have friends here,” he admits, breaking eye contact.

Lance can’t help his loud laugh. He figured Keith didn’t have Galran friends, from the way Keith spoke about their differences (the fact that Keith said Lance is the only person to really talk to him), but he never had someone flat out tell him they didn’t have friends. Lance has always had people around him, at home and at school, his family, his neighbors. He’s always had friends. “I know.”

“I have to do it alone, Lance.” Keith’s tone sounds like he’s explaining something to a child.

Rolling his eyes, Lance laughs again, especially as Keith directs an even more frustrated look at Lance. “That’s why I’m offering, dude.”

“Oh.”

“You’re so dumb sometimes.”

Keith starts laughing. “What? You’re dumber.”

“You’re dumb!”

There’s something very satisfying about hearing Keith laugh.

A lot of Lance’s jokes go over Keith’s head (and a lot of references are completely lost on him, like they are from completely different worlds), but sometimes Lance will make a face or say a phrase in an odd way, and Keith will break out into a wide smile and just laugh and it helps Lance to forget everything that’s bothering him.

“Thank you, Lance,” Keith says quietly, in between his laughing.

Thank you.

Hearing Keith’s laugh and seeing Keith’s smile is enough to make Lance’s chest feel full and his cheeks hurt from smiling back at his friend, from being the recipient of such a beautiful sound (a beautiful sight, of a boy with bright eyes crinkling shut in mirth, lips stretched into a pretty smile, cheeks flushed pink).

It’s enough that he doesn’t care that he doesn’t know why he and Keith are able to communication, enough that he doesn’t mind not knowing.

It’s enough that he can’t stop smiling when he arrives home, that his mami is shaking her head at him and throwing question after question that he can’t answer because his mind is elsewhere, lost in conversations about everything and about nothing.

It’s enough that when he closes his eyes to sleep, he’s still sitting in that field cradling a mirror in his hands and staring at a boy who knows more about him than anyone else ever has.

He wanted to prove himself and make a difference, and he’s going to do that, for Keith. He’ll free Keith, and they’ll explore the world together.

He thinks of Pidge’s and Hunk’s words, that there’s something strange about the mirror, about the world of the Galra reflected on its surface. He needs to tell them about this, he needs to tell them about Keith.

“I can’t wait.”

Maybe he’ll say something, another day.