Queen Allura of the block castle looked out at her far reaching Kingdom.

(Far reaching referring to the space between the bathroom and the snack table). All things that lay within her domain were hers to command.

All save for Keith, who kept taking the blocks from the southern wall of her castle.

Just as the angry thought passed she caught sight of a head of black hair out of the corner of her eye.

"Hey!"

Keith took off, dropping a few of the blocks as he ran.

Glaring at the retreating figure, little Allura climbed down from her makeshift stand of blocks and followed after him.

She was not about to let him get away with stealing her blocks again. Everytime he did Allura ended up having to completely rebuild her block castle from the ground up. Well, she wasn't going to let it keep happening.

Eventually Keith stopped and dropped all of the blocks he had collected into a little pile in front of PIdge.

Pidge was easily the youngest kid in the daycare (not counting the actual babies). She was smart, and could play with the older kids pretty well considering she was a toddler. The only catch was that Pidge hadn't quite gotten talking down yet. It made making what she wanted known extremely difficult. Still she managed.

Allura hid herself under the nearest table and watched.

PIdge had begun stacking the blocks in the haphazard way little kids did, with Keith only assisting when the pile got too high for the three year old. Once finished, instead of admiring their sloppy creation, Pidge knocked the whole thing down giggling the whole time. Almost immediately after, the two started stacking the blocks again. Only to knock it down. Again.

The whole display baffled Allura.

Why pour so much time into stacking the blocks only to knock them over again? Honestly, it made no sense. And yet they both looked so genuinely happy. What was she missing?

Later, back at her block castle, she tried stacking her own blocks and knocking them over. She had to admit, there was some novelty to the idea. But she couldn't seem to figure out why Keith seemed to find the whole thing so fun.

Pidge was the one who got to knock down the tower. She even stacked most of the blocks. Keith just sat to the side and let her work, only jumping in when it looked like she might topple the tower on to herself.

It was actually kind of cute… In a silly boyish kind of way.

When it came time to go home, Allura took her usual seat and prepared to wait. Her father tended to work late and while her godfather, Coran, was more than willing to pick her up he was often the last to show up. Though she didn't mind having to wait a bit longer than the other kids, it could get terribly lonely by herself.

Today proved to be a bit different, however, as the sound of the seat next to hers being pulled out drew her attention. Keith sat down next to her quietly and stared boredly at the wall.

Allura narrowed her eyes suspicious. "What're you doing?"

Keith didn't even turn his head to look at her. "Sittin."

"I know that! Why are you sitting here?"

"Cause I wanna."

"Well you can't! This is MY seat! Go sit somewhere else!"

The boy glanced down at the table. "It doesn't have yer name on it."

Glaring, Allura stuck her tongue out in response. It was the only argument she could give to his unshakeable logic.

"Why do you sit by yourself every day?" Keith asked suddenly.

Allura looked down at her hands. "I don't sit by myself every day."

"But you did yesterday and the day before that. And the day before that. And the day before that."

"W-well, what about you? Why do you steal my blocks everyday?"

"Cause yer a block hog!"

"Am not!"

"Am too!"

"Am not!"

"Am too!" Then Keith added. "And everyone knows it!"

Allura pouted at this.

It was certainly true that Keith wasn't the first to call Allura a block hog. Everyone had at some point. It wasn't her fault. The other kids never played with them right.

But it only mattered now that Keith was the one who saying it. Allura couldn't place why.

"W-well you should still ask first! It's the polite thing to do!"

That was something her father had always told her was true. She'd ignored it for the most part, but right now it seemed like a good way to win the argument.

"I don't gotta." Keith reasoned. He was surprisingly reasonable for a kid a year younger than her. "They're everyone's blocks. Sides you never ask before you hog 'em all."

Allura had had enough. "How else am I supposed to build my castle?!"

"We'd help build the castle." Keith offered. "If you let us play in it once we're done!"

She thought about this for a minute. Allura liked playing queen by herself. But… it occurred to her that all the queens she'd read about in books often had servants and things. And every queen had a knight in shining armor who would save her as a princess before marrying her and becoming her king. Or a prince consequence-or-whatever.

Allura twirled a small lock of her silver hair with her finger and tried to look thoughtful. As a shy little thought occurred to her. If she was the queen of the castle then naturally she'd get to decide who'd be her prince-con-something.

"W-well," she began. "A queen DOES need servants to look after. B-but I still get to be the queen!"

"If that's what you want, then fine. But you don't get to be a block hog anymore."

Crossing her arms, Allura gave a very prim. "Deal."

And so that was how Queen Allura gained her very own army of knights. And a prince-con-

"Let's shake on it." Keith spat into the palm of his hand and offered it to her.

Allura recoiled in disgust. "Ewww."

-dragon. Queen Allura had a yucky dragon.