Blue. They were blue as the oceans that once roared mightily over the entire planet. Untainted and effervescent the waters were the givers of life. Blue. They were as blue as the skies that graced his dying planet. He had sat under those skies and soaked up the optimism that covered him like a great banner in his youth and as King. Blue-the color of the eyes that floated in his dreams daily since he could remember. Except those same eyes also visited him when he was awake.

The eyes never haunted him or caused him alarm. In fact they were comforting and brought a breeze of the familiar. Many years ago he safely concluded that they belonged to someone he knew. His future wife? Yet when he met Lorelei she had the most inviting brown eyes that captured him. He then concluded that the eyes belonged to his children. The prince did indeed have blue eyes but they were not the eyes that flowed through his thoughts and dreams. When the princess was born she had the eyes of her mother, brown and interwoven with a quiet strength and bravery. He had no answer to this beautiful mystery yet someone was now calling to him and pleading with him to follow...

My beloved is radiant and ruddy,
outstanding among ten thousand.
His head is purest gold;
his hair is wavy
and black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
by the water streams,
washed in milk,
mounted like jewels.
His cheeks are like beds of spice
yielding perfume.
His lips are like lilies
dripping with myrrh.
His arms are rods of gold
set with topaz.
His body is like polished ivory
decorated with sapphire.

His legs are pillars of marble
set on bases of pure gold.
His appearance is like green valleys,
choice as its cedars.
His mouth is sweetness itself;
he is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved, this is my friend,
daughters

He heard the voice as clear as he heard each heavy breath he took.

"Follow it!" The king told himself as he did everyday during the past month when the voice first called out.

But to where?

"Your Highness it is time to depart."

"Your Highness?"

King Richard was snatched from his thoughts. All that was blue turned into towers of black-gray smoke. He was in a crouching position on the zenith of the mountain. He needed to come to the highest point on the planet to take everything in. All that was left was ashes. Eons to build yet it took only hours to destroy.

"Your Highness we have to leave now. There is nothing left."

The king continued to ignore his advisor.

"He will murder you and the children if we delay." Hershel pleaded.

Richard growing annoyed adjusted his black cape.

"If you do not care about yourself, at least think of the prince and the princess, Your-"

The king leapt to his feet and jumped into his advisors face. "Stop calling me that. I've told you repeatedly that I am Richard. Not Your Highness. Not Your Majesty, nor Your Grace. I'm no longer worthy of any of those titles."

"Hershel shook his head. What happened was not your fault. Everyone thought that he was dead. There was nothing more you could possibly do. If you were not off world with the children, the three of you would have been executed as well. None of us would be alive.

Richard backed away from his adviser who was his mentor and friend. He looked back and watched Margaret and Sasha laser off the name of his ship and his coat of arms off of the body. Their devotion to him was unquestionable.

"I am sorry, old friend." The king whispered with guilt creeping in his spirit.

Hershel nodded at Richard's apology.

"It is just that I saved our galaxy once. How was I unable to do it again?" Richard lamented in a sorrowful plea.

The older man searched for anything to console his King but was at a loss. He simply listened.

"I have failed. So many were depending on me-billions of people extinguished. The Queen..."

King Richard's voice faltered as he imagined the last moments of Lorelei's life.

Tyreese appeared at Hershel's side with a flag and a post in his hand. He handed it to Richard.

"We have to leave right now if we are to make to planet Kabi at the beginning of the warm season. That will give us time to build, to plant and to harvest." Tyreese reminded the King.

"Thank you". Richard said as he took the flag and the pole from his friend from the first war. Richard gingerly brushed the flag with his fingers. On the flag was his family's coat of arms combined with Lorelei's family's coat of arms: a condor symbolizing the rich history of flight and heroics in Richard's family through the centuries and a binary sun symbolizing Lorelei's first ancestors who sacrificed themselves to become the life force that created their galaxy.

"Let us leave him." Tyreese whispered to Hershel.

Richard took a quick glance over his shoulder to watch the two men walk back to the ship. He slid the flag onto the pole and spiked it into the ground in defiance.

It's been two years Lorelei but it hurts just the same. I failed. I was never fit to lead. I tried but I couldn't. I tried.

Richard's shoulder length brown hair whipped across his face. He closed his eyes and imagined it was his wife giving him a final kiss goodbye as he left their planet. Far away the shell of his castle which he had not been in for some time finally collapsed. The mountains had served as his home since that day. In caves he struggled, fought, and planned his route back to his rightful place as ruler but he ultimately concluded that this was not the life his children deserved. He would happily relinquish his throne so that his son and daughter could grow up happy and unharmed as children should.

Dolefully, he boarded the Andromeda and passed by what was spared of his court. His loved ones pretended to tend to minor tasks around the ship giving their king the dignity to process everything. He went to his room and looked in on his slumbering children. He caressed their faces and managed a smile .They shared his quarters despite the ship being enough for the children to have their own accommodations. He could not bear to let them out of his sight. Eventually Richard knew he would have to relent. His boy was almost sixteen and needed his privacy.

As the Andromeda lifted off, Richard stood at the giant observation window in his quarters. He watched as everything he knew and loved grew smaller then vanished. The blue skies were finally overtaken by the darkness of the cosmos. Richard looked at his reflection in the pane. He pressed his hands against the glass feeling the coldness sting his fingertips. Seeing the crown on his head he promptly removed it. Richard snatched his cape from around his neck and used it to wrap up his crown. Both would go into the core of the ship's engine to burn. Immediately the king cursed himself for thinking so impulsively. He went over to his desk to pull out a box from underneath. Haphazardly he tossed in his cape and crown. Again he stood in front of the observation window, examining his reflection. Without the cape and crown he was just an ace pilot dressed in his black flight suit like so many years ago-unaware of how dynamically his young life would change with one battle.

Oh how he longed for that life again. To be blissfully unaware.

Richard placed his head on the window and sobbed. He was nothing. The sobbing showed itself like a great storm exploding from his gut. No one could see him this way. He had to remain strong for everyone.

But who consoled a king in his great time of sorrow?

The bellows grew; his body aging from perpetual grief. He muted his cries into the bicep of his right arm. Thankfully he had not woken Carlton and Judith. Taking a deep breath to expel the next cry out of his body every muscle swiftly froze in place. A burst of exuberance consumed him. Such an opposing extreme of emotions were jarring. Was he going mad? The words just came and frenzied his heart:

You, my love, excite men as a mare excites a king's chariots.

You hair is beautiful upon your cheeks and falls upon your neck like jewels.

All women look at her and praise her.

Who is this whose glance is like the dawn?

She is beautiful and bright as dazzling as the sun and moon.

What magnificent young woman you are! How beautiful are your feet I sandals.

The curve of your thighs is like the work of an artist.

Your braided hair shines like the finest of satin; its beauty could hold a king captive.

In his mind's eye Richard saw the beautiful silhouette of a woman hoisting a sword mightily into the air. Her posture, he concluded, demonstrated that she commanded the adulation of civilizations of endless stars. Richard bathed in his vision. His vision roused feelings he thought long departed when the executioner thrust his sword into Lorelei's heart. Guilt visited him but not from his failure to save his wife.

"Who was this woman now commanding his heart and he hers?"

"Father?"

Richard was startled by his son's voice. His face grew scarlet and flushed. "Yes?"

"Who were you talking to?" Carlton asked as he sat up in bed.

Abashed, Richard walked over to his son and kissed him on his brow. Urgently, the king left his quarters. He ran to the ship's bridge. Tyreese had programmed in the coordinates for their new home before liftoff. Richard did not know if there was still time. No one could know. Certainly there would be anger after his actions were discovered.