Fic a day 12

This what Lyra Belacqua knows.

That the North, Svalbard and the panserbjørne are carved into her chest, just as much a part of her as Pan and the alethiometer. She ought to live there among the bears and the ice. It would suit her better than society and polite lies.

She never refers to her parents casually but Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel left her everything. The money gives her the freedom to do as she pleases; she studies instead.

Lyra will wear a shard of Æsahættr around her neck until she dies. She'll tell those responsible for her body to drop it into the deepest part of the sea. In some worlds they do.

Her surname name is the name of one who waits; when she turns eighteen she legally changes it to Silvertongue and scandalizes all of Oxford.

When she's twenty-one a divorcee, Mrs. Fielding, takes a liking to her and strong-arms her away from her books. She learns the social niceties Dame Reif gave up on teaching her six years ago there. Lyra will (disgruntledly) concede that they are (occasionally) useful.

Mrs. Fielding was a friend of her mothers. Neither of them will ever acknowledge this.

Lyra will read the alethiometer again with all the ease that she once had. The magisterium will fall at roughly the same time.

At twenty-seven Lyra learns to pilot a balloon from an aeronaut who admired Lee Scoresby as child. She spends the next few years traveling only by hot-air balloon, only under her own power.

Her skill with words will only improve.

The day she turns thirty-five she's in London. Her hair is coiffed, her dress red. She looks very much like her mother.

When she dies old and fulfilled or young and restless she will tell the harpies her stories, beginning to end. She'll enthrall them with words and when it's over they will agree to guide her to the stars, to bliss. Instead she'll wait for Will by the docks.

Lyra already knows the way.