Will was sitting outside the treehouse in the shade of a nearby tree. Kirjava was curled up beside him, purring, while he read a book for his Comparative Religion class. Needless to say he had a little different outlook on things than the author of the book, and some of it made him roll his eyes, but he kept reading. He had come to realise that you could learn a lot from something even if you didn't agree with it.
Kirjava saw Lyra and Pan before Will did, and she yawned, stretched, swiped a paw over her face, and trotted over to meet them. Will's heart felt painfully tight, watching the way she moved in that floaty dress with her long legs beneath it, though it was hard for him to let go of the stubbornness he was clinging to--that he had been clinging to for months. Why was he still holding on to it? He wasn't sure, but he wasn't sure how to let go of it, either.
"Hey," he said, but his voice came out squeaky and stupid, so he cleared his throat and tried again. "Hi."
"Hi," Lyra uneasily replied, the tip of one beaten up Mary Jane tapping and digging into the earth. She felt tremendously silly, more a useless girl than ever, as she stood at a distance while Pan climbed down to meet Kirjava halfway.
When her daemon met Will's own with an affectionate swipe of his paw along her shiny coat, she felt relieved. Reassured. Lyra closed what distance remained between them and unceremoniously plopped down in the shade beside him. "I brought Algebra," she went on. "I thought we could get it over and done with while it's still fresh."
Will reached beside him and picked up his Algebra book, the other thing he had brought outside with him. "Guess we had the same idea," he said with a faint smile. He folded down the corner of his religion book and put it away. "No sense in putting it off." Will liked physics, but hated maths.
Lyra pressed her lips into a little smile, then let them return to a looser, careless expression as she set her bag down beside her knee and began rummaging around inside. As she pulled out a pencil, her calf-bound notebook and finally her Algebra book Lyra asked, "How's Nate getting on?"
"He's good," said Will. "I mean, as good as he can be... I guess it's good that he's so little. He might not miss Gwen as much as he would if he was older." He shook his head a little; thinking about Nate and Gwen made him think about his own mother, and he didn't want to right now. He got out his notebook and turned it to the page where he'd started on the algebra problems yesterday and before he had put it away in irritation.
There was something profoundly tragic about the fact that Nate might not even remember his mother's face. But then, Lyra hadn't recognized her own on first sight and she liked to think she'd turned out okay. "Well, that's a good thing," she reasoned, tapping the eraser portion of her pencil along the opened page of her Algebra book. "So, when I tried problem number seven the other day I got X = 36," she volunteered. "What'd you get?"
"Thirty-two," Will said, frowning at his paper. That was as far as he had gotten before he gave up in disgust. "But I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. Here, look and see." He passed Lyra the notebook. When he did, his fingers brushed her hand, and he tried to pretend like he hadn't noticed it.
Lyra blinked when their fingers brushed, but she gave no other indication that she'd felt the touch or that she even cared as she took the notebook and set about puzzling her way through his scratch work.
"No, see, you messed up the quadratic formula here," she pointed to a cluster of numbers without looking up. "You should have calculated six to the third power before subtracting the nine. Do you suppose we should go on a date?"
"Oh," said Will, scratching his head, still a little confused but mostly getting the idea. "I totally missed that step. I--" It took him a second to realise what Lyra had just said, and suddenly felt dumb for being slow in catching on. "A date?"
Lyra lifted her head and looked Will straight in the eye. She pressed her mouth into a tentative line before she said, "You know. We agree to do something fun together. But it wouldn't just be us being... us anymore. Because, well. We haven't been us for a while now, have we."
Will shook his head. He wasn't looking at her; instead, he was folding the corner of his algebra book back and forth. "No, we haven't," he said. And after a pause, he added, "and I don't like it too much." Thing was, he hadn't really known how to fix it, since it had gone on so long.
"You don't like it too much?" Lyra repeated, her expression far more imploring than she meant it to be. She watched Will closely. Suffice it to say that to be on the receiving end of her stare might have been an intense experience. "I hate it," she passionately insisted. "I think about you all the time but I know it can't be that simple, so that's why I think we ought to try doing what other people do." She swallowed.
Hating it didn't really go far enough in describing how intensely Will disliked the situation with him and Lyra, so he hadn't even tried to put it in words. But something about Lyra's stare made him think she thought he didn't really care, and that was as far from the truth as it could be. "Not being around you much anymore makes me feel like I felt when we left our dæmons behind," he said in a low voice, though no less passionate than Lyra's for it. "Like part of me is missing."
"Well," she began, only to go quiet before she could offer anything else, too giddy to string together a sensible sentence. Sheer, unabashed relief shone in Lyra's face as she sat there, letting that knowledge gel. The discomfort of the past few months suddenly felt so pointless to her that she couldn't help but throw her arms tightly around his neck, declaring, "Oh, Will, we'll sort everything out. I've missed you too."
Will breathed a sigh of relief and held her tightly, his face pressed against her hair. "I've really missed you," he whispered. He rubbed his hand against her back, feeling her heartbeat against his palm. "I think... we tried to be just like we were before, but we can't do that--we're not who we used to be, not exactly. A different kind of us."
Lyra nodded against his shoulder. They even fit together differently than she remembered. "A different kind of us," she agreed. The sound of that made her feel funny, a bit dim-witted, as if ready to break into a nervous giggle fit any moment now.
Part of her wanted to protest - how different could they honestly be? But then she thought of poor Bert and Draco and how irritable she'd sometimes been around them for reasons she hadn't understood. "Let's scrap the dating idea. That was stupid."
Kirjava saw Lyra and Pan before Will did, and she yawned, stretched, swiped a paw over her face, and trotted over to meet them. Will's heart felt painfully tight, watching the way she moved in that floaty dress with her long legs beneath it, though it was hard for him to let go of the stubbornness he was clinging to--that he had been clinging to for months. Why was he still holding on to it? He wasn't sure, but he wasn't sure how to let go of it, either.
"Hey," he said, but his voice came out squeaky and stupid, so he cleared his throat and tried again. "Hi."
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When her daemon met Will's own with an affectionate swipe of his paw along her shiny coat, she felt relieved. Reassured. Lyra closed what distance remained between them and unceremoniously plopped down in the shade beside him. "I brought Algebra," she went on. "I thought we could get it over and done with while it's still fresh."
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"No, see, you messed up the quadratic formula here," she pointed to a cluster of numbers without looking up. "You should have calculated six to the third power before subtracting the nine. Do you suppose we should go on a date?"
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Part of her wanted to protest - how different could they honestly be? But then she thought of poor Bert and Draco and how irritable she'd sometimes been around them for reasons she hadn't understood. "Let's scrap the dating idea. That was stupid."
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