(no subject)
Every year on her birthday the Domestic Bursar at Jordan College would send for Lyra - or have her tracked down and caught - and have a photogram taken.
Lyra submitted indifferently, and scowled at the camera; it was just one of the things that happened. It didn't occur to her to ask where the pictures went. Not until her fourteenth birthday when Benny, the pastry cook at Jordan, gave her a whole Victoria sponge cake to do with whatever she pleased and told her she ought not be late for a dinner in the Master's Lodging.
It had been almost a year since she'd said goodbye to Will and she'd adjusted with a heavy heart to the quiet normalcy of student life by disappearing amongst books, tartan skirts and Sunday markets. She'd put on her finest dress without fuss and allowed Mrs. Lonsdale the House-Keeper to style her hair - a gross mass of pins and fingercurls that the Gyptian kids by the river had laughed at for hours. (Needless to say they'd gotten theirs in the form of several wallops, of course.)
The dinner had been uneventful but for the presentation of a grand cake with fourteen candles tucked into its buttercream frosting. After the Scholars had emptied their wine glasses several times over, the Master had fondly sent her up to her room. But the Bursar had not bothered to take her photogram.
The next morning she'd thought to ask why this was, or what the photograms were even for, but she'd returned to St. Sophia's for her alethiometry tutoring instead. And now it was beginning to look like she wouldn't be able to ask these questions for a while longer.
Fifteen had come and gone for her on the island without anyone else but Will knowing the day of her birth, her real age. Today she was sixteen years old and she couldn't decide if she felt how this number sounded, or cared about all the things that it meant. Lyra didn't want a party or a vast array of gifts, and she certainly she didn't want her age noted in the island registry for future uses.
But she did wonder if she looked any different today as she idled in front of the clothes box in the basement of the Compound, picking her way through its unsatisfactory contents while Pan worried and tore at a rising pile of disgustingly frilly dresses at her feet.
For once, she wouldn't have minded having her photogram taken; so long as she could see the image before it disappeared into the cosmos, never to be seen again.
[OOC: First three sentences taken directly from Philip Pullman's Lantern Slide #7 from the His Dark Materials special omnibus package. She wouldn't have told anyone but Will, not even her closest friends, that her birthday was coming up. ST/LT, new and old always welcome! eta: Slowtime for dinner!]
Lyra submitted indifferently, and scowled at the camera; it was just one of the things that happened. It didn't occur to her to ask where the pictures went. Not until her fourteenth birthday when Benny, the pastry cook at Jordan, gave her a whole Victoria sponge cake to do with whatever she pleased and told her she ought not be late for a dinner in the Master's Lodging.
It had been almost a year since she'd said goodbye to Will and she'd adjusted with a heavy heart to the quiet normalcy of student life by disappearing amongst books, tartan skirts and Sunday markets. She'd put on her finest dress without fuss and allowed Mrs. Lonsdale the House-Keeper to style her hair - a gross mass of pins and fingercurls that the Gyptian kids by the river had laughed at for hours. (Needless to say they'd gotten theirs in the form of several wallops, of course.)
The dinner had been uneventful but for the presentation of a grand cake with fourteen candles tucked into its buttercream frosting. After the Scholars had emptied their wine glasses several times over, the Master had fondly sent her up to her room. But the Bursar had not bothered to take her photogram.
The next morning she'd thought to ask why this was, or what the photograms were even for, but she'd returned to St. Sophia's for her alethiometry tutoring instead. And now it was beginning to look like she wouldn't be able to ask these questions for a while longer.
Fifteen had come and gone for her on the island without anyone else but Will knowing the day of her birth, her real age. Today she was sixteen years old and she couldn't decide if she felt how this number sounded, or cared about all the things that it meant. Lyra didn't want a party or a vast array of gifts, and she certainly she didn't want her age noted in the island registry for future uses.
But she did wonder if she looked any different today as she idled in front of the clothes box in the basement of the Compound, picking her way through its unsatisfactory contents while Pan worried and tore at a rising pile of disgustingly frilly dresses at her feet.
For once, she wouldn't have minded having her photogram taken; so long as she could see the image before it disappeared into the cosmos, never to be seen again.
[OOC: First three sentences taken directly from Philip Pullman's Lantern Slide #7 from the His Dark Materials special omnibus package. She wouldn't have told anyone but Will, not even her closest friends, that her birthday was coming up. ST/LT, new and old always welcome! eta: Slowtime for dinner!]