Observe our two protagonists, soon to become three; leaping to the feet and wonderment, scattering passersby like so much loose paper. Fortunately for them the alarmed looks are reserved for their sudden actions, no one else seems to have noticed the boy leaping from midair.

Except for the man with the Spyglass who folds it back down and whistles to his dog before leaving his days long vigil on the rooftops. As he troops down the stairs, Lyra and Pan rush up the stairs in the opposing building having found the front door unlocked. They cross two stories at an incredible rate with pan scampering ahead, his form being more efficient than Lyras dress ridden legs at climbing. They reach the houses attic and move quickly towards the high clasped window to the right, undoing it as quickly as Lyras hands allow. Peering out they see nothing but sun drenched slates and the street below. The window appeared to have closed as quickly and mysteriously as it had opened.

Lyra knew of course, that there were only two causes of the window opening, either someone had a cut an opening or there had been a slight shift in the world alignment opening a natural window. Neither seemed likely to her, she had researched both for a thesis and discovered that for a natural window to open there where usually extreme weather and natural phenomena as had been visited upon the arctic when her father had cut a bridge between the worlds. She was sure it wouldn't be the knife either, as Will had sworn to destroy it and she bet her life on him keeping his word. Still the thought caused her heart to lift monetarily. She dismissed the thought in an instant-she had long dismissed her love and obsession with Will as a childish crush with no real meaning.

They looked around the room for possible hiding places, but there where hundreds. The room was littered with old artefacts that some old biddy had been hoarding. There was a grand piano in one corner with a number of old pictures leaning against it to slowly mould while a full length dresser filled the opposing wall, the figure could be hiding in anyone of its draws. The rest of the room was a chaotic riot of broken furniture and deep shadows. She knew that it would be virtually impossible to find someone who wanted to remain hidden in such a room.

"The footprints, Lyra," Pan said in low voice that neither the less carried far through the rooms hidden recesses and echoed back to them. Lyra looked down and cursed herself, whoever the figure had been he, it was highly unlikely any women had such big feet and wore boots, had left a trail of damp water that led towards his hiding place in the dresser. Slowly Lyra moved towards the structure, acutely conscious about the danger of her actions, the man could be armed and she would be powerless to stop him. Neither the less her sense of insatiable curiosity drew her to the cupboard.

She reached it and quickly flung open the door, her heart beating hot and fast. Then she recoiled, shocked etched on her face. She tried to stammer something, a name that fluttered past her lips without a sound. Emotions of an incident long ago buried and paid for came back, hitting her mind like bullets. Memories of there all too soon parting, of betrayal and of love.

The man, meanwhile, looked equally shocked but he managed to compose enough to breath a few shocked words, "Lyra, can it really be..." then he lapsed into silence and pulled himself to his feet before stepping out and embracing her. She returned the hug with passion, clinging onto his frame with all the force she could muster.

He was older than she remembered, older than he had been when they had parted for the second time. But he did not look as old as he should have been, as though the past 10 years had merely skipped him by. But the look on that soft, angular face was the same as the one she remembered when she had seen him last, his face contorted with joy. He had aged but his essential spirit had not changed.

He had no daemon.

Some people in Lyras world would have treated him as an abomination, as something inhuman for that but Lyra knew that in truth his daemon was hidden inside of him and that he was still there and still whole, no matter how much she half screamed in imaginary disgust. But it confirmed one thing about thing: This was not the same Roger that she had known and befriended all those years ago. This was not the same Roger whom she had betrayed in front of the Northern Lights and this was not the same Roger whom she had watched dissolve into ecstasy as real air touched his skin... No this was not her Roger.

She released him from the embrace and took a step back, contemplating him. It was truly remarkable how similar he looked to her Roger-give or take 20 years-and she wondered how complete the similarities where. Did he too have that mole on his left collarbone? The one that they used to jab pins in, in an attempt to pop it? Had he grown up as a kitchen skivvy like her Roger? Had he played on the rooftops of Jordon Collage and rescued that rook from the guttering? And what then, what course had his life taken?

They both tried to speak at once, causing an awkward moment before a lapse into yet more silence. Roger was staring, wondering, trying to contemplate how this had happened, which god to pray to in thanks for this mirical. To him Lyra looked older, more mature than the one he had known and loved. The fire in her eyes was just as undimmed but it was offset by a harsher look. She was not his innocent Lyra, she was someone who had been burned by love and knew not to stick her hands back in the flame.

He spoke, slowly first and then more confidently as she listened bagenly and all the time he realised how different she was to his Lyra. His Lyra would have taken command, making orders and overriding his quiet voice. This Lyra was different, she was listening intently to every word with the passion of scholar trying to defeat an opponent. When she spoke it was quietly, using words as sparingly as she could, seeking to learn from him without giving anything away. She didn't trust him.

"Lyra," He said, "It's you isn't it."

"Yes." Flatly, matter of fact.

"But you're not my Lyra are you? Your different, you're..." He lapsed into silence.

"Different? How?" Harsh, unyielding, there was none of the warmth that his Lyra would have provided, and yet, there was that hug. That outpouring of joy and relief that smacked more of his Lyra than this cold and caustic character who refused to show anything at all. He opted for a question.

"Where am I?"

"Your in my world, you jumped through a window from yours into mine and then it closed. Do you know why?"

"A window? You mean this is another world, separate from my own universe." He struggled to comprehend, "I had no idea about that, they say the gods play games with the lives of men but this is ridiculas'..." He looked at her straight on and opted for truth, "Lyra? Am I still alive in this world?"

"No." Sharp, he knew that he had stirred an old wound.

"So they got me here then...where me and you, you know, together?"

"No. You died when you where a child."

"Because in my world we were, Lyra. We fought against them together, we married and where happy by the grace of the gods together. It was you and me always, right since we where nippers in Hacker Collage. But then, a few months ago they took you away from me, we crossed the line between free thought and heresy, or so they said. They put you on trial and..." He began to break down, tears swelling from one swollen cheek and gently cascading down his cheeks but his voice remained steady and for once Lyra was impressed, "...they burnt you for being a witch. We couldn't stop them. Not me, not your father, not your mum, not anyone." He lapsed and sat on the hard wooden boards and Lyra felt an emotion she hadn't felt for years. Pity. She moved forward and sat next to him before instinctively draping an arm round him and pulling him close. She hadn't felt this level of feeling for someone for years.

Perhaps it was tiredness, or the way in which he'd described her death that moved her, but she felt an intense fascination with him. And we from up in our clouded spires watched and approved.

Roger told Lyra everything, and she absorbed and understood it and marvelled. She had never really understood Wills world and its strange contraptions but she could understand Rogers, which seemed far closer to hers than Wills. She was amazed by how similar her story and Rodgers had been.

The crucial turning point, as far as she could tell, was that he wasn't taken by the Gobblers and that they appeared never to have existed. Lyra and Rodger had continued their half-feral existence in Hacker collage, named after an obscure Prime Minister (parliamentary democracy appeared to have developed far earlier in Rogers world), and they had grown up in a usual way. Lyra had gone off to a girls school when she was 14, left at 18 and joined Hacker as a scholar. She and Roger met again then, fallen in love, married and become dissenters against the Church of Baal.

At the birth of their first child Lyra had discovered that her mother still lived, as did her farther. Both where powerful dissidents and they protected her as she investigated Dust and they had been happy for 3 or 4 years. But then Lyra had admitted publically her Atheism and had been burnt at the stake as a Witch who had displeased the Gods, the child along with her. Roger had managed to escape and go on the run, and it had been the Church who he had been running from when he had fallen through the window and into this world.

Lyra tried to discover more, questioning and probing Rogers often hesitant answers, comforting him when she could. The Church of Baal, she discovered, was not mono-theistic but it believed in many gods like the ancient Carthaginians or the Old Danes in her world. Despite these differences she found it incredible how similar the two worlds where-there was far more that linked them than separated them. The church had a far stronger control in Rogers world, and even Roger, a dissident, believed in the Gods. He could not imagine how Lyra could think any other way.

Then there was the matter of age, Roger had been the same age of Lyra in her age and the same appeared to be the case for her otherworld counterpart-yet he seemed to be around 10 years younger. Time seem to behind in that Universe, or maybe it moved differently or something, she had no time to study Roger or his world to explain the cause. Anyway, the calendar they used there was different, using letters instead of numbers, and thus it was hard for Lyra to pinpoint Rogers birthday exactly.

After digesting this information, Lyra began to answer Rogers questions about her own world and her life. She told of how he had died and how she'd gone to the world of the dead and Will and everything... It was a long story, made longer by the extra years she had on Roger, while he was a young man, she was a middle aged women with the views and achievements to match. She told of her life as an Experimental Theologian, her job of questioning the established views on the universe. Like Roger's Lyra she was an atheist, but she claimed to have seen the authority die in front of her, old and crippled. Roger listened and marvelled at the way she changed when she spoke, there passion that infused her voice and the way she captivated him with her stories-for that's all they where to him, stories to fantastical to credit. He half suspected they where lies, similar to the ones that his Lyra had been so notorious for telling. She had not had the experience of the Harpies.

And then, And then she was done, her stories spent, her immediate questions fulfilled, her passion for knowledge abated. She lay there in the golden sunlight that streamed through the attic window, gazing silently at his face. How this boy had grown! She could still see the same contours he had possessed as a youngster, that mischievous smile, the thin face, the high cheekbones. Yet he had also changed. It was a stronger face now; more mature and fractured with worry lines that where unbecoming for a man of his age. It wasn't just time that had weathered him but also experience. Blake. She remembered when she had first read his Songs of Innocence and thought of Roger, his face becoming the emblem of Innocence for her-wide eyed and non-comprehending. But now he was more like the Songs of Experience-harder and more learned but still with that same smile. The little boy lost had been found.

Yet she couldn't shake off a nagging feeling that he was still a little boy. He evidently wasn't. He had loved and lost as much as Lyra had done, he had seen his lover burnt alive but Lyra was still struggling to see him as anything else but that young boy who had rescued the rook on Jordon Roof and looked after it until it was free.

The light turned from golden to red and slowly into a deep blue that marks the onset of night. They had spent all day upstairs, discussing and wondering and waiting. For what she did not know-an angel? Whatever it was the feeling of anticipation had now passed and she felt the sense of restlessness that had been with her throughout her life, the desire to move, to see to think. For a few precious moments she had been rid of it but now it returned. She took charge.

"We need to go." Roger looked up at her from his meditation, "Come on, we can't stay here. Whoever owns this place will be back soon and if we're found here together they'll be...questions." he nodded, understanding.

"And we wouldn't want to tarnish your reputation," he chirped, ever the gentleman.

Lyra let out a long, high, harsh laugh, "i doubt that will be a problem. My reputation is already damaged as it is, another rumour would only enhance it. No, it was more your reputation I was thinking about. You're going to be here for a while, or so it seems, at the last thing you need is for people to thinking you've messing around with me." She raised an eyebrow to imply meaning. Roger looked blank, "Let's just say I'm not known as the most virtuous woman in the world, nor am I expressively liked by the authorities. Now, you can stay at my room tonight and I'll get some friends to come by and see if we can work up a decent back-story for you-we've done this sort of thing before, then we can get you into safely." With this she led him downstairs and into the night.

The great writer of this world, George Thomson, once wrote that 'The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry' and ever is it so. Though Lyra did not know it, things would not be as simple as she planned. Like most humans she had one perspective and could never quite understand the great forces that clashed around her, only occasionally sensing the debris as it struck on of her comrades. Yet these patterns where all the clear from us on high, yet we could do nothing except watch and intervene when that most cruel of Gods, fate, decreed it so.