Is there a way out?
Lyra could not believe her luck! It was true that she had been suddenly attacked by a shapeless Yellow Peril that had consumed her friends Mary and Mabel while they were drinking a harmless orange soda and that she was now stranded in a lightless Void of Darkness without her beloved daemon Pantalaimon. But now she had found her Dad!!!!
"Father, is this really you?" she gasped mentally.
"If you are Lyra Silvertongue, once known as Lyra Belacqua, once a ward of Jordan College, then yes, I am Lord Asriel, your Father," came the brain-driven reply.
"I can't believe it! But it must be true! I'd know your voice anywhere. But where are we?" Lyra requested of her Dad.
"Daughter, this is the Void Of Despair. We fell into it, your Mother and me, when we brought Destruction upon the Evil of Metatron, the bad angel."
Sad was the Lord's voice, but hopeful too for Lyra.
"Where is my Mother?" Lyra inquired.
"She and I drifted apart in the Void, where there is no space," Lord Asriel's voice echoed dully in her cortex. "There is no escape for us. We are doomed to an eternity of un-life in the Void. Now you have joined us."
"No!" cried Lyra, the appalled, the horrified. "I cannot stay here forever!"
"Stay with us!" brain-spoke her Father. "We can be a family again. Listen! I will call your Mother." And he began to call for Lyra's Mother Marisa with his neurons.
"Father, I imagined my way into this Void. I'm going to try to imagine my way out of it again. Why don't you try too? We could be together in our world." Lyra was hopeful.
"No, Lyra." Lyra's Mother's voice was heard, sweet like liquid syrup. "Join us. Be with us forever. Together in the warm darkness forever."
Lyra was torn in two. Should she stay in the anguished Void with her newly-rediscovered and oh-so-longed-for parents or try to return to the worlds of blessed light?
"Father, Mother!" she cried at last, her heart bursting. "It's no good! I belong in the real living world. I must go! Please; say I can go!"
"Yes, go! You live! Go!" Lord Asriel's anguished voice was turned to Mrs Coulter. "You stay! We belong dead!"
How can Lyra bring herself to abandon her new-found parents so soon?
