Chapter Seven:
A Casket Full Of Caterpillars
Lyra Potter's P.O.V
Lyra was a force of nature, a bag of bone and blood and black bile, as she blitzed her way through the house. She knew where she was going. Her eyes were set. Fire in her belly. A key in hand.
The lock clicked open.
The handle groaned as it was turned.
The door creaked as it opened.
Little nudges across the fervid flesh splayed across her back.
She felt the muscle ripple there, as if she were getting ready to sprout wings of thistle leaves but the rind was still too coarse to split.
She paused at the threshold, red boots pressed at entry, a fleeting hiccup.
It was funny, bizarrely, how a place could exist in a way you never knew it could. That was Sirius's Study. A place she knew was there, like one would know tomorrow was coming, but one she had never seen before as no one ever truly saw tomorrow before it became today.
It was masculine, dark leather, a field-stone fireplace, wood panelling painted that British racing red. Lyra took a single step inside, glanced around, and was struck with her father's unmistakable smell.
Motor oil, the anise spiked cigarettes he snuck in the garage behind the car tarp, his dirty habit he had whined when she caught him when she was six, and the distinctive scent of home.
Lyra drowned in the smell, sucked it deep in her lungs, and she held it there until it burned, until she had no other choice but to let it go. Even then, she swiftly stole another breath into herself.
Slowly, she took another step in, and another, and another, until she was standing over what was clearly her father's desk.
She tickled the raven quill he had left on the side, dried ink tip broken, cocked a brow at the curious necklace, a twist of metal and sand snagged under a locked glass cloche display, chuckled at the black-framed reading glasses Sirius would have denied ever needing, flicked the pad of her fingers over paperweights with etched dogs inside.
All black.
All Sirius.
She did, however, pick up the silver-framed photo, the only one he had on the desk at the far side, over a hoard of blank parchment, the top crossed with a single sentence.
In case of emergency, floo: Tonks Manor, Barafundle Bay, Pembrokeshire.
Bit late for that, dad.
The photo was of herself and her father, taken long ago when she could still sit on his knee. They were both looking at the camera, both so impossibly alike and unalike, both clearly uncomfortable at the muggle practice they had been haggled into by Lily, both clearly pretending not to be.
Lyra did not trace her father's face with her finger. Nothing so cliché. It was not him. He did not move. He did not breathe. This was an echo in ink. She merely studied it for a moment, having quite forgotten what he looked like without that streak of grey at his temple, and carefully returned it to its original position.
She spent longer sitting in his oaken chair, stroking red leather and brass tacks, chesterfield-chic. Lyra had lost track of time when she went to open the draws of the desk, not touching what was inside. Files mostly. Gringotts receipts and Ministry memos.
This was a respectful investigation, the word rifling did not apply.
She tried the bottom desk drawer last.
The lock catches.
She took hold of the iron key again, tries and triumphs.
The draw slid open.
Inside was a wand, not her fathers, something plain and short and-
Unmarked, if she was not mistaken. Interesting. But not red, not like what Belenos said she would find. Not red boots in a black box.
No, the red was underneath.
Below the wand was a thick, dense bundle of letters, tied with string, swathed in red envelopes the same shade as her shoes. Beside those was a small, bent cardboard box, a flecked scarlet, battered by an age.
Lyra left the wand where she saw it, but she did take the box out, crinkled and bent as it was, and opened it.
Inside were wizarding photos, black and white and sepia.
She flicked through them, until the rolling grey became an October sky, stopping much by chance at one photo of four boys and two girls sitting on the steps of a sprawling townhouse, Gothic and gorgeous, a cherry tree, berries red, cut the corner in half, made the severe black-iron gate only a little less imposing.
One boy, one of the oldest in his group, Lyra knew. Those eyes, a grey so dark they were almost black, were undeniable. He grinned just as keenly as he did now, Belenos, dimpled and wild, his hair as shockingly chaotic as her own smushed down underneath a beret.
He waved at her from beneath the cherry tree.
The girl next to him, surely only a year or two younger, was brown haired, sullen looking, arms crossed and scowling right at Lyra, braids tied off with a silk ribbon. The girl shook her head at Lyra, whipping her braids like horsetails, as if she was telling her don't do it.
The boy next to her could be mistaken for a girl, for Lyra had on first glance, his hair wispy and soft, a pale blonde, flushed with a cherubs face. A taste for gold and glitter already present in the young boy by the gilt band around his thumb.
He shyly smiled, snagged somewhere between his siblings dispositions.
Beside them was Regulus, there could be no other, small for his age as Lyra had been, swinging his legs back and forth on the stone steps, one knee skinned, missing his front tooth, expression much too old for his tender age.
He waggled his fingers at her.
Sirius slouched at his left, speaking silently, voice trapped by paper and time, words Lyra would never hear, staring directly at her. He was young, so very young, a boy on the cusp of manhood, gangly and stretched getting ready to be filled like a Christmas pud, hair brushed shiny, face clean of smirk or stubble, in his arms a little girl only a few weeks old if that, swaddled in red.
Little Lyra.
Her name sake.
Her namesake?
The boys and girls, for they were all boys and girls, children, the oldest, perhaps Sirius or Belenos, no older than sixteen, seventeen. They all wore the same apart from the babe, black short shirts, black berets, black shorts or skirts, black shoes, the summer uniforms of the privileged from days gone by.
Lyra flipped the photo over.
On the back, written in Sirius's script, oddly shaky in places, beautiful cursive, a line: Belenos, Andromeda, Narcissus, Regulus, Sirius, Lyra. Summer Vacation ;1974. The last one.
Lyra flipped to the next photo.
It was smaller, this one, less condensed, half the cast missing. A Yuletide celebration, by the hawthorn wreath hung on the wall behind the trio squeezed into frame.
Sirius was kicked back against the wall beside the prickled wreath, wearing a sweater and long slacks, face dark and solemn in a way Lyra had never seen before.
Murderous, one might say.
Haunted, Lyra would parry.
The little boy, Regulus, sat on the floor on the other side of the wreath, baby now in his grasp, giggling down at a gummy smile. He said something to that babe, that Lyra, the photo swelling like a wave, and Sirius's head snapped around.
Her father reached over.
Took the child from straining hands.
Held her close, safe, above a boy frowning and extending downy arms.
Regulus caught an elbow.
Sirius shook him off fiercely, stealing a step away, towards the edge of the photo.
Sirius couldn't have been older than seventeen here.
The year he ran away from home a measly month away.
The year Little Lyra went missing.
Anew, Lyra flipped the photo.
Winter solstice. S & R & L ; 1974. Merlin help me. I'm sorry. I had to. There was no other way.
Merlin help him? With what? Why was he sorry? Sirius was never sorry, or so James would complain goodheartedly.
The photo gave her no answers. It was dead in her palm, as dead as the raven quill.
Lyra pitched the whole lot of photos back into the cardboard box, back in the grave they belonged, closed the lid with trembling hands, and pushed it far away from herself.
Yet, her gaze did, like speck of dust caught in sunlight, float down to the drawer at her side.
She dipped in.
Pulled out the large packet of unopened letters.
She thumbed the corner, read the line peaking out between the twine, and froze.
The script was similar, not Sirius's fat consonants, but familiar, the same hand that wrote the numbers on the gift tags of her black boxes, one to fifteen but never a name from who it was from. She knew because the 1 was underscored crookedly, in a flourish of movement.
The top letter was addressed to her, and not her at all.
Lyra Black.
10, Potter Manor, Rother District, East Sussex.
Lyra did not tear into the string. She untied it gradually, hands quivering and quaking, slipping corded twine from envelope. The string fell to the desk.
Like the photo's, she flipped and flicked.
They were all addressed to her, and not her at all.
Lyra Potter's P.O.V
Lyra slithered from the chesterfield chair, sank to her knees on shaggy rug, the pelt of some unsuspecting animal, and drew the letters with her. She scattered them out, a boneyard of paper and pen, and grabbed one at random.
This she did tear open.
Happy, Birthday, little one. You're five years old today, and that means you're officially a big girl. I wish I could be at your party, but I'm currently far away in a place called Bulgaria. Someday I'll bring you here, show you Sofia and Varna and Nessebar. I'm sure you'll enjoy that, after being cooped up in those dreadful thickets the Potters call a home… You'll enjoy the seaside. Take it as a birthday promise from your brother Reggie.
Brother?
Didn't he mean Uncle?
Lyra ripped into the next one.
Dear Lyra, I am writing this letter in the smallest inn room you have ever seen, not too far from the red cliffs of Petra. I wish you could see them for yourself, Lyra. One more place to put on our long, long list. Belenos is here too, and Narcissus and Andromeda, father and mother, uncles and aunts. They send their greeting, and Belenos says try not to get into too much trouble, just enough to keep Sirius on his toes. A Black, after all, needs to be kept spritely. I say, however, to cause as much trouble as you want, and then some more. Partner in crime, patiently waiting your response, brother Reggie.
P.S; Mother says it won't be long before you're home now. The Wizengamot, surely, even with Albus Dumbledore on his side, cannot side with Sirius on this. Illegal use of a Time-turner has an Azkaban price-tag, even if they're trying to pass you off as a Potter.
Another.
My dearest Lyra, greetings from Heidelberg, that's the one with the ruins on the hillside looking down over the city. I've spent many hours walking the gardens here with mother and father, who send their deepest warmth and love. They would write to you too, but Sirius shreds those letters. Miss Fig informed us that my letters are not quite reaching their target either, as Sirius seems to spot them before you and snatches them up. I doubt he reads them, not after- Mother assures me that one day you will read them, Sirius cannot keep you locked away for ever, he may have, somehow, won the Wizengamot case, with obvious meddling by Dumbledore I might add, but I spelled these pages to inform me if they were burnt or otherwise disposed, and as I have received no such telling, I am left to assume Sirius has them stashed somewhere collecting dust. He always did have a small soft spot for me. I'm just Slytherin enough to use it to my advantage. so I suppose that one day is enough for me now. Forever thinking of you, brother Reggie.
Next.
Bonjour ma petite sirène. That means my little mermaid in French. Do you enjoy the ocean? Swimming? There isn't any sea in Saint Etienne, but the coast is never far away. We, our family, would come and take you there, if it was not for the blasted wards Sirius has hung up around the Potter estate shooing off anyone with a drop of Black blood apart from himself, and you of course, from stepping foot on Potter soil. Even uncle Alphard, who has been nothing but kind, as kind as a Black can be, to your father got cursed off the land when he tried to visit, coupled with a sojourn at Saint Mungo's for three weeks. It seems it is fickle fate that Sirius is good at only three things. Trouble. Quidditch. And complex warding magic. Yet, I digress. Here we are, there you stay for now, and the sun is much too bright to be so dreary today. You must be nine by now, and off to Hogwarts so very soon. Two years, in fact. We shall meet then. Love, brother Reggie.
Next.
Darling Lyra, you were not at Hogwarts this year. Mother, Father, and I spent hours waiting on the platform. I've never seen mother cry so hard before when the train finally pulled away and you had not come to board it. Nor become so enraged. She finally blasted Sirius's face from the tapestry when we got home. I guess there is no going back now. We must have been fooling ourselves otherwise. Lucretia Malfoy, Narcissus's betrothed, who's father sits on the parental board, says you were excused attendance in place of home-schooling, signed off by your father and bloody Albus Dumbledore. That's funny. Orion signed no such paperwork. Only Sirius. Then again, they're calling you a Potter now, are they not? Pretending Lily did not have that stillborn boy in Saint Mungo's. Pretending Sirius did not steal Grandfather's Time-turner. Pretending those silver eyes came from James's mother. Our meeting will have to wait, then. Not much longer, surely. San Sebastian this time of year is-
Next.
Dearest Lyra, the snows in St. Petersburg are truly enchanting this time of year. I-
More.
Beloved Lyra, you would adore the skies in Stockholm at night-
Darling Lyra, Shanghai is warm and humid, and-
Treasured Lyra, Monte Carlo is proving to be a rather delightful-
More.
Merry yuletide-
Happy solstice-
Lucky Samhain-
A bright and prosperous New Year to-
More.
With all my love, brother Reggie.
Forever and a day yours, brother Reggie.
Counting down the days, brother Reggie.
More.
I was thinking of you this morning as I woke up-
You crossed my mind this evening-
I saw your name written in the stars, you know you have your own constellation, correct? All Blacks do. Look up tonight and you will see it, a little left of-
Next letter.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Another.
The last letter fell from her grasp, a bead of red on white and black.
Lyra peeked down to her hands, flexed those fingers before her.
Papercuts.
Her fingers were peppered with papercuts.
She did not feel the sting.
She could only think a single idea.
I have never seen the sea.
Lyra had not seen Bulgaria, or St. Petersburg, or France or Italy, or much of anything apart from this house, in these woods, in these wards. Her own black box, her own black ribbon, her own lovely envelope.
She had seen oil paintings from Rome splattered on canvas.
Photographs in her books of Egypt and the Nile.
She had heard her mother speak of Cokeworth and summers in Cornwall.
Yet, Lyra had never seen the sea.
She had never been further than the sparsely rushed, barely thirty-minute-long, trips to Hogsmeade and back again by apparition.
Why had she never seen the sea?
Why had she never gone to Hogwarts?
Why had she never been allowed anywhere by herself?
Her diagnosis? Father had said it was best. Lyra was delicate. Over stimulation could be bad. Best to keep her at home. Best to keep her safe.
Safe from what?
Safe from who?
Herself? Who she no longer quite knew?
Uncle Regulus who signed his letters brother?
Albus Dumbledore, the one who had prohibited her from Hogwarts like every other child?
Lyra, letter by letter, envelope by red envelope, assembled her missives like pieces of a puzzle unmade, slipped them home in packets they had been interred in for years, and rolled one over.
Above her own address is another, pushed into a corner lip. A return address written in the same hand.
12 Grimmauld Place · London Borough of Islington.
Lyra stacked them again, neatly. Binds them in their twine with papercut fingers.
But they do not go back into the draw.
They do not go back into the dark.
Family secrets were like that.
Once out, there was no going back.
They tumble safely into her hold as she left the study, knocking over the silver-frame photo of her and Sirius on her way.
Lyra didn't even notice the glass fracture and splinter and break.
Lyra Potter's P.O.V
Lyra started up the stairs, increasing speed with each rung climbed.
Thud… Thud… Thud, thud, thud, thudthud, thudthud, thudthudthudthud.
The letters were securely clutched to her chest.
Lyra got to the second-floor landing, she spun a curve, advancing towards the room at the end of the hall. Her back felt is if it was going to erupt with those thistledown wings. Throbbing and thumping with the beat of her footsteps. She was almost running by the time she reached the room.
Regulus had left the door ajar, a tacit encouragement.
She slipped through, like mould slipped into the alcoves of a house.
Regulus's guest room was as immaculate as it had been before. Exactly the same. Cashmere jumper over chair back. Silver-brush on corner table. Suitcase by closet.
Suitcase by closet.
Lyra latched on.
There was no hesitation as she went towards it, knelled down, placed letters by her hip, tipped it over on its fair back and reached for the clasps.
The time for hesitation was long past, vapourised somewhere between the first and third letter she read.
There was no lock on the suitcase, no spell or charm or ward.
One last implicit invite.
Lyra grabbed the corners, pictured the little brown-haired girl in her mind, Andromeda, if the list could be believed, shaking her head.
Don't do it.
Lyra did it.
She swung the lid open.
As with the photos, as with the letters, Lyra flicked through the life inside the suitcase. Neatly pressed shirts. A silver silk waistcoat embroidered with emerald finger-nail sized snakes. Cufflinks in the silhouette of viper-fangs. Clean handkerchiefs embellished with R.A.B by the lace, one of which, a black one, Lyra stole into her skirt pocket on a whim.
And then, towards the bottom, as the last shirt was lifted free and left crumpled to the side, everything came to a jarring standstill.
There was only one thing left in the suitcase.
Hands trembling violently, Lyra stretched in and pulled it out like one pulled the plug to a warm and cosy-protected bath.
Knowing the cold was coming.
The nakedness.
The wet exposure creeping on slick tile.
In her unsteady hold was a black box, with black ribbon, and a black gift tag.
16.
Lyra heard Belenos cackling in her ear.
"Who else indeed?"
Lyra Potter's P.O.V
When you're a child, you learn there are three dimensions. Height, width, and depth. Like a shoe box. Then, later you hear there was a fourth dimension. Time.
Lyra took this fourth dimension, and she stretched it out as far as she could. Coincidentally, this was not very far and not very long.
She took the black box over to Regulus's bed, left his suitcase tipped and spilled across the floor, red letters on carpet like a bloodstain, and sat at the very edge of the cool covers. That felt good. That felt right. On the verge of something inside as she was outside.
She placed the box to her side, looked down her legs to her boots.
During this time, for she has had fifteen others, Lyra felt a bit like a snake. As if she was shedding her skin, cutting scales, expanding an inch in tatters. Those red boots were as much her as her face, as her hands, as her eyes, and without them she felt raw and tender and new.
Where once they were smooth, now there were creases and folds, little map-making connections, suppleness that comes with age, with the passage of feet over so many paths.
As people could grow tired, shoes could too.
Perhaps it was time for her boots to rest.
Lyra bent down, hooked fingers into laces, and pulled.
The knot unravelled.
She toed them off.
They fell to the floor, a snaking ghostly skin in the grass.
She picked up the black box, unthreaded the bow, opened the cap, and brushed away the brittle tissue paper.
There were no boots waiting for her this time.
The pumps were suede, leather with the flesh side rubbed to make a velvety nap, open and high-backed like a throne. A darker red. Plum red. The soles were deep, suturing graceful, the heel just the right surplus of femininity and pragmatism.
On the back, a tiny satin black bow.
Lyra had spent her life running in flat boots, clunking in thickets and groves, maladroit. Heels had never been a part of that world.
As the sea had not been.
She wanted that sea.
She wanted those heels.
Lyra placed them on the floor before her, troopers standing guard.
She sank her toes in, twisting in her arch, and slanted down her heel.
A perfect fit.
Plush and soft and high.
Lyra stood.
She felt lofty in those high heels, as if the room, and the house, and the woods, and the world were her stage.
When she left the room later, carrying an empty black box and an opened stack of letters, the suitcase was packed carefully, everything left where it had been.
Apart from her red old boots.
She left those on Regulus's pillow.
Lyra Potter's P.O.V
It was night, deep into the dark twilight, and Lyra sat at the grand piano, the one she swore never to touch again, unsure of what to do with herself. She hadn't been sure since she had gone to burn a blue jay nest and, instead, freed a casket full of caterpillars.
She had heard Lily come in from the kitchen's hours ago, heard her gossiping to Regulus, their indistinct voices white noise on the back of her eyelids, calling half-heartedly for her somewhere in the foyer.
Lyra had not answered.
Lily had possibly assumed she was still in the woods.
Giggling, Lily had retreated upstairs, past the closed door of her den, past Lyra, two pairs of footsteps fading.
Lyra wondered if Regulus saw her boots on his pillow then as he retired for the night, leaving muddy imprints on his unspoiled linens, marking it her own way with traces of herself, declaring she had been there, she had occupied, she had taken.
Likely, he had not.
Possibly, he was in Lily's rooms drinking wine and talking taxes.
Lyra's hands settled fixed on the keys of the piano before her, on the music rack above the fall board, no sheet music but a rumpled handkerchief. R.A.B
She was utterly alone there, in the gloom.
No Lily.
No Regulus.
No Miss Fig.
No James.
No Sirius.
Just her, spry fingers, and tiny black satin bows on heels steadied on brass peddles.
She sat there, mute, still, longer than she could count, until she was sure there was no longer anyone there to hear.
Her serene face, her Black face, her devastating face, undulated with the tiniest of shudders, as if her façade were suffering an earthquake, tectonic plates grinding, forming an entirely new continent.
A Pangea for Pandora. The girl who kept opening boxes.
A deep breath in, and Lyra began to play. It was the same song as the one she played before Sirius's and James's funeral.
However, this time, her playing wavered, sceptical of itself. Lyra fumbled with the notes, one after the other, dropping tones and bars and mixing keys.
It wasn't feeling right. Like ants on skin, nipping, devouring her alive, like pine needle stitches.
Lyra stopped, and started over.
Again, the music failed, again, her fingers collapse in on her, again her senses betray.
Lyra stopped.
The music was refusing to come. Her fingers and face shivered. She swallowed hard, like there was something caught in her throat. Tears? A scream? Laughter?
Lyra wasn't too sure, but it hurt.
She closed her eyes, let her fingers float in the air, and she kept them closed for, all over again, time uncountable.
Seconds, minutes, hours later, she blinked.
Regulus stood in the pale light of the window, next to her piano, bathed silver and black, shirt untucked, blazer off, feet bare.
He didn't speak, not in the way ordinary people did.
He spoke in her language.
He brushed her across the bench gently, slipped in on the buckskin and birch, thighs and knees knocking warmth against her own, and he started to play.
Beautifully.
It was the same piece Lyra had been trying to play before, but this time it was changed, this time it was evocative with passion and those tricky emotions.
With feeling and touch.
The ants and pine needles shifted to raindrops and stardust.
Regulus had told her it was the Black curse, tactile synesthesia. He had gone as far as saying Belenos had it too, and some nameless, faceless relatives… But he had not said he, himself, did not.
He does.
She could see it.
A sense within a sense, an entangled copse of stimulus.
It was showing through the goosebumps trailing up his forearm, dappled delight like golden freckles to kiss, the same path spreading down her own arms.
He knew.
Lyra sat there, mesmerized, listening to the piece like she had never heard it before.
She glanced up, from Regulus's fingertips to his face, as if she could see the nerves there, constellations only they could see. He seemed lost to the music, lost to the keys, utterly immersed. He hadn't looked at her once.
Lyra peered back down, set her fingers to the keys, and started to play.
If he wanted to speak, she would sing.
She was timid at first, a colt creeping into a clearing, careful, concocting a quiet concord to his melody. However, she gained confidence rapidly.
Music did not come.
It flowed.
One just had to open the dam.
Their peculiar partnership grew into something natural and green. A minor piece for two hands becoming a major one for four.
The music started to swell, the cadence quickened in a womb, and Lyra could feel herself flushing. Scorching. Sticky and slick in places, like honey and treacle, and everything sweet.
She stole another glance at Regulus.
He was pounding away at the keys, thrashing a beat, harried spinning cords so interlocked, so intimate, and Lyra snaked through them, pitching moonlight, faster than he, able to reach the small spaces, the in between, where he could not. She tied the loops, and wrapped the sweeps, and crossed the kisses where fingers gathered.
She couldn't tell where their lines ended and began.
Lyra looked back down, forgetting Regulus entirely, and their hands glided across the keyboard. Faster and faster. Caressing and coaxing, shooting and demanding-
Regulus didn't like being ignored for too long.
He stretched around her, hooked a warm arm around her waist to coil at the major scale on her side. His elbow pressed into her hip, she slipped closer, but that was just confetti. Her legs crossed, one heeled foot winding through a spread leg to press at the far brass peddle to hollow out the belly of the piano, to make the keys and notes surge.
It became fast then, almost too fast to keep up, too much of too much west of a northern star, amorous and roiling, ruthless, cooked up in a lightening storm. She careened, he thrusted, she dipped, he dived, around a spiral and down a sharp, shocking drop.
They went hurtling into the final climactic chords, headfirst and hedonistic, their combined sustain ringing throughout the silent house, brilliant lights and breathy sighs, and-
And then it was over.
Lyra disconnected her hands from the keys, falling into her lap, gently, as if they might have broken. Perhaps they already had, in a way. Broken in as music had broken out.
She freed her foot last, slunk it back through the bend of a curved knee, the open invitation she kept taking, and for a while they simply sat in silence, breathing in the dark, quivering thigh pressed against quivering thigh.
Until he turned to her and she to him, damp sweat glistening in ebony locks brushing clammy forehead. Regulus, right then, looked like he had been left outside all night, Lyra thought, and had come home covered in morning dew.
Or sea spray.
"I want to see the ocean at Nessebar."
Something spurs in his gaze, she could roughly hear the snap, and Lyra knew where that silver-sand stare was going to go before it began the journey down to her feet.
Regulus saw the dark suede shoes, not her little red boots.
He glanced back up.
He smiled.
"Then to the Nessebar we go, but first how about London?"
A.N: Kudos if you can spot the Paterson quote squirrelled away in this chapter. I want to try and make a story as equally grotesque as it is sort of beautiful, so how could I not include that Stoker piano scene?
Side note; the sea at Nessebar is the Black Sea coast, which is tongue in cheek enough for me.
I've had a few private messages about this fic and my portrayal of Lily. I just quickly want to address that. For one, I'm not a subscriber to the whole 'Lily Evans is a perfect human being who did nothing wrong ever in the entire history of human kind' sort of trope a lot of writers attribute to the character. I love my characters flawed. To me, it makes them feel all that more real, all that more human. Secondly, this whole fic, thus far, is told from Lyra's point of view. Her feelings over wash every interaction, her thoughts are put forefront over, perhaps, the truth of the situation. Thirdly, Lily has not been shown in any form where she has not been grieving. The first time we meet Lily in this fic, she has just lost the love (s) of her life. That changes a person, both good and bad, and to pretend grief doesn't manifest in a multitude of ways, sometimes ugly ways, is dishonest. Which I didn't want to be in this fic. Loss can make people ugly, and, to me, that's a little heart-breaking.
And, finally, this is, in a whole, not Lily's story. Too much focus on her will inevitably make Lyra's narrative voice weaker, and making anything of Lyra's weaker is not something I want to do. As someone who has been locked up, locked away, and isolated, this story is not about Lyra getting weaker, but stronger.
There we go. That's how I see it. Of course, you're all welcome to disagree with me, but please stop sending paragraphs of rage into my inbox lol. Sometimes, people aren't perfect, grief gets grotesque, and maternal relationships can get toxic and mean without either party meaning for it to. Life isn't always kind, and this is, once again, a dark fic.
For those who have stayed, I thank you all for all your support, favourites, follows and of course, reviews! They really do mean a lot, and I hope this chapter, and next chapter, will live up to all your kind words. so THANK YOU ALL.
Remember, if you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon.
Big things are coming kid, so you better get ready, because shit is now hitting the fan.