As always seemed to be the way of such things, when things did go bad they went very bad, very quickly.

Lyra and Sylvie had stumbled across one of the spiders — rather far out of their normal territory, in fact, close enough to one of the other wilderfolk clans Sylvie suddenly seemed more intense than usual. It was a simple matter to track the thing, and they could have killed it almost immediately. One little adolescent acromantula — this one couldn't be more than three feet across, and it seemingly hadn't noticed them following it — was hardly sporting odds against the two of them, it wouldn't be difficult at all. Of course, that it would be easy would therefore make it boring.

But Sylvie had indicated they should follow it for a while, see where it was going. (She didn't say it, since the canine throat wasn't really equipped for English, but they'd gotten pretty good at silent communication by now.) At a guess, Sylvie was concerned about one so young being so close to one of their clans — ones this little usually didn't wander this far from the nest alone. If the acromantulae were planning something, perhaps splitting their single nest into smaller, more mobile ones, it would be in the best interests of the other beings of the forest to have some forewarning. At least, Lyra thought that's what this was about, Sylvie couldn't get across ideas that complicated without switching back to human form, which the spider they were following would certainly hear.

Not that Lyra at all minded the delay. While this summer had certainly been more entertaining than she'd had any right to expect, it did have its downsides. Since coming to this timeline, it was very possible she'd gotten out of practice at...

Actually, now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure she'd ever been in the practice of pretending to be a normal person for long periods of time. She hardly had to bother at home — little Meda hadn't known about Eris, but she'd also accepted her behaviour as just Bella being Bella, and nobody else in the house much expected her to act anything like a normal human being anymore. The Monroes, when she stopped by their manor with Ciardha, had mostly gotten used to her as well (though they had still found her rather disturbing even by the end). She hadn't needed to keep up the act with Zee, had hardly lasted a couple months into first year — Zee had in fact been perhaps the single person she'd needed to pretend with least, and the single person (besides maybe Ciardha) she spent the most time around.

Since coming to this timeline, well, mostly she'd been around Zee and Blaise, who was perhaps even more comfortable with her than Zee had been. Increasingly Maïa, but she'd had to pretend less and less as the months went on, and she could always get away to relax when she felt she needed to. That was the great advantage of living at Hogwarts, actually, one she hadn't anticipated: when all those petty expectations and limitations of daily human society started feeling too confining, suffocating, she could always run out to the forest and go kill things with Sylvie. She'd been oddly comfortable the second half of the year, she could only assume that was why.

But this American vacation of theirs... She hadn't realised just how tiring it would be. If it were just the Zabinis and Sirius, who was far more entertaining than she'd been led to expect, she might not have any issues, but Harry was a problem. Well, not a problem, exactly, but he was still too much of a normal person for Lyra to not keep up the act of humanity. And it was hard, as much effort as she was putting into it she wasn't doing very well. (It didn't help that Blaise had told him she was Bella's daughter.) Harry was, if anything, only growing more suspicious and wary around her, and it was bloody exhausting. Sometimes, she just felt so tired, but not in a way that made her not want to do anything, but instead an itch she couldn't scratch, the urge to do something messy and noisy and absurd just because she was bored, and she needed something interesting to happen.

If she hadn't had her portals back to Britain and Sylvie, she probably would have snapped and hexed one of Blaise's insufferable American friends by now.

There was something about this place, she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It wasn't just the magic here — and the forest was an impressive hotspot of ambient magic, having built up over the centuries, accelerating as magical creatures and beings congregated and multiplied, so thick it tingled in her lungs with every breath, tickling at her skin. It was something about the...the wildness of it, the plants allowed to spread undirected by human hands, natural forces held in a precarious balance, the violence but also the peace of it, a... She didn't know, the absence of civilization was almost a tactile thing, a lifting of weight holding her down, she always felt lighter out here, more herself, if that made sense. (She wasn't sure it did.)

There were good reasons she (and Eris) and Artemis more or less got along, after all. In another life, she sometimes thought, one in which the Blacks weren't quite so thoroughly steeped in the Dark, she might well have found herself falling in with her favourite Light goddess instead. There was a sort of wild joy she felt in embracing the freedom of the forest, a gleefulness in letting those savage impulses advanced society suppressed fly free, to run and hunt and play and kill. As Lyra was now, she wasn't inclined to stay for long — the potential for chaos here was minimal, the forest static, unchanging, in a way human society was not (not to mention there simply were no such things as enchanting or wards or even libraries here) — but she could imagine another her might feel fully at home in the forest, might leave humanity entirely behind and stay here forever.

Shite, she might even be inclined to find some way to exploit blood alchemy to make herself wilderfolk, so she could integrate properly — if Liz Potter could make bloody human-veela hybrids, she didn't see why that shouldn't be possible. Actually, she should look into that anyway, that sounded like an excellent idea.

But, if nothing else, the forest was an almost ideal temporary escape from humanity, a way to release the pressure, to keep herself sane.

So, even though they could have killed this one little spider and had done with it nearly an hour ago now, Lyra didn't feel a hint of impatience. She paced alongside Sylvie, the pale, waist-high wolf almost ghostly silent, magic almost instinctively flowing through Lyra with every breath, turning her body light, her steps silent, branches gently bent out of her path. Revelling in the dirt against her feet, the wind against her skin, when they occasionally paused, letting their quarry open up a little distance before moving on again, she would crouch down at Sylvie's side, hidden amongst the muted folds of the forest night, leaning her face into the wolf's neck, breathing her in even as Sylvie did her, life and sweat and green and magic, a contented grin pulling at her lips.

She didn't think she ever felt more comfortable than she did, here.

It was possible that, enjoying herself as much as she was, she hadn't been paying quite so much attention to her surroundings as she should have been. But then, Sylvie hadn't seen the ambush coming either.

The only warning was the familiar snickering of mandibles, quiet, hardly a whisper. Both Lyra and Sylvie perked up, glancing toward the left. Neither of them saw the attack coming from above. Lyra didn't notice the shadow falling upon her — another acromantula, older, legspan wider than she was tall — until she felt the spark of the thing's mind, far too close, an instant and it would have her. Instinctively, Lyra shifted through shadows, reappearing next to Sylvie.

Another spider had gotten the drop on her, one even larger and more vicious-looking than the one that had targeted Lyra, nicked with scars from innumerable fights over the years — Lyra wasn't sure what to think of the implication that they saw Sylvie as the greater threat, but she supposed she had been hunting them for longer than Lyra had, probably had a significantly higher body count. While Sylvie couldn't disappear into shadows, she was quicker than Lyra: despite being pinned against the forest floor by the much heavier spider, she had managed to twist out of the way of its fangs at the last moment. Before it could make any attempt to off her, Lyra's spear had already been driven into its head, piercing its brain, killing it in an instant. Before she could pull it back out, Lyra heard a rustling behind her, let go and threw herself to roll over the corpse (and Sylvie under it), barely getting out ahead of another pair of fangs.

Lyra took a quick glance around, cursed — they were surrounded, there had to be dozens of them, a mass of skeletal shadows shifting in the moonlight. Apparently, they were learning. While this wasn't entirely a bad thing — if the acromantulae didn't adapt their tactics to counter them, it'd probably get boring eventually — she and Sylvie did rather need to get out of this mess alive. It would be easy to destroy them all if Lyra had her wand on her, but she'd left it at Ancient House. (Using her wand on acromantulae just seemed...unsporting.) They'd never taken on this many at once by themselves and, judging by the silent tension where Eris lived in her head, she had as many doubts about their ability to kill them all as Lyra did.

So, they were running, then. Lyra could do that.

There was an odd tingling of magic on the air, Sylvie casting some sort of charm on the corpse pinning her to the ground. While only a minority of wilderfolk could cast magic — though nobody had any idea exactly what the proportion looked like, there'd never been any proper demographic studies of wilderfolk — Sylvie was one of them, a comparatively powerful one at that. More powerful than many ordinary mages Lyra's age, certainly, though not exceptionally so. Lyra could count on her fingers the times she'd seen Sylvie actually cast any magic, though, and the instinctive charm was completely unfamiliar, she couldn't guess what it did just by feel.

By how quick Lyra's freeform banishing sent the corpse into the spider that'd nearly killed her a second ago, she'd guess some sort of primitive featherweight charm. All right, then.

She winced at the loss of her spear — she'd been slowly altering the thing over the months, all those charms and enchantments she'd put into it...

Sylvie leapt into motion with a furious howl, the night crackling with wild power. For an instant Lyra was worried Sylvie meant to stand and fight — wilderfolk had their own fiery sort of pride — but she was darting away through the brush before Lyra could say anything. Lyra chased after her through shadows, even as another damn acromantula pounced at her, she heard the thing crash into a tree when she reappeared, keening and angry chittering filling the air. She'd come back just a couple steps behind Sylvie, just in time to see her weave between the legs of a bloody monster of a spider, the thing too cumbersome to keep up with her.

With an easy flex of magic, Lyra jumped into the air, smoothly landing on the thing's back — she hadn't had time to look into proper levitation, Bella had reminded her of the possibility only two days before, but short little jumps like this were trivial. A thousand bristly hairs scratched at her skin, but Lyra ignored it, ducked to press her hand against the join between its head and torso and forced magic through the contact. The spider's carapace shredded, blue-black blood welling up between her fingers and splashing up to her elbow, she jumped again as it convulsed, landed roughly, nearly turning her ankle, Sylvie a shifting shape in the near distance, Lyra ducked under another pouncing spider, stepped back into shadows.

She came out still a dozen paces behind Sylvie — seriously, she was so bloody fast — but well-situated to note the acromantulae paralleling them up in the trees. (There were so fucking many of them, they were so very fucked.) A pair leapt down toward Sylvie, Lyra skipped through shadows, threw off another banishing even as she surfaced, the one she'd hit crashing into the other, sending both off-course, she stepped back—

Something heavy crashed into her from behind, throwing her off her feet, tumbling across the forest floor. She hitched to a rest at the base of a tree, scratched and bruised, her head spinning. Dazed, it took a few seconds to push herself to her knees — far too long. She finally looked up, only to find another bloody spider, far too close, she reached for her magic and—

Sylvie appeared as a gold-white blur streaking in from the right, crashing into the spider halfway down its body. She must have done some kind of spell — its body caved in with a grinding crunch, rocketing away far quicker and further than it should, smashing itself to pieces across the ground and four separate trees. Now that it was gone, Lyra could see six more crowding in behind it, she didn't have time to cast anything, or even stand up.

Even as Sylvie's paws touched the ground, the magic around them stuttered, twisted, then flared, like a fire roaring explosively to life.

In a blink, like dozens of invisible severing curses slashing through the air, the spiders and the trees between and around them were torn to shreds, dark blood and wood chips flying. The first wave were dead instantly, the ones following them rearing back for a moment, keening and clacking, dodging branches and trunks crashing to the ground, scattering from the fires that bloomed where the magic had cut, starting small but quickly growing, until half of Lyra's vision was filled with blood and smoke and flames white and blue and orange, flooding the area with magic not dark nor light, but at once both and neither, wild and sharp and dangerous (but hauntingly beautiful). For a brief moment Lyra could only stare, temporarily awestruck.

Woah. Apparently, Sylvie was rather better at magic than Lyra had assumed.

Though that spell had obviously taken quite a bit out of her — Sylvie stumbled, nearly falling to the ground before recovering, teetering a bit with her first few steps. Lyra dragged herself to her feet, pulling up the side of her tree, pushing her own power into the flames, making them spread wider, rise quicker, buying the both of them more time to recover. As Sylvie padded past, Lyra shoved off her tree, nearly toppled to the ground, but Sylvie caught her, straining against her hip. Her head turned around, orange-gold eyes catching hers, her whine nearly covered by the cackling of the fires behind them, the chittering of the frustrated acromantulae.

"I'm fine," she said, carding a hand through the fur of Sylvie's neck. She pushed herself to her feet, still slightly shaky, but her head was clearing by the second. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Sylvie let out a low wuff of agreement, again darting off through the brush.

Some long minutes of stumbling through the forest later, and Lyra finally let herself relax, collapsing to lay in a patch of grass in the middle of a very familiar clearing. They'd come here without any agreement or even really thinking about it, at least not on her part, out of habit, or instinct. A gap in the trees a dozen metres wide within a short ten minute walk of the edge of the forest, filled with a thick carpet of grasses and flowering weeds, it was the very place Hagrid had sent her to for her first meeting with Sylvie, had repeatedly served as the most convenient place to find each other. Lyra had been keeping her charmed spear here, in the hollow of a long-dead tree at the fringes, and it was where she would normally leave her clothing, hanging from the branches until it was time to return to the castle.

Of course, they didn't actually need to come here. Lyra had lost her spear, and this time she'd undressed back at Ancient House and shadow-walked into the forest. (Come to think of it, when the school year started again she could just leave her clothes in her room and pop straight here — she hadn't been able to shadow-walk when she'd started hunting with Sylvie, it hadn't occurred to her until just now.) In fact, they'd only come here tonight for Lyra to pick up her spear, she'd appeared in the middle of Sylvie's clan this time.

Which was still awkward — she'd been introduced a couple months ago now, but the rest of the wilderfolk still weren't entirely comfortable with her. She was trusted, yes, if only because Sylvie vouched for her and she volunteered to kill spiders for them, but they weren't used to her yet, still all too human and alien. Or, the adults weren't comfortable with her yet, at least. The kids liked her already — she got mobbed by dozens of excitable little balls of fluff whenever she showed up — but of course they did, she'd always been strangely successful at winning young children over without even trying, it was bloody weird. Which only made the adults even more uneasy, so, yeah, she and Sylvie hadn't stayed for long, they never did.

So, they didn't need to return to this particular spot, but apparently the routine was just ingrained by now.

Lyra had been laying on the grass-softened ground for a handful of seconds, staring up at the starry sky above, her still-laboured breathing quickly slowing back to normal. She was pretty sure that hit she'd taken had bruised her up pretty bad, and she could feel the stinging from scratches, she'd probably be digging into her store of healing potions tonight. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been, she'd be fine.

She jerked, instinctively twitching away from the cool, wet nose prodding at her side. Sylvie let out a low whine, sniffing at her, pawing at her a bit — not with her claws at all, just sort of prodding at her. "I'm fine, nothing's broken." She blindly reached up, her hand finding Sylvie's head, idly scratching along the base of one of her ears. "Are you okay? That one that pinned you didn't nick you with its fangs, did it?" Wilderfolk were rather more resistant to acromantula venom than humans were, but it did make them quite ill, having Cherri pick up some antidote would still be called for.

(When she'd started getting into the habit of hunting giant, man-eating spiders, she had whipped up a bunch of antivenom first, she wasn't an idiot.)

There was a peculiar flare of magic, and Lyra's fingers were suddenly tangled in longer, softer human hair instead. "I am good, now." Sylvie shuffled closer, throwing herself over Lyra, arm around her and face in her chest and leg over her hips. Which was very warm — especially since Lyra still wasn't cooled down from their whole near-death experience running battle thing — but that was fine, she didn't mind. "It had me, but you were there."

Lyra hummed, slipping her hand further back, fingers digging in to the base of Sylvie's skull; she let out a soft little groan, turning her face more firmly against Lyra's skin, shifting against her. "Yes, well, I'd have been fucked if you hadn't whipped that crazy magic out of nowhere, so, the feeling's mutual, I guess."

You realise you could have slipped back home through shadows at any time.

For a second, Lyra just blinked up at the night sky. That...didn't even occur to me, actually. But I would have had to leave Sylvie behind, she might not have made it.

Maybe. Eris seemed far more amused than was entirely reasonable, her not-voice on the edge of laughter, but okay. Your wild little friend is quite resourceful, but maybe. Of course, you could have just taken her with you.

...You can do that?

Most people can't, no. But you have strong enough an affinity for shadows and know the feeling of Sylvie's magic well enough that you should be able to manage it. Keep it in mind, just in case something like this happens again.

You really were worried I was going to die tonight, weren't you?

An odd shade of disgust in Lyra's feel of her, Eris said, There's something wrong with acromantulae, I'm not certain what it is. I have far more trouble seeing them than I should. I really don't like them.

Oh, well, good thing we're—

Lyra was startled out of her thoughts when Sylvie moved against her, her face tucking into her neck, her breath hot and loud and very distracting, nails dragging lightly along her side, leg turning to slip between Lyra's knees, dragging up, and she could feel...

Wait, ah, what were we talking about?

Eris giggled. Never mind that, my bellatrice, just have fun with your adorable little sister-in-arms.

Lyra meant to ask what that was supposed to mean, but then there were teeth at her ear, Sylvie's hand abruptly finding its way—

Oh.

Oh, so they were doing this now.

Frowning into the hair covering her face — Sylvie always smelled like dirt and blood and sweat and magic, wild and powerful — Lyra hesitated for a second.

But only for a second.


"So, I get it now."

"Ah! Trixie?!"

"Lyra, what are you doing in here?"

Lyra blinked back at Zee and Sirius, tangled up in Zee's bed, glaring up at her and flailing to cover themselves. Which, that was sort of silly — she never had quite understood why people were so sensitive about nudity. "You know, I always thought the sex thing was kind of weird. But I think I get it now."

"How did you even get in here?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

She ignored Siri's question, it was bloody obvious what she was talking about. "I shadow-walked in, of course"

"Lyra, the door was locked."

"Was it? I didn't check." Not that it mattered, it wasn't like a lock would stop...well, anyone in the house, really, Harry wasn't so useless he couldn't pull off a basic unlocking charm, honestly.

"We were kind of in the middle of something."

"You're not bothering me, go ahead." She shrugged. "Anyway, I get it though. Well, I mean, I don't really get it — I still think how important people think this stuff is, the effort they'll put into it, all that is still silly. But the basic idea, sure. Orgasms are fun. I get it."

Siri let out a groan. "Morrigan have mercy on our souls, Little Bella's started screwing around. Do I even want to know?"

"Wilderfolk girl back at Hogwarts, you haven't met her." Lyra blinked. "Or...you have, now that I think about it — that was you at the Quidditch match, wasn't it?"

"You don't— You mean the little white and yellow one, always sticking her nose in things she shouldn't? You know, I would say it's hard to imagine you fucking a bloody wilderfolk, but if I had to pick one..."

"I know, she's great, right? Also, orgasms? Fun."

"Not gonna hear me disagreeing on—"

"Do you two mind?!" Lyra didn't think she'd ever heard Zee's voice get quite that high and screechy, it was bloody weird. The glaring was also rather...well, Black-ish, Other Bella and Cissy had clearly been an excellent influence. "Lyra, get out."

"All right then, fine. Gods and Powers, Zee, I'm not doing anything. I just thought you'd like to know I understand now that orgasms are fun and I get it."

"Go!"

"Yes, yes. Have fun!" With a parting grin, Lyra stepped back into the shadows.


In case anyone was wondering, yes, a botched bioalchemy ritual to make people animagi/wilderfolk is my headcanon explanation for where werewolves come from. Lyra is aware of this, and considers it an acceptable risk. —Lysandra

I can't really express how much I enjoy Lyra and Sirius being pretty much the same person and all distractible and weird, even to Zee. May have to post the one where Sirius is manic and everyone goes clubbing next, for that exact reason...

Also, Sylvie is pretty and her magic is pretty and yes, this was planned from pretty much as soon as her character was introduced. —Leigha

Basically, we think Lyra and Sylvie are adorable and we ship it. —Lysandra

This scene takes place roughly around 2nd August, about three weeks after the one where Lyra acquires a muggleborn girlfriend. I'm sure you can all imagine that will cause no problems whatsoever. —Leigha

Leigha is debating whether to write more unnecessary comments because she is drunk and silly, and I'm just gonna spare you all that and post this now. —Lysandra