TITLE: A Piece of Him

AUTHOR: FuschiaBoots

SUMMARY: A moment in Lyra's life a few years after her parting from Will.

DISCLAIMER: I am character poor. I own none of them. They bedevil my psyche.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I thought it might be nice just to see what Lyra gets up to in class, and how she thinks about Will. Enjoy, and maybe a review?

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Lyra sat, left leg sprawling a little to the side and surruptiously lifted the edge of her desk to pull out a sheet of paper. She did like school, she did, and it wasn't that the Mrs Higgins, their teacher for bionomics wasn't good, because she was, in a sweet, bumbling kind of way, it was just sometimes Lyra found her thoughts straying to other things...other worlds.

The afternoon was warm and the sun was slanting through the window and beating softly against her skin and Lyra could feel her mind running over the rooftops at Oxford as she used to do, with Roger, so very long ago.

Letting Mrs Higgins words wash over her, she let her hand start to sketch against the page she had pulled out. Light, soft strokes, the scratch of her lead against the rough surface of the paper echoing in her ears. Slowly a picture formed.

The girl next to her, a brash thing who Lyra didn't really like by the name of Rozie, leant over to stare at Lyra's sketch.

'Oooh, who's that?' she whispered, smirking. 'Is that your boyfriend?'

Lyra lifted her hand away from the page and looked down at her drawing. She supposed she could have lied, and told Rozie a million things that would have made the other girl's head spin with jealousy. But Lyra had lost her passion for spinning lies, and those dark eyes, and straight brows that looked up at her from the page reminded her of how things did not always have to be fanciful and grand to be the most beautiful.

'No,' Lyra answered, her voice low and ringing in a certain way that echoed in her very bones whenever she spoke of Will, 'He is my love,' she said simply, 'my only love, who loves me more than anyone could ever be loved. He is in every atom of me and I in every atom of him and although we are parted, one day we will be always together, and then we'll laugh at you, or at least I will, because I will feel so sorry that you can't understand love.'

Rozie had opened her mouth to say something clever, and spiteful back, but found the words fled and her mouth dry. As Lyra spoke it seemed that the sun lowered and it's rays stretched out and weaved themselves golden amongst her dark blonde hair, like a sunlight crown.

If Will had seen it he would have seen a Lyra drenched in Dust.

Lyra's eyes were dark and sure as she let her gaze slip from Rozie's astonished face, back to the little lead drawing of Will she had created. Very slowly she drew a finger lightly across his brow, as if to push a lock of dark, straight hair out of his eyes. Then she gently lifted the lid of her desk (Mrs Higgins still quite absorbed in her lecture on biometric pentameters) and placed the sheet at the top of pile papers, stacked in the very far right hand corner.

Each slip of paper in that carefully hoarded stack held the same thing. A piece of Will. Often his face, but sometimes other parts, too, like his hand, or Kirjava, or even the subtle knife. Sometimes Lyra felt guilty, hording these little slips of memory, or imagination, or whatever they were, but at the same time it brought her comfort to draw them, and she figured there was nothing wrong with that.