This is just a quick note before I start writing this chapter, so you don't think I've gone mad or it's a different story or anything. Way back in chapter five I promised a few chapters about an unnamed character I introduced in the last sentence of Lyra's section. This is the first of those chapters.

Disclaimer: if I owned would I really be writing this?

Chapter eleven; Surrounded By Nothing

Nothingness, the feeling of discontent, the feeling of there being no hope. I'm sure some of you have felt this before, but remember, you are not alone, for the person who truly loves you will always be there for you and will have gone through the same thing before. He/she who loves you will always be able to help.

It was tough being alone, it really was. Not that Dawn minded particularly, it was okay but sometimes it just got a bit lonely. You know, being lonely was just part of her life, and she didn't exactly know any other way. Well, she knew people; obviously, but they weren't close as her and her family had always kept apart from the other families and lived in their own corner of the moving village that was their home. It was good living in the tribe, but sometimes Dawn wished they were more like their ancestors, the river people who they were so alike. She reached up and tugged on the reign of the horse she was guiding, pulling it closer towards the path being followed by the rest of her tribe. Bollox was constantly going his own way, and it was starting to get on her nerves a bit. No-body wanted a horse which needed constant guidance to go anywhere, and Bollox was the worst anyone in the tribe had ever seen.

Dawn, however didn't mind, because Bollox was her own little baby. Although she was only fourteen she was already living away from her parents trailer and running her own life. She had her one horse and her wagon which was the same as most of the other people in her tribe and she was nothing special.

Not that everyone would have agreed with her on that matter, for there was one young man, barely a teenager, who thought the world of her. Terry thought she was the most amazing woman ever to walk the earth and had done for many years. All he could wish for revolved around the time when they would be married, and he would become a real man leading a trailer and a wife with him. Unfortunately for him Dawn had other ideas, for although she loved Terry her heart did not belong to him, and never would. Everyone told her that Terry was soft on her and she should make an effort because he was a grand catch but she didn't agree with them on that point. Yea, there was no arguing that Terry was going to grow up to be a good man, but her heart belonged to another and that other was her childhood friend, Myst.

Myst and her had grown up together and were about as close as it was possible to be. She had never met anyone she was able to connect to as well as him before, but until she had heard the voice a few nights before she hadn't identified her feelings as Love. Maybe he was feeling the same, but she didn't know. All she honestly knew was that her life was not going to change dramatically, and she was comfortable as that. Unless… The memory of the singing voice kept returning to her and refused to let her be. It haunted her dreams, in which she saw a girl barely older than herself standing by the roadside in a silent city singing her song with an animal Dawn couldn't recognise draped around her feet.

Turning up here; be ready. Her death Oblatang warned her inside hear head, and Dawn prepared for the long slog of turning Bollox into any type of tidy turn. Keeping him away from the tender grass on either side of the worn dirt track was hard enough, but to turn him from one path to another could be near impossible, and Dawn could tell in advance that the turning coming up was going to be a hard one. It was covered in the type of harsh grass no horse would like to eat, but surrounded by young saplings and fresh shoots which would do nothing to a horse but draw them ever closer.

"You are going round that corner." She grunted to Bollox, and pulled his reign sharply. "Their, good boy." She coaxed as he started to go round. He completed the turn very well, and Dawn was delighted. If she wasn't supposed to be riding in the trail she would have got down from the cart and hugged him.

"Dawn, wait up." Myst called, and she stopped for him to catch her up.

"What's up?" she asked as he vaulted up onto the bench beside her. "You hardly ever bother to come and visit me when we're moving." He smiled apologetically.

"Yea, well. tight times call for tight measures. I'm bringing you fair warning of something so you should be grateful."

"Yeah, what?" she asked, suddenly feeling worried. "Is something wrong in the trail ahead?" he smiled at her.

"As if, we'd have stopped if that was the problem. I'm not even sure would you call this a problem. Thing is, Terry is on the march. He wants to talk to you when we stop."

"Oh Christ."

"Exactly. I recommend you make yourself have a headache or be busy mucking out Bollox or something. That way he won't be able to talk to you or anything."

"Yeah. Well thanks." She replied, and watched as Myst jumped down and made off up the trial again. She was glad they were such good friends, it would kill her if they weren't.

Short chapter I know, but that's cause I wasn't really sure what I was doing with Dawn to start up with. Myst was originally called Darren but I decided that because the tribe was all in with the world thing then they should have names from things around us, hence Myst. Also I'm trying to bring in all the cultures mentioned in HDM, hence Oblatang as Dawn's death. The original of this chapter had Dawn as a teenager called Bridget living in our world, but it just seemed too princess diaries for it to work. Anyway, there'll be a few more chapters with Dawn. She comes into the story in a major way near the end but for now she's just to split up the Will and Lyra stuff a bit and stop it dragging on too much.

Note on deaths: in my story a death is like a daemon in our world in the fact that you can't see them because they're inside you and only called on if you need them, but different in the fact that a few people can talk to them. As you can see Dawn can talk to her death as if it was outside her, but no-body else knows that he exists.