I do not own any rights to the his dark materials books or characters they belong to Philip Pullman

Chapter Two An old friend

Will lay awake that night staring at the ceiling while Kirjava dosed beside him with her tail swishing from side to side.

The sheath, with the pieces of the subtle knife in it, was sitting on the table by his bed. He longed to use it to see Lyra even just for a few minutes…

"You know we can't," said Kirjava quite suddenly with her eyes still closed, "You know that if you saw her again you wouldn't be able to come back here, anyway who would be able to fix it?"

" I know, it's just that…" he sighed deeply, " I miss her so much…" he got up and walked towards the window and Kirjava jumped down off the bed and followed him. He stared out at the stars remembering his adventures with Lyra, then he noticed a shooting star but… it was heading towards him and was getting bigger by the second, then he said to Kirjava,

"Is that a… it can't be… It is it's an Angel!" In fact he could tell it was a high ranked angel because it was clearly visible by a light from another world. She stopped outside the window and said,

"Hello Will, How are you?" It was Kirjava who first realized that this was in fact Xaphania and after she nudged Will he realized and moved aside for her to come in.

"I'm fine thank you Xaphania how are you?" he said with a bewildered look on his face.

"I'm fine thank you, I can see you are wondering why I am here."

Will sat down on the bed and Kirjava jumped up beside him. " I need your help." She said with a very serious look on her face, though it was quite hard to read the emotion of an angel.

"What do you want from me? I can't do much now without the knife."

"That's were your wrong, you can do so much you wouldn't believe it if I told you."

"Well what do you want me to do then?"

"I need you to…" suddenly she stopped talking and her head snapped around, she stood up and walked towards the window. "No… They can't have found me impossible… Will I must leave now," she said turning to him, "Meet me in the Botanic Gardens tomorrow and we shall talk." At that she turned to jump out the window but Will shouted,

"Who has found you and why do we need to talk?" But before he had even fished talking Xaphania was already out of earshot heading towards the stars…

(0)

Will was lying on his bed again with Kirjava beside him, with her eyes closed again, wondering what was going on. "Kirjava?" she purred in reply "What do you think is going on?"

"I don't think you should think about it till tomorrow when we know what's going on."

"I think you're right." At that point Mary came in,

"You all right?" she asked, "I heard voices."

"Should we tell her?" Will thought to Kirjava

"No not yet." She thought back.

"Yeah I'm fine, it was probably just me and Kirjava you heard talking." Will replied.

"It's just I thought I heard…" she sighed in disappointment. "Never mind… it couldn't have been. I came to ask you if you want to come shopping with your mum and me after I finish work tomorrow?"

Will shot a glance at Kirjava, "No I'm alright. Why do you have to work during summer any-way?" He said trying to change the subject.

"Because I have to check the experiments regularly, or else the lab might blow up." She said giving him a joking sort of look. "Any-way, if you don't want to come it's up to you. Night-night she said as she closed the door.

(0)

It was about half eleven at night, or so Will thought, he lay awake with the light of a street lamp shining through his curtains onto his face, he was thinking of Lyra again as a tear slid slowly from the side of his eye… he lay there thinking of the first time they kissed in the little forest of silver trees, another tear came to his eye, then he thought of their last kiss through the window that closed them off forever… he couldn't take it any more, he started to weep for what seemed ages, even Kirjava's comforting couldn't stop him. When he was able to finally stop the torrents of tears he turned on his side and finally fell asleep.


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