With a task in hand, Serafina Pekkala could see the immediate as well or better than any short-life, but now that she had fulfilled her personal obligations to the man Scoresby, and her obligations to the angels, her obligations were to witch. And the witch she was wept bitterly again for the sisters she'd lost. Twenty in number, but far more in spirit and life, sucked dry by the specters, most. She saw time far differently with hundreds of years behind her and hundreds more ahead. But death in its swiftness gathers sadness to an immediate, so now she mourned.
There was no mourning for herself, no thoughts of filling the airid spaces around her with other scraps of shadow or thoughts of what to tell her clan as she returned. She would tell the truth, fully. It was simply what was required of her. She would hope that the Latvian queen Ruta Skadi had great luck in her own motivations so that they might meet again as sisters and mourn together for what had been lost on their journey. It was natural, it was witch. This was unnatural.
"You're staying in our world?" She questioned the short-life again. Minds change quickly when they do not have the benefit of time to create solid ideas with.
"Yes." Will Parry stood stone faced next to her, staring off the bow. She hadn't faced him yet. He knew she wouldn't.
She sighed. "It is unnatural to be out of your world, Will Parry. You know this."
"Did you know of my father? A man called Stanislaus Grumman in your world."
"I did not." Kaisa flapped his grey wings in warning. Will was leading the conversation, he'd been prepared. As Ruta Skadi had said there was something in him reminiscent of Lord Asriel. Serafina wished she'd met the man truly. Then she would know if it was a danger. His other-worldliness didn't scare her. A child could not scare a witch, a child has just begun existance. But there was something far above child she recognized in him. Whether or not it had been there since she'd met the boy in Cittagazze was not apparent. He was full of stotic determination now, she could not change his mind. Love was his end, she wished she'd known him earlier.
"He loved my mum and I so much that one of your witches killed him for it."
"Witches are not mine, they are their own allowing me to represent for them. The individual mind is not commanded like a specter on a simple drive. The things that drive us may allow us to think they're our reasons for living, but they are what gives us passion, from that we live truly. Do not limit your life to being a loosed arrow. Forces beyond the bowstring act on the arrow as well."
"You would have me live in my own world?" He turned to face her, not glaring: questioning. She'd already had many times the years he would have; he wanted to know what difference it made.
"Yes. I would have you living a long full life in your own world."
"Serafina Pekkala, have you ever loved someone?" He couldn't imagine a question so serious to someone he was so entirely foreign to, but Lyra had shown him where boldness was necessary.
"Yes. I do still."
"And when he dies...what will you think of him?"
But she hadn't thought at all. She could not imagine that grief onto herself, could not guess at what any future was. Whether from his question or the loss of her sisters, a fire began leaking flames into her heart.
"Go home, Will Parry. She will not blame you when you die, but she will love you until she does. Any questions of a future that might have been will plague her, and she will love you for the moments you gave her. She'll never let you know and she'll never let go. She'll watch you deteriorate and love you and wish she could deny all nature and lie with you forever." She faced him finally, threatening for the first time, anger such as she could not remember. "But you will die and she will continue. It will be the nature of things and you will only learn you cannot change it."
Will turned away hotly, but softened as Lyra, clutching Pantalaimon, dashed up the steps from the belly of the ship and called to him.
"You speak in terms of nature," he talked softly, still not facing the witch. "I tell you this, Serafina Pekkala, this is my nature." And he and Kirjava made their way jauntily across the moving deck to gather Lyra and Pantalaimon to themselves.
And so it will be.
Serafina Pekkala smiled at the young girl. They were sisters now. Sisters not born of death, but of love that could outlast its lovers. And so it will be. She smiled again, a nature of love: the happiest regret.