Sorry it took so long, been mucking around an awful lot. Standardized testing in school too, need a dose of adrenaline when I get home to tell me I'm still alive, I think first person shooters may've saved my life.
I didn't use Lyra's name in the first draft of this chapter, dunno why, maybe I'm not fully thinking about my character as Lyra yet, who was almost entirely different during the course of the books. Never the less, you'd all know who I was talking about. I'm not using chapter titles yet either, maybe I will once I start writing more with each entry.
I mention the "latin languages" later in the chapter to replace romance languages, a term that folks in our world use and that probably couldn't have magically jumped over to exist in Lyra's world, unless, of course, by coincidence, I've never read Lyra's Oxford so if they, in that book or the others, ever refer to it by another name please inform me. If anything else is mentioned by a different name or wouldn't seem to exist in Lyra's world in its presented form please tell me too, I want to make it as real as possible.
And so this grown child awoke, fighting back sleep should her nightmare pursue her. A primal fear enveloped her of the sort we all develop when we are awoken from a horrid dream but are not conscious enough to reason our fear. As she won her fight for wakefulness she sat up in her bed, eyes darting about in the dark. Her breath came raggedly and each beat of her heart resonated about her room. As she calmed she lay back down again, feeling the sweat cool on her skin. She lay such until the room brightened with the first light of dawn and when she could finally discern ever detail of the room she shared with several others in her boarding school. With the comforting light about her she managed to drift off into sleep until the energy that comes every morning with the waking of the school and the serving of breakfast awoke her with no recollection of the night's terror.
Her roommates were up, dressed and gone by the time Lyra was up, she dressed quickly to make up for lost time and hurried down to one of the large rooms of the school that was used to serve breakfast and lunch, a more formal dining room being used for dinner and special occasions. She had found her seat amongst her peers just as the morning prayer was spoken by Dame Hannah (seated at a long table set apart from the rest, accompanied by the rest of the adults in the school). She joined in half-heartedly, muttering the words she had memorized during the near two years she had been at the school. After the prayer the serving bell was rung and the room became full of greetings and light-hearted conversation.
Servants came about to deliver coffee, tea, breads, breakfast meats and fruits, among other foods commonly found at breakfast time. Lyra had taken a cup of tea and, along with a half a loaf of bread, managed to steal away from the bustling breakfast room to eat in the school's courtyard, vacant at this time of the day.
Hoping to escape the heat and activity she found no solace in the courtyard, she was assaulted by her memories, each moment frozen with unreal detail. The plethora of various plants; flowers, bushes and trees, each one brought back memories left sealed... of the gardens, the world of Ci'gazze, or the fields and forests of the Mulefa. Frozen in the barks of trees, kindly faces of old stared back at her. With her nostalgia becoming increasingly overwhelming she found herself on the verge of tears as the morning meal was finished and the students came rushing through the halls on their ways into the city or back to their rooms or one of the school's various other structures, the library, common rooms or the school's own museum, with it's collection of artifacts and art collected by old students. Lyra tore her gaze from the plants around her and hurried to join the bustle in the hallways, her tea and bread forgotten on a stone wall along the path of the courtyard.
As it was a Saturday and no lectures or proper schedule was maintained, the students had the day to themselves, to be spent meandering about the city or spent studying among the ancient tomes of the library. Lyra herself was destined to be spending her day doing the latter, as she was behind in her alethiometer studies since the school-wide exams in the past week. Dame Hannah had made sure that the copy of the book of symbols from Bodley's library was always available on her request and Lyra had made full use of this privilege as frequently as she could.
The chief librarian was an elderly woman, bent over from age but who still managed to hold herself quite highly for being one of the only graduates (of both the boarding school and the college run by Dame Hannah) to have a complete mastery of the latin foreign languages and a nearly-encyclopedic memory consisting of nearly every book held in her domain.
She looked up from repairing an ancient tome whose bindings had all but turned to dust. She squinted up at Lyra from behind her reading glasses, "Why, hello again dear, been awhile, what with exams, eh?"
Lyra smiled at the woman, "It has Madame Belry, I trust the book is in its usual spot?"
"Of course, of course..." The woman turned back to her work.
The library was an impressive room, occupying most of the second floor of the school. The book shelves were made of a sturdy red wood, the naptha lamps cast circles of red light about their bases and the general feel of the room was very warm and relaxing. The book shelves were lined up on the walls as well as in the center of the room, in shelves. Lounge chairs and couches, along with solid wooden tables (made of the same wood as the shelves) occupied most of the empty space.
The encyclopedia of the alethiometer's symbols was on display in a small wooden case when not in use, and that case was set by a most comfortable arm chair, Lyra's destination. She had stopped in her room to pick up the alethiometer, now set in a wooden case, lined with velvet, and inlaid with a pattern of a sun, which Lyra knew, had truth being one of its foremost meanings. The original cases had been created with the alethiometer, and were, by now, in rather poor condition, but Lyra had managed to convince one of her oldest friends, who was now under the apprenticeship of one of the finest craftsmen in the city, to make an exact replica.
She unlatched the case and, handling the book gently, took a seat on the armchair, depositing her alethiometer on the table beside her. Her first step towards learning the alethiometer had been to learn the first several meanings of each symbol and the situations in which they would apply, Dame Hannah had given her such questions and the symbols the alethiometer may produce and asked Lyra to uncover the answer to such questions. With her exams just passed Lyra had no tangible task so she decided to pick symbols at random and think them out as Dame Hannah instructed her to, what purpose it served, what it most commonly represented, its uses, place in mythology or religion, Dame Hannah had told her that even without the book, such questions could uncover many of the lesser meanings if one applied herself.
Choosing a symbol at random to begin her studies she found herself flipping pages through the book. When she came to a stop she found herself staring into the eyes of an angel, drawn in fine, sharp ink on the crackling parchment. Her mind ceased for an instant, before the rush of images and the voices from her dream seemed to fill the room about her. She remembered; it was no dream.