The battle is on. Which isn't all that good if you're battling against an army of Ice Bears. If you're fighting alongside them, it is much better.
This story belongs to its author and creators, the respect and love necessary to write a tribute belongs to me.
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It was even more frightening to watch from a distance than to be right up in it, Lyra concluded as she peeked from the single window in the house facing in the right direction. Not that the fight was all that close, but she could see the glittering lights of what was hopefully Magisterium soldiers dying. Not that the battle had promised to be especially even. Lord Asriel, Fader Coram, Iorek, Serafina Pekkala and the king of the Gyptians had planned this well.
Trapping their enemies between the rock and the Gyptians, letting the witches shoot from the air and the Ice Bears charge straight into the hopefully trapped enemies, it was a strategy which would hopefully work well. They had many battles ahead.
It was only the first battle, and not in any way the last, nor the only time Lyra greeted her returning father with a relieved, minute-long, crushing hug as Pan jumped around a patient Stelmaria, but watching them from a distance never got any easier.
As the rumours of their rebellion spread, the magisterium sent more and more forces to stop them in their tracks, but between the Gyptians of the sea, the witches of the air and the bears of the ice, they were all overrun. Lyra found it terrible, though not as terrible as she would her friends dying, and she usually sat after the battles and listened to the songs of the witches and Gyptians, revering their fallen enemies' souls after they had honoured their own fallen, each man and woman of their own lost in turn. Lord Asriel took to going and finding her there, bringing the sleeping child back to his house, and later, when they finally moved further south, bit by bit, his tent in camp.
Said tent was quickly the largest one, as it became a logical council hall when they moved, not only Iorek insisting on staying with Lyra, but Serafina Pekkala usually found there as well. There was rarely less than ten people in that tent, peacefully speaking in hushed voices, or whispering frantically, the sounds often loud and uninhibited during the day, only muted by the promised rage of Iorek and Asriel if anyone dared risk waking their charge.
Serafina Pekkala was often seen smiling, as she watched Lord Asriel guard his child almost jealously, and some understood. Ma Costa and fader Coram were the first two to smile secretly in recognition, but neither one of them ever spoke of it. One day, it would be the time when the Witch felt she could speak herself.
Even later, when Kaysa was increasingly found sleeping next to Stelmaria, the snow leopard still in sleep guarding the cat between her paws, no one spoke of things they were wise enough to understand they had no right to mention. One day it would be time, and there would be words to express it with, when Lyra and Serafina alike fell asleep, leaning on a shoulder each of Lord Asriel. He never spoke of it either, as he gently carried and tucked them both in. To those privileged few who got to see the man's eyes in those moments, there was no need for him to.