I'll Find You by the Light of the Moon

Chapter Four

Hey! Sorry for the... long wait. I kinda sorta totally forgot about this fic. Now that I'm writing again I'll try to do weekly updates. 

Hope you enjoy!! <3

Lyra was not one to give up, but sometimes, she was tempted. Tempted to beg Dr. Relf to ask the Alethiometer all the questions she was dying to ask.

All the questions it didn't want to give her the answers to.

Thirteen years was a long time, and yet, according to Dr. Relf, she'd progressed so much so quickly. On a good day, she could believe this: she could believe that she was regaining the ability she'd once had. On a bad day, though, she felt like she wasn't getting anywhere.

Today was a bad day.

She'd come to Hannah's office after lunch to study, and they'd been at it for hours, until finally it was four o'clock and Lyra was packing up to leave.

"Lyra, before you go, I'm having dinner with some other Alethiometrists and I was hoping you could come? Six o'clock?"

Lyra smiled and nodded and said "I'll be sure to make it," before leaving.

She would be sure to make it. As said before, Lyra Silvertongue was not one to give up, and she wasn't about to start now. Right now, not giving up meant working hard and studying to learn the alethiometer the right way.

Achieving grace.

And also, building the Republic of Heaven. She still wasn't sure what that meant, although it had been thirteen years since she'd first been told to do so. Thirteen years since-

Oh, she couldn't think about it.

Just yesterday had been Midsummer's Day, when she could think all she wanted and cry all she wanted and know that Will was listening. But right now, she couldn't lose control. She had to try asking the simple question again: Is my mother dead?

She didn't know the answer. Well, of course she didn't know the answer, why else would she be asking? She hadn't heard anything about Mrs. Coulter since her arrival back in her world. She assumed that the woman was dead but she had no proof. It was the question she always asked the alethiometer, but she always got a different answer. She was trying to figure out how to ask it, because she wouldn't get a good answer otherwise.

Today, she was feeling a bit spiteful toward her mother and the question and even the alethiometer itself, so she asked using serpent, madonna, hourglass: Is the evil mother dead?

Its answer was as complicated as normal: Thunderbolt, angel, sword, hourglass, griffin, wild man... why couldn't it just tell her yes or no? Why did it always seem to have a million things to say about such a simple question. When it was done, she asked the question again, the same way: Is the evil mother dead?

This time, she wrote down what it said to decipher later.

Sword, helmet, madonna, angel, sun, hourglass, griffin, wild man, hourglass, serpent, madonna, griffin, wild man, baby, thunderbolt, hourglass.

"If I look only at the Primary meanings, it'd be something like this," she mused, stroking Pan's back and writing it down:

Justice, war, motherhood, messenger, day, time, treasure, wild man, time, evil, motherhood, treasure, wild man, future, inspiration, time.

"But then again, you used hourglass as death and not time," Pan said, nodding towards the alethiometer.

Justice, war, motherhood, messenger, day, death, treasure, wild man, death, evil, motherhood, treasure, wild man, future, inspiration, death.