The wind is breathing through the new leaves overhead, and a sudden change of it moves through her hair too. Maybe it’s wind that wove its way between stone mausoleums or something because it’s colder… or at least, it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, all the hairs on her arms standing to attention as well. It is cold? Or the first, prickling hints of adrenaline? "Forreal," she confirms, and the shiver moves lightly down her spine. She doesn't hate this, either, and she doesn't quite know how to explain how she's doing, not really.
"Avery's been writing it all down for me," she begins, taking the wine bottle back but just holding it, blunt thumbnail working its way absentmindedly under a corner of the label. "At first he was like, I'll record it, make something to hand over to Jocelyn cuz that might be easier than telling her all this stuff out loud, which, let's be real, ain't never gonna work for Jocelyn. But I want it written up, so he been interviewing me, real in depth, and we got a whole bunch out after Mother's Day. But then Monday rolls round and I'm in the workshop sweeping up and just, more stuff comes back to me, y'know?" She's talking a little faster, now, heart beating a little faster. It feels like admitting she's been doing something she shouldn't. Trespassing maybe, only, it's her own memories that she's been trespassing on, and they're hers, so she has every right to pick 'em up, turn 'em over, see what's been hiding underneath. It's exciting, though distantly she has the feeling it shouldn't be. Illicit, that's the word. "–And more comes back the next day and even more at trapeze, cuz I think the flying is the same kinda feeling, it's unlocking it, or something. Or the questions he's asking— he's good at questions, like he's prying my mind open, making it work. Like this—" she says, and takes a breath, starts to sing.
It's only a few lines – she knows there was more, originally, but a few lines is all her memory's relinquished so far – of a song she made up, down there. It's fast paced lyrics in a minor key, her singing voice a lower register than normal (like she's been singing, already, for days, like her voice is nearing its end) about a tree-woman who rooted herself so deep in the earth she couldn’t stretch her branches to reach the table overflowing with wine and she withered away, died horribly of thirst. Lyra remembers everyone around her shrieking with laughter. Remembers how proud and clever she felt, and every hair follicle on her body feels like it's tingling right now. “Dark, right?”
Dark but catchy. She’s been humming it since. It's disquieting in a way that not a lot of above-ground things are, but… but yeah, she been humming it since.