"My hair's hero," Lyra squeezed his forearm, and with a bounce in her step they went up.
Granola-eating hippies, he’d said about her friends once, not long after she’d started to really click with the trapeze crew. He hadn’t meant it, he’d just been in a mood and he’d been mimicking his asshole dad – like, Lyra knew it wasn’t really coming from him, she did know that, but it’d still stuck with her for a while, and still crept into her head now. Even though he didn’t talk about them, she figured his family took up as much space in his head as hers did in hers – way too much mental real estate, honestly – and after talking to his mom the other day after so many months of no-contact maybe the shit they’d say would be swimming round in his head closer to the surface than usual. Like, Lyra'd never tell anyone to tone it down, but she kinda hoped that no one would be too over the top, in his face. Just… wanted him to like them as much as she did; wanted, as ever, her friends to just get on.
She had no idea what they were walking into, with Fern’s place. The girl was a vegan (so, yeah legit the granola part was on point) who wore different wings most Wednesdays (some with structure, others more shawl-like) and Lyra knew she was an artist, though couldn’t remember which school she was studying at, and only had a job in the summer, apart from a little life modeling; Lyra knew bout that cuz she tried to invite Lyra along a couple of times (it'd been tempting, the money, and Lyra liked her body more or less but, it was kinda hers? She didn't know how she felt bout letting other people use her body like that, even for art. But she'd told Fern her nah was about sitting still, and Mackenzie had laughed hard and said ain't that the truth; there was a stillness to Fern that there just wasn't to Lyra). Fern had a rotating cast of different flatmates, had spent a year in France between high school and art school, had two parents who were still together though not exactly happily. Fern could be vague as anything one minute and the next ask the most interesting questions. But what her place looked like, she couldn’t imagine.
Yeah, she had money. No multiple jobs for Fern. But still in Lyra’s head they were gonna be packed in somewhere small. In Lyra’s head, kinda everyone lived in the same size apartment as she did, so whenever the world proved her wrong she was a little surprised.
Fern's place wasn't small. Not frat house or Duffield-manor huge, but not small.
Just inside the front door was another that led to the ground floor, and a narrow staircase that led up to the party. The light bulbs in the stairway up had been replaced with different bulbs of green and yellow and orange, something that made Lyra wonder why she'd never thought to do that in their place?? They didn't give off much light (so yeah, okay, that was why; couldn't craft in the dark) and the stairs themselves were fairly dark and steep, with one wooden rail still wrapped in last week's tinsel, little scraps of light reflecting off each tiny silver strand.
They could hear the music and laughter drawing them in and Lyra tightened her fingers around Avery's arm, casting another excited look over her shoulder at him. God yes she was gonna dance with him tonight.
At the top of the stairs, everything opened up, and Lyra’s eyes widened as she stepped into a huge room, very open plan, with the ceiling so much higher than she expected. There were fairy lights everywhere, and patches of colour splashed across the party from more coloured lightbulbs hanging over the heads of people who were in groups chatting, or in one corner lounging over a range of squashy furniture or gathered round a kitchen island eating and drinking.