Lyra's lightfooted mind, which had been attempting to dance past any attempt at scrutiny of this feeling entirely, faltered a little when Rosario misunderstood. She synced up with Rosario better than she synced up with anyone else, and while there were always times when her mom mistook her tone, or her grandmother did, and loads of times when other people out in the world thought she was being glib when she was being serious, rude when she was being nervous, bossy when she was insecure or abrasive when she was sad... Rosario rarely did.
But why should Rosario think there was any degree of seriousness in Lyra's suggestion that Archer was a vampire? She'd never told Rosario a thing about her missing months, and as the weeks and months passed by (at their traditional, one-day-after-another pace, now) the whole story felt more and more like it was only a dream. Whole weeks would pass with Lyra's mind giving it no thought whatsoever, and more often than not she lived her life like the whole thing just hadn't been real.
It was only now that something else unexplainable and strange was going on that Lyra felt any connection at all to what had happened to her.
Archer was very pretty, and he sang beautifully, and danced beautifully, he was graceful and smart and identical to a man who'd been at university in the 1970s... Was he some kind of... fey?
No, no no - her mind rebelled against this thought as soon as she'd had it. Archer was normal, flesh and blood normal, she'd smelled his sweat, he'd sent her YouTube videos, she'd heard him snore, for fuck's sake.
But - she looked again at the photo on the screen.
Ah fuck, she didn't know. She didn't know what she thought or what she believed... But as Rosario talked about directories, Lyra decided on something: she was gonna get in touch with PhantomTruth, a guy who was obviously at the other end of the rationality spectrum (wasn't he?) as Rosario. She wanted to say he's a vampire to someone like him and see if he snorted.
But not like, now. Lyra sat on her hands to stop herself fiddling with the buttons, and took her eyes off the disquieting picture on the screen. "What can I do to help? I'll look through something too?"