Lyra put two fingers to her forehead and gave Nat a sharp salute, one that promised she wouldn't let them down. How could she, and risk not living up to the tales her grandma was telling? That was the kind of pressure Lyra thrived in. One of the kinds.
Besides, she was thinking to herself of her monstrous mannequin throne on the roof and wondering what it'd look like with a microwave door like, worked into the seat. "That will not be a problem," she said, because even if the thing was too broken to fix, too big to move, too hard to dump, Lyra was sure she'd figure something out. She always did, somehow. Talk big game, then figure out a way to live up to it.
Things had been so whack lately that it had been an easy thing to forget. As messy and as shitty as things got, she always figured something out in the end. As freaky and as weird as Archer Goldenhawk was and whatever that meant for Rosario, they were gonna figure that out in the end, too. However she did decide to tell Rosario bout what happened at the Mystery Spot, they'd sort it. It just took a solid door in the face to make her slow down enough to remember that.
Lyra dug her fingers down the side of the final book, cramming them in between the pages and the cardboard of the box. She had to dig open the book to get a grip on it, but it was a gorgeous weight in her hands when she did. Lyra wasn't sure she'd ever described a book as a gorgeous weight before, but that was her first impression. Her second: the soft, matte texture of the dust jacket, a little torn about the edges but beautiful, bordered in Celtic designs.
As she turned the book over in her hands, the smell triggered something that wasn't quite a memory, just a sense of the sea and a wild wind. Nothing she could put her finger on, nothing she even consciously noticed, save the fact that the book felt like it had once been very familiar, like something from childhood. The front cover sported a painting of the landscape of Ireland, the light playing magically through a surly sky, the sun bright on green hills. "I think my grandma used to own this book," she said, because it seemed like the most rational scenario, though even as she said her her forehead creased a little, unsure.
A Compendium of the Saints of Ireland it was, and it should've produced the same goosebumps she'd been feeling all day, but the wild-wind-and-sea feeling snatched them away before they could take hold on her again.