(8 years earlier)
Fabienna Tower was like everything that belonged to the elves - beautiful in a cool, inaccessible way, perfect to the point of exaggeration. Even the evening light seeped in more quietly here. Softer. As if it didn't want to disturb the order of this old, magical space.
Sharon hated this silence.
- I've been sitting here for an hour. - Her voice reverberated off the stone walls of the empty lecture theatre. - And I still don't understand how she is able to talk so much.... without saying anything.
Lyra, leaning nonchalantly against the table, stretched lazily.
- It's an elf talent. It's called "being impossibly annoying",' she replied in an expert tone.
Sharon parroted under her breath, but there was more frustration than amusement in it.
- She said I had "chaos in my heart and sparks in my head". That it's not magic yet, it's just.... a mess.
- Sounds like a compliment - Lyra shrugged her shoulders. - Maybe in Elvish it means she likes you?
- Mhm. That's why she looked at me like a pile of mud on a white carpet.
We both fell silent for a moment.
Outside the tower windows, dusk was spilling slowly over the treetops. The Elven Academy was beautiful at this hour - all the way annoyingly beautiful. The cool marbles, the bright light of the crystals, the light breeze from the forest.
Sharon stood up abruptly.
- Come on.
- Where to?
- Upstairs.
Lyra raised an eyebrow.
- 'To the roof?
- To the roof.
- Rebel.
- Chaos at heart, remember?
They were sitting on the edge of one of the side towers - the one rarely ventured onto. From below came the barely audible sounds of the Academy, conversations, laughter, the sounds of magic. And here... here there was only the wind.
And two girls.
Lyra handed Sharon a piece of dried fruit.
- Fabienna is probably sitting in her chamber right now meditating on the meaning of life. Or polishing her perfect elfin rump.
Sharon giggled, genuinely amused.
- 'Oi, Lyra...
- Hm?
- Do you think she... ever been young?
Lyra lifted her gaze to the sky, feigning deep thought.
- Maybe she was born instantly old and sarcastic. Or she grew out of the ground like a fungus.
- The Fabienna fungus... - Sharon rested her forehead against her knees, choking back a laugh.
Silence returned slowly. But it was already a good silence. One where nothing needed to be said.
Lyra looked at Sharon sideways. For a long time. Carefully.
- What are you afraid of, Sharon? - She asked suddenly.
Sharon fell silent.
It was a question that always surprised her, because Lyra didn't ask questions for the sake of principle. Once she asked something - it meant that the answer was important.
The girl looked somewhere far away - at the forests, at the stars, at the world that seemed so calm and inaccessible from this height.
- I'm scared... - she began quietly. - I'm afraid that one day... I will lose myself. In all this world of magic, rules, responsibilities.... - she paused for a moment. - That I'll wake up and not know who I am. That all that will be left is what someone told me to be.
Lyra didn't look away.
And then she said something Sharon would remember forever:
- If you ever lose yourself.... find me. I will remind you of who you are.
And that sounded like a promise.
Maybe even a spell.
- I wonder if Fabienna knows you're sitting on her roof like a stray cat.
Both girls turned abruptly.
Behind them stood... Fabienna.
Or rather - the illusion of Fabienna, who had just been distracted by a retching Lyra.
- I knew it! - Sharon threw a handful of dried fruit over her shoulder. - You nasty elven fake!
Lyra laughed for a long time more.
And Sharon laughed with her.
Because it was that time - a time when nothing had broken yet.
A time when the world was only theirs.
When the laughter finally subsided, and Fabienna's illusion had long since dissipated into thin air, Sharon and Lyra simply sat in silence. Above their heads, the stars twinkled - clearer here, away from the lights of the Academy.
For a while it really was fine.
But something in Lyra's behaviour had changed slightly. Sharon sensed it immediately - that different tone of hers, those shorter answers. Lyra was ruminating on something in her mind. Knowing her - for a long time.
- What is it? - Sharon asked finally, straightening up slightly. - 'You're thinking too loudly.
Lyra sighed quietly.
- 'Mhm. Maybe.
- Well then, talk.
For a moment she thought Lyra was going to float her again with some joke. But not this time.
- I wonder... - she began slowly - is all this even for me.
Sharon furrowed her brow.
- 'The academy?
Lyra nodded.
- Elves have time. They can sit here for half a century, perfecting themselves, sawing every rune to perfection. And me... I don't know. I feel like I'm suffocating here.
Sharon was silent.
- 'You know what Fabienna said? That my magic is too wild. That it's untamed. That I should tame it.
- Like a horse,' Sharon muttered, shaking her head.
Lyra smiled weakly.
- 'Well, that's right. But I don't want to tame her. I don't want to be another perfect Academy student. I want to see something more. A different world. A different life. Not just the walls of this tower and spells repeated over and over again.
There was silence.
Sharon bit her lip.
- And I thought... we'd always be here together.
Lyra looked at her sideways - softly, with a kind of sadness.
- 'Maybe we will be. Just not here.
They sat for a long time yet. Until the night got really cold. Until the silence started to sound different - like something that would become a memory in a while.
- And you? - spoke up Lyra after a long silence, resting her chin on her knees. - 'What do you actually want, Sharon? Yes... I really do.
Sharon looked at her from under a storm of dark hair.
- To become a sorceress,' she answered without hesitation. - A good sorceress. A strong one.
Lyra snorted slightly.
- 'I think that's obvious. We are at the Academy of Magic.
Sharon, however, shook her head.
- "That's not the point," she sighed. - I don't want to be a sorceress just because they put me here. I want to be one... Because my mother was one.
Lyra raised her eyebrows slightly.
- 'Sharanna, right?
Sharon nodded, and there was something soft, gentle in her gaze, very rare in her.
- "She died at the battle of Vael'Dor," she said quietly. - They say she was defending the last circle of mages when the city was already burning. Fabienna knew her. She taught her once - just as she teaches us now.
Lyra listened in silence, surprised that Sharon was talking about it at all. She rarely mentioned it. It was... too personal.
- "After Mum died," Sharon continued, 'it was Fabienna who took me in. I was barely nine years old at the time. I don't know what would have happened to me if it hadn't been for her.
Lyra leaned her head against Sharon's shoulder - just, naturally, like teenagers have always done.
- And that's why you're afraid you might one day .... lose yourself? - she asked quietly.
Sharon bit her lip.
- Mhm. That in all this striving for strength.... I'd forget who I am. Or who my mother was. And Fabienna always says that magic without a heart is just empty words.
Lyra smiled slightly.
- That's very... In your style,' she muttered.
- Stupid?
- No. Beautiful.
They sat in that silence for a while longer, which was no longer awkward. It was theirs.
- 'And are you seriously thinking of leaving? - Sharon asked after a while. - Really?
Lyra looked up at the sky.
- I think. But I don't know when. Not yet. Maybe in a year. Maybe in two years. Maybe not until I feel I really need to anymore.
- And then what?
Lyra shrugged her shoulders.
- 'The world is huge, Shar. There are so many places we've never seen. So much magic other than that of the Academy. I want to touch it all. To see it. I don't want to spend my whole life between stone walls.
Sharon looked at her carefully.
- This... will you promise me something? - she finally said.
- What?
- That wherever you are... you won't forget me.
Lyra smiled broadly until her eyes lit up.
- 'You are probably the last person to be forgotten.
- Seriously. Promise.
Lyra raised her hand, offered it in a vow gesture.
- I promise, Sharon.
And then they both still believed that promises always mean something.