Last midsummer...
Sep. 19th, 2005 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyra_silverToday Lyra and Pantalaimon sneak out of maths class early, with a conspiratorial smile for their classmates and a quick glance at the half-blind lecturer. They cut through the University Parks, behind Gabriel College. They hurry down Holywell Street and the road curving past Magdalen, and climb over the fence of the Botanical Gardens. It's daytime and the gardens are open, of course, but Lyra feels it would be a certain kind of failure to pay the entrance fee like the tourists do. These are her gardens, after all.
Across the park, past the fountain, and back at the plainer end of the garden, just by the riverbank, the bench waits for them. It's empty. No one would dare sit on Lyra's bench, not on Midsummer's Day. Lyra runs to it and takes her seat. Pantalaimon slips up behind her just as the first set of bells begins to chime noon.
Across the park, past the fountain, and back at the plainer end of the garden, just by the riverbank, the bench waits for them. It's empty. No one would dare sit on Lyra's bench, not on Midsummer's Day. Lyra runs to it and takes her seat. Pantalaimon slips up behind her just as the first set of bells begins to chime noon.
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Date: 2005-09-20 06:12 am (UTC)She whispers, "I won't forget you, Will," to the empty bench.
Lyra and Pantalaimon trudge back northward, past the hazy spires of Magdalen, Gabriel and Durham and up to St Sophia's, in the warm Oxford afternoon.