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Although the temperature up north is beyond agreeable, and even further below zero, Marisa finds herself feeling much more comfortable here than she ever had back in London.
Perhaps it is the reminder of her childhood, of living close to the french alps, where more often than not, it would be so cold that even the furs couldn’t keep one warm for long.
Or perhaps it is something else entirely; her desire for freedom, which only ever seems satisfied up north, where the land stretches too wide for human eyes to see even a fraction of its entirety. Where she feels utterly alone, and in such, utterly wonderful.
Here, where there need be no false smiles, no sickly sweet compliments forced off her tongue for nothing less than the simple chance to talk at a table with scholars of the same educacional level as her, the only difference being one single chromosome.
Men, most of which cannot even comprehend half of what she is saying.
How she despises herself in moments like those; when her voice doesn’t sound like her own, her lashes heavy and alluring and her cheeks straining to maintain that smile which she’d practiced many times in the mirror.
All of it to maintain the interest of the very people she now walks away from.
How marvelously cruel it is, that after all these years of biting her lip, letting herself be judged time and time again, enduring the discrimination of trying to succeed; of being a woman in a man’s world, she is now left to run away from her own success.
Would anybody have told her as much, just two months ago, she would have deemed them entirely ridiculous. Whatever could be a good enough reason for her to willingly turn her back on not only the Magisterium, but also her years of dedication to her own projects?
Whatever could? Well, perhaps it would be better to ask whoever.
Marisa would prefer to answer that nobody could.
Nobody held such power over her. And for a long time, almost twelve years to be precise, she truly believed that.
During the entirety of her adult life, not a single person had ever held more power over her than she did over them. She’d made abundantly sure of that. Although she’d come close once, too close, at the age of twenty two, after meeting a young Lord who’d so unexpectedly won her heart.
With Asriel, she’d almost let herself fall once (or perhaps she had indeed fallen, hard and fast, crashing into an abyss of love and passion like she’d never thought she would, she’d become a sinner, and it had hurt her much more than she’d ever let on…perhaps). So she swore to never take the risk again.
Under no circumstances.
Such incredible feelings simply weren’t meant for her. As much as she wasn’t meant to harbor them.
Which is why, but a year after their encounter, Marisa refused to hold, or even really look at the screeching child after the exhausting hours of labour.
She’d sworn she wouldn’t fall a second time.
She couldn’t.
Because however harsh she’d molded the innocent child she’d once been into the steely adult she was today, she’d feared that if there was ever one person who could rip at the well fastened chains on her heart, it would be the girl— her daughter.
Yes, Lyra wasn’t anything like she’d expected. She wasn’t sweet and lovely as perhaps a young girl her age should have been, nor was she well mannered, not at all in fact.
She’d met Lyra at Jordan college two months ago as a very strong-willed and rather wild child. With barely any regard to etiquette, she’d been all that Marisa herself can’t stand.
An easy way to finally quench that insistent curiosity she’d tried and failed to stifle in the years they’d been apart. Or so it should have been, for all things considered, Lyra was nothing like her.
But that is a feeble lie. One which even Marisa cannot make believable.
Lyra was everything like her. Restless, stubborn, intelligent and curious beyond what was deemed acceptable. She had enough of Asriel too, to instantly remind her of him; not merely in looks, which were rather undeniable with her ash blond hair and distinctively sharp jawline, but in character as well.
That wild, untamed little thing, which under any other circumstances would have been just another child, at best a successful participant in her latest project, captured her heart that very moment Marisa’s sat down next to her at dinner.
Her daughter had not simply proven her fear to be true, but had somehow revived a part of her she’d long forgotten had ever existed. All without even trying to do so.
And now, here, atop this frozen mountain in the middle of nowhere, she finds herself alone and yearning for only one thing; Lyra.