Lyra stared at the Tenth Sun standing before her, his voice still echoing faintly in her ears. For a long moment, she did not know what to say, nor did she know how to feel. Emotions churned within her in a quiet, turbulent storm.
In a strange, aching way, she felt like a mother who had been denied the right to see her child for years, only to finally behold him again yet find herself unable to embrace him. She felt as though countless invisible threads were tugging at her heart, longing, relief, confusion, and a hollow ache she had not expected. She felt a whole constellation of emotions at once, all heavy, all raw, and all difficult to articulate.
