Long Past Dawn

I don't know how long I sit staring out at the ocean before I hear the swoosh of the sand as someone gets closer to where I'm sitting.

I don't turn to see who it is, maybe because I half expect it to be Jikan.

'Thank Tyche she's ok...' Lyra's voice sounds in my head and I whip around in surprise.

Lyra stands panting in the sand a few feet away from me. She doesn't seem like the type to be out of breath easily and I have to wonder just how long she was looking for me.

After a moment of catching her breath, she sits down next to me on the sand. Lyra's black hair shines in the sun and for a moment it feels as if my vision is cut back to the image of Jikan's dark hair in the moonlight. I gulp and advert my gaze.

"Don't ever do something like that again!" Lyra scolds me, and probably rightly so. "Queen Hippolyta was ready to go wrestle Hades to get you back and here you are sitting on the beach like you haven't been missing almost all night and morning!"

Sighing I lean my head against Lyra's shoulder to make sure she's real. I can't believe I almost forgot them. "Hey, are you ok?" Lyra asks with a slightly worried look on her face.

"Yeah..." I say as I stare out at the waves, whoever that me was, she said that one day I would come back. But I don't think I will. "I am now, thank you for coming for me."

I turn to see Lyra smirking at me slightly. She looks like she's holding back a laugh, "Do you have any idea how cheesy that was? Even the mice wouldn't eat it if you asked them to, glykoulis."

"Quit smirking at me, I'm serious!" I say even though it is embarrassing.

"I'm not smirking!" Lyra laughs. Her black hair is thrown back in a carefree manner with the sun shining off it, she's nothing like Jikan.

"Well stop laughing at me!" I say defensively though at this point I have to keep myself from laughing.

"I'm not laughing!" Lyra says through her laughter and it doesn't help her case in the least.

"Well quit whatever it is you're doing," I say and at this point, I'm laughing with her.

"This is me with a cheery disposition; a ray of sunshine in the midst of bleakness. Don't put a cloud over my sunshine!" Lyra says as her sides rock with laughter.

"You're using this an excuse to laugh at me!" I say as I flop onto my back, the sand is warm from the sun and it feels nice. I wish this moment would never end.

"A rain cloud!" Lyra shouts over the roar of the waves. "But you're my silly little rain cloud."

"And here I thought I could be my own person," I say with a laugh.

"Of course," Lyra says with a laugh too, "But you're also my little rain cloud."

"Whatever you say," I laugh with a wrinkle of my nose.

Lyra glances at me and then looks away, "Hey Dawn?"

"Hmmm?" I answer as I look up at the blue and cloudless sky above us, the warm sand underneath me is making me tired and my mind is starting to drift away.

"One day you'll leave, won't you? You'll go back to New York and your life... You have to leave eventually..." Lyra says as she, too, looks up at the sky. "Is it selfish that I don't want you to?"

A cloud passes over the sun for a moment and we're covered in a shadow but in the next, it's gone and the sun is back. I don't know what to say.

"I don't know how long I thought I would never feel like this again," I say as I look up at the sky and smile.

"Like what?" Lyra asks unsure of why I didn't answer her question.

"Happy, excited to be alive, wanting to know what will happen tomorrow but not really caring," I say laughing, "I thought I would have to wait forever to feel this alive again but it turns out I didn't."

Lyra reaches out her hand and puts it on top of mine, "Then stay."

"I-" I want to, "I don't know, it feels like I'm living on a line. I have a life in both places but if I step over too far to one side the other me, that other life, will disappear and I'll never get it back."

"Dawn, do you want to know what I'm scared will disappear on me?" Lyra says and I nod, "You."

"W-what?" I say slightly shocked.

"There's just something about you, Dawn," Lyra says as she rolls onto her side to look at me. "I'm scared to lose, because I know I won't find it in anyone else."

I laugh but I can feel my cheeks turning red, I try to tell myself it's just the sun. I'm not sure I believe myself. "I'm sure you could say the same thing about Euliala or Anastasia."

The way Lyra looks at me after I say that, the look in her eyes is something I can't put a name on. After a moment she sighs, "No, you're different Dawn. You're special but you don't let yourself be."

I don't know what to say to that so we sit in silence.

"You know they're together..." Lyra says after a moment but now she's not looking at me but instead out at the waves rolling over the sand.

I had kinda guessed so I just nod.

"For a long time after they told me I felt like some third wheel to them, I still do sometimes," Lyra says and her eyes are unreadable, the soft brown of them seems to have hardened slightly, "Do you know what changed that feeling?"

I shake my head, I wouldn't know. Time maybe?

"You, being here with us," Lyra says, "You might not think it but you are part of our group. You have a place here."

Lyra gets up and brushes the sand off of herself, her black hair like dark silk in the sunlight. "But if you choose to leave and go back to the world of man then that's you're choice. Just know that they don't deserve you there. Oh, and you have to be back for training by sun high."

And with that and nothing more she turns and leaves me on the beach by myself.