The Nightscape

Within A Week

They drove to one of the safe houses that Anya had mentioned, on the outskirts of the city. Her driving had been interested, involving some dangerous 'evasive maneuvers' even though they hadn't been visibly followed. She had driven into a car park without any cameras and insisted that they change cars, and then they had to wait for an hour before they drove out again. When they finally arrived, it wasn't what Lyra was expecting. She had either predicted a lavish, expensive apartment that the rich young woman wouldn't mind living in her herself, or a small, remote little cabin designed to be hard to reach. Instead, it was a normal house in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. 

"Right. This is off the books, you should be safe here. Lyra, can you come with me to see Guy? He needs to know where you are, and what's happened to his sister, and we need to come up with a plan of action." Lyra nodded solemnly, running a hand over her face. 

"Sure. But if he starts yelling at me because of Ettie, I'm just walking out." She threatened. Her father hadn't gotten out yet, even though he had both of their bags in his hands. 

"I want to come with you. If Hayden is after you-" Her dad started to say.

"If Hayden is coming after her, which he is, nothing you could do could stop him. If anything, he'll only try and use you as leverage. Trust me, the best thing you can do for her is stay here and stay safe while we deal with the threat." Anya interrupted him, not unkindly. He still didn't look convinced, looking towards Lyra. 

"You promise me that if anything happens, or if gods forbid you're about to heal the rift, you'll come back?" He asked, trying too hard to keep his voice level yet still not able to keep the coarse edge peeking through. Lyra moved across the backseat of the car and hugged him. 

"Of course. I'll come back tonight." She told him, watching with a sense of being deeply unsettled as he took the offered keys from Anya, climbed out of the car and disappeared into the house. When the door was closed and locked behind him, Anya blew out a deep breath and twisted in the seat to grin at Lyra. 

"Always a relief when the parents learn to let you deal with these things, trust me. Climb into the front and we'll go to Guy." She said lightly, putting the handbrake on and offering Lyra her hand. Lyra didn't answer right away, instead focusing on scrambling over the gear box and handbrake without knocking them and settling into the front seat. 

"My dad won't let go of this easily. He's only just found out about all of this, and now you're telling me that we're getting close to the end." Lyra murmured. Anya just smiled at her, a glint of pity in her eyes. 

"I know that you'll be leaving your dad behind, but trust me, this is for the best. It isn't natural for us to be in this world. We need to go back to our homeland." Lyra scowled at her. 

"If it isn't natural for us to be in this world, it wasn't for our parents either. But we still exist, so we must be abominations too." She muttered. "At the end of the day, I was born and raised in this world. This is my home, not the Nightscape or the Dayscape. I couldn't even survive in either of them without coming back here to get everything!" Anya inclined her head. 

"Look, I get that. I really do, way more than Guy and Ettie because they're born of two Flickerer's and have lived most of their lives in the Scapes rather than here. However, our people have been living there before the split for hundreds of thousands of years, hell, we evolved there. I know it seems inhospitable, but that's just because of the rift. Once everything is healed, it will be hard to readjust and learn to live there, but we'll all work together and we'll figure it out. We'll be back where we should be, where we should have always been." She argued. 

"Really, Anya? You think that as soon as the split is healed, everyone is going to become best friends and help each other? I may not know as much about our people as you do, but I do know people. Just because an issue is solved, it won't solve a generations long civil war. We will have to govern ourselves, and there's already a huge divide and power vacuum. Things will only get worse when we're fighting to survive anyway and we don't have the human world to hide in." She snapped as Anya put the car in gear and pulled out, beginning to drive off.