The silence that had grown between them was no longer a quiet space; it was a chasm. Each day that passed after Selene's question felt like a stone dropped into that void, widening it, deepening it. The library, once a sanctuary of warm glances and whispered conversations, had become a gallery of cold shoulders and averted eyes.
Lyra had perfected the art of evasion. If Selene entered a room, Lyra found a reason to leave it. If their paths were destined to cross, Lyra's gaze would slide over Selene as if she were just another piece of furniture, her smile a brittle, professional mask reserved for patrons she barely knew. She was a ghost in her own library, always just disappearing around a corner, her presence announced only by the faint scent of vanilla and old paper that lingered tauntingly in the air after she'd fled.
It was a deliberate, calculated retreat. And it was breaking Selene's heart.
She tried to rationalize it. She told herself she'd been too forward, too strange. That she'd scared Lyra away with her intense questions about dreams and timelines. But the rationalizations rang hollow against the memory of the raw, unguarded shock on Lyra's face that day. That hadn't been the face of someone who was merely weirded out. It was the face of someone who had been seen, truly and deeply seen, and it had terrified them.
The uncertainty became a physical ache, a constant, gnawing pressure in her chest. She couldn't focus on her work. The fragments of pottery on her desk seemed to mock her, pieces of a past she could reassemble but a present that was falling apart in her hands.
Finally, on a evening when the sky outside the great windows was bruising with twilight, Selene reached her limit. The library was empty, bathed in the deep, quiet gloom of closing time. She saw Lyra at the main desk, her head bowed as she counted the day's till, a single lamp casting a golden pool of light around her. She looked so peaceful, so untouchable, and the injustice of it all ignited a fire in Selene's veins.
She walked across the silent floor, her footsteps echoing like gunshots in the vast, quiet space. She didn't stop until she was standing directly before the desk, her presence a dark shadow falling over the neat stacks of cash.
Lyra looked up. For a fleeting, unguarded second, Selene saw it all: the surprise, the guilt, the fear. Then, the shutters came down. Her expression smoothed into that infuriating, placid neutrality.
"Selene," she said, her voice cool and professional. "The library is technically closed. Did you need to check something out?"
The dismissive formality was the final straw.
"No I just wanna talk," Selene's voice was low, but it vibrated with a intensity that made Lyra flinch. "I've been here everyday but you seemed to be avoiding."
Lyra's eyes flickered toward the door, seeking an escape that wasn't there. "I'm not sure what you mean. It's been a very long week."
"A long week?" Selene let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "Is that what you're calling it? This... this freezing me out? This act like I'm a stranger? Like what's been happening between us for weeks just... evaporated?"
"Nothing has been happening between us," Lyra said, her voice tight as she focused on locking the cash drawer, her hands trembling slightly. "We're acquaintances who see each other at the library. That's all."
The lie was so bald, so cruel, that it stole the air from Selene's lungs. "Acquaintances?" she repeated, her voice cracking. "You looked at me like I held the universe in my eyes. You laughed with me. You shared coffee with me. You trusted me enough to show me your secret kindness with those cats. Was that all just nothing?"
Lyra refused to meet her gaze. "I think you're misremembering. You're misinterpreting basic kindness."
"Misinterpreting?" The word was a spark to tinder. All the confusion, the longing, the heartache of the past days exploded out of her. Her control shattered. "Is that what I'm doing? Or are you just a coward?"
Lyra's head snapped up, her eyes flashing with a fire Selene hadn't seen before. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know that something scared you!" Selene shot back, leaning forward, her palms flat on the cool wood of the desk. "I asked you one question, one stupid, hypothetical question, and you looked at me like I'd seen straight into your soul. And you have been running from me ever since. So whatever it is you're hiding, whatever secret you're so terrified I'll discover, just say it! Because this... this silence is killing me!"
Tears, hot and furious, welled in Selene's eyes, but she didn't try to hide them. "Is it me?" she demanded, her voice rising, raw and broken in the empty library. "Is it because I'm the one who's seeing it? Is it because I like you? and I don't know what force this is but I'm so drawn to you!"
The confession tore from her, louder and more desperate than she'd intended, echoing off the silent books.
"Is that the terrible secret? That I like you, Lyra? That I think about you all the time? That I wake up dreaming of you and go to sleep wondering what you're doing? That I want to know everything about you, the good and the bad and the things you think you need to hide?"
She was fully crying now, the tears tracking hot paths down her cheeks, but she didn't care. The dam had burst.
"I want to get to know you more than I've ever wanted to know anyone in my entire life! And I thought... God, I was so sure... that you felt it too. That you felt this... this pull between us. But you'd rather hide. You'd rather pretend I don't exist than just be honest with me!"
Her voice broke on a sob, and she finally fell silent, her body trembling, the only sound in the vast room her ragged breaths and the frantic beating of her own heart.
Lyra was statue-still behind the desk. All the color had drained from her face. Her own eyes were glistening, wide with a storm of emotions: shock, fear, and a devastating, profound anguish. The carefully constructed walls had not just been rattled; they had been obliterated by the sheer, unstoppable force of Selene's truth.
She stood exposed, utterly speechless, her own composure in ruins. The silence that followed was heavier than any that had come before, thick with the wreckage of everything left unsaid and the stunning, seismic power of everything that finally had been.