The silence that followed Selene's demand was absolute. The air, which had moments before been electric with revelation, now went cold and still. The shimmering artifact on the table seemed to dim, as if reflecting Lyra's retreat back into herself.
Lyra looked away, her shoulders tensing. She carefully, almost reverently, picked up the object and returned it to its velvet cloth and then to the locked cabinet. The soft click of the key turning in the lock sounded like a door slamming shut.
"No," Lyra said, her back still to Selene. The word was quiet, but firm. Final. "I cannot."
Selene felt the rejection like a physical blow. "You cannot, or you will not?" she challenged, her voice rising with frustration.
Lyra turned around, and the woman who had just confessed to being an immortal being now looked heartbreakingly human, her face a mask of conflict and fear. "It is not the time. And I will not be the reason you are put in danger. Knowing its existence is one thing. Knowing its purpose... that is a burden I will not give you."
"So that's it?" Selene stood up, her hands balling into fists at her sides. "You drop a bombshell that rewrites my entire understanding of reality, and then you just... shut down? You refuse to explain?"
"It is for your protection," Lyra insisted, though her voice lacked conviction, as if she was reciting a line she herself didn't fully believe in anymore.
"My protection?" Selene let out a bitter, disbelieving laugh. "Or yours?"
The days that followed were a torturous return to the past. The warmth and intimacy they had so recently built vanished, replaced by a familiar, icy distance. Lyra became a ghost in her own life. She was at the library, but she was not present. Her answers were clipped, her eyes evaded Selene's, and any attempt at conversation was met with a polite, professional wall. It was worse than before, because now Selene knew what was on the other side of that wall; a truth more incredible than anything she could have imagined.
The whiplash was unbearable. After the vulnerability, after the whispered confessions in the dark, this retreat felt like a profound betrayal. The frustration and hurt curdled inside Selene, fermenting into a sharp, righteous anger.
She found her moment a few days later, cornering Lyra in the history section long after the library had closed. The aisles were dark and silent, a canyon of forgotten stories.
"Enough," Selene said, her voice echoing in the quiet. Lyra, who was reshelving books, flinched but did not turn around.
"I thought we were going to try," Selene continued, stepping closer. "I thought after everything, after you told me... that... we were going to finally stop this. Why does it feel like we are back to square one again?"
Lyra kept her back turned, her movements stiff. "Some things are more complicated than they seem, Selene."
"Stop it!" Selene's command was sharp, and it finally made Lyra freeze. "Just stop. Can you be an adult with me for one second and actually communicate? Or is that beyond your capabilities?"
Slowly, Lyra turned. Her expression was pained, but there was a flicker of defiance in her eyes.
Selene didn't give her a chance to speak. The words, pent up for days, came pouring out. "You have lived for what? Centuries? Millennia? And you are acting like an avoidant kid who got her feelings hurt. You hide behind your secrets and your fear, and you push away the one person who is actually trying to understand you. You told me you weren't human, but this?" Selene gestured at the space between them, thick with tension. "This is the most human, most pathetic thing I have ever seen. Aren't you embarrassed?"
The words hung in the dusty air, brutal and honest. Lyra's face paled, the defiance snuffed out, leaving only raw exposure. She looked utterly stripped bare, not as an ancient being, but as a person who had just been called out on her deepest flaw.
For a long moment, she said nothing. She just stared at Selene, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. The silence was no longer a shield; it was an admission.
Finally, she spoke, her voice a broken whisper. "Every day."