Replica

Normal is a word invented by boring people to make them feel better about being boring.

A strange and baffling truth: that the people we're supposed to know best can turn out to be strangers, and that near strangers can feel so much like home.

When she was little, she'd liked to pretend that stars were really lights anchoring distant islands, as if she wasn't looking up but only out across a dark sea. She knew the truth now but still found stars comforting, especially in their sameness. A sky full of burning replicas.

They would face it together, as they were then: turned human by joy, by a belonging that felt just like freedom.

That was the problem with the outside world, the human world. The whole thing was made up puzzles, of a language she didn't quite speak.

Lyra and Caelum: the two replicas with names plucked straight from the stars.

But it was true she had never hurt anyone to get what she wanted. Was that what made her less than human?

She'd also learned that curiosity lead to disappointment: that it was better not to want, not to look, not to wonder.

When Lyra read, it was as if a series of small windows open in the back of her mind, flooding her with light and fresh air and visions of other places, other lives, other, period.

As if they each belonged two separate realities that only coexisted momentarily

the two replicas with names plucked straight from the stars.

So we're different. Who cares? We chose to escape together. We chose to stay together. We chose each other, didn't we?

He smiled, and behind his eyes were doors that opened and said come in.

Sometimes, on sleepless nights, we wonder if they’re right.

She knew that there were electrical currents in the body and was what she was reminded of now. of currents flowing between them, of thousands of lights.