"So you're a Zeke," Lyra repeated. "And a Zeke takes pictures with his camera and paint with light." She frowned. "I don't know about that. I know someone called Zeke back home. He's a shepherd. He's got a flock of sheep with him and he really loves them." She looked in awe as Zeke started to paint on the air above them. The picture didn't look like anything, just shapes and colours in the air, like clouds in a clear sky. Like sheep. The Zeke from Lyra's hometown loved his sheep to bits, even though he sometimes has to force them to move where they should go. When this Zeke was bumped around and had to erase his picture, he started pouting in the way that reminded Lyra of those sheep being shepherded around the plains.

She laughed merrily. "Now you're looking like a sheep yourself. Maybe I should just call you Sheep." She gently pulled him away from the crowds and to a quieter corner. "Right, I'll just run up and grab my viola, err, [i]violin[/i], and I'll be back soon, okay?"

Lyra ran quickly up the stairs, humming a bit along the way.

---

Her room was empty and just exactly as it was when they went out last night. ShiZhen was nowhere around; it didn't even seem like she was there today at all. Lyra briefly wondered where she could be. The last time she'd seen her she had half her legs frozen in the middle of the river, after all.

In any case, her violin was right there on the table where she left it. She picked it up and made her way downstairs.

---

She came back to the foyer humming the same tune she started when she came up, although it had improved somewhat. It took Lyra a while to realise that her violin was singing along, although faintly. She touched the strings and realised that they were, surprisingly, still. It was the small slice of air around them that was vibrating in the same way a string would. Odd, yet fitting. She's an air elementalist, wasn't she? Though it was curious why the sound would only make itself around the violin strings.

"Ooh, yeah, Zeke!" Lyra spun around to meet her friend. She'd somehow walked all the way past him. "Let's go?"   

[@Regitnui]