Lyra's POV
The persistent knocking dragged me from the depths of sleep like fingers clawing through murky water.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Lyra? Lyra, are you okay in there?"
The voice sounded impossibly distant at first, muffled and echoing as if someone was calling to me from the bottom of a well. I let out a low groan, my cheek pressed against something coarse and flat. Paper. I was lying face-down on an open book.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Lyra?"
I slowly lifted my face from the pages, blinking against the pale grey light filtering through the room. Dawn was struggling to break through the darkness, casting everything in that peculiar half-light that belonged neither to night nor day. My neck felt stiff and twisted. My throat was parched. And there, right where my face had been resting, was a dark wet spot.
Saliva.
I had been drooling all over the book.
