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She hears him long before she turns around and smiles with Pan looped around her neck. It isn't the kind of greeting one gives a bear-king, the bear-king, but if Iorek Byrnison is offended by Lyra's lack of social graces then he doesn't show it. Instead, he kneels in front of her and Lyra forgets herself a moment and throws her arms around his neck. Even now, she doesn't have to kneel to do this, as tall as Iorek is. Ten years since she returned home, ten years since she's seen Will and at least seven since her last trip to the North.
"You look so young, Lyra Silvertongue," he rumbles to her, the syllables coming out strongly with his accent, and she can't help but laugh. He says it to her always, musings in letters Serafina Pekkala transcribes for him before sending all the way from Svalbard.
"Tell me how things are, Iorek, dear," she responds instead and Pan wriggles from around her neck leaving her throat bare and cold until she tightens the scarf Pan nudged out of the way when he settled there in the first place.
"Good," Iorek rumbles and nudges her before turning and starting back toward the shelter he had erected for when men visit him, as they so inevitably do. "Trade is strong. The ice is cold. The hunt is good this season." He rumbles out a few more observations of the life for the bears and Lyra tucks the information away. The bears' language is only one of several she's spent the last ten years trying to learn, the languages of the people of the North, just so that when she comes back here she isn't an inconvenience, an obvious foreigner in a place where she should be inevitably just that.
It's just that the North is a part of her as much as Pan and her beating heart.
At the last village outpost before she stepped bravely into the bears' realm, she heard whispers behind her. They remember her from before, the witch-child that last visited years before, well within the memories of the people. They remember and they will remember for all her lifetime and her children's lifetimes because the people of the North don't forget.
She worried first that they turned away witches, but it's been too long since she's been to the North, else she would have remembered that these people are not at war with the witches. These are the people who keep the company of the witches and raise the boy-children born when one of the village men fall in love with one. One of them, the distant sparkle of witch-magic in his eyes, walked with Lyra through the streets as if he were her escort. She knows better, as she's never had an escort before, but her single-minded focus on getting to Iorek didn't stop her from letting him lead her behind the general store that sells the essentials for the brave ones who venture beyond the village and kiss her against the frosty building while the moon shone in a bright crescent above them. He had dark hair and shining eyes and for a moment Lyra thought of Will, the closest thing to a witch that any boy could ever be, and smiled when they parted ways. No hard feelings. There never were in this place, not with the witches, to which Lyra is tantamount in the minds of these people.
Lyra relaxes in the warm glow of the roaring fire Iorek keeps mostly for her benefit than anyone else's, because the ice and snow doesn't bother him like it does her. She adjusts her bag, heavy with notebooks. She's still in the midst of her dissertation, still writing with what free time she has, and as much as this is a personal visit, it is also for business. There are not many other ways to fund a trip North, not when most people want to forget about the North and the dangerous frontier it represents on the edge of countless other worlds.
The rest of the evening is spent telling stories, catching up until Serafina Pekkala and her witches arrive. With Lyra comes news of the rest of the world, of the Church and their plans for the future, and the supply caravan with which Lyra traveled.
The rest of the world may have forgotten the North and Lord Asriel, but those memories are strong here, like the spray of blood on a battlefield that endures for years after. Lyra occasionally takes notes, drifts off slowly, and wakes when Pan licks her awake in time to say good night to Iorek.
The bear-king allows her to walk back toward the palace with him, at least halfway while wrapped in a thick blanket before sending her back.
"I will be here in the morning, Lyra Silvertongue," he promises and nudges her as though she were one of his errant cubs, the ones that she has only heard of in letters and caught glimpses of as they try to spy on their father and the mysterious Lyra Silvertongue.
"Good night, Iorek," she murmurs and he rumbles an undeniably bear-like farewell before turning and starting back across the snow. The moon here has disappeared to a thin sliver that hangs on the edge of the horizon, and there are still hours before the night will truly be over, though here it is dark always at this time of year. Lyra stands in the snow, wearing boots and a gown and her blanket draped around her shoulders, and watches the moon finally collapse behind the far-off mountains, as if it is as exhausted as she is.
Then, thinking of the morning, of trade-notes yet to be taken, and conversations with Iorek she has not yet conceived having, Lyra disappears back into the lone cabin and the warmth the candle in the window promises.