Heeeyyyyyy - sorry the page is a couple hours late, everyone. I woke up in Pittsburgh at 5am this morning and drove home to see to flowers and a dress for this wedding shindig. My bad.

Nytrinhia, the colorist, had a lot of good commentary she included when she sent me the finished page:

"As much as I feel for Lyra's situation here (very, VERY few people like being hit on by adolescent youths while they're working), this is supposed to be a dangerous assignment, it seems kinda unprofessional to focus on tweens with dreams instead of the drath crawling into animal bodies and battling with these tweens' minds. C'mon Lyra, you kill things for a living. You can handle some horomone-driven academy boys.

Also the fact that she asked Orrig (and said "please") kinda makes me think normally this is something Orrig WOULD do for her (after all, he has stated that it's part of his job to look after his crew so they can do their job properly), and that fact that he said no is (to me) significant- either that he is trying to impress on her how rude she was to Thistle and that she needs to grow up and handle situations better and/OR that there is a very specific reason he/she is assigned to watching the group they're watching. Either way I'm pretty sure he wants her to focus on the job and deal with it as it is. I'm also probably reading way too much into it :P"

My reply to Nytrinhia was that basically, yes, all of these are correct, but Lyra has basically rubbed Orrig raw at this point, and he has no patience left. Man, I've got my work cut out for me, here. Lyra, we need to find a way to redeem you.

"And here we see Lyra demonstrating an orc intimidation technique, jutting her lower jaw forward to expose her tusks in a show of dominance. It doesn't look like it's working however, and the alpha orc sends her back to her side of the room."

(....I'm stealing that for Orc culture later.)

Next week, we'll find out exactly what Thistle is up to!

HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS