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White Rose
By
Caitlin Tillie




Chapter 1

This story begins many years ago, on one of those cold, wet and miserable days, the kind that if you wanted to go out side then you would need a boat...
Fifteen year old Lyra opened her eyes and groaned, she had just been dreaming when something had woken her up. She looked to the foot of her bed and saw her ginger colored cat Pan, she figured that Pan had jumped on the bed and the shock had woken her up. It occurred to Lyra what it was that she had been dreaming about, although she strained her memory all that she could remember was a little white flower…only, Lyra had no idea what it was. Yawning, she pulled off the covers and got out of bed. “Well Lyra, another day, another weird dream” she said to her reflection.
“Meow”, Pan jumped down from the bed to rub against Lyra’s bare ankles. Lyra reached down to scratch Pan’s ears, “I don’t suppose that you have weird dreams too, hmm?” Lyra walked over to her closet, picked out a pair of black jeans and a dark green spaghetti strap top. After taming her long brown hair into a braid, Lyra opened her door and went downstairs.
Since her mom was always at work by now (her dad had died in a car crash a few years previous) Lyra helped herself to some cereal and orange juice, not exactly her ideal breakfast but, hey, it was something to eat. “Well Pan,” Lyra said to the ginger cat that had softly padded into the kitchen after her, “what are we going to do today?” Pan replied by walking over to the basement door and rubbing her head against it, the basement was Lyra and Pan’s favorite place to explore because it was easily the most interesting place in the house apart from Lyra’s room of course. “Good idea Pan! The basement it is,” Lyra lifted her glass of orange juice in a sort of mockery toast as to how she would be spending her day. After washing her dishes and putting them away, Lyra made her way downstairs to the bottom level of the house.
After pausing part way down the stairs to turn on the lights, Lyra was in the “basement of wonders”, “PAN!” Lyra shouted up the stairs for her feline companion. In less than 10 seconds Pan appeared, scurrying down the stairs as if her life depended on it, and as soon as the cat cleared the stairway doorframe- SLAM! The door slammed shut after her as if someone had just closed it with, as Lyra thought, considerable force. After raising an eyebrow at it for a moment Lyra shook the thought from her head, drafts…right? Spooked by the noise, Pan had run behind a stack of boxes, and then had started hissing at the door as if something was there… “Well that’s odd,” Lyra muttered to herself.
Lyra soon forgot all about the strange occurrence with the basement door when she started to look through the old trunks that were stored there. Looking through one of the chests, Lyra found old bed linens, china, and a brass lamp, in another she found old out of style clothes and books. Thumbing through an old yellowing, gardening book,
Lyra found a picture of a familiar small, white flower, smiling Lyra read the caption aloud. “White roses are a cherished garden beauty; they thrive in warm climates and bloom during the summer months.” Well, at least I know what my dream flower is, Lyra thought to herself, as she closed the little book something flashed in the light as it fell out of the back of the book and made a metallic clank as it hit the floor. The sound caused Lyra to look down next to her, where the sound had come from, and there lying on the floor next to her right knee was a small gold key.
Stooping down to pick up the tiny object, Lyra was surprised to find that the key was much heavier than it looked. Upon closer inspection (well, as close an inspection as could be done in the dim light) she discovered that the key was an old fashioned gold one, and even though she couldn’t see it (stupid lights…) Lyra could feel the intricate design work imbedded in the tiny key. “I don’t know about you Pan, but I personally want to get a better look at this, let’s go upstairs, we can come back later.” Lyra said this to the still slightly spooked Pan who had finally come out of hiding to rub her head on the open trunk.
Pocketing the key, Lyra started up the stairs, turning off the lights as she went. The sight of the door reminded Lyra of the events of earlier, “Well, let’s just hope that the door didn’t jam or lock…” Lyra reached for the door knob hoping that it would open without anything else happening…click…click, click, click…. “crud!!!!” Lyra growled in frustration, the door was locked….

White Rose
By
Caitlin Tillie





Chapter 3

After going back up to her room (Pan following her of course) Lyra turned on her Maroon 5 cd and was listening to Adam Levine singing "Harder to breath."..."How dare you say that my behaviors unacceptable, so condescending unnecessarily critical, I have a tendency of getting very physical .." As she sat down at her desk to instant message her boyfriend Shawn, something poked her leg from inside her jeans pocket, Lyra put her hand in her pocket and drew out the tiny gold key. "Well, I'll look at this later," Lyra said as she put it next to her keyboard. After signing on to her screen name Broken_Mirror_89 Lyra sent an instant message to Shawn, Sk8ting_31.

Broken_Mirror_89: Hey! What's up?

Sk8ting_31: Not much, how r u?

Broken_Mirror_89: Well, other than getting stuck in the basement, fine...

Sk8ting_31: Really? What happened?

Broken_Mirror_89: Not much really,the door locked behind me and...

Sk8ting_31: And what?

Broken_Mirror_89: Well, I couldn't get it to open, I got frustrated and yelled at it to open and, well, it opened...

Sk8ting_31: Well, that is weird, but I can't argue w/ it,you can get pretty scary when you're angry.

Broken_Mirror_89: Well hahaha! Mr.-I-busted-the-ball-in-gym-class-cause-I-got-beaten-at-volleyball!

Sk8ting_31 surprised k, I get the point hey, do you want to go to a movie l8tr?

Broken_Mirror_89: Sure! What time?

Sk8ting_31: How about 8:00?

Broken_Mirror_89: Ok, see u then!!

Sk8ting_31: k, l8tr

Broken_Mirror_89: bye!

With that Lyra signed off, the cd still playing "Beauty queen of only 18, she had some trouble with herself" Lyra turned on her desk light so that she could look at the tiny key, holding it under the light Lyra's suspicions from earlier were confirmed when she saw an intricate design embedded into the handle part of the key. Wow, this is really detailed, Lyra wispered, looking at the rose pattern, which was so precise that it showed the slightly jagged edges of the leaves and the veins running through them. "I wonder what this for, I'm pretty sure that this doesn't go to any locks that I know about," Lyra said quietly to Pan.
Zrrrrt-thud!! Hssssss!!! Huh-what? Lyra said, jumping at the noise, while Pan raced for the safety of the dark space under Lyra's computer desk. Lyra saw the source of the racket almost instantly; Pan had knocked over her stereo system, causing the wiring in the back to get pulled out of the speakers, the actual player itself, cracking the plastic covering and causing some of the wires to actually rip apart. "Pan!" Lyra was distraught at the sight, her parents had given her that stereo system for her 13th birthday, and now here it was in pieces. "Paaaaannnn!! Why did you do this?????" Lyra said to the cat, who was still under the desk. "Merrow!" "Well, I guess that it's a good thing that I don't speak cat. Because if I did, you would be getting an earful right now!" Lyra spoke to the cat with the tone a mother would use when scolding a wayward child. Stooping down to inspect the damage more closely, Lyra saw one of Pans toy mice. "Here," Lyra said, tossing the toy over her shoulder. Lyra heard Pan race across the carpet, grab the mouse then run back under the desk. After unplugging the system so that she didn't risk getting electrocuted Lyra began the tedious work of repairing her stereo.
An hour past, then two, it was 1:02pm by the time that Lyra put the last speaker back in place and plugged the whole thing back in. "Well that's better, but what to do for the next six hours?" As if in answer, her stomach gave a particularly loud rumble, "well, lunch seems like a good idea." Lyra didn't bother calling for Pan, the ginger cat was soundly sleeping on her bed. Lyra went down the main stairs for the second time that day, after having a quick bite to eat Lyra wrote her mother a note that she would be out on a date but would be back by 10:00. After putting the note on the refrigerator so that her mother would see it, Lyra walked back up the stairs to write in her xanga and work on her story.

*bangs head against comp. desk...* stupid gaia!!!! All my editing has gone to waste and the punctuation is all messed up!!!!! scream stressed gonk

Using unusual names like Lyra will only make people like of Lyra nad Pantalaimon from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Change it now. gonk

*tackles skie, wanting to know names.*

What t3h Jeicen refers to is a very popular trilogy written by Philip Pullman... The first of which is: "The Golden Compass". This series is EXTREMELY (spelling? sweatdrop ) good, and the main character is a girl named Lyra... and her "daemon" (the physical manifestation of her... spirit? They explain it in the third book, but I read that a long time ago...) named Pantalaimon, or "Pan" for short.

either way I think its the name that Jessie gave the character