Author's Note: Sorry for the delay! Again, laddering up into Bronze League (I won bloody four games out of five, where's the bloody logic in butting me in bloody Bronze League I could not ever fathom, not for my bloody life), pissing off at Blizzard, doing math and physics, etc.. Sorry! But on the better side, I have accumulated several chapters (4 or 5, all well above 2500 words) for publication over the next couple of weeks. So cheers!

Sorry, but Aesearia probably won't be back for another chapter after this. But that's okay! 'Cause this one's good! Hope you like this new character!

If you can, once the second Lyra chapter after this is published, figure out who Rowena really is, I'll tell you the rest of the plot. Good luck. Hint: Knowledge in foreign languages are required :D

Have fun! Review! REVIEW!

LYRA

Lyra groaned, raising her stiff her hand to rub her eyes. She yawned and opened her sleep-ridden eyes.

And saw a cube-y, wooden ceiling.

Panic almost hit her.

Then she remembered what had happened over the past two days (has it only been two days?).

Then she remembered that she died.

She suddenly sat up.

Does this mean that she's dead?

Alarmed, she frantically looked around, trying to find Pantalaimon – if he was missing, then she is dead –

"Relax, Lyra," Pantalaimon scolded, though he seemed slightly frightened as well. He was near the pillow (she had been sleeping on a bed, apparently).

Lyra took in her surroundings. She was in a small, wooden room, all made of cubes. Next to her red bed was a small table, on which a lone torch stood. Bookshelves were put into the walls, and a small study desk was to her far left. She could see the door slightly right to her; if she needed to make an escape –

"It's about time you woke, child."

Lyra's eyes snapped to a woman, whom she had somehow missed, sitting on a wooden bench next to her bed. In her hands were a cube-y book and a quill, and she peered at Lyra with deep, sardonic, old black eyes over a rectangular pair of glasses. Her slightly-wiry, wild black hair which fell to her shoulders and puffed to the sides surrounded her young face in a dark halo. She looked to be in her very late teenages or her very early twenties, but something about her was so very ancient, weighed down, burdened, and old. She wasn't beautiful, but she was pretty enough, in a modest sense. A dark cloak enveloped it all.

Did she just call her "child"?

"I'm not a - "

"Take it easy," the woman said, raising her hand, allowing a snowy rabbit to climb to her shoulders –

This woman has a daemon.

"You have a daemon," Lyra intoned nonchalantly, motioning the rabbit.

The woman chuckled.

"Indeed," she said, a sardonic, knowing smile creeping onto her face. "It would appear that we have come from similar, if not the same, universes."

What?

"Under any case, you seemed to have been in some trouble."

Then Lyra remembered.

"How did I get here?" Lyra inquired, making sure not to sound accusatory. She wasn't sure she wanted to get on the bad side of this odd woman; or, at least, not until she learned more.

"Well," she said, looking thoughtful, "Astrapi brought you here. He's the, you know, tall, dark, skeleton bloke."

"Oh."

Lyra was much too embarrassed to express her earlier suspicions that the skeleton was Death.

A sudden idea seized her.

Where was her alethiometer?

She overturned the blankets, revealing that she was no longer wearing the dress, but a suit of cube-y white clothes. "Where's my clothes?" Lyra demanded shrilly, panicking a bit. "Where's my clothes?"

"Firstly," the woman said dryly, "proper grammar is 'where are my clothes'. Secondly, there was quite a bit of blood, and I had to wash it out. How did you get so much blood on yourself?"

But Lyra circumvented the question. "Where's my satchel? And my coat?"

"Relax, child. Both are safe. The coat is drying off with the dress and the satchel is right there," she said, pointing to a small cube-y wooden knob near the door, where the satchel hung.

"Did you look inside?"

There was a slight, uneasy pause. It had been a blunt question, one that Lyra realized she ought not to have asked.

The woman cocked her head to one side.

"Yes," she said, the smile gone, a blank expression replacing it. "And I see you have somehow procured a curious instrument; a dangerous one, at that." Seeing the frightful expression on Lyra's face, she hastily added: "Oh, fret not, I have not removed it. It is still in there. Though I must say, that is a very curious alethiometer. Not many men or women could ever even lay eyes on an alethiometer, much less be in possession of one."

Lyra scrutinized the woman casually.

"Under any case, you are avoiding my question. How did you get so much blood on you?"

"People wanted me dead. Nearly killed me too, but - " Lyra absent-mindedly touched her throat, and was surprised to feel no scar, or, indeed, any sign of damage, " – apparently, I'm still alive. They slit open my throat and everything."

"Wounds can be healed quite easily in this world."

"So I see."

There was a small pause as both women thought back on their day.

"What's your name?"

Only then did Lyra realize that she had not given the strange women her name yet, and neither had the strange woman her. She contemplated on whether or not to give the woman her real name for a split second, but once she met the woman's piercing eyes, she decided against it for fear that the woman might somehow find out. She's seen more queer things in this world.

"My name is Lyra. Lyra Silvertongue."

"And you may call me Rowena."