Lyra Malis never saw herself becoming anything extraordinary, and she never really wanted to. She was perfectly content with her family on their farm in the Highlands, learning magic at the school just on the other side of the forest. Seeing how fam...
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"WHY IS THERE SO MUCH PANIC OVER A DOG?"
Lyra had never seen her aunt look quite as frantic as she did that day. She kept a firm grip on her and Casey's hands as the three nearly ran back to the farm house. Every couple of seconds, Aunt Delaney looked sharply over her shoulder, making sure the dog was not following them.
Casey was terrified but silent as he stumbled alongside his mother and cousin, and Lyra, while fear was prevalent, was confused more than anything. It was just a dog.
Anne Malis, crouched in her garden as she tended to her flowers, quickly stood at the quick-moving sight of her daughter and grandchildren. At the look on their faces, she began to fear for the worst. "What's happened?" she called out nervously.
"Where's Delphi?" answered Delaney.
"Still in town with Wyatt, I think. What's - "
"We need to get inside. And call Wyatt. Now."
Anne's face paled, but she nodded, and followed the three of them into the house, closing and locking the door behind them. Safely inside, Delaney stopped at last, turning and kneeling down to hug both Lyra and Casey. Casey almost immediately started crying.
"I don't understand," Lyra said. She pulled herself out of her aunt's grip. "It was just a dog."
"Dog?" her grandmother asked quickly, standing by the phone. "What kind of dog?" Delaney gave her a simple look in answer, and Anne immediately began dialing.
"Why does it matter?" cried Lyra, looking from her grandmother to her aunt. "It wasn't mean, or aggressive at all! What's so wrong with it?"
Casey was still crying, wrapped in his mother's arms; her grandmother was urgently talking on the phone, trying to reach her uncle; but Delaney was silent for a moment, as if she was holding herself back from saying something.
Finally, she spoke. "That's something you need to hear from your mother."
By the time her uncle's pickup had pulled up in front of the house, Lyra had taken her aunt's place at Casey's side, creating a new handshake, though they already had several, in an attempt to distract him from the tension that filled the room. Aunt Delaney was stationed at the front door, their Bubbe at the back, each armed with a bat and a frying pan respectively, staring out the window in anticipation of something horrible. Though Lyra wanted to dismiss this all as an overreaction, their actions had her just as fearful as she had first been, though she was even more confused now.
