After Trojan Gift (LJ). (I realized I needed to define their relationship more clearly before I wrote further ahead with Sylvia/Gar
This is set in the Addergoole ‘verse, whose landing page is here on DW & here on LJ, in year 9. Sylvia the Otter-girl is the character in the icon, by @Inventrix, shown here:
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To say Gar was pissed would be to woefully underrepesent the situation.
He stood in the hallway, shaking. You don’t hit girls. You don’t hit girls. You don’t…
“You trapped me!” he shouted, fists clenched. Her otter-ers twitched, but her expression didn’t change.
“Don’t shout. Yes, I trapped you. You’re handsome and clever, and, with Arundel having gotten a new Kept, I find I miss having a warm presence in bed with me at night.”
“You…!” He couldn’t shout. What was more, he knew exactly why. “I’m your possession now,” he hissed angrily. She hadn’t told him not to explode, and he felt the rock quills coming to the surface. “You trapped me because you wanted a teddy bear.” Fury, denied the shouting, erupted in a cloud of red-rock spikes. “And made sure I knew exactly what was happening.”
“Ow.” The weak sound of it forced him to look down at her. At his Owner. At his Owner, lying on the floor, about a million tiny pieces of rock sticking out of her, bleeding little trickles everywhere and still managing to look mostly calm.
The collar provided him information: It is hard, although not impossible, to kill an Ellehemaei with conventional weapons. That takes hawthorn, rowan, or an innate power with those properties, although beheading has been known to work, as has removing the heart.
She wasn’t going to die. He was pretty sure that was a good thing.
Students who kill another student will be expelled and possible expunged, the collar informed him.
“Shut up, shut up,” he muttered. Rocks, he was good at. That was the first thing he’d started learning. “Abatu eperu,” he muttered, making all the piece of shrapnel vanish. He was better at transmute, but he was pretty sure she didn’t want diamonds sticking out of her, either. “Why me?” he muttered. “Couldn’t you just, you know, ask me to sleep with you?” He picked her up as carefully as he could, wincing at the blood smears.
“That is often mis-construed and even more often rejected,” she muttered weakly. “I wanted to be very clear.”
“Yeah, well, congrats. I think I was clear on my feelings on it, too?”
“Very,” she wheezed, and passed out.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/262914.html. You can comment here or there.
ow. However, Keeping people should be a little dangerous. I wonder how often Kept exact revenge on Keepers after AG?
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/199839.html ;-D
Ooh, sneaky Sylvia. She gave him a collar that gives you information about all those things you normally have to spend ages seeking. Not that it stops you from falling into traps. 🙂
*grin* esp. if the collar IS the trap.
I am oddly disappointed in Sylvia. She has both misplaced the moral standards (or at least qualms) that stopped her from declaring that she and Arundel were dating, and indeed got them separate rooms, and hasn’t replaced them with a reasonably airtight plan for keeping her very cranky new Kept from splattering her. No points for nice or smart. I suspect that a smart, unhappy Kept with an unconscious Keeper and no orders other than “don’t shout” can find a way to prevent said Keeper from issuing further orders on waking up and strongly encourage them to release said Kept. Might take some help from a friend or three. Will he?
Yes, Sylvia was not expecting this level of resistance.
I was more impressed with the way she got her crew, and got them separate rooms. I’m kind of disappointed with her here – I thought she had a different moral perspective. I do like Gar’s powers…
Well, it *is* Addergoole. People Keep people there.