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These Walls Can Talk, a story of Fae Apoc/Addergoole for the Giraffe Call

Feb14

This story contains magic and references to Addergoole but no slavery, sex, or violence.

For rix_scaedu‘s prompt

Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here here (and on LJ).

This takes place during the apoc, ~2012-2013

Out There, the bombs were falling, and the people were screaming and fleeing.

Bethesda stretched, reaching for a set of eyes near the road. She had a feeling, as she did sometimes, that someone was coming who she should let in.

Not every refugee made it past Bethesda’s threshold, of course, or she would be over-flowing with people and nowhere to put them, nothing to feed them. She had to pick and choose, which was frustrating and sometimes enraging – both to her, and to those she left behind – but necessary. This war made for a lot of hard choices.

There, in the crowd, her senses told her there were four – a mother, a child, a young man, and a terrified girl in her twenties. Bethseda whispered the Words, and opened up a door for them. Would they take her hospitality? Not everyone did. Not everyone appreciated it.

When she had first Changed, she had been miserable. She’d been in pain for weeks, of course, hands and legs, bones and skin shifting, stretching, until she was a tiny cottage, not remotely human anymore, except in mind, except in spirit. She’d finished her four years at school – near school, at least – and learned everything she could in that time.

One of the things she learned is that she was growing, and would continue to grow, possibly forever. Another thing she learned was that she had a great-grandmother who was now a castle, which gave her hope.

She learned that she could use Words. That she could still feel. And that, while she no longer had a body in the conventional sense, she still had ways of interacting with other people, even intimately. After all, her great-grandmother the castle had made children.

And she learned, slowly and with a great deal of effort, that, like Baba Yaga’s cottage (but with better legs), she was mobile. Slowly, very slowly (her legs were shorter), Bethesda could move. And, as she grew, she learned how to move her property with her, which had to be, she admitted, the strangest thing, a house walking through the city with a yard like a skirt hanging around her, covering her underpinnings.

Once she had these refugees, those who would stay, she might move again. This city didn’t seem like a good place to stay much longer. She opened her gate, and welcomed them into herself.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/268390.html. You can comment here or there.

In the Infirmary

Feb14

After Prickly. This is set in the Addergoole ‘verse, whose landing page is here on DW & here on LJ, in year 9.

Gar carried Sylvie to the Doctor’s office, met on the way by Luke, who, to Gar’s eyes, looked as if he was trying not to laugh. And then, mostly because she didn’t tell him to, he waited with her. He hadn’t meant to do… that. To perforate her like that. Parts were showing that shouldn’t show. And he’d done that, because he was angry. It made him feel a little ill.

“That,” she said weakly, “was not what I was expecting.”

He laughed nervously. “No?” Where was the damn doctor?

“No,” she confirmed. “I expected… irritation, I suppose.”

“Irritation?” He took a few long, slow breaths. He didn’t want to get angry again. “You trapped me into slavery.” He said it as quietly as he could.

“I did,” she agreed. “I trapped Arundel last year. And I was trapped the year before. It happens often around here.”

“And people don’t normally explode?”

She made a grimace he assumed was supposed to be a smile. “Not normally so… literally, no. Normally they just yell a little, and calm down. I didn’t even yell.”

He looked at her face, because that part wasn’t all messed up. “I can believe that,” he muttered. “You don’t seem like a yeller.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/267821.html. You can comment here or there.

On the River

Feb13

This story is safe of all slavery and/or Ellehemaei Law, although it does include some small magic and a guy living through all of US history.

For Friendly Anon’s prompt.

This takes place from the late 1600’s through 2011

~*~

He’d built one of the first houses on the river, and tried to pretend it was his home, which he’d left so far behind.

At that time, there hadn’t been all that many people around, so he’d cut corners here and there – lots of here, and a little here, as his mother would have said – pulling up the beams, bending them from small trees into large ones with Workings, preserving those giant straight maple beams so that they would last forever.

He was no good with earth, so he’d moved the rocks for the foundation the hard way until another exile had come by, and then he’d traded favors – his skill with wood for Constance’s skill with stone. Their houses had looked like everyone else’s, but they were sturdy, solid, watertight, and built to last the ages.

After all, they were exiles in a strange land, and they didn’t know how long they’d be there.

He moved on, as the territories opened up, leaving the house to his son and Constance’s youngest daughter, with a promise of “you’re-always-welcome-Father” so he’d have a place to stay. He moved West slowly, looking for a place that felt like home, staying in a city for maybe thirty years, then heading back to visit his family and meet the newest generation, then heading out again, further west every time.

Gannon was fond of feminine companionship, and so he found himself making friends with women – usually human women – in each new territory, so that, after a century or so, making his way back to Albany took him quite a while, visiting every solid-beam house he’d built over the years, visiting each new generation of children. Telling them all sanitized stories of The Good Old Days, stories of the secrets he’d hidden in the houses, stories of their grandmothers, their grandfathers, of the way their city had been.

It took him from 2000 to 2011 to make it from Washington to Albany, and, at that, he rushed the last three family visits.

The house was still there, sitting on the Husdon next to Constance’s place, two stone-and-maple houses in tall, sturdy groves of maples and oaks. The city had grown around it, flowed around them like the river around rocks, the road bigger then he remembered it, the place a bit shabbier. There was a cemetery across the street; he remembered when there had been a church there. Down the road, there was a Kwik-E-Mart and a strip mall, but the stonework on the strip mall looked familiar. Constance? Or one of his descendants? The carving on the beams, too – Gannon recognized his own style, but not his own work.

And, he had to smile, the clerk in the gas station had eyes he remembered from what had to be her ancestress, and, he was willing to bet, probably the same tail, too. “I’m Gannon,” he told her, glad to be home.

~*~

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/267525.html. You can comment here or there.

In the Jam, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call

Feb13

This story is safe of all faeries and/or slavery.

For [personal profile] inventrix‘s prompt. Faerie Apocalypse has a landing page here here (and on LJ).

This takes place during the apoc, ~2012-2013

They called it the Great Traffic Jam, although it was much more Jam than Traffic.

When the people had started fleeing the city en masse, inevitably, someone had realized that they could move faster walking than in their car. One person and another abandoned their cars, until those who had stuck it out driving had to walk, too, because they were, in effect, parked in.

This wasn’t the only city this had happened in. In some others, they had brought out the earth-movers and the bulldozers to clear the highways, turning their medians into junkyards. But this city had been one of the first and worst hit, and there was nobody left to clear the roads, and no reason to do so. So the cars remained.

Eventually, as it became clear that the gods and monsters were not coming this far out, people, some people, stopped walking and simply colonized the cars, those the furthest from the city, on a stretch of highway where there was, for several miles in every direction, very little except the cars and a couple farms.

Kota had been born in the back of an SUV, a giant gas-guzzler that had given up the ghost early on, run out of gas on the side of the road. A bank of four of them made up their colony’s hospital; her sisters Exie and Essie had been born there too.

She learned to read from a shipment of books overturned on the side of the road; she and her sisters grew up in the back of an RV. Their colony’s dearest possession was a grocery semi of canned goods.

And now that Kota and Exie were old enough, they were going exploring. They had heard, from travelers, that there was a tanker truck stuck in the Jam. If there was still gas, they thought, maybe they could move the Jam.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/267282.html. You can comment here or there.

Learning of History, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

Feb12

After
Scrounging for History (LJ)
Digging through History (LJ)
Delving in History (LJ) and
Bringing Home History (LJ)
Singing down History (LJ)

Part 5 of ~7.5
Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Karida let out a whoop as the creature they were fighting landed in a puff of dirt and dust, and then a quiet whimper as the sight of blood and, worse, bone caught her eye. “Shit,” she moaned, and stepped back. She didn’t want to faint into the pit. Dropping yourself on your enemy was a poor tactic.

“Got you,” Amalie murmured. “Here we go. Jasfe tlactl Karida,” she murmured, and sang the rest, “jasfe tlacatl Karida-my-kin, jafse tlacatl βραχίων.”

“Jasfe,” their captive murmured, and the air rang. “Jasfe tlactl?”

“That’s it,” Amalie hummed happily. “There you go, Karida, good as new. And seems our new sister is a healer.”

“Wonderful.” She flexed the healed arm and muttered a quick repair on the sleeve, as well; she wasn’t that good at those Words, but good enough to not have the cloth flapping around. “So we have something in the pit, do we? Dor?”

“I’m working on it. There’s some pretty impressive invisibility Workings going on. I didn’t know monsters could work.”

“Some monsters snarl/ and some monsters hiss,” Amalie hummed, “Some monsters know/the way the world is.”

“That’s one of Mom’s,” Dor complained, and then, with an oof, sat down on the edge of the pit. “Come look.”

“Coming.” The four of them looked over the edge of the pit together, at the image Dor was slowly forcing into existence. Foot-long claws. Tusks, like some sort of goblin in the old stories. A long tail like a dragon, lashing back and forth angrily. Hooves like a goat.

Fiery was the first to speak. “Witch,” she grunted. “Witch-woam.”

“Witch,” Amalie hummed, getting the feel of the song. “Tell me again, Fiery-sister?”

“Witch-woam,” the girl repeated. “Sundown.”

“Sundown,” Amalie repeated. “There we go. The witch, they said, lived in the dusk/ the witch they need but cannot trust./The witch who brought their water clear/ the witch who kept their lives so dear.”

“Nasty people,” Karida swore. The creature in the pit was, fangs and tail and hooves aside, a woman. A witch, perhaps, an Ellehemaei. But was she monster or foe? “They traded services with her?”

“That’s the tune that’s singing to me,” Amalie confirmed. “Sundown, you better beware/If I find you’ve been sneaking ’round my back stair… Mmm. I see.”

In the pit, the witch hissed and snarled.

“Some monsters hiss?” Dor offered. “If she was doing Workings for them, she can’t be feral.”

“And probably isn’t a monster.” Karida looked down into the pit. “If you don’t fight us, we won’t fight you. We aren’t looking for a war.”

“Nasty humans,” the witch-creature spat. “Let me out.”

“Human?” Dor laughed. “No more than you are.” He muttered the beginnings of a working, shaping stairs into the pit. “Did they kick you out, the way they kicked Fiery out?”

“What do you care, scrounger trash, trash-scrounger?”

He stopped the Working, stairs stepping down but ending above the woman’s reach. “If you don’t care, then I don’t either,” he answered tightly. “But it seems the sort of thing that our company might take note of… scrounger trash or no.”

Next:
Getting Over History (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/266959.html. You can comment here or there.

“Porter needs a Girlfriend”

Feb11

For [personal profile] inventrix‘s commissioned prompt.

This falls in the Year 9 Timeline, after Prickly (LJ) and Nice Guys (LJ)

Addergoole has a landing page here on DW (and on LJ).

December, Year 8

“Porter needs a girlfriend,” Arundel told Sylvia. Not that’s she’d necessarily listen, but she sometimes would have a conversation with him if he couched it the right way. And this, this was starting to bother him.

“Girlfriends are hard things to come by here,” his Keeper answered, more in the tone of informing him of a fact than with any interest. Of course, that’s how she usually sounded. “He could find a Keeper with no trouble at all, but he has been resistant to the idea. We might find him a Kept, but that would be trickier.”

“He really just needs a girlfriend,” he tried again. “You know, someone to hang out with, and neck with a little bit, cuddle and watch TV and all that sort of thing?” He wasn’t sure she did. They certainly didn’t have that sort of relationship. Then again, he wasn’t sure that was the sort of thing she’d want.

“I’ve never had that,” she answered, possibly reading his mind. He wasn’t always sure she couldn’t. “It sounds… I think it sounds pleasant.”

Arundel gulped. It seemed like an opening. It seemed like his chance. “Would you like to?” he offered.

“Like to?” she looked intrigued. Intrigued was good, right?

Porter could wait. “Would you like to have a boyfriend?” And, because she could misinterpret the oddest things, “me, I mean?”

Late September, Year 9
“Porter needs a girlfriend,” Arundel told Sylvia. Not that she’d listen, but she was getting better about that, not that he wasn’t her Kept anymore. Now that she had a new Kept. He didn’t know what to think about that, though Gar seemed like a nice sort.

“Porter?” Timora whispered, and then wrote, quickly, on her whiteboard, “I didn’t think people down here did ‘dating.’”

Arundel laughed uncertainly. “They really don’t, not very often,” he agreed. “But I’ve heard it happens, and can you see Porter with a Kept?”

She smiled, and wrote, “Catnip mouse?”

“There’s Kendra, she graduated last year, she was a mouse,” he smirked. Timora was fun. More fun when they were alone together, but they couldn’t spend all their time locked in his room. He had his crew, after all; they had the crew.

“Mice?” Sylvia smiled. “Maybe another cat, instead?”

Arundel pictured that for a moment. He didn’t know any other cat-Changes, but he hadn’t met everyone yet. But Gar was chuckling.

“Oh, man, can you imagine the sound? No, thank you.” Sylvia shot him a disapproving glare, and Gar only smiled broader. The rocky Ninth-Cohort seemed to enjoy tweaking his Keeper, and didn’t seem to mind when she glared at him. Arundel didn’t get it. But then again, he’d never really gotten Sylvia, either.

“Right, right, not a cat,” Arundel interrupted. “And there’s no mice that I know of. Bird?”

But Timora, his Timora, was writing again, so he shut up and let her “talk.” Her hand flew over the white-board, and in a moment, she held up: “Why not just people? Just try different people until someone clicks.”

The others read the board a moment after Arundel. “Like speed dating?” Gar offered. “Addergoole speed dating seems hazardous to everyone’s health.” He tugged on the chain around his neck pointedly, making Arundel squirm.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Sylvia countered slowly. “Not speed dating, that’s silly. But just bring girls by for dinner, girls we know are single, and see if he make friends with any of them.”

Timora drew a smilie face, while Arundel nodded, feeling as if his plan had run away without him.

Timora, it turned out, had Opinions. Arundel hadn’t been expecting that, certainly not as many as she had. He knew she’d only acceded to being Kept by him to have someone to talk to, which left him feeling a little bit left-behind by the whole process – happy to have her, but totally uncertain what do do with her. And now!

“Her first,” she whispered to him, tilting her head at a girl in the lunch room. Arundel gulped.

“She’s a Sixth Cohort, Timora,” he murmured.

“She’s pretty. And smart. And you’re only asking her over for dinner, right?” She smiled at him sweetly, and he sighed.

“If I get my wings broken for asking, I’m going to be grumpy,” he told her.

“You’re fearless,” she scolded. Wasn’t he supposed to be doing the scolding?

“But not stupid. Not that stupid, at least.” He wanted to make her happy, though, and he wanted Porter to have a girlfriend, and he didn’t want to make Sylvia frown at him. So he found Cynara cy’Drake in a quiet moment between classes – when her insane crew were nowhere around – and invited her to dinner in their suite.

Five minutes and a half-dozen promises later, he’d managed to get her to agree to dinner. Porter, he feared, was more likely to vanish through the floor than hit on her, but maybe then Timora would trust his judgment.

Cya was, in person and away from her crew (a group of Sixth Cohorts so crazy they not only embraced but fully lived up to their crew name of Boom!), less intimidating, enough that everyone (even Gar) seemed to enjoy dinner.

But Porter was still ears-down whiskers-twitching by the time she left. “That’s the sort of woman who alphabetizes her sock drawer,” he claimed. “I am terrified if I spend too long near her, she’s going to sort my stripes.”

Despite this, Timora seemed unswayed from her plan, and Arundel, a little confused as to how he managed to always lose control of everything, found himself looking through the lunchroom with her again, picking out more potential dinner dates for his friend.

“You said he needed a girlfriend,” Timora pointed out when he protested.

“Yeah, but, maybe he can find his own?”

“He helped me out a lot on Hell Night. I just want to help him, too. What about her?”

“Heidi?” The pretty blonde girl had deep-swooping ram’s horns and a sweet smile. “I’m not sure she’s into guys, but I’ll ask.” She was, at the very least, less imposing than Cynara, and only a year ahead of him.

She accepted the invitation with far less song-and-dance than his first attempt – she was, after all, cy’Valerian – and dinner was relaxed, fun, and with all the romantic spark of two aged nuns taking tea. “She’s fun,” Porter commented. “We should have her and her girlfriend over more often.”

Timora was still not stoppable.

Next, she pointed out a student in Arundel and Porter’s cohort, a studious blond girl named Sofia. Knowing by now that it wouldn’t work to argue with her, short of an order, Arundel sighed, and politely invited Sofia to dinner.

Sylvia, he noticed, was getting increasingly impatient with these diners, which made Gar all the more snarky, but, on the other hand, seemed to make Timora happier and happier. The whole thing made Arundel more than a little confused, and not exactly happy.

“If this one doesn’t work out…”

“If this doesn’t work out, one more, and then I’m done, and we can let Porter find his own girlfriend,” she assured him. “Besides, she seems like a nice girl.”

She was, indeed, nice, proper; she and Sylvia got along very well. Porter, on the other hand, seemed, while not unimpressed, kind of lost around the very sleek, class-president-type girl. “She needs like a future presidential candidate,” he complained woefully. “Not a guy who opens doors.”

“One more,” Timora reminded Arundel. “You said I could try one more.” And then she smiled at him, a wicked smile he wasn’t used to seeing from her. “Do you think they’re softened up enough yet?”

“Softened… what?”

“Well, Sylvia wasn’t going to let just anyone into her suite. She puts up with me because she doesn’t know what to do with me. But nobody else will have my power. And Porter is kind of skittish around girls, but by now, he’s relaxing enough to crack jokes.”

HE stared at his Kept. “You planned this?”

“Well… I liked Sofia for him. But I have a better idea.” Her grin was growing wider. “So let’s invite Belfreja to dinner.”

“Bel… the girl with the…”

“Beautiful assets.” Timora’s smile was gone now. “There are so many boys after her that no one has managed to Keep her yet for the crowd around her.”

“And you want to add Porter to the list?”

“No.” She looked deadly serious. “I want to cut through all that and have Porter Keep her, before someone like Calvin wins the race-for-Bel’s-collaring.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?” he asked slowly.

“I got lucky. You and Porter – and my power – and I didn’t get it bad at all. But I’ve seen some of the others in my Cohort – and even Gar isn’t really happy with Sylvia. I think Porter and Belfreja could really get along,” she added. “They both have that noir feel to them.”

He thought past the girl’s assets to her personality and, slowly, nodded. “I think you’re right, Timora. Good idea,” he added, knowing the Bond would roll over her with the praise, and, while she was smiling in the giddy aftereffects, stole a kiss.

“You know,” he continued, “I don’t think Porter’s the only one who needs a girlfriend.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/265870.html. You can comment here or there.

Two Vignettes of Cynara – Addergoole Boom Post-Apoc

Feb8

This first vignette happens around year 20 of the Addergoole school, 3-4 years after the Apoc begins. This is a little bit after this scene. Note: Cya is known for keeping Kept for a year directly after they graduate Addergoole; she Kept Gaheris for 3-1/2 (the apoc messed with her normal methods of doing things)

Cya lay in bed next to Gaheris, not sleeping, running through their date – date! DATE! – in her head, running through what he’d said to her. What she’d felt about what he’d said. The way he’d looked at her. He was, she thought, maybe really staying.

She felt, guiltily, at the edges of her love for Howard, her love for Leo. Feeling this comfortable with another free Ellehemaei felt like a betrayal, felt like she was cheating on them, in a way that having, sleeping with, Kept never had.

Stop it, she told herself, with a tiny, suppressed squeak of frustration. Even beyond the sexual, Howard had Magnolia, and loved her. Leofric had Zita, and they – they had their perfect balance together. It was no more cheating to have Gaheris than it was for either of them to have their loves.

But still.. countered the little voice in her head. The one that said that that’s not what Cya did. Cynara planned, and she was there, and she was always there when she needed her.

And that is not going to stop, she reminded herself. She was still going to be the one that was there. But this… this could be okay.

Slowly, uncertainly, Cya let herself fall in love again.

The second one is in line with this series:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ)
“Are we killing this one?” (LJ)
Meeting the Family (LJ) (a chat log)
Roleplay Log (Cya/Cabal, posted by cluudle)
Cleaning Up (LJ), One month later

Cya escorted her dripping Kept into her cabin by the back door – because, with a house designed with two growing boys in mind, the route from the back door to the bathroom was unobstructed and hard-surface, very hard to ruin, and because that door was closer to the barn, and thus a shorter route for her jittery, unhappy Kept.

Once in the bathroom, she gave Panlong a gentle shove towards the tub. “Fill it with water at a temperature you’re comfortable with, and get in, in whichever order you’d prefer.” No use chancing that he might still have New Kept Syndrome and end up hurting himself trying to follow vague orders. “I’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to make us some doctored hot chocolate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammered, and started the water. Cya hid a sigh in her turning, and hurried through the cocoa-making. Cabal was right. She really hadn’t been fair to the boy.

She didn’t want to be fair to him, of course. She wanted to make everyone who had hurt Yoshi pay… Didn’t you have this conversation with your father once? she reminded herself sharply. And what did you tell him?

“If you kill everyone who ever hurts me, Dad, I’m never going to learn how to do this revenge thing right on my own.” She muttered it under her breath, smiling a little bit at the memory. Her dad had made such a boggled, lost expression at that…

…sometimes Leo reminded her of her father. Especially around Ruki. Best not to think about Leo right now, it would only muddle things more. She poured a generous shot of hoarded Kahlua and a tiny smidge of vodka into the cocoa, poured it into two mugs, and added a handful of marshmallows to each mug. Time to deal with the boy. Time to figure out if he could be dealt with. If he could be helped.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/264191.html. You can comment here or there.

All you can be, a story of Addergoole Year Nine

Feb8

After Damn list (LJ).

Ahouva’s stories all come with that warning: magical thinking.

I don’t like being scared of my Keeper. He shouldn’t have seen that. She shouldn’t have written that.
She shouldn’t have even thought it; it was okay to be frightened of your Keeper. He was in charge of her, after all. He had the power of life or death over her, that’s what Kendon had said. That was frightening, very reasonably frightening.

But it made Basalt unhappy, and the last thing she wanted to do was… “Where are we going?” Stupid, dumb, stupid, questioning him. Keeper knew what he was doing. That’s why he was in charge, not her.

“Outside. It’s still nice enough out, and I thought you might like the open air.”

“…Oh.” She blinked, not sure what to think about that. “Thank you?”

He smiled down at her. “You’re welcome. So.” He opened the door. “You don’t like the list?”

“I…” she quailed. “I didn’t say that!”

“I know. And if you really disliked it, it would end up on the list, wouldn’t it?”

It had taken some twisty thinking to keep it off of there. Guiltily, she muttered “yes?”

“Ah.” He paused, the sun shining down on them. “I want to know what’s really going on, not what you think I want to hear.”

“But then…” she stopped herself, but not in time. He shook his head.

“Finish that sentence the way you originally planned to. Please.”

The please didn’t make it any less of an order. “But then you’d be angry with me. I’m not very grateful. I’m not very good at being Kept.”

“Oh, Ahouva.” He hugged her very carefully. “You’re very good at being Kept. But you’re not very good at helping me be a good Keeper to you.”

“I’m sorry?” she squeaked. It felt nice to be held in his arms. And safe. Kendon’s arms had never felt safe.

His breath was warm across her hair as he sighed. “I asked you to write the list because I want to know what’s going on in your head – and because I want you to think about your wants and dislikes, instead of just mine.”

“But why?” she muttered into his shoulder. “It’s easier to be a good Kept if I just think about what you want.”

“I know, honey.” He pressed her a little closer to herself. “But what I really, really want is for you to be the best Ahouva you can be. Sorry,” he added ruefully. “I know the other thing is probably easier.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/263569.html. You can comment here or there.

Prickly

Feb8

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:
.
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.

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