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.

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.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/262914.html. You can comment here or there.