Alder's Grove

Unexpected Student
by Lyn Thorne-Alder

To Rix Scaedu's Prompt, set in Year 17, 2011. 

Luke was running pick-up duty, and it was making him crankier than usual, which, for this year, was saying something.

He was down to one student left, and their plane was late.

He’d lost two students in the last three days to plane crashes.  H

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Written to chanter_greenie's prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call.

It was not technically a prison. Even if it had been, Aodh did not think he’d mind. He had sunlight and fresh air, a stone house that did not catch fire, and copies of as many books as he wanted to read. He had teachers working with him patiently on his still-unreliable fire powers, and, more importantly, people helping him create Workings that protected his own body from the results of his flames.

He didn’t think he could leave, but Aodh did not mind all that much. He remembered too well what happened when his power got out of control.
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written to inventrix's prompt. Year 17 of the Addergoole School.

The teachers had been on edge all year. Dáin figured it had something to do with the stuff that had been happening when he came to school - portals opening to other worlds, people disappearing and reappearing, miracles and horrid things all over the world, if the news was to be believed at all. But the news didn't come through - no TV came through at all, down in Addergoole. The older kids said it used to work, but something about the shifting wards or the weather patterns had turned out to mess with any incoming signal. Phones to the outside didn't work well either, if they worked at all.

The teachers being on edge had bothered Dáin more than the lack of contact. Addergoole had this way of sucking you in, making you forget about the outside world. He'd barely thought about his parents, just enough to send them a couple slightly-guilty letters. He'd thought about his old boyfriend even less, and the letter he'd sent him had been a lot more guilty.

Mostly, though, Dáin had been pretty engrossed in his first year of school. There had been magic to learn, an awkward Change to handle, his Keeper to, uh, be Kept by, and the rest of his classmates to mostly-try-not-to-bother, as per orders.
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To clare_dragonfly's prompt.
Addergoole has a landing page here

It was the easy joke that Abrelle was cold. Ha, ha. Snake, cold-blooded. Emotionally frigid. She'd gotten through three years of Addergoole without making very many friends; her former Keeper's crew sufficed for companionship and back-watching, and her former Keeper had taken care of the first of her required two children for her.

It was the easy joke that she was cold, and she preferred it like that. If nobody thought she had emotions, nobody would try to get in. If nobody tried to get in (The way her former Keeper had. The way their child had) then nobody could hurt her again.

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Next: Shifting