For clare_dragonfly‘s prompt.
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Addergoole, Hell Night Year Eight

The halls were dark and creepy, and Phillipa had gotten horribly turned around. She didn’t know where she was, or even how she had gotten there, and she didn’t really know, now, where she wanted to go.

Some giant minotaur had been bearing down on her when she’d slipped and gone twisting down some sort of slide. She’d barely avoided something that looked like a mechanical monster and gotten hit with three squirt guns of stinky, gooey something, and now she was sitting in a tiny box that had the pleasant advantage of being quiet and well-lit but the disadvantage of letting her know exactly how badly she’d gotten drenched. Her heart was still pounding, and her palms and butt felt as if she’d scraped them really, really badly. She really should move, but she knew, if she went back out there, it would just get worse.

The door to her box opened, and a short, cheerful girl stuck her head in. “Phillipa, right? I’m Caity. We’re in the same PE together, remember?”

Caity, unlike a lot of the students here, still looked mostly like Caity, if a bit sharper-edged. Phillipa nodded uncertainly. “Yes? What’s going on?”

The tiny girl was looking at her sharply. “Are you in pain?”

“I think I scraped myself a little bit…”

“I’d say so! Here, stand up, you look like you’re bleeding.” Caity took her hand, very gingerly, and tugged her out of the box. “You’ve fallen into our protective custody trap. I hope you don’t mind too much, but it looks like it stressed you out a bit?”

“A bit,” she winced. “It shows that badly?”

“Well, here.” She reached behind her and took a mirror from… Phillipa wasn’t really sure from where, actually. “Look for yourself.”

“What? I know I’m all coated in goo… oh.” In the mirror, she saw a stranger. Her eyes, but greener than hers had ever managed except with contacts. Her nose, but narrower, her lips, but redder, her hair, but… tangled with vines, somehow. And her fingers were longer, sharper, or something, and along her arms…. “Are those thorns?”

“Technically, on a rose, they’re called prickles. I wonder if you’ll be able to hold onto things better with them?”

“I… rose, what?”

“Well,” the tiny girl smiled, “it makes sense. You’re pretty, with a bit of a thorny disposition.”

“I am not…. am I really?”

“A little.” Caity patted her shoulder. “But it’s okay. we’re all a bit victim to our biology.”

next! Planting Seeds (LJ)

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