"Yeah!"

He smiles tiredly at her. "Thanks for the good advice."

"You're welcome."

Ma'ar yawns. "You should probably go to class or something, right. I think I need to sleep more anyway." And hopefully this time with fewer nightmares.

She does have class soonish. Off she goes.

The illusion class is pretty good - her classmate has notes for her, and the rest of the class is more than half girls and pretty welcoming even though she mostly doesn't know them.

That afternoon she's scheduled to buddy with Lionwind and see a couple of patients. Usually she gets there half a candlemark early so they can discuss who they're seeing, but this time Lionwind doesn't immediately open his notes.

"So I spoke to the school and I lie-detected for them to question the, er, culprits," he says quietly.

"And?"

"Well, as soon as it was obvious the adults knew the deal and were taking it seriously, they confessed. Conn did sabotage Illa's work. He didn't mean to hurt her, but that was mostly him being an unforgivable level of idiot about it, he - seems to have not considered that a random modification to a spell might make it explode instead of just not working? Anyway, they're all suspended for the rest of the session and they'll have to do more remedial ethics counseling to be let back into classes. Adept Liora also gave them a whole tirade about it not being safe to feint as though you're going to attack someone, in an advanced class, even if it's not technically against the rules." His lips twitch. "That woman's got a wicked tongue, I like her."

"That's good - I'm glad they didn't drag it out and make you waste a lot of time. Did Adept Liora say anything about Ma'ar?"

"She asked how he was doing, and I think plans to go visit him in the hospital and have a talk about - what he would need to do, to safely participate in her class next session."

"We thought maybe he should have a shield-talisman so he can react safely if he's startled without just being wide open all the time."

"Oh, excellent, that is a good idea. It - does not seem to me that it would be good for him, at this point, to pressure him not to defend himself, but if he feels secure enough in his shields he will probably be less twitchy about firing off offensive magic."

"Yeah. It would help if people did not actually attack him! But that's not something he can just decide, like 'today my plan is that nobody will attack me'."

"Exactly. And - he is not wrong that he could be attacked even on school grounds. You were that one time, after all. In this instance the boy in question claimed he was not planning to actually strike, and it was not a lie, but - well, things were happening very fast and people are known to have trouble recalling their true thoughts and motives if there is an incentive to remember a particular story of it."

"Yeah. And it's maybe guessable that Ma'ar's provokable, anyway... though probably he got more than he bargained for if he were thinking along those lines at all." She sighs. "I did a little nudge to help Ma'ar with nightmares, he was having more than usual. I think everything went fine but thought I should say just on general principle."

Nod. "Thank you for the head's up. It seems very unsurprising his nightmares would be worse than usual, I cannot imagine that he likes sleeping in a strange place."

"Yeah, I put wards around his bed for him, I think he wasn't sleeping hardly at all before that."

"Mmm. I am very glad he has you as a friend."

He sure needs one! She doesn't say that, she asks about the forthcoming patient.

Lionwind lets her steer the conversation back to their actual work, and they have a reasonably productive afternoon with their patients.

When she's all done with her classes for the day she does some of her homework with Skan - she thinks he might be amused by illusion targets even if they flicker and sometimes vanish before he swats them - and then goes and visit Ma'ar again.

Ma'ar sitting up in bed, looking a lot more alert and healthy than before. The bandages are off his arm now, showing the pink flaky skin of a mostly-Healed burn, though the other arm is still bound and in a sling. He's picking at some food off a tray and reading a magic textbook.

"Do you think you'll make it to classes tomorrow?" she wonders.

"I think so! The Healer said they'd probably let me go in the morning, I'll still need my arm splinted for another day but I can come back to have it checked."

"Oh good. Lionwind says -" and she relays about the fate of the bullies.