A/N: Hello there Merlin fans! I've had this on my computer for a while and I'm starting to get back to it, so I thought I'd post it. I really thought that Merlin needed some more female characters, so here's Caoimhe (pronounced Kee-va, just so you know). It will probably go through the entire show with extra adventures and stuff, of course, unless I get a lot of complaints about how it takes 3 seasons for a love story to happen or something, then I might time skip. However, I hope you guys enjoy, since these types of stories aren't seen much in this fandom and of course, I own nothing but Caoimhe, her horse Dadga, and her mother at the moment.
In a land of myth and a time of magic, there are those who are destined to live on in legend and myth, to be remembered for their deeds of greatness and bravery. They are the ones who you know of in name and in act, ones you are not likely to forget.
Then there are those who are destined down a different path, a path of loss, where their story is forgotten or erased from legend, despite their actions and heroics. One specifically is as part of a legend as any other, but was doomed to never be remembered for the change she brought and the land she helped to unite after the fall of the Once and Future King.
Her name is Caoimhe.
In a time that was only recorded in the tales of bards and the legends of the land, there were two daughters gifted to King Anguish of the island of Eire and his wife Eathelin of Camelot. The first was Iseult, dark of hair and eye like the fall of night, born to be remembered in history as part of the second greatest love story known from the Middle Ages. Years passed before the second was born, a decade of failures and miscarriages that the child seemed more of a miracle and an impossibility than a real child. Her name was Caoimhe, her hair light as the sun, her eyes just as her sister's, but unlike her sister, her story was not to be remembered through the ages, just in the people who knew her. Not that she would know when the time came for her destiny to be fulfilled.
That destiny began when she was just eleven years old, at the wedding of her sister to King Mark of Cornwall, when she broke a mirror with only a thought at the sight of Iseult drinking a potion that would end up dooming her. It was there that the visions began, first as simple dreams, then as nightmares that would draw her from sleep with a scream or a cold sweat. It was a growing magic that was instinctual, elemental, and powerful in the eyes of her mother. Eathelin saw the futures of her daughters as going in one way: Iseult off away from anything, happy in her delusions, while Caoimhe would use the magic she inherited from her mother to win back the use of magic in Camelot.
Future, however, is always changing. Iseult drank a love potion and fell in love with a knight of King Mark's garrison, one he thought of as a son, Tristan. Caoimhe was the most trouble with these plans, for as she grew older, she grew bolder, her magic unknown in her own eyes, but her skill with a blade was impeccable. She wished to be a knight, a knight of renown, and to always have a spirit of adventure. All of this was a mix to ruin the plans Eathelin had originally made. A back up was necessary.
So, in the year of Caoimhe's seventeen birthday, twenty years after Eathelin was forced out of Camelot during the Great Purge of magic, that such a plan was put forth, when Eathelin called her youngest daughter into her presence.
Caoimhe had grown over the years, and with her, her golden blonde hair tumbled in curls down to her waist, her brown eyes keen, and her once flawless skin now tanned and scarred, most distinctively upon her jaw. She dressed in only a shift of a dress, long and blue, while her mother was in an extravagant dress of reds and golds, her crown upon her head.
"My dear daughter," Eathelin simpered, glancing down at Caoimhe from her throne, her blue-green eyes inspecting to see if her plan would in fact work this time around, "It is the time that you must begin to think of your future, and what it will bring. Your sister has been married for six years, happily so for the past three, and I hope that you will make a match in the time it took her."
Caoimhe never considered the idea of marriage for anything less than truly loving the man she would end up with, and so never deemed it something she would see in her own lifetime. She knew her mother wanted her to find a man to better the family line and father his children, but all Caoimhe could think was that such a life was one someone would have to condemn her to rather than her choosing it herself. So, she curtsied to her mother and answered, "I have heard of my sister's tales of her relationship, but I do not wish my future to be what Iseult already has. We are far too different to end up so similarly. Marriage itself is not on my path."
"You say that now, and many do at your age, so young and full of life. So, I give you until your twenty first birthday, four whole years, to consider my offer of a future for you. I know you have a desire for adventure," Eathelin continued, moving to cup her daughter's face, "but adventure is a fleeting thing. I believe the best thing for you is to experience the world you wish to enter. I've arranged for you to live with your uncle and cousin, he has a ward near your age who could enlighten you on the aspects of what it means to be a lady of the court."
Caoimhe knew what it would mean if she said the simple two letter word, she had seen her mother's magic despite the trying to hide it away until the time came. So, in a voice barely above a whisper, she asked, "And if I don't become enlightened?"
"Well," Eathelin smiled coldly, her eyes sharp as jewels, "Your father and I have decided that should you not marry by the time you turn twenty one or have plans to marry soon after, then you shall no longer be considered a Princess of Eire. You see, you cannot be of nobility if you cannot understand the meaning of nobility and continue the line of the royal family."
Caoimhe felt her throat go dry. Was a dream worth giving up her title, and how did she know if she could ever become a knight? She held a right in Camelot, a title, but she was troubled at the idea of actually giving up her family for the sake of what might never be.
Eathelin took her daughter's hands in her own, "Now, don't fret, my dear, you have time for much thinking. We now need to prepare you for Camelot, do we not? We do not want to keep your Uncle Uther and cousin Arthur waiting, now do we?"
A/N: Well, what do you think? Was it good? I know she seems a little bland now, but Caoimhe really begins to shine. Also, should I do the rest of the story in third person, or would it be better to do first and really get into Caoimhe's character? Let me know in a review and I hope to post the next chapter soon!