A/N: These were written sometime in 2014. The first and third were previously published but have been slightly altered. The second was an early draft for Wax and Flame.
~o~
Young Merlin was alone in the midst of a forest, one hidden away behind a door in the Land of Magic. He was knelt above a narrow, winding creek, his hands in the water.
"You're playing when you should be studying," Mab whispered from the wind, appearing suddenly from nowhere. Swathed in darkness, she observed him from afar.
"I'm not playing. I am shaping the water. See the stones beneath? The way the water runs over them... I hear something rise from it that is almost like the sound of voices gathered in song."
"It is a song," Mab said, distantly. "Though, the voice belonged to my sisters."
"It's is so sad," Merlin stated, his tone soft.
"The song is about death. You shouldn't expect it to be pleasant."
"Whose death?"
"Ours," Mab answered sharply, her chin turning to the air. "Hers and my own. She has already given up." She stood in silence for a moment, in thought, then made herself and Merlin reappear in the schoolroom of the cave. "She may have given up, but I won't." She walked to one of the various towers of books on a neighboring table, selected one and placed it in Merlin's hands. "Learn."
The stone walls of Avalon Abbey were cast in unspent light from the moon, a glow as though transferred from Queen Mab's underground realm of magic.
Merlin and Nimue walked side by side through the courtyard and winding halls of the holy place, close enough that their shoulders brushed with their steps.
Light fell through the corner shadows in beams. There was darkness under the trees, though their leaves and fruit were whitened in the light of a full moon. Nimue's eyes strayed to the dark, to the places she was unable to make out in passing. She was quiet, lost in reverie.
She'd heard a noise that made her recall the room she'd slept in as a child, the great trees then that had creaked at night as the wind had taken them.
Though it was a mild evening, Merlin's mind went to winter and its palaces. He thought of Uther and the battleground of ice; to the hope he'd had then for the future of England under the reign of a good man, a Christian king. Merlin vividly remembered the sight of rushing armies coming toward him on both sides. The energy that had flooded the area. The moment when all else faded as his eyes met with Vortigern's. The king's body sealed behind a stirious window, a plain of snow stained with the blood of those fallen the frame of his death.
He thought of Nimue as he had known her in the mourning of her father Lord Ardent. Merlin had remained in Avalon afterward for as for long as possible to provide Nimue with the comfort he hadn't been given in the wake of Ambrosia's death.
At present he'd been in Avalon less than a week, but he did not know all that had transpired in the outside world during his departure. He feared that as he the same as slept in the Abbey, Mab had in his absence struck.
He imagined Arthur, where he might be on his quest. Was the boy near ice, was he near sands, the seas...
"I forgot to tell you. I had a dream about your Aunt Ambrosia," Nimue disturbed his thoughts.
"Auntie A..."
Nimue turned her face away from his, her eyes revealing a hint of embarrassment, remorse. "I know it wasn't her as you knew her, but my own picture, the one you've given me over the years. Your stories are always so detailed it makes me feel like I knew her as well." Nimue returned his gaze, now smiling warmly. "She was here with us. She was happy and so proud of you, Merlin."
He stopped to listen. He took Nimue's hands in his. She closed her eyes with the exchange, accepting his touch, lost until she thought to protectively shield her face. She then added, "I'm proud of you too, Merlin."
With her words he leaned forward, touching his head to hers, wishing in some way that what he felt for her would transfer through contact. "Thank you," he whispered. It wasn't enough but but was all he could manage at the moment.
Merlin waved a hand over Nimue's hair and shoulders in a half-hearted attempt to help bring her to sleep. The sky was a dark blue, and floating in the air and about their swing-bed were hundreds of tiny gray and brown feathers. "There is nothing in all the realms that could make me want to leave you," Merlin said, his face inches from Nimue's.
"You do not have a choice," Nimue replied, the smile not reaching her eyes. "You will leave with the sun."
"What do you mean?"
"You're not supposed to be visiting me, especially not in bed. The sisters would not think it right," Nimue said, with a hint of amusement. "But to my benefit they cannot see you. If they happen on my body, they will only see a figure lost in dreams."
Merlin did not at first understand, then realized they were both already asleep and that he was visiting her dreams through his own. Nimue nodded, knowing that he grasped their situation. "You're using magic to see me."
He sighed. "It was not my intention, Nimue. While asleep my want to see you apparently exceeds any remaining moral inhibitions."
Nimue laughed. "Why apologise? I'm so glad that you're here. I've missed you."
He stroked her cheek. "I've missed you, too. You can't know how much." Merlin moved to study the feathers in his hand. "However, it is rather disquieting to discover I am so lacking in control."
"But this is only a dream."
"Yes, but what might I do in the future? A life could be ruined from a message sent in dreams."
"So many dismiss visions, though. You shouldn't worry."
"If only it were that simple."
"But it is. You visit me. You don't fly to inform others of your plans or see the wicked. Even if they are in your thoughts while conscious, you haven't the time to see them because you go where your heart lies: with me."
Merlin reached for Nimue's hand and pressed her fingers to his lips, kissing them; wishing he could somehow account for the recently dreamed plumes of smoke bleeding into the laughter of a clinquant Queen.
~o~