New York City, 2008
He bustles throughout the city, hardly looking where he was going. The honking of the cars and the cabs around him didn't faze him anymore. It used to be you could hear someone come from miles away just by the sound of roots and gravel being crushed under the heavy fall of a horses hooves. Now he couldn't hear anything. He felt the weight of hundreds of years on his shoulders and yet, he didn't look a day over twenty four.
He spent near an eternity searching the United Kingdom for Arthur, waiting for him to be reborn. He waited through famines and wars; times of immense peril that made Merlin think, now is the time. If anyone can save the kingdom from useless war and killing now it's Arthur. So where is he? Suffice to say Merlin was never able to find him. He didn't think he had even been reborn at all, if he had Merlin would have felt it. So Merlin left those shores nearly eighty years ago; kissed them goodbye and settled in North America. After wandering for a several years he gained his foothold in New York City. He watched the city rise and succeed and though he never stayed in one place for too long, New York had become his home.
Today he settled for a calming morning walk in Central Park. He walked briskly through the morning fog, pulling his knit beanie a bit further over his ears to keep them warm. He sat on his favorite bench. Just a lone wooden bench that faced an gravel pathway. On this particular day he brought his favorite book along with him, the final installment of the Harry Potter series; out of all the books that he had read in the last century, this series was still his favorite. The world sure had changed. It was hard to remember that there was actually a time when people were terrified of magic. That it had actually been forbidden when these days most children grew up wishing they could be so special as to be endowed with such abilities. They fantasized about receiving their letter that would admit them to a magical school to study potions and transmogrify. Merlin whimsically wondered how things would have turned out had it been that way in Camelot. From the front pocket of his zip-up hoodie he pulled out an old pack of cigarettes and pressed one between his lips; fished the lighter out of his front pocket and lit it quickly. The smoke swirled all around his face as he turned his attention back to the page; letting the sounds of the park sweep him away into the story.
Just as he finished the first paragraph of the third chapter he heard a voice suddenly. It didn't come from anyone passing by, it was coming from inside his head. Calling his name, telling him that he was impossibly close. He sat there on the bench in a stunned silence. It had been years since he had heard a voice inside his own head. Centuries even; the last voice to penetrate him had been Kilgharrah and the last Dragon was long dead. He tried his best to shrug it off, there had been a lot of running after white rabbits in time past, chasing down voices across continents hoping that they would lead him towards his resurrected friend. He decided long ago that he wouldn't dwell on it any longer, in the end he always ended up alone and exhausted. He shook his head and turned back to his book and continued to read, losing himself completely in another reality until he was pulled out of his reverie. The echo of small foot falls on the packed gravel grew closer and it made Merlin lose his place in the paragraph. He looked up from the porcelain pages and was nearly blinded by the sun breaking through the trees although, no matter how bright the sunlight he would always recognize that face. It was one that he was punished with having to see every night in his dreams; a pale masthead for the eternal guilt that plagued him. No matter what the era he would recognize her anywhere, Morgana.
Without even a second thought he discarded his book as he stood to get a better look but she was too quick. He called out to her but she couldn't hear, not with her ear buds in and blasting what he was sure was some kind of dance beat into her ears. She continued to run down the path, enjoying her morning run and not realizing that she left behind an extremely befuddled wizard who could only watch her go. A million different explanations ran through his head. Why here and why now? Why leave him to wander aimlessly into the 21st century only to appear before him in the park? He watched her go before she veered off to the left and disappeared from his sight. Merlin bent to pick up his book from the ground where it had landed and like a bolt of lightning, doubt began to settle in. What if it wasn't really her? It could have been anyone really. It wouldn't have been the first time that he had mistaken a pale skinned, raven haired woman for Morgana. There was that incident twenty years earlier that ended in a stint at the county jail for a night and he didn't want to ever relive it.
Although in the lowest pit of his stomach he could feel it. The possibility that he had heard the voice in his head because she had been nearby was overwhelming. Perhaps every time he had heard the voices in times past she had been nearby as well. There were too many maybe's swimming around in his head. He quickly decided that it was probably best if he just went home and got some rest so he packed the book away in his plain black backpack and walked in the direction of his apartment; opposite the direction that Morgana had run.