Merlin

For over a thousand years he had stood sentinel to the lake and its hidden sleeping inhabitants. There had been times when he despaired of his long gone friend ever returning. Long years where he'd spoken no words at all because the pain of growing close to people again was too much to bear. He had lost track of the last of Camelot's descendants sometime after The Great War. The burden of looking after them all had become too great for him finally.

He wanted the laughter of a king who made fun of him when he inevitably tripped over two left feet. He wanted the camaraderie of talk around the campfire. Though his long vigil had provided some friends along the way, there had been none like him. No one who understood him and accepted him as he once had.

These days he adopted the look of an elderly village man. He found it saved him from too many questions from the ever curious town he had chosen to call home. Some years back a photograph of him had been found in the library archives and he'd barely escaped being found out. The days of instant communication and a mentality of people that believed Harry Potter actually existed had made it increasingly harder to hide.

In the last few years he had foreseen a change. A divergence from the paths he had spied even just from 20 years ago. The world was once again on a precipice of...something?

In the long years of awaiting the King's return, he had learned to hone his foresight, and yet this cliff that the world balanced on was not in his power to divine. It worried him and at the same time made him more hopeful than he had felt since the day he finally had put a sword through Morgana and believed he would make it to the lake in enough time to save him.

Arthur's return had been promised to him by Kilgarra more than a millennia ago and there had been more than a few times that Merlin had thought he would see his friend again. And yet, though he passed by the edges of the lake daily on his walk home, he never saw or heard a whisper from it that would herald the Once and Future King.

Not before now anyway. The recent collapse of several key governments and the subsequent dissolution of the United Nations had given rise to horrific despots and left a vacuum for the less than upstanding Council of Sorcerers to step in and reign from behind the scenes.

If there was ever a time for his friend to return, he thought, it would be now.

He had stood sentinel for almost a thousand years now, the last 50 of them as a wizened, wrinkled, old man. Today, looking out over the lake, he finally threw off that cloak and resumed the mantle of his youth and full power. He felt a ripple in the lake and saw a glimmer of golden steel just under the surface of the previously still waters.

"Hello, old friend." he whispered. "Seems like the world once again has need of you. It will be good to finally see you again after all these years." He walked forward and stepped to the edges of the water, watching and watching, full of hope and promise once again.

TBC...maybe!