1.

The forest reminds Merlin of how fast time works away at everything. It's astonishing how new paths seem to be accepted by the landscape, natural pauses in the vegetation snaking their way from the cabin back to civilisation. Already, the path he treads looks like it has belonged there for a decade, when in fact he and Gaius only started walking this way a couple of weeks ago. Some places it seems that nature is resisting; the grove that has been trodden into place has been filled with water, and a bog seems to be forming, causing the need to make several careful hops. He still manages to soak his shoes every other try, clumsy as he is.

By contrast, the path that they have only just abandoned after the scare that day when Merlin is convinced he was spotted, has already started to grow over. That path has been in use for as long as Merlin has been alive. It's sobering to see how years and years of convention just flicker away like that. No matter how long it's been used, no matter how many people knew that path as the main route to the cabin - and back in the day, there were many people doing this work - the path still fades. Merlin and Gaius are the only ones left who remember it, and they don't know half its stories. Regardless, the path's only existence will soon be in their minds. They are the only ones left.

But it can't be impossible to leave a mark in time. Merlin has found paths in the forests many times that seem permanent in different ways. The most fascinating is coming across an ancient game trail, which happens once in a while. It's never a whole path, from one location to the next, always a few yards of trail have remained while other parts have faded. They seem to appear out of nowhere, a reminder that there has been life in these hills for a long, long time.

Other more lasting marks do not remind him of anything of the sort. The paths made by the machines, for instance, don't go away. Wherever they have been, even if they've only been there once and that was years ago, the grass doesn't grow as lushly it does in other places, and it seems to always be yellowed and near death. The moss is dry. It is as if life wants nothing to do with the marks left by dead things. Dead things that Merlin could seize control of, or even eradicate, had it been within prudence and not just within his power.

"It's like science fiction," Gaius says, and maybe that is what it looks like to him. He is of a different generation, he remembers a different world, because most of the major changes that have happened have occurred in the last couple of decades. Merlin has never read science fiction. It is not the sort of thing he'd devote his time to, since his time is quite rare and precious. Still he feels the need to argue with his uncle.

"It's not science fiction," he insists, "For one thing, it is all real. And science fiction is based within scientific possibilities, isn't it?" That wasn't really a question. He may not be a fan of the genre, but he knows its definition. "Science would never be able to do these things on its own. Everything we have relies on magic, whether the general public chooses to recognise that or not."

They don't have that choice, of course.

Therein lies the problem.