A/N: So this is just a little one-shot, of a way -given an odd one, involving quite a bit of random crossdressing- Freya and Merlin could have met when they were younger, before she was cursed and before he was Arthur's manservant, during their pre-Camelot time. It's a little weird, but it was one of those ideas that just kinda popped into my head and refused to go away no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, LOL.
She is only a child still -maybe a dozen years old, at best- and a slight one at that, hardly noticeable when she stands beside her Druid parents, especially when she takes a half-step behind her father, a tall, hooded man with a long, serious face.
All the same, whenever they've traveled from their lake-side home, beyond the mountains she knows so well, she's always hidden; disguised for her own protection.
She's their treasure, all the more so now that her siblings have passed on because of the sweating sickness, making her the only little darling they have left.
They've gone away from home a few times before -maybe on five or so separate occasions, well spread out over the short years of her life, she thinks- but this time is different. Different, because she doesn't think they're going back. The sickness was bad in that area, for one, too many painful memories; and her mother is weak, she coughs a little too much for comfort. Father wouldn't bring her back there, exposing her to the elements. They're looking for other Druids, like themselves. Traveling, nomadic Druids. They hope these will take them in.
No more wildflowers and light in the summertime, she mourns inwardly, wondering how she will bear it, never knowing that there is far worse to come in her future. More deaths in the family, leaving her alone, exile, and a curse. She has no way of knowing this is what will occur; she is no seer.
"Freya?" She's stepped out of their tiny caravan and taken a few curious steps forward in this new place they've stopped at, and her father is already worried they've lost her.
She blinks, unaware that anything could be wrong. Her long dark hair is tucked up in a woolly cap, after all, and she's donned a pair of boy's breeches that once belonged to one of her brothers.
As a girl, she might look her age, though only just, but as a boy she looks far younger; too young to interest the press-gangs who take children away for soldiers in Cenred's roguish army. And no one is going to steal away a pretty little Druid girl to sell for reward money (King Cenred flip-flops almost daily in his views on magic and Druids, and King Uther Pendragon, in the next kingdom over -a place called Camelot- pays handsomely for persons with magic) if she doesn't look enough like one. If she seems like an ordinary grubby boy, who might belong to anyone... Well, no one will care much about her then, will they?
"Father, I'm here," she squeaks out, materializing at his side.
"There's a village ahead," wheezes her mother.
Her father pats her mother's hand. "Yes, Love, I see it. Perhaps we can get food and shelter for tonight."
Freya grimaces. "The horses..."
"What horses?" her father asks, thinking she means their pair of old carthorses, until he sees the warhorses tethered nearby.
"A press gang," he worries. "The army's gone into that village to take away strong young boys."
They won't have me... Freya knows they'll never give her more than a passing, bored glance.
Apparently her mother thinks the same, and is confident enough that they will not be in any danger, so long as they keep the fact that they are Druids a secret. Because they take the supplies they need and go into the village on foot.
Freya never learns the name of the village -it isn't much, after all, just a few fields and a couple of cows, though it's a pretty place, in its own way- and some years later, when the name is brought up by the first friend she's had in ages, she still won't know she's been here. She'll never imagine the truth. She'll never suspect this is Ealdor, or who the strange boy she meets this day really is.
Meanwhile, inside the village, Hunith is anxious.
She only has one son, a spunky, big-eared lad, with black hair and a dangerous secret. He has magic. She feared it, long ago, from the moment she realized she was carrying a child to begin with, because of who his father was, but she's calmed over the years.
The troublesome boy gives her the fright of her life, nearly daily, but always seems to evade being truly caught. No one has seen him move objects without touching them. Not yet, anyway. And of course she's forbidden him -strictly forbidden him- to tell anyone. At thirteen going on fourteen he's too old for empty threats of a beating to scare him off from giving away his secret, but, thank the gods, he's a born pleaser. He loves his mother devotedly and fears doing anything to make her cry.
If he's discovered, he knows she will probably cry. He really doesn't like that.
But today her fear is not only for his magic. He's no fighter, but that won't stop the press-gang from taking him away. He's old enough, and that's all that concerns them. They don't care how likely he is to be killed off first. His best friend, William, is lucky to be in bed with a chill, too sick to assemble with the rest of the village, too ill to rise up and greet the press-gang with the other boys. So he's likely safe enough.
Only her son...Hunith's dear boy...is in terrible danger. They'll get him killed, or figure out he has magic; or both.
One answer screamed out to her from the moment they arrived. Dress Merlin in a way that will ward off their attention...
He protested, at first, to the dress Hunith threw over his head, and nearly choked with horror at the sight of the matching bonnet, but he rises now from the cottage hearth, face smudged here and there with soot, short hair and prominent ears covered, and smooths his skirt. He has no intention of going out of the house so the rest of the village can see him like this, but when the press-gang barges in, as if looking for able-bodied boys who might be hiding, they'll find only a very ugly young woman with a stupid look on her face.
Merlin's eyebrows lift with surprise when he sees, coming through the doorway, not a press-gang, but parents and a little boy seeking lodging. The press-gang's still outside, stealing away boys whose mother's weren't clever enough to disguise them for just this one day, and this family's slipped in unnoticed.
Freya stares at the strange 'girl' standing near the hearth. There is something about her, something she can't put her finger on.
She doesn't know it, but Merlin finds her strange, too. He thinks, in a way he cannot figure out, that the 'boy' is like him.
They want to know each other, to be friends.
When the press-gang passes their house entirely, catching a glimpse of Merlin's embarrassing bonnet from the window and gathering that only a woman and her daughter live in there (judging the house too small to be worthy of a thorough search), Hunith lets the children go out and play.
Freya is shy, and Merlin doesn't want to be seen. Somebody will tell William about this for sure, and he will be teased mercilessly as soon as his best mate is feeling better. So they creep behind trees, till they find a babbling little brook, following it upwards till they reach the stream, and Merlin sticks his bare feet out from under the dress and plunges them in the cool water.
Sweat trickles down his neck from the back of his head, and guessing its safe enough, with only a harmless little boy who is not from their village watching, Merlin takes off the bonnet.
Seeing his short hair and his face no longer framed by a round, frayed ribbon, Freya can tell he's a boy, almost a young man. She's mildly surprised, but not stunned.
All she asks is, "Why do you wear a dress?"
He flushes, glances down, and inadvertently notices something: this boy's breeches fit him a little funny around a certain area. "My mother... She doesn't want the press-gang to take me."
"You know," says Freya, her eyes as cool and calculating as a cat's, blinking down at him. "Don't you?"
That you're no more a boy than I am a girl? Merlin shrugs his shoulders. "Yes. It's all right. You don't have to hide anything from me." They didn't need any secrets, neither of them meant any harm to the other. Moreover, he's got the strangest feeling she just understands, somehow.
She takes off the woolly cap and lets her hair hang loose. It's a relief. She's been sweating, too. Her hair's damp and clings to her pale, tired face.
He bends over and splashes water at her.
She laughs and splashes back.
They spend all day playing together. Merlin somehow manages to climb trees in a dress, even though it catches constantly and drives him mad. Freya is quick, too, and she loves outdoor games. She teaches him blind man's bluff. And laughs good-naturedly at his disorientation after she's spun him around three times and he's struggling in vain, blindfolded, to locate her.
A loose branch falls and almost hits her head and crushes her skull in, but Merlin's eyes glow gold and sends it smashing into another tree in the opposite direction.
Freya doesn't see this. One day, when she's a little older, she'll learn of his magic. She simply won't know it's him, is all. For now, she's distracted; her parents are calling, anxious as to where she's been with 'Hunith's girl' all this time.
Merlin puts the bonnet back on. Freya tucks her hair back up in her woolly cap. They catch hands and head back. She feels an odd sense of satisfaction to be walking about hand-in-hand with this girl who is not really a girl.
She's thought of what he is to her, finally come up with a name -a term- for it. To Freya, he is her mirror-boy. He hides his gender, to keep safe, just as she does hers, and when she reveals her true self, he does the same. So that they are always opposite. They are never both boys, or both girls, at the same moment. They are looking-glass images of each other. He is her mirror-boy, and she his mirror-girl.
They sleep side by side on the floor that night, each finding a sense of unprecedented peace in the heavy breathing of their mirror counterpart.
It is not until the morning, when she leaves, even lets him hug her goodbye, that Freya realizes she never asked her mirror-boy's name, and he never learned hers. She hopes they will meet again someday, thinks she would be unlikely to find a better companion, but the Druid girl has no idea that, when they do, she won't recognize him.
Nor will he know her.
For, by then, even in rags, she'll be a lovely young outcast Druid woman without a trace even of pretend boyishness in her being.
She'll be frightened out of her wits when her mirror-boy magically saves her from a bounty hunter's cage.
"I'm Merlin, by the way," he'll tell her.
And she, shivering, will reply, "I'm Freya."
"Freya," he'll repeat, completely enamored.
She'll watch him, all but outright gawking.
And he'll say, gently, "I'll see you in the morning, Freya."
At last, she will finally come out of her shock enough to remember to say thank you.
And so the legend of Merlin and the Lady of the Lake begins...