Under the Greenwood Tree
by Liss Webster
There's a battle, of course. It's how these things are done. But that's irrelevant - boys with their toys (she remembers Arthur as a small child, smaller than her, his expression fierce as he practises with a wooden sword that Gwen's father made him) - and it's here that matters. It's old, this place, she can feel its age, as if the trees and rocks and plants have roots wrapped twice round the world and once around her, all of them bound together.
It's old, this place, and it's thick with brambles and nettles and oak and alder, beech and poplar. It's old, this place, and she stands in the shadows and waits.
It's here that matters.
When Merlin comes (he used to blush when she spoke to him), it's dark, and she's knows it's here that matters.
"You don't have to do this, Morgana," he says, and she laughs, oh how she laughs, and she feels the trees and the rocks and the plants laugh with her (they're all joined now), because she didn't have to do this. Not until he came. Not until he came. Not until he changed her course (and she'd seen it coming; why hadn't she stopped it?), not until then.
"It's here that matters," she says. "It has to be this way," she says, because surely Merlin (sweet Merlin, with eyes that showed how desperately he cared, before) can see that he is wrong and that Arthur is wrong and that they are all wrong, and Morgana will make it right? Surely he can see, here, in this old place, with its soul wrapping around him?
But Merlin cannot see.
And Morgana tries to show him.
~There is never an end~