And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on the carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the circle game

10th April 2020

The Easter holidays had begun, not that they were that relaxing. Both Merlin and Morgana were worried about everything with coronavirus, Amhar was thriving when he had all of Merlin and Morgana's attention, babbling a lot yet quite a most of his words were rather coherent. He had taken a liking to the movie "The Good Dinosaur", as well as cars, although his favourite thing to watch was Clangers, Merlin and Morgana's least favourite thing so made sure to limit it as much as possible. Alongside this, Morgana insisted on joining in with the "baby club" (much like a baby group on the TV) every day with Amhar, which Merlin rather liked joining in with too even if it was slightly annoying.

Morgana's 26th birthday fell right in the middle of lockdown, with no view of it budging. Nowhere was open, the only outing allowed was to go to an "essential shop", you weren't allowed to go for a drive and going on the same walk day after day had begun to get boring after a while. With nice weather on the rise, Merlin and Morgana opted to buy a paddling pool, a tiny 3ft slide, a sand and water table and a toddler trampoline. They did want to get him a swing too, yet the garden was too small and was already looking slightly overwhelmed with all the toys out. Merlin had also bought some rather pricey gifts for Morgana's birthday— a grey Stokke bag, a floating locket necklace and a very expensive BBHugMe pillow.

Merlin let Morgana sleep in again for her birthday, while he was glad that her nausea was subsiding it was still there, and they had a lot of sex which made her tired, alongside running after a toddler. When the morning came around, Merlin took Amhar, changed his nappy and filled his cow cup with milk before they went to the master bedroom. Morgana was already awake, going through her messages and the endless texts of happy birthday.

"Happy birthday" Merlin greeted.

"Happy birway!" Amhar squealed as Merlin lifted him onto the bed.

"Aww, Merlin" Morgana smiled as he put the gift bags down. Amhar helped her rip the presents open, Merlin had used both gift bags and wrapping paper.

"Oh my god Merlin!" Morgana gasped as she opened her bag. "This was exactly the bag I wanted, but it's so expensive!".

"Well, I bought it for you" Merlin smiled. "Happy birthday".

"You know I needed another pregnancy pillow" Morgana grinned.

"You can never have too many?" Merlin shrugged.

"You can't" Morgana agreed, then began to open the locket.

"Merlin" tears sprung into Morgana's eyes.

"I've already added the sapphire for Amhar" Merlin said. "Then once baby's here we can add his".

"I love you" Morgana said as she kissed Merlin. "Thank you so much".

"I'm glad you like it" Merlin smiled. "I hope you'll like your next surprise".

"A surprise!" Morgana gasped.

"Cakey time!" Amhar shouted.

"Amhar!" Merlin facepalmed. "It's supposed to be a surprise".

"Amhar sowwy" Amhar offered. "Hug?".

"It's okay sweetie" Morgana chuckled as she hugged Amhar. "Let's go downstairs and see what cake daddy made". The cake was rather basic—pale pink with a rose gold 26 on the top, alongside Morgana's name written in icing. Merlin and Amhar sang happy birthday and then Morgana cut the cake so that they could eat it for breakfast, not long after running back to the toilet again as she tended to do after a lot of meals.

"I take it that means you liked it?" Merlin grinned as Morgana went straight back to eating her cake.

"Duh" Morgana raised her eyebrow.

After lunch and getting changed, Merlin suggested going for a walk. It was unusually warm for April, as usually Morgana would still take her coat when leaving the house yet today morgana didn't wear her hoodie and chucked it in the buggy, as did Merlin.

"I think someone gets to use their paddling pool soon" Morgana commented.

"That sounds good" Merlin agreed. "It's boiling".

"Hopefully my chocolate avocado's won't melt" Morgana winced.

"I'm sure they'll be fine" Merlin shrugged. "Let's go then". In front of the house, Merlin and Morgana had a large lawn, and tended to walk through it during their daily walks. Morgana noticed someone sat in the middle with a pram—the same rose gold one that Mithian had.

"Is that Mithian!" Morgana exclaimed.

"Surprise" Merlin offered.

"Oh my god, yes! Human contact".

"Hey" Merlin stuck his tongue out. They lay down their picnic blanket socially distanced and happily chatted away.

"Baby" Amhar said as he pointed at Athena.

"Yeah, she's a baby" Leon smiled.

"Mummy having baby" Amhar said, his eyes wide.

"Really!" Mithian exclaimed. "Do you want it to be a brother or a sister?".

Amhar looked tentatively at Athena for a moment. "Bwuvver".

"He's in luck then" Melrin smiled.

"How's lockdown been for you then?" Mithian asked.

"Virtual teaching has been...interesting" Morgana sipped at her water. "I mean, we haven't done live lessons yet, those are starting after the holidays. Everything else seems okay, kids are sending back the work well and all. How are you getting on?".

"Well, this little madam here is rather nice and keeps mummy up at stupid hours" Mithian said.

Morgana smiled sympathetically. "He was the same until he was one".

"So we've been enjoying newborn cuddles a lot. Leon's back at work now, virtually so he confines himself to one room. Then usually I stay in one room with Athena so that way I have the Moses basket around".

"I've been slightly worried about that too" Morgana sighed. "We're probably going to use the travel cot Arthur and Gwen used, then Merlin's parents bought a Moses basket, so we plan to switch baby between each as needed. Not to mention the toddler so we have to bear that in mind".

"Yeah, how's he been coping?" Mithian asked.

"I swear, if I have to hear those fucking clangers one more time" Morgana rolled her eyes.

"You'll what?" Mithian chuckled.

Morgana pondered for a moment. "Cry".

"You already did that" Merlin chuckled. "Last night".

"I'm hormonal!" Morgana protested.

"Well, lockdown birthday, how's it been then?" Mithian commented.

"Merlin made me a cake which we had for breakfast and then I threw up".

"Morning sickness still going!" Mithian gasped.

"Hyperemesis bloody sucks" Morgana rolled her eyes. "Gave me my presents, we had more cake and Amhar hasn't requested his ridiculous children's programme yet".

"We're dreading Athena getting older for that reason" Leon sighed.

"It's a nightmare" Merlin agreed.

"Oh but in the night garden is good" Morgana said.

"You cried at that last night..." Merlin drawled.

"I cry at it every time!" Morgana protested. "Poor iggle piggle hallucinating to death in his boat".

"Poor iggle piggle" Mithian agreed.

Back at home, Morgana and Merlin had made several zoom and FaceTime calls. Given that people weren't allowed to meet-up, video calls were the next best thing. Morgause phoned and stayed for ages, the sisters slowly reconciling as they talked for a while, although avoided certain unsaid topics. Morgause had suggested several baby names which both Morgana and Merlin did not like at all, making a mental note to avoid those names suggested by Morgause.

They'd also had calls with Dylan, the twins and Kara and Mike. Amhar was happy to see everyone, especially his friend Noah and his new baby sister Amelia. Even though they were only one so didn't completely understand everything, they were happy to see one another for a little before going off to play, while Kara and Morgana talked about their pregnancies, Kara was having a girl and was due at the end of April.


12th April 2020

Even though Amhar was only eighteen months old, he was old enough to know what chocolate was and that it was a treat, so Merlin and Morgana made sure to do an Easter egg hunt with him. They wouldn't make it too hard, 'hiding' the eggs in plain sight for Amhar to find, and probably eat a most of it themselves.

"We're so old now" Morgana chuckled as Merlin changed Amhar's nappy. "The ones organising the egg hunts instead of hunting the eggs".

"We're not old" Merlin scoffed. "We're twenty-six".

"Still, I feel old" Morgana shrugged.

"Tell that to Morgause" Merlin chucked.

"True, she's ancient" Morgana agreed.

"Sixty now?" Merlin asked.

"Merlin!" Morgana gasped and slapped his arm. "She isn't sixty".

"Then how old is she?".

Morgana thought for a moment. "Whats twenty-six add eighteen?".

"Forty-four" Merlin said.

"That is old" Morgana decided.

"If you say we're old then that really is the case" Merlin remarked. "Shall we go find chocolate eggs?".

"Yeah!" Amhar said as they went down the stairs and began to find the chocolate eggs. Amhar had a paw patrol one that came with a bowl and cup, Merlin had a darkmilk Cadbury's egg while Morgana had a giant chocolate avocado. Amhar was now beginning to concentrate for longer periods of time, so after breakfast and getting changed Merlin and Morgana decided to make chocolate chip cookies with him.

"I do that" Amhar insisted. Morgana mixed the butter and sugar together slightly before she put the bowl on the highchair tray, and gave Amhar the spoon to mix it.

Amhar giggled and bashed the spoon around rather than mixing the mixture he seemed to get most of it onto himself or his highchair tray.

"Oh dear" Morgana said. "Like this Amhar, see". Merlin stayed down to roll out the cookies and put them in the oven while Morgana took Amhar for a bath, an occurrence that was beginning to happen twice a day seeing as he loved to get messy.

"Merlin!" Morgana shouted. He'd just put the cookies in the oven and was beginning to tidy the kitchen. Morgana never tended to shout unless it was important (or she was extra hormonal).

"What's up babe?" Merlin called.

"The toilet is smoking!" Morgana screeched.

"Shit" Merlin muttered and rushed up the stairs. While the year was a good year, he wouldn't put it past it for something to go wrong, like the smoking toilet exploding "What's the problem?".

"Can't you see, the toilet is smoking!" Morgana exclaimed. Merlin looked to the toilet. There were two unused toilet rolls on top, with an empty toilet paper tube wedged in the lid.

"Very funny" Merlin grinned.

"What?" Morgana grinned. "At least we haven't had the whole town stormed by mountain goats".

"Thank god we live in South Wales" Merlin muttered.


A/N: Lockdown 1.0 was crazy haha, I was looking through YouTube to double check when something was announced and it came up with mountain goats going around Wales villages