"Hurry up with that fire, Merlin, the sun will be setting soon."
They were out on a hunting trip, just the four of them. It had been a long week, with endless little problems, building up until Arthur was too frustrated to speak. He had immediately ordered Merlin to pack a bag, and they had headed out into the woods with barely a moment's delay. The trip itself had been mostly silent, but the farther they rode from the castle, the more Arthur relaxed. When they decided to set up camp, he was back to bossing Merlin around like normal.
Merlin scraped the flint enough times to be believable before giving up and whispering a spell. The fire burst to life. Behind him, Tinnig, an ocelot now, whipped him with her tail. She was taking advantage of Arthur's generous off to change whenever she liked, but she still saw it as her duty to keep Merlin from exposing himself.
Merlin went about skinning and cooking the rabbit Mala had caught for their stew. He'd been cooking since he was a child, so it didn't take too long. Once it was done, he dished it out into bowls for himself and Arthur, and passed one to the Prince. Arthur took it silently and began eating. He was discretely watching Tinnig, now a lurcher, wrestling with Mala. Merlin knew that he was having a hard time accepting their oddities, but he was trying, and that was enough.
Arthur shook his head. He looked down at the bowl. "So, Merlin, where'd you learn to cook?"
Merlin grinned. "Just because you don't know how, doesn't mean the majority of people don't."
"Just answer the question."
Merlin looked over at Tinnig, panting happily and quietly chatting with Mala. "My mother taught me."
"Oh." Arthur suddenly looked awkward, like he always did whenever the subject of parents was brought up. "You've never mentioned her."
"Really? I'm sure I must have."
"Never. What's she like? She must be someone special to name her son Merlin."
"Don't make fun of my mother! She named me after my father's daemon. She was a merlin falcon."
"Really? She named you after his daemon?" Arthur looked incredulous.
"Yes, she wanted a way to remember him."
Arthur went quiet. "Oh. You know, you've never mentioned your father, either."
Merlin shrugged, looking down at his bowl. "I never met him. He left before I was born."
Sensing his discomfort, Tinnig wandered over to him. She rested her head on his knee, and he pet her neck.
Arthur awkwardly cleared his throat. "I never met my mother, either."
"No?"
"No, she... Uh, she died when I was born."
"Oh... Arthur, I'm sorry, I didn't-"
"Back to your mother," Arthur cut across. "What's she like? What's her name?"
Thinking of his mother made Merlin smile proudly. Tinnig thumped her tail. "She's brilliant. Her name's Hunith, and she's the most incredible person I've ever met. She raised me by herself, despite all the flack she got from our neighbors, and she still managed to work in the fields. She's also our village's only midwife, and she grows all the medicinal herbs. They wouldn't last a day without her."
"She's kind, and patient," Tinnig said, uncaring of propriety. "Determined, a real fighter. She don't take nuthin from no one."
"You get it from her, then."
"I suppose so." Merlin grinned.
"What's your village called?"
"Ealdor. It's just over the border, in Essetir."
Arthur's eyes widened. Mala sat up from where she lay beside the fire. "You're from Essetir?"
Merlin sighed. "I have no loyalty to Cenred, if that's what you're worried about. He's a tyrant, and cares nothing for his people, especially the border villages."
Mala growled.
"Careful, Merlin. Cenred may be a creep, but he's still an ally of Camelot."
Merlin rolled his eyes. "You just said he was a creep, clearly you don't care for him either."
"It's not about whether or not I like him, it's... just change the subject."
"Fine," Merlin huffed, but he noticed that Arthur looked incredibly uncomfortable. Maybe there was something more to the situation. "What do you want to know?"
Arthur exchanged a thoughtful look with Mala. "I've always wondered what life is like in the villages. What did you do? Why did you leave?"
Merlin fell quiet. He looked down at the ground, at the trees, at Tinnig, anywhere but Arthur.
"Merlin?"
"I just... didn't fit in there," Merlin sighed. "The village healer's bastard son with an unsettled daemon. Ealdor is a small village, people gossip, and they made it no secret what they thought of me." Tinnig was becoming distressed, shifting between forms too fast for any of them to be recognizable. "They called us freaks, a curse, things like that. Eventually, people began whispering about magic... It wasn't safe there anymore, so Mother wrote to Gaius, and he agreed to take me in." None of that was a lie, exactly, just not the full truth. Arthur didn't need to know about The Incident. "It wasn't all bad, though. I never knew anything else, and I had Mother and Fethryn, and Tinnig, and Will."
Tinnig calmed slightly, settling on a porcupine, quills bristling. Mala wisely kept her distance.
"Will?" Arthur asked, completely focused on Merlin.
Merlin smiled. "He and Ekalya were our only friends. They didn't care about our strangeness, or about the rumors, or that everyone ostracized him, too. We spent all our time together, we're practically brothers." His expression fell. "Will was so mad when he found out we were leaving. He refused to talk to me."
"If you're as close as you say," Arthur said awkwardly. Emotions weren't his strength. "I'm sure he's forgiven you. He had to know you were in danger staying there."
"Yeah..."
From there they fell into silence, finishing their meal and setting up bed rolls. Merlin checked on the horses one last time, and they laid down. Arthur was out within minutes, used to falling asleep quickly on patrols when one could be woken up at any moment. Merlin rolled over to look at the fire.
He thought of Will, of his Mother and Fethryn, even of his neighbors and crazy Old Man Simmons. He thought of working in the fields, of helping his mother in the herb garden, of sharing the house with the animals during the winter. He thought of being shunned every time he tried to help, of children throwing things at him, of adults whispering behind his back. He hadn't lied to Arthur, it really hadn't been all bad, but it was lonely. Merlin had grown up knowing that he couldn't rely on his neighbors, because why would they help him? Mostly they pretended he wasn't there, only acknowledging him if he did something wrong. Then he got older, and Tinnig didn't settle, and suddenly everyone was watching him all the time. Merlin took to hiding in the woods surrounding the village, playing with Tinnig and letting her shift forms to her heart's content.
Then one day Will followed them. They had always been close, and he was upset that Merlin had been disappearing so often. Merlin had tried to run away from him, and they had gotten into an argument. Merlin felt that Will should treat him like everyone else in Ealdor, as his own daemon Ekalya had settled as a wildcat, and thus shouldn't be seen with such an oddity as Merlin and Tinnig. Will thought he was being an idiot, and had no problem telling him so to his face.
The argument quickly escalated, until Will punched him. Merlin had pulled him down with him and they had wrestled, punching and kicking each other like they never had before during play fights. Tinnig had turned into a lynx and pounced at Ekalya, which quickly turned into a mess of claws and teeth.
Merlin had never been much of a fighter. When Will pinned him down, Merlin had panicked. In his desperation to get away, he had used magic to knock Will away. Everything had gone still after that.
Merlin had thought that was the end of him. He thought that Will would run back to the village, yelling about how Merlin had used magic to hurt him. Instead, Will had laughed. He'd laughed so loudly and for so long that Merlin worried he had hit his head. Then he'd begun talking, saying how of course Merlin had magic, it made perfect sense, and why hadn't he told him before? He asked where Merlin had learned it, what he could do, what kind of pranks he had pulled with it. Will was most shocked to find that Merlin had never used it to prank anyone. They quickly made plans to pull something on Old Man Simmons.
They stayed in the woods until the sun set, talking about magic, and daemons, and whether there was a connection between the two. When they finally headed back to the village, covered in bruises and scrapes, a black eye and a bloody lip, their fight was forgotten.
They had been closer after that, if it was possible. They had snuck out to the woods nearly every day, practicing magic, or planning pranks, or playing in the stream, or simply to get away from the others. After a few months their mothers had found them, and scolded them for shirking off work, but their bond had grown so strong over the time that being back in the village couldn't ruin it. They had never fought like that again, but they had come close when Merlin told Will that he was leaving for Camelot.
Merlin sighed, not wanting to think about how his friend had avoided him during his last days in Ealdor. Tinnig, sensing his thoughts, turned into a silk-soft rabbit and cuddled under his chin. Merlin pet her and watched the fire, imagining that he could see shapes. They shifted like a daemon, and he smiled.
By the time the embers died, he was deeply asleep.
Merlin (Tinnig, unsettled, disquised as a pine marten) (prefers smaller animals)
Arthur (Mala, Irish Wolfhound)
Balinor (Leda, merlin falcon)
Hunith (Fethryn, clouded leopard)
Will (Ekalya, wildcat)
The incident Merlin describes is not The Incident. That will come later.