🔔🎁✨ Happy Holidays! 🌟❄️🌲

This is an advent calendar! I will be posting a season-themed drabble or one-shot each day to celebrate. Most stories will be fluffy or humorous, with a sprinkling of light angst in between. A&M-centric with background Arwen for the most part, though other characters will pop up here and there.

Thanks to Nat as well as the people on the Land of Myth Discord for coming up with some prompts for me to write about!

Hope you all enjoy! 💖

Door 1: Sledding

Merlin threw a panicked look over his shoulder, the fresh snow crunching loudly underneath his boots as he ran. The chimaera was perhaps fifty paces away now, and steadily coming closer.

"It's gaining on us," he panted, his breath rising above his head in puffs of white mist. At some point, his lungs had started burning.

"Don't worry!" Arthur called from two steps ahead, his shield swinging at his arm as he ran. "I've got a plan."

Merlin threw him a doubtful look, though his eyes widened when he glanced up ahead. "Stop!" he shouted. "There's a cliff!"

"It's a slope!" Arthur corrected and came to a skittering halt at the edge of it, almost causing Merlin to crash into him.

Behind them, the chimaera's lion head roared.

Dread overcame Merlin like a heavy cloak. They were stuck. Arthur had led them to a dead end.

He would need to use his magic. Already, it was prickling hotly in his fingertips, ready to lash out at the beast chasing them. Arthur's sword was sticking out of its back, right next to the goat's head, little more than a useless stick of steel against a creature of magic.

This is it, Merlin thought, raising his hand as he watched the beast approach on its massive paws. No more hiding.

"What are you doing?" Arthur snapped from behind him and grabbed him at the neck.

Before Merlin knew it, he was pulled down and then, he was sitting on the ground right at the edge of the cliff, with Arthur settling down behind him. Merlin started struggling immediately, but one of Arthur's arms was snaking around him, wrapping itself tightly around his chest and pinning him in place.

"Arthur, what on earth are you—" Merlin started, the rest of his words drowned out by the chimaera's roar.

"Do try not to fall off," said Arthur and gave them both a push, moving them forward.

Only then did Merlin see that they weren't sitting on the ground at all, but on Arthur's shield, which was just now tipping over the edge.

They were going to sled down the cliff.

Merlin never had the time to tell Arthur that his idea was insane. His stomach lurched when they tipped forward, and then they were off, gaining speed at an alarming rate as they slid down the side of the hill. A rush of cold wind slapped against his cheeks, snow and ice pelting his body, and it was all Merlin could do to keep his feet up and hands to himself, trusting that Arthur's strong arm would keep him in place.

The world blurred into a mosaic of white, grey, and green, every stone, bump, and dip they passed rattling the shield and reverberating through Merlin's spine as they hurtled downward. Soon, there was snow everywhere, and Merlin closed his eyes, his ears filled with nothing but the roar of the wind whipping past them and the pulse of his rapidly beating heart.

He only opened them again when they finally slowed down to see that they had reached the bottom, the hill merging directly into a vast open field. It was covered by a thick blanket of snow, which brought them to a quick and surprisingly soft halt.

Not a moment later, Arthur whooped behind him. "Brilliant," he shouted, then shoved at Merlin's back. "Come on, lazybones, get off. We need to get to our horses!"

Dazed, Merlin got to his feet, his knees weak. He stumbled around for a moment, then steadied himself enough to stand straight and look up at the snow-covered hill, where the chimaera was little more than a brown shadow against the cloud-grey sky.

It didn't look to be coming after them.

"That was completely reckless!" Merlin snapped, when he had finally regained his wits, turning on Arthur with a glare. "Did you really just push us down a bloody cliff?"

"It was genius, wasn't it?" Arthur said, grinning. "And it was a slope!"