YES I AM STILL WORKING ON "Ô MERLE BLANC"
This ficlet was written for the Merlin Microfic 2024 Challenge
Theme : Hunger.
Number of words (total) : 500.
It had begun a few months after her father's death. In the wake of the impossible, gigantic void he left behind, along with the overwhelming sense of grief she carried around like the heaviest cloak, laced through the anger and resentment she still felt towards her brother, who didn't even come to his funeral… it had appeared.
This. The feeling.
It was something she couldn't really name, couldn't find the right word for, something that seized her guts, gnawed at her bowels, made her want to hold her stomach and cradle it like a crying infant.
It felt like sickness. Like rage and despair and acridness.
For lack of a better word, she called it the tricephalous hunger.
Because it felt like a need. Felt like an overconsuming want, for what she did not know, but it was something, and something her body craved anyway, despite never being named.
Sometimes, it made her snap. At servants, at Morgana even. The feeling came, twisted her insides, and next thing she knew, she had called Ibb out on her gossiping, reminded Morgana a bit too bluntly that at least she was able to shield herself from the freezing wind. She always regretted it, apologized like she had committed two felonies and a serious crime, and fled as fast as she could afterwards.
Other times, it made her burst into sobs. And those were not the tears she sometimes allowed Morgana, the other maids, or even, one time, Arthur to see. Those were ugly, unrefined, raw and gross, and always left her feeling even worse. Those were the fits that came when she forced the feeling down during the day and was forced to let it explode behind the door of her lonely, lonely home.
But mostly… It made her hungry.
It made her wolf down suppers, wish for the hunt to come back with more rabbits and pheasants, and forget to wipe her mouth of the grease her fingers had painted on her lips.
She barked, but the anger came back. She wailed, but the tears remained. She ate, but the hunger stayed.
And that's how Merlin found out.
He found out hearing her stomach rumble during a council meeting, offering her his own share of a fresh batch of pastries, and watching her immediately devour it behind a pillar.
She expected him to be surprised, amused even, to crack a joke maybe.
But he was not, and did not. He only looked at her with a strange sadness in his eyes, and wordlessly held out another one of the pastries.
And then she remembered. His own temper a few months ago, when they returned from Ealdor with Will's last words on their breaths, his bloodshot eyes, the munchies Arthur laughed about endlessly.
"It'll pass", he promised.
She wanted to believe him. Him, more than the loneliness settling in her bones, him more than the craving.
So, the next time the tricephalous hunger came, she turned to him.
And pass, it did.