2025

"Merlin, if I die -"

"If I need a servant in the next life-"

"Don't ask me"

"No man is worth your tears"

"You're certainly not"

"I'm happy to be your servant, until the day I

die."

"Just.... Take it."

It startles me sometimes, how often they'd talked about death. How sure they were that the other would someday die.

And it's poetic that Merlin denied Arthur's mortality so often, while Arthur was always afraid to lose Merlin.

And then Arthur dies,

And Merlin cries

And Merlin's death is nowhere near in reach.

There is no next life.

But by the gods, he wished there was.

From How to Recognise the Trees of the Countryside, the Young Naturalist Series - 1954. This book belonged to my great-grandmother, who may have been a naturalist but wasn't young at the time! She was 60-70 when she bought it and wrote her name on the inside cover. Learning about nature is a lifelong pursuit, take her word for it.

4x06 || 5x05

Our Japanese class found it funny that in common terminology "food" isn't very distinguished from specifically "rice" until it was pointed out to us that in English "meal" is "loose roughly ground grain"

Voice of the Nightingale, 1923, Wladyslaw Starewicz

Thanks @liviapeleia for tagging me, your wip excerpts made me very curious to know what's next :D!

Rules: you will be given a word. Then you share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word!

Tagging @breadkween, @achillesuwu and @futurepastme if you're interested! Your word should you choose to accept it is FISH!

Livia you gave me 'myth.'

M

“Merlin is a-” 

But he knew, he had known for a long time. 

Across from him his servant looked like a startled hare, wide-eyed, gaunt in the dim light. The thing they had not been saying had almost been said. Did Merlin think that just because it was said aloud that suddenly Arthur would change his mind, have him executed? 

Instead he made a show of sagging in relief and Merlin hesitated and then sagged with him. 

Y

“You’re lying. You have something you must do, something that might help me. Maybe it'll turn the tide of this battle.” 

“Arthur-”

“Whatever you're about to say, let it be the truth for once. I need to hear it, finally hear it. How many years has it been? We never spoke about your magic, not once, not really, not like we should have.” 

“My-?” 

“It’s said now, I don't care, not anymore. I can't go into this battle without you, not unless I know it’s for a good cause and not unless I know that you’ll be safe.” 

T

“The spitting, what's that then?”

“To ward off curses! Anyone can do it!”

“The asphodel?” 

“The dead need appeasing!” Merlin threw his hands in the air and then towards Arthur. “You’ve seen the ghost of your father, you've fought the undead!” 

Arthur was throwing his hands too now. “The cabbage leaves? Prophetic dreams have to be sorcerery?!” 

“Yes but not the kind you get from cabbage leaves!” 

H

He is the custodian of our stories, the golden age we brought about together and he’ll be the custodian of the stories after I’m gone, learn them from him, help him to hold them and share them, I think some days he might find them too heavy to carry.

He’s the most powerful and the most precious thing to ever walk this Earth, it would be a tragedy too immense to imagine or bear thinking about if he lost what made him human. But more than that, I ask you to do this, to pass on this message to those who come after you because I love him and I cannot do all of these things myself. 

the horrors persist but my friends write beautiful fanfic

BBC Merlin 1x04 “The Poisoned Chalice”

We deserved more of just Merlin

The little head tilt, the sweet voice and the tiny smile, the moment he asked Arthur:

“Don’t you?”

To Merlin, magic had always been there for everyone to see, to feel.

He is magic, after all.

For all those years, Merlin had believed what he felt was obvious, and that everyone else felt the same way. It was strange to Merlin that Arthur couldn’t understand that the forest, the animals, even the smallest, living in it, were sacred. Because life is sacred. He couldn’t grasp the reason why the knights couldn’t feel that the old Druids’ camp was haunted, and therefore didn’t believe him. He had literally heard death, and cried because of it.

“As if everything is much more than itself.”

The phrase could refer to him too. Merlin is much more than… Him.

That’s what brought his doom. He had never had the chance to truly know himself. He was either a servant, or the sorcerer of a prophecy, or a Dragonlord.

Never just him.

And in this moment we see he had missed being one with nature, breathing in the animals’ lives. He was himself again.

He was vibrating, much like anything else there living with him.

They never went deep into Merlin’s powers, they were just there for Arthur. Merlin had lost sight of what he wanted to do with them, he even forgot he was so powerful he could have overthrown Arthur himself, if he really wished to.

Merlin was the only man alive able to see Avalon.

During the knights and the king’s quest to save Gwen, Merlin met the Queen of a Queendom no one had ever even seen.

He could have killed Morgana (and did try) multiple times, although she was an High Priestess, and simply decided not to, but he had more than just the power to do so.

The Catha, the Druids bowed to him, met him in the woods, called to him.

Merlin created a telepathic connection with Arthur the first days he was in Camelot.

He survived death multiple times.

His immortality forbid him to die.

Merlin hated hunting because he could feel the animals being scared, followed; he had recognised Gwen when Morgana transformed her into a deer; he could hear the magic around him, inside objects and inside people, like a whisper, as if it was nothing; he could call lightning from the sky.

He could stop the time, or at least slow it down.

Every magical being knew him by name only. But he was not a leader, he was just different.

“Is she like me?” “No one is like you, Merlin.”

After everything he had witnessed, even Gaius knew Merlin was special and did nothing to help him understand why he was.

Merlin was the reason Aithusa was born, why Kilgharrah was free, and we were robbed of him getting to really know his powers, both as a Dragonlord and as the most powerful sorcerer to ever walk the earth.

He literally deleted himself just to be at Arthur’ side, and it hurt him. We saw it constantly. He was sad not only because everyone and everything was against him, or because he couldn’t use magic for simple tricks, but because he couldn’t really know what he could do, both as a magical being and as just Merlin.

To study his powers meant treason and death, and Merlin forbid himself to go beyond what he already knew.

His incapacity to understand, his lack of will to know, and his indecision about who he was, literally helped the fall of the great destiny he was a part of.

Merlin’s decisions, whatever he wanted them to happen or not, helped Arthur die.

Merlin’s real enemy was himself.