pawpawpakuTitle: Eternity
Rating: Gen
Pairing/s: None
Character/s: Arthur, Merlin
Summary: Arthur thought the sky was a good metaphor for Merlin.
Warnings: None
Word Count: 349
Prompt: #55 Blue
Author's Notes: A character study. Nothing like I intended with this prompt.
Arthur thought the sky was a good metaphor for Merlin.
It was vast and endless and you couldn't touch it; reach yes, because it appeared to be just an arm's length away sometimes, but it could never be grasped and held in the palm of a hand. It enveloped the land and protected them from the abyss beyond like an infinite guard, one who's stance never changed, never faltered. Magic was the same, especially that of his manservant - bottomless and grande, capable of tearing the earth apart like a storm and rain misery and destruction down like the clouds, crying for the crops and washing away their sorrows. But it could also shine like the jewels at night and burn like the sun - though, it favoured the mellow sapphire more than the blazing amber, a detail Arthur was grateful for in times of peril.
The sea, too, he supposed.
Merlin's magic was as deep as the ocean, as varied as the life dwelling far beneath the surface, and as tempered as the waves pulsing against the shore. Merlin himself was a boat far out to sea; lone, yet content with that, safe with the knowledge that there would always be solid ground to greet him as he sailed. He disappeared from time to time, that much Arthur wasn't surprised about, as if he'd just been picked up by the wind and blown to wherever the world wished to take him. He always came back though, a small bird and its nesting place, but not always in his own time. Arthur could just step out onto the courtyard, a shock of scarlet against the smooth azure, and raise his hand and listen to the air.
If Merlin was the sky and the sea, immortal and brief, loving and heartless, then he was the land that connected them, the centremost force that bound them together.
But he would crumble, one day, and the ocean would swallow him; the sky would lift him; and the magic - the magic would hold him, blue and breathless, and make him a star.