A Thousand Years (Merlin)

The challenge for this story is simple - write a story with no dialogue.

Your hair is blond and mine is black.

You are a prince and I a pariah, made an outcast by your own father, and it should stop me but I am drawn to you like a moth to a flame. I cannot stay away, because my own destiny calls me to you, though you are arrogant and boorish when we first meet, for all that I am told you will be the Once and Future King. Most days see me doubtful and I study your profile to try and find the man who will be the one to finally unite the land but, in those early days, I would swear it all a lie.

There are other times when I think I see a glimmer of possibility and it is that which makes me stay. You defy your father to bring me a flower, despite the odds stacked against you—against me—and I think it is the first time I truly believe it possible, that if anyone could restore the magic, it would be you. The first time I think I could accept you as my king, you save a unicorn in an act of selflessness I have never seen you demonstrate and you save Camelot.

I first know I love you when I give you the antidote, despite knowing another life will be sacrificed for yours.

But mine is a quiet love, though fierce, because I know you could never love me back. I am a sorcerer, and you have learnt your father's hate of magic as your own, so I shall stay by your side and fight your battles without you knowing, waiting for the perfect time. And, if that day should never come, I will be grateful to have shared a life with you for it is all I shall ever have. Sometimes, I am hopeful and the confession is on the tip of my tongue, but then you are in love with Gwen and she is crowned as your Queen. I stand by you, though, forever faithful, steadfast through it all, because you are my king and I think I finally understand what it means to love someone more than my own self.

And then I lose you.

And I am forced to watch as our friends grow old and die, as a wealth of new faces rise up and Albion is lost to the world. I wonder when you will come back because maybe Albion has no need for you now but I do and I flounder, lost and alone.

At first, I think every glimpse of golden hair is yours and I run myself ragged looking to see if it really is your face, your eyes, in the crowd. It never is. I dream of the days of old when you would grace me with a smile, when things were simpler, and we were young and naïve without the weight of the world on our shoulders. I long for your touch and to hear your voice once more, even if it were only in the sharp whip crack of anger, because I fear I begin to forget you. They have stories now, of you and I, and the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur.

It seems I am ill-suited to the present so I retreat to a place more familiar, the waters of Avalon where I laid you to rest, and I sit and I wait for you to be brought back to me. Time is on my side and, even were it not, I have loved you for a thousand years.

And I will love you for a thousand more.

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