Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a long learned lesson across the kingdom that things that remain invisible are meant to be left unseen; and Camelot has not seen snow in twenty years. It appears however, from time to time as a fantastic element in the stories that the wet nannies tell Arthur by the fireplace as harsh winters tear up his city, rocking in wooden chairs looking out the hails and storms outside the palace window. They sing lullabies about a prince who plays in it, raven haired and rosy cheeked like the spring, and whose touch was warm like the summer; whose eyes were as golden as the leaves of the eves in the fall, but whose heart was as cold as winter without snow.

“When the great war came and his kingdom fell, his heart turned as cold as ice. But the prince loves his people and he loves his kingdom, so the gods took pity, and there in his land, the snow falls, and winter is soft for his kingdom. And his people, they all play in the snow,” they tell him, but send him to bed.

Arthur remembers these stories, as he sees his breath fog up before his own eyes and shivers in his damp cloak. The wind howls around him, brittle branches shatter under his touch. Gaius has long since disappeared behind the bushes. And Arthur has not seen a world so white in his life.

He’s never been to this part of the forest before.

Before him, Gaius kneels before a tall stone, his back turned to him, muttering some ancient language under his breath, swaying with a candle that remains unlit in the wind. A prayer for the dead, Arthur recognizes from a hundred odd deaths he’s been in attendance to in his time, and wonders who’s been buried in the dead forest, so far away from home.

Surrounding the grave, rises four stumps of what definitely would have once been trees, framed by a backdrop of a tower in the distance. Their branches are cut off and broken and are covered in the same white sludge that covers the ground and swallows the noise of the world around it, black scorch marks peek through the ruins of their barks.

It looks like someone threw cotton over a crime scene.

Arthur steps over the shrubbery for a better look, and pinches his itching nose to stop himself from sneezing, and fails. By the gods, it’s cold.

Gaius shouts, skittish for someone who was just praying. He falls on his back. “Who goes there— Oh! Arthur! My boy,” he exclaims, clutching his chest. “You scared me to death, what are you doing out of the castle?”

“I’m following you, what are you doing out of the castle?” Arthur retaliates; feeling petulant. “What is this place?”

Gaius heaves a sigh, a tell-a-tale pinch between his brows taking a turn into that disappointed look that he’s mastered with age. “I should’ve known your father wouldn’t— and- and you must swear to me that you will not tell him that I’ve shown you this. But this, Arthur,” he says; “Is the grave of Yigraine Pendragon,”

“My mother?” Arthur asks, and his boots feel heavy on his feet. He can’t seem to bring himself to move. Gaius averts his gaze. “She’s so far away from home,”

“It wasn’t much of a choice,” Gaius says, kneeling back down where he’d been. “Your father did not wish to have anything touched by magic in his kingdom, when she died,”

“But- but it’s so… bleak. It’s so white. My father speaks of her like she walked around with a basket full of spring in her arms. Why- what happened here? What sort of sorcery killed her that it turned all the trees to ashes… and the whole world so unnaturally white?”

“I’m afraid this is the only natural place in the whole of our united kingdoms, Sire,” Gaius says, a faraway fondness seeping into his voice. “Your mother used to love the snow, back when she was alive,”

“Snow?” Arthur asks, and curiously eyes the thing that he’s stepped in. “Like the ones in the stories?”

“Yes. It always used to snow in the winter. It’s been so long since we’ve had a white solstice to celebrate,” Gaius says. “It only snows here now, after everything. And only on your birthday. The ashes however… it was the king’s choice,”

“My father burned the trees?”

“He burned a lot of things that night,” Gaius says. “And he made many choices. I do not wish to speak of your father’s choices,”

“I deserve to know,”

“And I deserve to keep my head against being beheaded for treason,” Gaius answers. It’s a tone Arthur’s heard on Uther, the urgent, silencing sort that cuts off words before they could ever be strung together into sentences. It carries a finality in them that Arthur’s used to, just not on Gaius. Gaius, who’d made it his life’s mission to answer all of Arthur’s curiosities when he’d been little. If not for the wet gleam of his eyes, Arthur would’ve taken it for anger. For no reason but sentiment, it makes Arthur feel worse.

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to overstep,”

“The king has been very kind, to allow me to remain in the castle, after the purge ended. And I do not wish to be ungrateful, not all of those who knew and learned magic were so lucky to get away with their heads,” Gaius says in return.

“I understand,” Arthur says. It is strange how quickly it escapes him that Gaius, in the heart of Camelot, remains steady and kind to the hands that wait to grab him by the neck and snap it if the chance comes. Whatever curiosity he had of his old friend’s bitterness around the one day he needed him the most dissipates into nothingness.

It seems rather a selfish task, to wish a man to gorge himself on sweets and figs and wine on the wake of the night half his kind burned to death.  Part of him wonders if he even stays by choice. “I’m sorry,” he adds, almost in afterthought.

Gaius shakes his head. Time has taken a toll on his smile. “What for?” he asks. “Biitter old hearts have a hard time forgetting, Arthur. That is not reason for you to carry the guilt of something that you could not have prevented,”

Arthur’s cut off before he can protest. “These grounds once held the magic that balanced the fabric of time itself. Each tree at the corners of this grove was the house of a spirit who brought the seasons to us. There used to be druid festivals here, on the solstice of each season,” Gaius says. “On the day of the first snow, we used to have a festival here; to the spirits that brought the snow to us, and made it so kind,”

“The stories,”

“Exactly, like them,” Gaius says. “Glorious things they were. Haven’t seen one of those in twenty years. I miss it sometimes, you see? So I make my way up here,”

“I can’t believe I’ve never been here before,” Arthur says, catching a speck of white that fluttered from the skies. “I’d always thought she lay in the crypts,”

“She would’ve loathed it there, to be so crammed and cold,” Gaius chuckles. “She was never one for the indoors,”

Arthur hums, fidgeting. He feels seven again, caught in a place he should not be. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had been such an open topic, such a gentle topic. His father’s stories of her were always short, and led to the same ending of the evils of magic, and how she’s now touched by magic and was far out of reach, and he could not bear to see the atrocities done to her, and would die than have the same fate befall his kingdom. Arthur had always thought her crypt to be bloody and wilted, unvisited and lonely. This, all this space, all this fondness, the white blanketed on the marble slab that’s been slid over her resting place; it almost seems kind. Gaius looks at him. He’d longed to visit his mother for so long.

“Will you not greet your mother, since you’ve come all the way here?” he asks.

Arthur gulps, suddenly reminded of all the times he’d been told that she never even got to hold him as her baby. “I do not think she would know me, even if I did,”

Gaius raises a brow. “Then I suggest you introduce yourself,”

What a thought. Arthur scoffs to himself. But in hindsight, what were birthdays for, but for children to meet their mothers, and for mothers to meet their child?

He kneels beside Gaius, the snow soft and fragile, cracking open spots in the ground as if to let him have a moment closer to his mother who lay beneath it, and seeps through his trousers like tears, its cold touch seeping and sinking into his knees. He brushes off the snow from her grave and sees runes carved into it; and recoils. “That—”

“Let’s just say that when your mother died, it wasn’t your father who built her a grave, but the very druids that he’d ordered to be burned alive,” Gaius says.

“But—”

“She loved magic, Arthur. Magic loved her in return,”

“My father’s always said she wanted the best for our kingdom,”

“She would weep, if she saw it now,”

Arthur’s sure it’s an exaggeration; for it seems unfathomable that someone who loved magic so much married a man who loathed it with his whole being. It seems unimaginable, a Camelot where magic and them lived in harmony, Almost as impossible as having snowfall in the winter. But here is, and here are the runes, and here is snow.

Another lesson that’s hard learned and never forgotten. In a world full of magic, though most unwelcome, there was always an “improbable”. There was never “impossible”.

Arthur shares a cup of wine with Gaius at his mother’s side that afternoon, getting used to the cold that comfortingly settles beneath his skin and the stillness of the fallen snow. He’s just begun to fall in love with the tranquility of its silence when the wind howls around them, loud and piercing, and the clouds roll in. The cold begins to bite.

This is the winter that Arthur knows.

“This isn’t right,” Gaius says, scrambling to his feet as the wind sweeps the snow in the hurry of a child chucking away their wooden horse and building blocks at the approaching footsteps of their father. The snow rises, specks and spatters of white dust, iridescent in the starlight and joins the chaos of dead leaves and broken branches. It lifts a veil off the ground, scorched and scratched, that hid away beneath the soft white. “We need to get out of here, come, come,”

And as howl turns to screech, Gaius leads Arthur towards the tower that stood across his mother’s grave, a colossal column of crumbling stone torn into by the sheer might of wiry claws of the ivy that crawls up its sides. Moving against the wind, cold and damp, his clothes sticking to his chest; Arthur fears his ears might just burst.

The screeching grows louder, it’s the damning kind of scream and its then that Arthur realizes that it’s not the wind but a man screaming, screaming in broken pain, the kind whose noise is larger than the fragile things that accommodate it, and tears it to shreds. It’s the scream that is followed by the taste of  metal, and that rattles him to the bone.

It’s the exact kind of scream he’s learned to run towards.

He draws his sword.

They are met, of all things, with what looks like a scarecrow, with a sock puppet’s head. It’s an abomination of a sight. A mismatch of human and machine, wood and rags, messy stitches and black buttons sewn in the place of eyes and cries golden tears, arms splayed out and feet stumbling. Its mouth sewn shut in haphazard jagged bits of string holding it together. The thing stumbles again, and collapses in a heap before his feet. Gaius immediately kneels with it.

The wind throws its tantrum outside the tower. No one could tell there ever was snow here, once.

The last echoes of the scream vanish, swallowed by the walls. Something loud clatters in the distance.

“Stay here, I’ll see what it is,”

“Arthur—”

But Arthur’s already started down the hallway.

 ❄❄❄

At the end of the hallway is a lab, or a sad attempt of one, metal buckets placed under leaking ceilings and a haphazard mess of tools and papers strewn all over the tables, and on the floor, right next to the dead body of its owner. There’s a light blue sheen over the body, the eyes bulging out, blood crusted around the rim. The skin has split, like the flesh and bones and the organs inside expanded and broke free through it. The flesh remains intact. There’s blood everywhere, frothing at the dead man’s mouth, a red pool surrounding him, reaching its stringy fingers to seep into his life’s work and save itself there.

“Gaius!!” Arthur calls, salvaging what he could of the bloodsoaked papers, the diagrams, the notes blotched and ruined, and vaguely resembling the thing that had come running to them outside.

Gaius comes rushing, robes and makeshift wrappings in hand. “What– oh,” he says, coming to a halt at the doorway. The thing peeks in with him, and immediately crumples into golden tears again. “Oh dear heavens,”

“Must be his creator,” Arthur mutters, flicking through the papers written in a language he had seen a hundred times before but still could not understand. “Maybe it was his own sorcery that killed him,”

“It couldn’t be,” Gaius says, reaching for the papers. “Animating spells are some of the safest practices of sorcery, not unless—” he pauses. Stumbles back a step. His head whips to the thing that’s crying in the corner. “Not unless he was trying to bring him to- we need to take this humanoid back with us,” Gaius says, immediately picking at the things that were scattered on the desk. The pieces of wood, the cogs and wheels, a heavy looking chest which Gaius pulls out from beneath the table. “Opem this,” he says, slamming the papers onto the table. “Keys, there should be keys,”

“You’re joking,”

“I’m afraid not, this- this could be groundbreaking,” with the earnestness of someone who’d taken leave of his senses. “If my suspicions are correct, he was trying to bring the seasons back to life,”

Arthur watches Gaius move around faster than he’s ever seen an old man move, cluttering around a dead man’s table to find a key to bring back seasons, and stares at the key ring that lies in the blood, attached deftly to the man’s belt. This is sorcery; Arthur knows this much, for all things that feel nonsensical about their whole situation. It’s the very thing his kingdom tries to eradicate; for it makes disasters and takes lives and brings wonderful things to horrible ends. If anything, he must burn this man, his papers and this place to the ground, set it all on fire with the strange creature that he’s created in the name of magic, whatever his purpose might have been. Erase it all off the face of this world so no one could be touched by it, and no one would be hurt.

But then there’s the snow.  And his mother, with whom it left.

He picks up the keys, and unlocks the box, to the sight of jars and jars of body parts, an eye here, two ears there, preserved in some gharrish yellow liquid that smelled of dead rats.  A letter, tucked in its corner, more pieces of wood. Gaius pours over the letter as if it held all the secrets of the universe. He looks at the humanoid that sits curled up against the far wall of the  room, golden trails down the sides of its makeshift face and back at it.

“He restored every significant piece of natural magic that was destroyed in the purge,” Gaius declares in disbelief. “He died before he could finish it,”

Arthur finds himself unable to tear his eyes away from the corpse that stares at him in complete silence, all its secrets and all its vision petrified in one horrific consequence of a fatality caused by someone, or something completely unknown. Arthur shakes his head.

“No, He was killed,”

 ❄❄❄

On Restoration, Magic and Vessels

What is restoration? Replacement, yes, but also, recreation. Think of the Argo, on which Jason set sail in all those myths. A ship which was restored bit by bit as it was worn and destroyed, until one day it returned, but it was not the same ship that set out. Not in the collection of its parts at least. In essence, it was Jason’s ship, and his ship was the Argo. But completely new, completely, replicated. But we prefer restoration, not recreation, when that’s essentially what we do when we take the parts of something destroyed and put it back together. We like the familiarity of restoration, fear “creation” because to create is to make something happen that never truly was before. The very thought scares us. So much that we’d much rather “restore” something and call it “restored” and conveniently stay silent of the fact that it is never going to be the same.

Now will the seasonal grove be restored, now that it’s been destroyed? Naturally, the trees would. But not its magic. The thing about magic is it is energy. Now energy can never be restored because it never truly runs out. It simply changes form, and now it remains, after the Pendragon’s flames, dissipated, scattered masses of it restless and in motion. It’s uncontained and in pain and it’s reckless. It’s causing tears in the very fabrics of nature. But the trees will take a hundred more years to be restored. And another tree could be burned, and an object can fall into the wrong hands. And in the wrong hands, magic could turn into the very thing Uther Pendragon claims it to be. A weapon.

So a vessel to harness the seasons themselves. One which can’t be held captive without hope, which can’t be stolen, which won’t be idle in the face of fire. A man. One shaped and built out of magic. One within whom the spirits of nature themselves rest their energy. A means through which magic can be contained and harnessed, once and for all.

 ❄❄❄

Moonlight falls upon them like a completely unnecessary spotlight as they make their return to the castle, their bags a lot heavier than it had been when they set out, and their numbers greater. The kingdom that’s usually asleep roars with life, screams of children and the pipes of musicians creating an ugly clash in the cold howling wind; the rain prickling into his skin like little shards of ice free falling from the sky.

One thing about Camelot, even at the mouth of death, even in the worst of winters,  it will never fail to celebrate its festivals and throw its lavish parties.

Behind them, they leave behind a grave that’s been hidden from the eyes of a whole kingdom, and a new grave for a man who’d tried to fix a crime.

“I think we could finish what he started,” Gaius had told him, and hadn’t waited for an answer as he began stuffing notes and papers and notebooks into his own carry-on. “We could bring snow back into Camelot, if we finish what he had successfully begun,”

“How do we know—?”

“Did you not sit in the snow by your mother’s side just moments ago?” Gaius had taunted. “Have I not experienced the snow none of Camelot has in the last twenty years?”

There hadn’t been a way to refuse. The snow had been a lot kinder than the hail ever was.

“I will take these to the castle, and get them to the tower as quickly as possible,” Gaius had promised. “I will open the entrance from the west wing,”

And so  the prince of the kingdom wafts through the shadows like a fugitive.

Arthur’s aware that he’s an expected man in the castle, and he’s also aware of the scolding that’s waiting around the corner when he slips in through the back door of the castle. About how he’s “the man of the hour” and “there have been people waiting to celebrate you” when really, all that happens in those banquets was a whole lot of drinking, and a whole lot of courtiers trying to kiss the king’s royal behind by singing praises of his heir to his face, and a night that withers away to yet another speech on how proud Arthur’s mother would have been, had she been alive to see the glory they’d built their kingdom to, and the principles it stands on. Safe, and far away from the crutches of sorcery.

Principles which Arthur’s now learned his mother would have wept at, had she borne witness to them.

Arthur also learns that sneaking in is quite a lot more difficult when one isn’t wearing a cloak; his own having been lent to cover the rag doll, scarecrow looking thing that crept behind him in the shadows. People turn their heads, some wave, some try to speak. The journey’s quite an odd mix of excuses and pleasantries.

Circling round the tunnels that led up to the west wing of the palace, he prays Gaius would have managed to open the physician’s tower in time.

They are so close to the stairway when they run head first into the king. Arthur’s arm shoots out to shield the creature behind him. “Father!” he yells, stumbling a few steps back. “I expected you would be at the banquet,”

“I would have expected you to have been in attendance yourself. The celebrations began ages ago,” his father snaps. “Where have you been? Do you know how bad this makes me look before our dignitaries?”

“Um—”

“And who’s that with you?”

“Uh-” Arthur sputters. Lying has never been his strong suit. “Um- I heard reports of a violent attack off at the east side of the forest so- I- went to investigate! This man, he was attacked, severely, I wanted to take him to Gaius,”

“There is a time and place for Chivalry,” Uther sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But I suspect the attack was horrible, if you’ve got to cover his whole face with.. This rag,”

A little story of conquest always did the trick.

“Yes! Yes, cut up, very badly I could show you…”

“Not necessary,” The king says.  “Clean up and get yourself to the banquet hall immediately. I will not face the humiliation of my son refusing to be in attendance on the celebration of his own birth,”

Arthur smiles painfully through gritted teeth. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, and takes off up the stairs, the humanoid creature stumbling behind him.

Outside the window of the physician’s tower, Camelot welcomes the snow for the first time in twenty years.

 ❄❄❄

Arthur’s seven when he sees his nanny for the last time, a cold day in November while the storm and hail battered the kingdom. He makes her tell the story of the snow prince again, just to keep her there a little longer, asks her a million questions she’s answered before while his father stands outside and waits his turn to tell him how he’s grown, and how it is now time to train to be king.

“You can’t go until you answer all my questions,” Arthur says, hanging onto the edge of her sleeve. The woman’s kind, sitting there, indulging him. She’s got tears in her eyes as she brushes away his hair from his forehead. “You never told me why we don’t have snow over here,”

“Here? In Camelot?” she asks. “I think I have,”

“No you haven’t,” Arthur pouts. “You always say that the snow comes because the snow prince loves his people and his kingdom,”

“Yes I did,”

“You said there was snow here once. But there’s no snow now,”

“There’s no snow now,” She agrees. “And the winter is cold and harsh, just like it’s meant to be. And maybe it’ll snow again, when we learn some repentance for the wrongs we’ve done and show some mercy to the ones we’ve hurt. But the moral of the story is, the kinder you are, the happier the people around you will be. People suffer when there’s no kindness in this world. Don’t you ever forget that,”

“Do you think we’ll ever get snow?”

“I don’t know, little one,” she sighs. “I wish I could tell you it will,”

Arthur recalls pouting. What kind of a prince would ever let his people suffer, just because he could. Why would the innocent suffer, just because he was personally wronged. “I would make it snow all winter if I were the snow prince,”

The woman smiles. “Then maybe all hope is not lost for Camelot just yet,”

Arthur thinks about her stories as he sits at the high table now distractedly following the speckles of white that fall outside the window. The kingdom has taken it for a miracle. His father has taken it for politics. “Camelot,” he thunders; while Gaius sits in his tower, with magic itself, at the very heart of their kingdom. “Is now truly cleansed from the grasps of those who attempt to corrupt its heart,”

He partakes in the toast, but his goblet remains full.

He doesn’t think much about the celebrations, his mind wandering past the dining hall and into the tower. The thing. The papers. He thinks about how he brought snow with him, about he thinks about damage. He thinks about the dead man in the woods, buried next to his mother. For the first time in twenty years, he thinks about the scale of their hunt against sorcery, so severe that it altered nature itself- all for a king who lost his queen to childbirth. For the first time, his father’s boasting feels like a crime and not a duty.

And really, is this the Camelot he wants to build? Arthur doesn’t think it is.

His father pays him no mind for the rest of the night, perfectly satisfied that there is a prince to be shown off in place, and he’s not likened to a sulking sloth once as he pushes his food around without an appetite. He waves over a maid. “Where is the Lady Morgana? Would you happen to know?” he asks.

“I am sorry sire but I do not have the slightest,” the woman says, bowing deeply. “She left in search of a tonic in the early hours of the celebration, before my lord’s arrival,”

Arthur swears he feels his heart stop. “You mean she went to the physician’s chambers?”

“Yes my lord. I hear Gaius is out however, Guinevere said the lady would be staying until he arrived,”

“Right,” Arthur says, scrambling to his feet, grabbing the sword he had let idly clutter on his table. “Thank you, you’ve been very- helpful. I-,” he says, making it a point to push his chair back in. he will not be returning to the feast tonight. “I am going to- if my father asks let him know that I too have retired to my chambers,”

And he bolts out of the hall.  This cannot go out of hand.  However, running, Arthur finds, gets him nothing. Because in Gaius’s workshop, pouring over pages upon pages that have been spread across every possible tabletop, is Morgana. Morgana who spins around with a nasty grin the moment he opens the door. “There you are, Arthur,”

“Morgana,” Arthur greets, attempting the slightest bit of composure. “Couldn’t make it to my feast. I am insulted,”

“Please if I wanted to see you being paraded I would go to every other celebration in Camelot,” she huffs. “Oh wait, I do,”

“It must be quite disappointing to be so unimportant,”

“Not quite unimportant when I could just tell the king what his son gets up to while he’s away on business,” she says, leaning against the table. “Quite the discovery you’ve made, the snow prince himself,”

“That story’s bullshit and you know it. This… thing, is some sort of contraption this sorcerer built,” Arthur rolls his eyes. “And you’re way too invested in this to consider tattling,”

Morgana winks. She goes back to looking at blood soaked papers. “I’m surprised you want to help magic after all this time,” she says. “You are, after all, Uther Pendragon’s son,”

Arthur purses his lips. “This isn’t about magic. It’s about my people,” he says, approaching her. “If we restore the seasons… then nature would not be so hard on them in trying times,”

“You gave the man a proper burial I heard,” she says.

“I…” Arthur sighs. “He died attempting to do a service. He deserved the dignity of a proper burial,”

“I’m glad you thought so,” Morgana says, a hand on his shoulder. It’s nice. Her approval; when she’s been the sole defender of sorcery in Camelot for quite some time. It makes him feel like he’s done something right. “But I can’t help but wonder,” she says. “This- humanoid creature… Gaius says it’s concentrated magic. What happens if this operation goes wrong?”

“I know,” Arthur says. His mind reels to the man who’d died trying to operate it in the first place. The petrified look in his eyes. The scream that had shattered the snow and had raged a storm. “I hope he figures it out soon,”

 ❄❄❄

Snow falls steadily outside the window, and Arthur and Morgana burn the midnight candle arranging papers. There’s a lot missing, and a lot more lost to blotted ink ruined by water and blood. The pages are numbered, thank god for that; but all of it seems to be observations rather than instructions. By the time Gaius emerges from the workshop, Arthur’s back and his eyes hurt from the long, tedious task of staying in the same wretched position.

“I believe I have found a successful answer,” Gaius announces, a weary smile on his face. “Anesthesia,”

“Are you—”

“It worked out quite well while I attached the rest of his parts,” Gaius says, rummaging through the neatly stacked piles of paper to get to some box that lay hidden underneath it. The papers go flying; a night’s work, fully gone to waste. “It was a purely accidental rather simple find, truly. I simply induced him with a bit of the anesthetics which we put in sleeping tonics. Since he is, for all reasonable reasons, alive- my good intuition believed that it would be rather painful when someone is trying to sew in your limbs, and carve your face,”

Arthur gapes. It could not be that simple. “But- but- all this time- then what the hell--“

Morgana nods in frantic agreement. “There is absolutely zero mention of an anesthetic in these notes,”

“Perhaps he did not have the facilities to perform his acts like this, sire,” Gaius says. “After all, he did live in the middle of a forbidden part of the forest. I presume, the screaming we heard in the forest might have been because these procedures were done without these remedies,”

“But all these papers- these- notes-“

“What can I say my lord, sometimes miracles are man made,” Gaius shrugs. “Now if you could help me find the sewing scissors that I am sure I kept here somewhere,  we can undo the stitches of his mouth,”

“Are we sure this is safe?” Arthur questions, but follows Gaius all the same. He remembers the look on the dead man’s face. He remembers blood. And the reasonable part of him imagines that surely if the man who tried and gave life to magic in itself died in the pursuit of its completion, then they, who had stumbled upon it in the forest in a moment of disaster could not possibly imagine to get away unscathed. 

He relies on his sword for safety as he watches with horrifying fascination as Gaius sets to work on the now unconscious humanoid, cutting stitches with a pen knife, a small stack of speculative papers scattered before him. 

The notes call the humanoid a summation of parts and not a whole. 

The final stitch is cut. 

The noise is deafening.

Like all other humans that are born to this world, the first thing the humanoid does once he awakens, is cry. A guttural, painful screech, his hands clawing at the bandages over his eyes and the welts and staples on his limbs.  Gaius is quick to run to his side, a potion in his hands. “Drink this,.” he says, guiding his hands towards his mouth. “It’ll help with the pain. Drink,” he says. He guides him through all his motions, holds his chin, tilts his head back, tips the liquid into his newly formed mouth. “We mustn’t take off the blindfold, the magic might project upon sight,”

“Heavens above,” Morgana mutters, hands covering her mouth. It’s not often that Arthur agrees with her but it’s so damned difficult to look past the severity of the moment. 

They’ve just birthed a personification of magic, in the very heart of Camelot. 

Gaius steps back, joining their fascinated silence. “I think we must pay the druids a visit,”

 ❄❄❄

Arthur had hoped that those who practice magic would rejoice at seeing magic returned to them, fully preserved and untouchable by the crude ways of man. He takes the humanoid with him like it’s a peace offering. The plan is simple. Give them the papers. Hand them the humanoid to keep it in their care for the sake of preserving natural order. Promise them a kinder Camelot, perhaps repent for his own father’s sins. Come home to a white winter. Gaius too, is optimistic. What better way to make amends than to restore what has been destroyed?

He’s admittedly a little surprised when the leader of the Druids takes one look at the humanoid they’d presented to them and says “You must destroy it,”

“I don’t understand,” Arthur says. “Winter has been brought back, your magic is preserved,”

“Our magic, would have adapted, sire,” The man corrects sternly. “Ours is the way of nature. And nature, when disturbed, adapts. We warned Claudius when he began that this would not bring him the satisfaction he sought, if he died trying, this too, should have followed him to the land of the dead,”

“The pages speak of a cup of life,”

“It demands a price,” he says, patience thinning away from his voice. “A life cannot be imposed on a thing without a life being taken in return. That is the fundamental of nature,”

“Is there no other way?” Arthur asks. “If what was destroyed can be restored—”

“But it can’t!” the man shouts. 

“I think there is a chance—”

“Do you know what your father did, Prince Arthur?” he asks, brushing himself off. “He slaughtered my people in masses. He burned our groves, hung our children, killed out priests and our animals in the name of vengeance,” he says. “He threw our queen’s body, the very same queen who birthed you to our feet and accused us of murder when we had warned him against manipulating nature like this for the sake of an heir because nature in itself demands a price. He didn’t heed our warning, and punished us to watch while anyone who knew anything or had anything to do with magic burn alive,”

This is not the purge Arthur knew of. This is not the way his mother had died in all the stories he’d heard. He thinks back to the bitterness in Gaius’s face when he’d  told him about his mother’s death. 

“And I am telling you as I did him all those years ago, nature should not be manipulated like this. We cannot give human life to this humanoid creature by magic. And we cannot keep it because anyone who has magic at their hands dies horrible deaths and that is the nature of our reality,” he says. “So do not speak of chances, when the consequences are not yours to face and too severe for the rest of us to afford,”

“So what? You want me to kill it?”

The man sighs. “I believe that magic and your kingdom can reconcile in other ways than bringing about a mutation to life that would threaten both you and us by being conceived. If you wish to atone your father’s sins, I believe offering peace and safety is a far better way to do it. Not this. So yes, unless you can guarantee that once you take off its blindfold and it sees the world it does not destroy both the magic and the mundane that caused it harm, I want is gone,” he says. “But I doubt a thing with winter for a heart would see the state of its kind and take to it with love,”

Arthur blinks, he has never been an idealist; now face to face with a choice of what is and what could be. This cannot be the resolution of it. Now that he’s seen the gentleness of snow, now that a part of his mother’s spirit lives among them, cool comfort in an otherwise harsh time, he cannot let go. He will not. 

He can’t bear to watch the hope that had sparked behind Gaius’s old exhausted eyes flicker out just out of a misery of today when there is a tomorrow. A tomorrow where he could be the one to change what has gone wrong in this version of reality. And maybe the seven year old who had once been the idealist that had been smothered down for war and politics had not in fact died all together. 

“Then I am sorry, and I hope I can build a safer Camelot for you upon ascending to the throne,” he bows to the Druid leader. “I bid you a good day,”

“You must understand that I refuse you this for the sake of my people,” the man says.

“I don’t blame you,” Arthur says. “When I am king, I hope we can meet under better circumstances,”

“We will be at your disposal,” he promises. “Will you destroy it then?”

Arthur watches the humanoid creature, sitting far away with the horses where he’d left him, poking at the ground with a stick, repeated, continuous motions as though he might be able to dig a hole big enough to plant himself there and go back to his roots. 

“I don’t know,” Arthur says. 

“Then I wish you good luck, pray you will choose wisely,” The druid says. 

 ❄❄❄

There is no question that destroying the cause of Camelot’s kindest winter in the last two decades is far from an option. But Arthur lurks in the thoughts of danger as he rides home. A heart made of winter, he’s heard that before. And as twisted as it is that a wet nanny’s tale would prophesize the abomination that was this man’s creation, he reminds himself that the snow prince was kind. He also remembers that the snow was taken away because the prince was hurt. 

Perhaps healing was the way to restore it back to the way it was. 

“Can you not speak?” he asks the thing, who’s obediently kept himself from falling while Arthur guided him through the woods. “Not a word?”

For a moment, there is silence.

“Hurts,” comes the answer. 

“Then we will get you to Gaius. He has a way with aches and pains,” he resolves. “In the meantime, allow me to introduce myself,”

“Arthur,”

Arthur halts. “How did you know that?”

“Before,”

“You hear us speaking?”

“Yes,” says the thing. Arthur purses his lips. 

“So you heard the Druids too?” he wonders aloud; bringing himself to trot side by side with it. “What they said, is it true? Will you destroy us?”

The thing says nothing. And Arthur doesn’t know what else he expected. The warnings are far too heavy to ignore, his kingdom and his people at stake, his mother’s memory on the other side of the bargain. He’d not once had doubt in the destruction of magic and all things that came with it. It is the sort of hesitation one grows out of after the third raid and the sight of people begging for his mercy becomes a numbing sight. Innocent people. He thinks now. 

What are the monsters they’ve created themselves into?

His sword hangs at his hip with the weight of responsibility. He does not come from a kingdom where you can afford to be an idealist. And this thing, this person, being alive and kind, and forgiving past the violence that has been committed on the summation of all of its parts, is nothing but an ideal. 

“Will you destroy me?” the thing asks. 

“No,” Arthur says. “I think we’ve destroyed each other enough,”

 ❄❄❄

On the nature of Life and Love

There are many ways to bring life to this world. Some natural, some magical. But what is magical, about the cup of life, about the spell in the treasure box, about the immortality of the fireborn phoenix but that the life and spirit of those were willed into existence. We believe our lives our worth living, so we shall live. We make believe that our spouses and our friends and our enemies love us, so we love. We believe in safety and therefore feel no fear the same way we pretend to be unaware of the living world until sleep consumes us. The druids are simple in their magic, and believe in the higher power that gives them such powers, irrespective of the fact that it is their belief in that higher power that brings it to existence in the first place. 

The power of the collective will is distilled in the cup of life. So it is able to bring life. We believe that to take one must pay a price. Therefore an eye for an eye, a heart for a heart, a life for a life. They believe their gods are vengeful and will take revenge if they were to become tangible at a point in time. They refuse me the belief that they put in the cup of life. So perhaps, if magic is in fact, make believe, perhaps I could believe enough, and will the natural course of this world into existence, and if a price is to be paid for that life, perhaps the hundreds who have died in the name of magic would atone for the life that we grant this vessel. 

 ❄❄❄

“You didn’t tell me my father left her bare on the forest floor in the middle of the purge,” Arthur says, barging into the physician’s chambers. The humanoid stumbles in tow, meek and silent as it had been since the crying had stopped. Gaius looks up from the work table, Morgana with him absorbed into the papers as if they could be of any use. He has the gall to look ashamed, averting his eyes. 

“It was not my truth to tell,” he says. “I have been sworn to secrecy, my lord. That is the exchange of my life,”

“Then the druids?”

“They built her tomb, alongside the rest of their people that died,” he affirms, and Arthur considers not for the first time that day, of committing patricide. It is all the confirmation he needs to decide that he will keep this creature in his care until the day arrives that it is safe. 

“They don’t want to grant him life,” he says, collapsing onto a chair. 

“Their fear is reasonable. This is a lot of unregulated magic,” Gaius says. 

Morgana frowns. “I don’t understand, this is their people. A cumulation of their people and their sacred grounds that died—”

“Maybe they are afraid that all that was destroyed will come back with a bite for vengeance,” Gaius says. “But as long as we keep Emrys stable… then nature should run its course,”

“I’m sorry, Emrys?” Arthur questions. 

“Oh! This guy had given him a name, it’s in the pages,” Morgana says, waving a paper in front of Arthur’s face. “It means immortal. Quite fitting don’t you think?”

“...Right, so Emrys,” Arthur says, tests out the word on his mouth and feels incredibly wrong. “How do we keep him contained?”

“Inhibition,” Gaius says. “We must keep him idle. For instance, if we keep his eyes shut, or like his master did, his mouth sewn…”

“That’s just cruel,”

“I agree,”

“Then our best option was to take him far away from here,” Gaius says. “And since the Druids refuse patronage, it’s in Emrys’s best interests that he is not exposed to things that would cause his magic to so to speak, go haywire,”

“Do you think it was his magic that killed his master?”

“It is possible,” Gaius says. Arthur turns to Emrys; magic personified, as doubt sets in. “We can’t know for sure,”

 ❄❄❄

Outside the physician’s chambers the kingdom prepares for a festival that they had not celebrated since the death of their queen. The snow festival, Arthur’s and Morgana’s first, litters the streets in muted colors and lights, children playing in the thin blankets of snow on the streets and shaking off snow from trees, snow fights, and pleased pink blushes on the faces of the people who thrive in the winter than suffer from it. The winter fruits are abundant, sweetness is thick in the air. There’s a feast on every street and a dance in every corner. 

Across the kingdom, they are telling the story of the snow prince, and mothers gesture to the falling snow when they tell their children that “the snow prince was a kind prince,”

The snow prince of their stories remains stashed in Arthur’s chambers. Gaius is weary of their collective decision to keep him in the palace while he heals from his parts being put together. He’d not let Emrys out of the physician’s chambers a whole week while he chanted spells and performed medical miracles the kingdom had banned from use, healing spells for scar tissues that slowly replaced the stitches of Emrys’s limbs, potions that soothed his aches and soreness, salve that reduced inflammation, a blend of magic and medicine that made him look fat more human than he was, almost to a believable degree, save for the red strip of cloth that was tied around his eyes. Emrys is more talkative with Morgana, a thing that she takes pride in; and quietly lingers around Arthur as if he can see secrets Arthur himself is unaware that he is hiding. In the end, Gaius only lets Arthur have his way on the promise that he will keep Emrys’s eyes covered so he would not be exposed to the sights of what the outside world is. Looking out the window of Gaius’s high towers and seeing nothing but happiness, Arthur can’t help but wonder what is there, right then, in that moment to be concealed. 

The chopping block stares at him out of the corner of his eye. And suddenly, Arthur’s reminded. Then his father storms the physician’s chambers and Arthur remembers once more. “I have seen neither of you involved in your duties,” He thunders, an accusing look thrown at both him and Morgana, who had been too preoccupied with Emrys, who had begun showing them small displays of magic in their leisure. Little globs of light, figures of smoke, small worlds willed into existence without the accompaniment of the usual tattle tale flash of gold in his eyes that remain covered. “I will not have this insolence continue. You are no longer children,”

“Apologies my lord,” Gaius cuts in. “I was in need of assistance with a particularly difficult patient,”

“Then you must call upon assistance, not the Royal house,” the king snaps. “I want both of you to show your faces at festivities in the next hour or god save me, I will have you both thrown into the dungeons,”

“Yes sire,”

“Yes father,”

It is fundamentally immaterial that teaching Emrys the art of speech is but the least of what should be Arthur’s concerns; but getting him to speak is by far the most intriguing of the work in his roster. A speaking magic might be an honest magic, and Arthur, knowing the state of the purge upon all these revelations, intends to learn. But there is also safety circling in his mind. He is actively committing a crime deemed to be worse than high treason. And Gaius, if anyone would befall a terrible fate would face the worst. He knows his father’s idea of mercy. 

Arthur’s quick to turn the moment the door closes behind the king, apology ready on his mouth. Gaius waves him off. “You have been spending far too much time away from your work, that much is true,” he says. “And I doubt the king does not recognize Emrys here, he will grow suspicious if he catches a whiff that you abandon your duties to spend your time here, with him,”

“But—”

“There is nothing you can do to help now. Healing is his job, and assisting him is mine. You must be careful,” Gaius says. “Now run along, this kingdom would loathe its leaders if they spend more time in the dungeons than in court,”

Arthur keeps his head down as he slips into place next to his father for no purpose but his own, only to keep his father’s attention away from prying into the whereabouts and how-abouts he spent his time. “I lost track of time, father. I am sorry,” he says. Well rehearsed. Well used.

“You cannot afford these types of silly mistakes anymore,”

Another line. Well rehearsed. Well used. 

“I understand. It won’t happen again,”

And this is where it generally ends. 

“This has to do with the man you had brought into the castle a few days ago?”

Arthur’s blood runs cold. Across him, Morgana shakes her head. He clears his throat. “No, actually—”

“Do not lie to me Arthur I see him scurrying around after you in the halls. You are not a physician’s assistant. If his eyes need healing, he may stay in the physician’s chambers, or should be returned to his family. I do not know what fascinations you might have with him but I assure you, this kingdom wants none of it,”

Rich words, for a man celebrating the gifts given to them by the very thing he wishes to banish. 

“We must be wary, in these times Arthur,” his father continues, his voice taking a turn into something serious. Arthur’s nails sink into the arm rests of his seat. “This snow is abrupt. Our kingdom has not seen a white winter in two decades.  I suspect this boy, though you might have brought him in good faith, might be of danger,”

“Perhaps nature was kind to us,” He says through gritted teeth. “Maybe we should enjoy what we have. Maybe there isn’t a cause to be paranoid,”

“Vigilance is an attribute of a king, son,” His father says. “And I am reminded that you are still a boy, unfit to be a king,”

 ❄❄❄

Upon the height of the night and the music ebbs away into the distance of the crowd, Morgana finds him, and points to the tower where Arthur had left Emrys behind. At them, Emrys smiles from the balcony, and waves. His blindfold is out of sight. It is as if they reach a collective conclusion, then and there. “We can’t keep Emrys here,”

 ❄❄❄

On Preservation and Decay

Preservation. A concept that we’ve been taken with for the majority of our existence. To preserve means longevity, it means sustenance, continuation, consistency. All these things. We all are taken with the idea of preservation, so taken that alas, we forget the simplest of facts, that preservation also means memory. Like the preservation of one’s spirit, as far as legacy runs past one’s death, and fondness or fear surrounds the utterance of one’s name. Preservation is in existence. It is in essence, a fragment of one’s mind, manifested in the mind, projected in many ways. 

The thing with preservation though, the riddle that no one of the greats who’ve tried and come close have managed to make of in the end, is that preservation does not nullify decay. All things, at the end of the line, expire. Leaves die and fall, bodies hidden under tombs decompose, somewhere, the last person who knows the name of the greatest king who’s ever lived a century or two ago, dies, and memory goes with him. 

Preserve as one might, but in the end, we all go back to where we came from. 

 ❄❄❄

Arthur’s plagued by visions of disaster as he runs through the commotion of fireworks and laughter, straight back into the castle, Morgana at his tail. He does not humor his father’s questioning glance in his direction, nor the angry call of his name after him. Emrys must be kept away from danger, or winter will be harsh again. 

“Tell Gaius we need a hiding place,” he tells Morgana, and throws open the doors to his room. 

And across him, a man. Black haired, blue eyed, smiling like he’s gotten the first taste of happiness. “Arthur, I presume,”

“Yes,” Arthur says, noting the red fabric that now hung loosely around his neck, the aesthetics of which he could have appreciated had his thoughts not been consumed by how it ironically resembled the rope of a noose, or the spill of blood of a decapitated head. He wonders if Merlin bleeds. 

“You look different than you sound,” Emrys comments. “You sound older,”

It’s silly, really. The stories that Arthur has told him, mimicking wet nannies in hopes to get him to understand the stories of the world. About how people are afraid, about how kindness binds them together, about friends, about growing up, about family. About himself, his own thoughts, while a silent Emrys observed and listened. He’s shared bits and parts of himself and the Camelot he fantasizes of, in the quiet of a mute and non-judgmental subject. 

It has come to this, then.

“Sorry to disappoint?” Arthur questions. 

“Oh not at all, I quite like the way you look,” Emrys says, throws it out there like it's some casual thing to say, and Arthur’s reminded that the man has a filter of a child; which is to say, one which is non-existence. Emrys hasn’t learned hesitance, or doubt, or subtlety. He doesn’t know what to do with it. “You look the part, like a prince, like everyone loves you,”

“Right. Right, commentary later, uh- why did you take off the cloth around your eyes?”

“Because I thought surely, the world is more than just a dull red,” Emrys says. “And so it is! Isn’t it a beautiful world that you live in? I don’t quite understand why you wanted to shield me from it,”

“It is beautiful now,”

“Is it not always?”

“... It’s complicated. You need to cover your eyes now, we have to leave,”

“Oh but I don’t want to,” Emrys says. “And maybe, if it’s so complicated, you can show me where it is difficult. I have the powers of nature you know? And for those who’ve saved me, I am more than willing to help,”

Arthur shakes his head, tempted by his words, hope, ignited by the thought that oh, magic hadn’t opened its eyes and sought revenge. Magic itself did not wish for their destruction. “I can’t,” he says, reminding himself that his kindness comes from an unawareness about his city, the state it’s in, what it does to people, especially those who think of magic, or speak its name or recognise its language. “Not now, because it isn’t safe. My father— the king- you must trust me, it’ll be dangerous. We cannot do this right here right now, you will not be safe,”

“Nothing a little magic can’t handle surely?”

“Magic isn’t safe here,”

Emrys halts. “But why?”

“It’s just like that. And what I want, is for you to be safe, for your magic to be safe until I can make it safe enough here to welcome you to our city’s walls,”

“But where—?”

“To the palace we found you in—”

It all comes to a head at once. The doors fly open. Emrys’s eyes flash gold as he stumbles back against Arthur’s desk. There are guards, Arthur counts ten, and an angry king with his sword drawn. “Sorcery,” the king snarls. “My intuition did not fail me,”

And Arthur would argue had the king’s men had not gone flying in all directions, and there’s now blood on the walls and on the floor, and their bodies look the exact same to the man they had buried in the woods, burst at the seams, bloodied and horrifying. 

“It was you,” Arthur breathes. 

“He hurt me,” Emrys argues back. “I didn’t mean to- he- there were big knives and- and–”

“You dare poison my son’s judgment with your spells?” Uther roars. 

And in Arthur’s mind, it only is one word. Protect. Protect who from whom, he doesn’t know. But he knows if his father draws his sword towards Emrys, he will meet the same fate as his guards, or Emrys will face death before he saw the world for what it could be. Metal crashes against metal, and he’s locked in joust with his father. 

“Father you must listen,”

“You’re affected by his magic, I will not be swayed,”

“I found him in the woods, he is living, he brings the snow, he’s harmless,”

“Arthur, I command you; stop this madness,” his father yells, pushing with all his strength. Arthur stumbles back, gathers his bearings  and strikes back. “I am your king,”

“He is my friend,” Arthur says, resolute, and knocks the king across his shoulder. He holds his hand out to him, tries to ignore the tears that rim at his eyes or that look on his face.  “Come with me,” he tells him, and it is a miracle that Emrys takes his hand. And as they flee, towards the very gates Arthur had snuck him through, the king roars his commands. “Catch them, kill the bastard before he runs away,”

And in a moment of unthinking madness upon seeing the snow past the barred gates of their palace, Arthur pulls Emrys to an alcove, panting, shivering, afraid. He holds him by the sides of his face. “This is our kingdom,” he tells him and the soldiers run by them. “This is the way magic is treated here, and I know it is not right,”

“Arthur,”

“I will fix it. You must let me fix it, and when I do, I will find you, and bring you and your people here, to Camelot, where we will live in harmony, and the bloodshed will end. Hear me now, if there’s anything magic that will listen, I will, I swear in my mother’s name, bring magic back to Camelot. You will not live in fear again,” He says, correcting his hold to keep Emrys at shoulder’s length. “But for now, it isn’t safe here,”

Emrys’s eyes glow molten gold. Heat vibrates under Arthur’s fingertips. Momentarily, he wonders if he too will face the same fate as those before him. He wonders if his death would atone. He thinks of the decisions that led to this moment, and hopes his mother will be proud. In unwavering certainty, he knows he would die someone who attempted saving, who sought to make amends, rather than bloodshed. 

They look at each other. Emrys cups the side of his face. There’s something resolute there. 

His eyes shine gold.

“Keep your word,” Emrys says. 

He does not sound like himself. He sounds rather like a collection of voices, dismembered parts, dead souls held together by sheer will and craft. He sounds like who he was created to be. A being beyond comprehension, a mass of parts, not a being at all. 

“I will find you,” Arthur replies. 

And the next moment, he is alone. 

A small bird flutters into the air, blue and sharp in flight, gold footed and gold beaked. 

A Merlin. 

 ❄❄❄

He is alone in his memories, of the pages, of the notes, of the thing that they had created under lamp light in Gaius’s chambers. He is also alone in his promises and his hopes, the thoughts of saving a kingdom that did not know it needed saving, and people who did not see how they should repent. And he knows he’s alone when the guards return, confused as to why they had ventured so far into the city without an order, and Morgana flits in to find him, and hangs off his arm, complaining about having to hear his father’s drunken moaning of Arthur’s own irresponsibility all night. 

He knows he’s alone in his memories because the snow leaves them, like it had never been there, and the whole kingdom seems to think that the two decades away from magic is an occasion worthy of a celebration spanning multiple nights. 

Winter isn’t cruel to them. 

But it is bleak without the snow. 

Arthur visits his mother’s grave again, as winter turns to spring. There’s a Merlin sitting on her tombstone. 

And he knows that when time comes, and he is king, and their kingdom is kinder, winter will come as it always did. 

And the snow will fall again.