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The relief of Morgana's forgiveness meant more to Merlin than he could express. It felt like a knot at the back of his neck had slipped undone. He understood her disbelief. Arthur knew about their magic and was going to watch them practice it right in his room. It was unbelievable. No wonder Morgana was excited; however, Merlin was still surprised by how quickly she managed to scarf down her lunch.
"I'm amazed you didn't choke," he said, completely serious. "Hand me your plate." The glass bottle shattering all across the room had made him realize that it might be a bit complicated for a first shot. He knew how to draw the pieces from all over and make them whole, but he could make it easier. Morgana handed him the plate, and with a bit of magic, he cleaned it and snapped it right in half.
"Shit!" Arthur flinched. Morgana laughed.
"Sorry, Arthur. Morgana, be nice." Merlin chided her. He put the two halves of the plate down on the table. "Okay, so you can see where the break is?"
"Yes," Morgana answered.
"Good," Merlin moved the two pieces closer. "You can see how the two pieces fit together?" he traced between the edges where the plate had cracked. "You simply say the word and make them stay there."
"You didn't hold the pieces together when you did the spell." she pointed out.
Merlin smiled. "Once you learn how to do all the steps, you can start skipping some, but first things first. It's a little easier to visualize this way." he pushed the pieces of the plate flush with each other so that the crack nearly disappeared. "It's easy to imagine things breaking and coming apart, but it's trickier to put them back together. A lot of magic works like that. If you can picture it happening, you can make it happen. Right now, the plate looks whole, and you can use magic to make it so that it actually is."
Morgana stood and stretched her fingers towards the plate. "What do I say?"
"Gestrice."
"Gestrice," she repeated. Nothing happened.
"That's alright; try again."
It took her a couple more attempts before Morgana huffed and said, "I can feel my magic moving, but it's not doing anything!"
Merlin frowned and grabbed his spellbook. He flipped it open to the page with the spell on it. "Oh," he said. "Say it again for me?"
"Gestrice."
"Right." He pointed to the word written in runes at the top of the page. "This second letter here makes a slightly different sound than the 'eh' sound you usually hear. It's a sound that was lost with the Old Religion, and it's a bit hard. It's like 'e.'"
"Eh?" she tried.
"Nope, 'e.'"
"Eh."
"E."
"Eh."
"Try it with the 'g' sound. Ge."
"Geh."
"Closer; 'ge.'"
"Geh."
"You two sound ridiculous."
"Shut up, Arthur," said Merlin. "Ge."
"Geh."
Merlin shook his head. "When you say it, it's a little further forward in your mouth, and the space...hm." he conjured a pencil from his room and drew a chart in the margins of the book. "So," he began. "Up here, you've got more closed sounds, like the 'i' sound in the spell. He wrote an 'i' in the top left corner. "Down here are open sounds, like er... 'ah' as in the first sound in Arthur's name." He wrote an 'a' in the bottom right corner.
"Well, that's no good," Arthur said. "Morgana's accent is different than yours; she says my name differently."
"Oh, you're right." Merlin frowned. He looked back at Morgana. "How do you say Arthur's name?"
"Arthur."
Merlin quickly scribbled another 'a' above and to the left of the first one. "So that sound is further back in the mouth, and more closed. It's similar to the 'e's." He drew an 'e' in the middle of the chart, near the left and another above it further over. "So here, this one is 'eh,' and this one is 'e.'"
"I didn't expect learning sorcery to be so...linguistic," Morgana admitted.
"Neither did I!" Merlin had to admit that his tone was significantly more enthusiastic. He heard Arthur chuckle slightly at him, but he didn't mind it. Learning languages was a favourite pastime of his. It was a bit easy for him, probably because of his magic, but each new language was like a fun puzzle of new sounds and phrases. He'd once thought of them as quite challenging until Gaius had marvelled at how fast he'd picked up Greek. Apparently, most people took years to learn languages, not months. Merlin still enjoyed it, though, and found he was quite liking teaching it. Morgana looked a bit stressed. "Go on and try it again."
Morgana sighed. "Ge."
"That's it!" Merlin beamed at her. "Try the spell again!"
"Gestrice!" her eyes flashed with light, and when Merlin picked up the plate, it stayed together perfectly.
"You did it!"
"I did?" Morgana stared at the plate. "I did. I did it!" she flung her arms around Merlin so suddenly he nearly dropped the plate again. "Arthur, look!" she grabbed the plate and practically shoved it in Arthur's face.
"It's good. Er, very much a good plate."
"That felt amazing!"
"What...what did it feel like?"
Morgana paused, thinking. "I mean, mostly it felt like putting a plate back together, which in and of itself doesn't sound interesting, but aside from that," she smiled. "It was like I was finally working with myself, instead of resisting what I can do."
Merlin smiled back at her and tried not to think about his locked-away magic that persistently beat against his ribcage. "A lot of magic is mundane like that, honestly," said Merlin. "It's not always big and exciting. That's not how most people use it."
"Is this how you use it?" Morgana asked, holding up the plate.
Merlin nodded. "When I'm not using it to fight off whatever's trying to attack Camelot this week."
"You use it to fight?" Morgana perked up, her eyes wide and shining. Behind her, Merlin could see Arthur shaking his head and mouthing 'you fucked up!' at him.
"Er, yes?"
Morgana got alarmingly close to Merlin's face with those shining eyes of hers. "Will you teach me how to use magic to fight?"
"Yes," Merlin answered. He knew Morgana was a capable swordswoman, and he could tell she had powerful magic. It would be amazing to have her as an ally. "But, I thought I'd teach you how to put fires out before teaching you how to throw them at people."
"That's...probably a good idea." she conceded, before hesitating. "Why fire?"
"It's easy to begin with fire." Morgana nodded, uneasy, probably thinking about the Fire she'd accidentally set. "It's easy to make, and it responds very quickly. It's like..." Merlin had to think about how to explain. "It's like a puppy. It's untrained, but eager to please, so it sparks up and gets excited, and before you realize, you've lost control of it. It's easy to get riled up and make a fire, but it's harder to be calm and control it. I like Fire; it's beautiful. But you have to firm and gentle with it."
"Why is it like that?" Arthur asked, nearly throwing Merlin off-guard, but he'd got going and wasn't likely to stop now.
"Well, everything in the universe is made of tiny pieces, and those pieces are held together with magic." He divided the plate Morgana held without really thinking about it. He couldn't see atoms in the way he once could, but he could still feel them. "By moving the magic, you shape the world." he shifted the dust of the plate into a new shape, mimicking the floral design; new porcelain petals sported images of small roses. He lifted the flowers into the air. "Fires only need three things: heat, food, and air, so it's nearly effortless to make one. You add too much heat to something that already has food and air," he excited the magic around the flowers, setting them ablaze. "And you'll get a fire. That's how it works, even without magic. Using a flint creates heat, the hot spark catches the kindling, and whoosh, fire. Now, if you take one of those things away," he said, chilling the flowers, "you put the fire out."
"I want to try."
"Mhmm. Let's get a handle on the mending spell, and then we'll see about dousing fires," Merlin said. He turned the flowers back into a plate and handed it to Morgana.
She grinned broadly and threw the plate to the ground. "Okay."
"You just made it harder for yourself." Merlin pointed out.
It took Morgana several tries to get all of the ceramic pieces back together, but she was just as excited to successfully perform the spell a second time as she was the first. They kept at it. Merlin even scattered the pieces across the room until Morgana knew the composition of the plate inside and out. They moved on to smashing the bottle, and Merlin had to assure Arthur that he wouldn't leave broken glass around anywhere more than once. Before they knew it, it was nearly suppertime.
"Bugger, Gwen'll be worrying," Morgana grumbled. "When can we do this again?"
"Not too soon," said Arthur. "We don't want people getting suspicious."
"Tuesday?" asked Merlin. "Three days from now should be alright."
"It's going to feel like ages." Morgana stood and hugged Merlin again. "Thank you. Truly, this means everything to me."
"I'm only sorry I didn't do it sooner," Merlin admitted.
Morgana's smile turned wistful. "I understand, though. I've only been carrying this secret for a fraction of the time you've had to worry. I can't imagine..."
"Ehh..." Merlin flushed. "It's fine."
"It's not, though." Arthur piped up.
"Well, it's better now!" Merlin quipped back.
"It is." Morgana agreed. "Be seeing you, then." And with that, she swept out of the room, leaving the prince and his manservant alone.
It felt strange now, being alone with Arthur. While Morgana had been there, Arthur had watched quietly. Because he'd barely said anything, it was hard to know what he'd thought, and Merlin was desperate to know.
Had they made an impact on him? Surely, they must have. Although, perhaps he hadn't said anything because he'd been bored. That seemed unlikely. Even mundane magic was still magic. Arthur had been on edge; he'd jumped every time they broke things and then sat rigidly and fixated each time they cast the spell. Merlin needed to know why.
"So... What did you think?" he asked, trying not to sound nervous.
Arthur's pause didn't help him feel any better. The prince waited a long minute before finally speaking. "I was surprised that you didn't have to teach her how to get at her magic."
Merlin cocked his head sideways in confusion. "Get at it?"
"You showed her how to use magic, but she already had it."
"I told you she did."
"I know, but that's the part I don't understand. What does that mean? How does it feel? You said that magic was in everything, that it holds the universe together, but how can you feel that?"
Merlin sat in his chair, nearly overwhelmed by the questions. "How...How does it feel to have magic?" Arthur nodded. "It's... It's like- Well, I don't know. It's not like anything else. In some ways, it feels almost like a body part, but it isn't confined to me, or where I am. It changes all the time. It's not always physical, it doesn't weigh anything, but it can use pressure, sometimes it's warm? It..." he sighed. "It can feel pain. It gets tired and sore and restless. If I don't use it for a long time, it aches, or goes numb and then goes all pins and needles when I move it." he could feel it now, throbbing and fluttering in his chest. "Sometimes it settles in between my ribs. Sometimes I can hold it in my hands, or taste it in my mouth. It's a part of me." he felt like he hadn't explained it enough, but he didn't know what else to say.
"Wha-what does magic taste like?" Arthur was staring at him with such sweet confusion that Merlin couldn't help but laugh, which had the charming effect of making the prince blush.
"It doesn't taste like much. It's a little sweet, a little sour, but it feels more like having something vaguely fuzzy or prickly in your mouth."
Arthur narrowed his eyes, clearly thinking very hard. "Like a blackberry?"
"Er," Merlin considered this. "Yes. It feels a little like eating blackberries. Shame you don't like them, then."
"It's not that I don't like them," Arthur muttered.
"What?"
The prince looked surprised that Merlin had heard. "I don't mind them."
Merlin crossed his arms. "Don't be daft," he said. "You never eat blackberries."
"That's only because..." he trailed off, turning a bright red quite suddenly. "Nevermind."
Merlin was curious now. "Because what?"
"Forget it."
"Arthur? Because what?" he teased.
"Just go and fetch me dinner, and nevermind it."
"Come to think of it, that seer we met in the forest said something about you not eating blackberries."
"Merlin!" Arthur snapped. He was actually quite worked up about this, Merlin realized.
Hm. A mystery.
"Fine, fine. I'll forget it!" Merlin said, even though they both knew he did not mean it at all.
"Good." Arthur looked away, still a bit pink. "Do you want to have dinner here?"
Merlin nodded, glad he hadn't ended the conversation by poking at whatever was bothering Arthur. "Sure."
Maybe he could get the cook to put some blackberries on Arthur's plate.