Not the same - Merlin - Orte - Päckchen 8

[leviathans-moon.livejournal.com]

Title: Not the same
Author: leviathans_moon
Team: Metaphermorphose
Bingo-Tabelle: Orte
Challenge: In der Fremde
Fandom: Merlin
Päckchen: 8


Everything still looked the same, a small village with houses that had been built decades ago. Tom was raking the hay in his field, a welcoming, homely sight and one that Merlin grew up with. He had often wondered whether Tom might not run out of hay to rake at some point, and he was sure he did, but whenever Merlin remembered seeing Tom it was while raking the hay. Stones were unturned, all the trees still stood tall, with dark green leaves that would soon turn orange or red and fall off. The breeze, the smell of the wind, was the same, and yet so different.
His house looked the same. The old cloths hanging from the ceiling, providing a kind of partition; his old bedstead in one corner, his mother’s in another; and the old chimney stove looming on the short side of the house, a big gaping hole in the wall, ashes on the floor and soot on its walls. The small table in front of it was laden with herbs and grain, awaiting their preparation, and he could see his mother sitting on the small stool, back slightly bent, grinding away to make coarse flour for her bread. The curtains were torn in the left corner from when he had tripped and grabbed at them in the presence of one of the neighbours, which meant he couldn’t just fix them with his magic; and his mother did not have any yarn to spare or a needle, in fact, to mend it herself. He felt a sense of home as he stood in the doorway, and yet, it also all felt so strange.
The presence of Arthur, Morgana and Gwen made every fibre of his being aware of where he belonged now, and it wasn’t in Ealdur anymore. A sense of strangeness penetrated his heart when he looked at the corner where his bed was, where he had used to sleep ever since he had been a baby. It didn’t feel like his anymore, and he felt as much like a guest as the others must feel. It saddened him – to know that the time he had spent here was in the past and would never return, and that whatever lay ahead of him was how things were meant to be.
“Merlin!”
But of course, he didn’t have time to be sad or dwell on the strangeness. His new life was calling to do things for him.