He watched the fire at night. Held his hand almost close enough to burn. He watched the flames dance and thought, I've mastered you.
He could summon them, dismiss them, shape them, walk through them. It had been five hundred years since someone had tried to throw him onto one.
That didn't stop them, every night, from claiming him in his dreams.
He watered the horses. Went swimming. He let it flow over his hands. He thought, I've mastered you.
He could summon it, dismiss it, shape it, breathe despite it.
That didn't stop it, every night, from dragging him to its depths.
He worked the earth for the first eighteen years of his life. Summoned metals from it. He braced himself against the stone. He thought, I've mastered you.
That didn't stop it, every night, from tripping him while he fled the monsters in their metal shells that caught him and bound him with the metal from its depths.
But the air . . .
It taunted him. Caressed him. Let him fall but answered his call without fail.
Kilgharrah, then Aithusa, then the Eastern dragons he found, wyverns when he was desperate - They carried him up into it and noticed only his whoops of joy, never his sighs of relief. He thought, Blow away all this pain. Let me be a part of you.
That never stopped him, every time, from returning to the earth, to the fire, to the water.
The wind held no grudges. It woke him every night with sharp blasts of frigid air, and when he woke shaking, it wrapped around him like a blanket.
It thought, I'll wait with you.
A/N: I thought this was going to be a story about Merlin being a pyromaniac.
Apparently, I was wrong.
