Morgana contemplates matters (Patreon)

Morgana's hand moved across the page in bursts of rapid, decisive, aggressive motions. It paused, a contemplative lull; then it was back in motion, thumb making artful smudges, charcoal stick tracing sweeping, dramatic lines in a furious, droning scratch.

Her vision was slowly coming together, an image half-remembered, half-dreamed, rendered in shades of storm gray. Violent, hungry waves like the maw of a huge beast, clasping down viciously on a ship that once thought itself great and invincible, cresting the sea with impetuous confidence; now cut in two, spilling its innards to the depths, splintered, jagged boards and masts like impotent teeth, unable to bite back the bigger creature that downed it, and faceless, helpless shapes. A flag, once proud, now bled of its red-and-gold, teared and tangled, the neck of its dragon-emblem wrung, broken.

A tableau of something that never came to pass, however hard Morgana had tried to bring it about in her bottomless anguish and anger. She felt an echo of those feelings now too – would always feel them, deep in her bones, twinned with her marrow – paired with the sour, terrible victory of dragging your foe down, and yourself along, bittersweet mutual destruction.

Morgana sighed, paused and looked up. The reality that met her was far more serene than her fancies. Balmy, clear-sky summer, the briny air humming with the ceaseless, tireless song of cicadas, every so often punctuated by the guffaw-call of seagulls. Boughs of ripe fruit, and shocks of blooming flowers bursting out of the green everywhere around her – and among it all Mordred, sitting by the rectangle pool of water in the inner yard, bent over a folk tales book with Nimue.

A serene scene, yet not entirely devoid of troubling elements; such one component being Nimue herself. Her presence was like a splinter – a tiny sliver of a splinter, so unobtrusive you barely felt it, didn’t even know it was there in the beginning. A splinter superficially lodged into the skin, unobserved, a tiny prickle of pain easy to ignore; but one like that burrows itself deeper and deeper into the flesh till each light touch is pain. And then you can no longer ignore it, or bear it. It wasn’t quite so deep yet – but it was something to keep an eye on, to prevent from wedging itself too firmly in place. It should be pushed out on its own soon enough. Once Morgana and Mordred would be off the island.

Despite the unfortunate comparison, Morgana didn’t find the girl herself to be as unpleasant a thing as a splinter might be. Sharp as a shard, that she was, even so young; with an avid curiosity for the world around her, a silent observance in her keen gaze that reminded her of Merlin. Though Morgana couldn’t tell what really went on behind those eyes, green like her mother’s – like so much of her was, detail after detail mirroring the serene countenance of High Priest Niniane. She seemed as often in good spirits as she was in contemplative ones, drawn to some inner meditations. She could be so opaque, as misty as the horizon.

And so Morgana kept an eye on her. She was circumspect of the friendship that’d struck up between her and Mordred, though not sufficiently worried to intervene.

It seemed to have developed organically enough. Nimue was only three years older, someone who could be both a playmate and trusted to be somewhat responsible; her mother was a Priest and Morgana an adept, so it figured their children would run into each other. Besides, it had been Mordred themselves who had seemed so enthusiastic about the friendship – always the one approaching Nimue, bringing her books to read and swords to play and telling Morgana all they learned from her about weird creatures dwelling in the depths of the sea and how to pick up crabs without them pinching you. Mordred, befriending Nimue as if there wasn’t a gaping maw yawning between their families, a chasm of frothing, furious, wild waves.

She’d rigorously instructed Mordred in the matter of keeping the secret of their blood, of their lineage, of their parentage, unless it was one of the few individuals already in the known, adults that they could trust – she wondered how much Merlin had revealed to Nimue, how much of a conspirator his daughter was; it was a matter of when, and not if, Nimue would know it all, certainly. She’d allowed Mordred to then become a friend of her, but urged them to stir away from...potentially inflaming topics, such as Merlin and Igraine and all that transpired on the Continent. Urged them to behave like she was any other child on Avalon – who just happened to have a horrible monster of a father. Mordred and her were set to leave the island in a couple years, anyway, and it would be a long, long time till they’d be properly reunited with the Wyllt family, in Camelot. By then, Morgana would have thoroughly warned Mordred. By then, they’d know and understand so much more than they did now.

For now, they could just be a child. No worries of betrayal, no conspiring or spying or revenge.

As for Morgana herself, she found it hard to separate the daughter from her father. It wasn’t so much that Merlin’s reputation shadowed her; what Morgana wondered – dreaded – was how much of a mirror she was. How much parts her mother, how much parts her father, and what of the rest, that which blends to create something new, removed from both parents? She couldn’t quite tell yet, looking at the girl. She was too much of a child for Morgana to come to any solid, final – sordid – conclusions, though she held no hope for the apple falling too far from the rotten tree.

Perhaps there could have been hope, but Morgana knew that she was bound for Camelot, for an apprenticeship under her father. The Royal Sorcerer had finally got himself the pupil he coveted – coveted so much so that he’d travel all the way to Avalon to offer her a new life, in exchange of the one he’d stolen. But she never would have been enough for him, even if she’d trampled her dignity and accepted. How could she be? He’d wanted – needed – blood of his blood, magic of his line, a descendant through and through. Someone to teach, to mold. Someone to trust, if Merlin was capable of that, and perhaps care about, if that too wasn’t foreign an emotion to him. Things Morgana could have never been – she suspected she’d only ever been meant to be a foe, a threat, kept close in check. Nimue he could nurture, cultivate the way he wanted, to water, to prune, the way a gardener tends to a flower, from seed to blossom.

She didn’t envy Nimue her place.

But Merlin had gotten what he wanted – child, apprentice, legacy, whether pawn or accomplice –but what did Niniane get out of this? A child could have been answer sufficient. But so many details puzzled her. Niniane got herself a daughter, a daughter she wouldn’t even get to raise much, beyond these first few years of her life, before she’d be whisked off to Camelot to become Merlin’s full-time apprentice. Niniane had no intention of going away with her, that she’d made decisively clear. She was most content on Avalon, and with her role in the Temple, more content than she’d be on the Continent. She had nothing but her daughter to tie her to Camelot.

Morgana had never understood why Niniane had got herself involved with the Royal Sorcerer in the first place. She’d heard the story of their meeting in the woods – Niniane had never been shy about it, though she never revealed the entire details of that encounter, or their subsequent ones – and how they’d developed a sense of mutual curiosity, of mutual respect. How that had all led to Nimue, it seems, and an amiable split as they parted ways to each follow their own path.

She sounded so level-headed when she talked about it, with a sort of subdued, quiet fondness so unlike the heated, maddening passion Morgana expected necessary in order for one to overlook who Merlin was and what he’d done and not only bed him – an action which, were it strategical, she could begrudgingly understand at least – but apparently like him, too. Perhaps the restrained tenderness was the benefit of retrospective, of cooled sentiments.

Yet Morgana couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of betrayal, even though she’d ever first met Niniane upon her return on the island with Mordred, merely days old, bundled in her arms, one of her few – and her most precious – possessions brought over from the Continent, even though she’d never grown particularly close to the woman since then. It was betrayal, treachery, blasphemy almost, that an adept, no less a Priest of Her Lady’s Temple would consort with such a man, who had stained his hands with the blood of the Le Fays. The Le Fays, who have always been loyal and devout and gracious, who have built The Lady shrines, who sang her praise and prayer. The Le Fay – Igraine, the very woman Merlin helped ruin – spread her faith across the sea, built her Temples and sang her praise and prayer so far from home. So many people now had her name on their lips, so many held her close to their heart now. Morgana would rather not think of the role the Royal Sorcerer played in this, though. Her mother had been practical; she’d had no choice but to accept Merlin’s aid. She’d rather not think, either, of his own vested interest in the Goddess, of his curious interest in the ways her magic worked – in the way magic itself worked. She’d already begrudgingly read his books on the subject, and just as begrudgingly acquiesced they were thought-provoking.

And so Morgana couldn’t imagine someone so easily, so willingly associating themselves with that man. She was aware, especially after she’d arrived on the Continent, that there were people who coveted the position of Merlin Wyllt’s spouse, the wealth and reputation and influence they imagined would come from being married to the Royal Sorcerer, the Royal Advisor himself. Perhaps some of them coveted the man himself, though the idea of it made her insides revolt. Niniane must have certainly fancied the man though, and never the position she might have secured at his side, given she has so far made no move to claim any benefit from having born his child, has made no – known – attempts of marrying him. No; she’d nonchalantly confessed she’d had no intention to wed him, or anyone for that matter. Perhaps she too had only wanted the legacy of a child, of a magical line.

There was so much Morgana didn’t know, so much Morgana could only speculate about. She sighed, and went back to her sketch, hand moving with renewed fury.