Mischief part 13 - worrying won't help

[archaeologist-d.livejournal.com]

Author: archaeologist_d
Title: Mischief - part 13 - Worrying won't help
Rating: PG
Pairing/s: none
Character/s: Merlin, Arthur, Morgana
Summary: Arthur didn’t really want to think about Merlin leaving, but if he turned into a man, would he stay with Arthur?
Word Count: 478
Camelot_drabble Prompt 481: Change my mind
Author's Notes: unbetaed, more adventures with Merlin the cat.
Disclaimer: Merlin characters are the property of Shine and BBC. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
------------------
Arthur had to acknowledge that Morgana knew a lot more than she’d been telling him. Within a day, she’d talked with her coven—and he never thought he’d say that ever—and she had some leads.

But it wasn’t just the magic. Her friends, a network of associations both great and small, were collectively scratching their heads. Only a sorcerer with enormous power would have the ability to change their form, and as far as they knew, such a person didn’t exist. There were not even rumours.

In the last several centuries, when magic had flourished, before the Inquisition and purge and the decimation of magical beings forcing them underground, only one or two well-known wizards could have achieved transformation, and as far as Morgana knew, they died long ago.

Except for Merlin’s namesake.

But the legendary wizard of Arthurian lore was more myth than reality. Morgana told Arthur that she was certainly that the original Merlin had been an amalgam of wishful thinking and bits of several ancient sorcerers’ lives rewritten into one semi-cohesive story to placate the masses.

Besides, even if Merlin the cat were the sorcerer of legend, he would need more power to reverse the spell than any of the wizards currently alive could achieve.

It didn’t sound good.

Of course, he didn’t tell his cat that. The little idiot was more perceptive than a lot of humans and Arthur didn’t want to upset him. That just led to torn curtains and Merlin hiding in the back of the closet, chewing on Arthur’s best trainers.

-----------------

Arthur could see that Merlin was getting worried. More and more things were off-kilter, his laptop turning on and off without Arthur touching it, books reshuffling themselves as if Merlin were busy reading them all and putting them back in some haphazard method that Arthur couldn’t comprehend, the cat toys disappearing and reappearing—although Merlin could have just been hiding them to drive Arthur crazy.

More cuddly than ever, Merlin kept crawling onto Arthur’s head at night or slithering down under the covers and purring into Arthur’s side. The under-the-covers toe chasing was normal, though, so in some ways, Merlin was still his Merlin.

For a day or so, Arthur didn’t really say much to Merlin. None of the normal high-pitched talk—Morgana would have mocked him endlessly anyway, no sharing of Arthur’s day or which treats would be best. Arthur was confused as to what he should do. If Merlin the cat were a man, then shouldn’t Arthur treat him that way, give him some space and be more of a distant friend than cat owner? Was he even Merlin’s owner or just some fool who adopted a non-cat cat?

And what was a cat owner anyway? Did Arthur own the cat or did the cat own him?

He already missed Merlin and he wasn’t even gone.