Hello everyone! This will be a collection of eight short-ish stories/semi-related oneshots all inspired by different verses in Rumi's poem "By Your Soul." (TRULY TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR WORDS (irony implied.) )

I really do hope you all enjoy them as I will enjoy writing them in my spare-time! Most of it, if not all of it, deals with Merlin and Arthur's soul-bond before and after they meet. All of it is deals with the canon time-line.

I am really hoping to play around with this one so, even though the first one came out as a third person omnipresent don't be surprised if it doesn't strick for the second one! ;)

Story time!

Stars

Again I am raging, I am in such a state by your soul that every
bond you bind, I break, by your soul.

-Rumi, By Your Soul.

Never in the thirteen years he'd been alive had he felt such a heavy-handed wrongness make foul the nighttime air.

He'd seen small fires and been in awe of lightning storms before, but then again, he'd never really feared the natural world. This was different. It seemed as if no creature was left in the forest and Merlin was certain, though he didn't quite know how, that the earth itself was recoiling in something akin to disgust and shame.

He stopped with a small shuffle of his boots and listened full-heartedly. If there was a boar, a cockatrice or the like, he reasoned, by the cloak of the night there was no need at all to pretend any of those things could best him. The smallest shake of his head or fingers would be enough, as if often was.

For a small moment he wished that there was a cockatrice waiting for him just around the trees, if only so that he could feel his magic rush eagerly to his fingertips for a few, precious seconds and, despite himself, he found that he was smiling at the thought.

"Merlin of Ealdor-" he bent over to sweep a branch up in a fist and pretended to duel an invisible enemy. "Tamer of cockatrices, griffins and unicorns! Oh, is there no one that can take him? What's that? A dragon you say...?"

He rounded the trees with almost a bounce in his step but there was no boar or griffin waiting for him in the semi-darkness of the moonlit clearing.

It was the grim sight of not one but two bodies lying cold and unmoving in the forest floor what took his breath away and his tenuous hold on the branch with it.

"Um…hello?"

But there was not a soul to answer him, only two dead men with tattooed hands and forearms and oh he knew. He'd known, in a cold and calculative part of his young mind, from the moment he'd laid eyes on the gruesome sword-wound cutting cleanly the druid's stomach through and through and the arrow still ebbed deeply on the other man's chest. The name came strangely to his tongue since he'd never spoken it though he'd thought about him a thousand times before. "…Uther Pendragon."

He knew of him the same way deer know of hunters and rabbits of falcons. The very name filled him with hopelessness that he very rarely felt.

Why would Uther Pendragon ever have anything to do with me? he thought desperately.

What kind of man would be as ruthless as to hunt down a child that was far beyond the heart of his own kingdom? And yet if the King of Camelot had ventured relatively far into Cenred's lands to hunt down and kill people of magic who was to say he would ever stop there?

A certainty over his own fate left his cold all over. Eventually, he realized, word of him would spread. After all he couldn't even properly control what little magic was safe enough to do (hadn't he been fantasizing about using magic right there and then just moments ago?) and Uther Pendragon was sure to have a way of telling sorcerers from ordinary people.

"…boy…"

His neck craned forwards so fast that it was a wonder he hadn't broken it. For a moment he thought he'd imagined the breathy whisper but-

Fingers, and then a tattooed arm, moved in the air in a way no dead body should.

He was standing up before he knew it. The lower seams of his trousers were irremediably bloodstained but it didn't matter. All that mattered was the pleading hand that rose unsteadily as if to beckon his forward and he stumbled over not unlike a newborn colt, filled with sadness and compassion.

He'd never again curse his magic; Merlin promised fervently to the gods above, if there was something, anything, he could do for whatever poor soul had held to life this long.

The man was old, older than Old Man Simmons himself in Merlin's opinion, but for some yet unknown reason he was the only one left alive out of two men he was traveling with. In the moonlit night he looked like one of those prophets of old, bearded and pale as he was. But when Merlin crouched before him the hand that shot forward to snatch his wrist was anything but weak.

The man's grasp strengthened with each passing second and it wasn't long before he added words to it. "You….you…."

"You have a wound in your shoulder sir." Merlin informed him gently, taking his mumbles for delirium. "Can you walk? I can help you to my village; it's not that far away…my mum knows a little bit about medicine…my uncle's a physician you know? Don't worry, we'll be careful. I know that-"he swallowed before continuing, "I know that possessing magic is very dangerous and-"

'…Þurhhæle."

It was barely a needy breath but Merlin felt his blood grow cold. Though he'd never heard that particular word before magic, restless and heavy, stirred underneath his skin like a beast being awoken.

"…what?" he could only whisper.

"Þurhhæle…."the man repeated patiently and his hand moved to hold Merlin's forearm. "It's a spell…a healing spell…"

"Um…"at a loss for words, panic got the best of him. "I can't do magic, sir, I'm sorry. Why don't I help you up and then you can-"

But the hand in his forearm tightened and the ink-drawn marks on contrasted even more vividly against the pallor of the old man's skin.

"No…"there was an odd hoarseness in the druid's voice when he spoke next, "I don't have that kind of magic in me…but you…"

He fell silent without warning, like a steed being ridden for far too long and in the shadows of the night Merlin sought out the man's gaze with wary eyes.

When he finally found what he was looking for in the semi-darkness he realized that there was only a dull, blank stare-devoid of all spark-to meet his.

"Oh." he could only say, "You're…"

He could not understand how the man managed to smile in the face of horror then but in time, when the wisps of something more precious and lovely to him than anything else he'd ever imagined had taken form and name in a certain King, he did.

"Hmm…yes," it was barely a breath at all but he could hear it nonetheless. "…the gods…didn't bless me…with the gift of sight…"

Even though he knew little of medicine and the night sky darkened as in sympathy for them he could tell that the old druid didn't have long in the world.

He was certain now, that if he didn't do something the druid would die and it would be because of him. He'd always thought of himself as someone willing to help if necessary but fear for his life and the perceived proximity of Uther Pendragon petrified him like nothing before ever had.

In the end, he reflected later, he never really did have a choice.

"You don't have magic," he told the man sadly when placing a hand upon the narrow shoulder. "That's why you need me to do it, don't you?"

The man had fallen silent for a few moments and, though he could barely see the old, weathered face, Merlin was sure that he had not lost consciousness.

There, with the moon above him and green earth below him, Merlin Emrys whispered, for the first time in his existence, a healing spell.

"Þurhhæle." It felt like the sweetest honey in his tongue.

In silence and in the shade he saw the wound close itself together. Though he did it again and again, countless times as the centuries passed, nothing ever quite rivaled that moment in which his magic was revealed to him as a force of goodness and healing and not just a cursed burden, (except perhaps for the times in which he used that same magic to aid Arthur Pendragon.)

Magic, he thought with tear-filled eyes, could be used to do good in the world.

"Thank you."

The man stared unblinkingly at him though his eyes held nothing within them. And yet Merlin felt a not so-unwelcomed presence fill the air around him.

He meant to say 'you're welcome,' and them be on his way but instead what came out of his mouth was, "So they tried to kill you even though you did not have magic, huh?"

Only because you were a druid, he thought with despair, the same way they would target mum if they ever found out I have magic even though she's done nothing wrong…

The man's grasp tightened as if he'd learnt some secret about the boy before him by touch alone. "No." he said strongly.

Merlin choked out a disbelieving snort and tried to stifle it with his free hand. He knew what he'd seen and that was certainly a wound capable of causing death by blood loss.

"No, child." continued the druid, "He didn't."

A sudden and strange feeling invaded Merlin when he heard the words, like a very old memory being suddenly jolted. There was a shaky hand upon his brow then and he felt an odd urge to weep.

"No," there was a loving gentleness in the druid's voice that Merlin couldn't help but think of as that of his own father if he'd stayed in Ealdor. "No, child. I may be blind but I can still see-see patterns of the hearts that beat inside men. There was a young one…he was the one that found me. He arrived after the others, you see, after my friends had already been…well, he was not here by then. He found me hiding behind the tree and looked at me for a long time, it seemed. I am sure that he realized my eyes are dead when he first looked at me."

The moon watched over them and Merlin listened.

"He argued with the others. Argued loudly. He said there was no need to kill me, that there had been enough bloodshed. He said a blind man could do no harm. But they didn't agree."

Old fears resurfaced in Merlin's young mind and he shivered in spite of himself. "They were knights of Camelot." He whispered.

"Yes." The druid confirmed. "Yes, they were knights of Camelot. But this boy-he said he'd do it himself. And he waited, I believe, until the other ones had gone on to tell me he'd give me a wound-though not a mortal one-that I should be able to heal it with magic. The poor child sounded as if he was about to cry. And so he stabbed my shoulder-blade and asked me to play dead. Then, after those that were with him and been fooled he knelt by me and asked me to please heal myself in gratitude for the mercy he'd showed me."

Merlin, barely able to understand the onslaught of emotions that stormed his soul with the druid's tale, could only nod numbly. A thought filled with chilling certainty leapt upon his mind: he knew this compassionate soul that had spared the druid; he knew it perhaps even better than his own.

The druid smiled when Merlin's eyes, swirling with depths before unknown to him, focused upon the stars above.

"Did he pray to the gods for you to be alright?" Merlin whispered quietly to no one in particular. He didn't know how he knew but he was certain of it beyond any doubt.

The touch upon his brow faded and then suddenly the old, withered and tattooed hand rested upon his heart.

"Oh, yes." The druid said softly and his voice held all the emotions his eyes could not. "I heard him pray for someone to save this old man's life. But I believe…" he smiled knowingly and even in the night it was filled with light. "There was something more. The bonds he bid with death you broke, child, and only because of your heart."

When he spoke next Merlin was too far away, lost in his own thoughts, to hear him. But centuries later, when it all had been said and done between him and his King, he could remember those words with stark clarity and in them he took solace.

"Oh boy, you do well to look at them. Two souls formed like this can outlive the very stars."

There you have it. One down and seven to go! Please be patient with me :)

On a completely unrelated and yet totally important note I must rant about DC. Guys I don't think y'all understand. Most people absolutely adore Marvel and MCU and I love that but me, being a DC gal since before I can remember, I could never quite get into it. I love the Avengers and I think MCU is doing a great thing with their movies and what not but now that DC is coming out with the JUSTICE LEAGUE and BATMAN and SUPES ! OHMYGOD I can actually fangirl about it just as much as y'all fangirl about MCU and that just makes me SO SO HAPPY. That's all.

Shout out to April29Roses, Yakarin and Oz for being always awesome. I've missed doing this. :)

Hope you're all well. :) Love y'all!