thalialunacy2 | Always the Last Place You Look: Prologue

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Prologue

"A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold." ~Ogden Nash

Merlin knows, now that he’s grown, that he didn't have the most lavish childhood. It would be considered by some to have been nearly spartan, in fact. Small flat, no yard, parents gone more than around, school full of children who thought him strange.

But to him, it had been perfect. He'd had his parents, as best they could manage, and he'd had his books. His books that meant more to him than any other thing ever could, he had thought. Because his books gave him gorgeous, glorious stories, gave him worlds and lifetimes and brilliant powers. They sent his imagination on spins and leaps, turning into words that he scribbled onto paper and murmured to himself with a note of love and longing for adventure.

And then there were the stories he didn’t have to remind himself weren’t real; he always liked those very much: The ones the ladies at the shops told him. The ones the couples in the pubs told, though not to him, and sometimes not even through words. He was a world-class eavesdropper by age five. His mum joked about his ears having something to do with it, and Merlin thought she was right, until the first time he got teased for them, had a bully tweak one and call him Fievel. That was his first taste of how a blessing could be a curse.

By the by, though, and unsurprisingly, he'd liked the stories his mother told most of all. He'd ask for them every night, and no matter what kind of day she'd had, she'd always do her best. Her stories had been grand, and practical, and thorough, and magical.

And he'd certainly had his favourite. “Tell me again,” he’d say, as she was tucking him into bed, the rain pattering down outside, “how you knew you loved my dad.”

She’d smile, and turn to switch the light off. “I knew I loved your father,” she’d say, smoothing back his hair, “the day that he gave me the world.”

The globe (the world in question), clearly purchased at a car boot sale for probably about ten pence, was old and yellow then, so you can imagine its state now. But it sits on the hand-me-down coffee table in the legitimately spartan flat Merlin occupies by himself, his mother a newly-fading memory.

It’s his single greatest treasure these days. Outside of reading other people's books, and the occasional flight of fancy, his stories—and his family—are long gone.

Merlin has met the woman of his dreams, but doesn’t know her name. Let’s start there.

He's met a woman, well, seen her, really, is all, and he doesn’t know her name yet, but he’s positive he’s going to marry her. He finds perfection in her dark hair, her keen green eyes, her creamy skin. And his hope for their eventual shared future never ceases, no matter what.

It's the kind of earnest good faith that the world sees far too rarely.

Their interactions can all be described thus:

She stops in, into the little shop where he works, every single day. She stops in and she buys a pastry, which she can’t possibly be eating because her figure is flawless— But then again, Merlin figures, maybe she’s just that blessed. Hell, she probably does the blessing. A proper goddess, like.

Anyway, she buys a pastry and though she never quite looks at him, and she’s most definitely never spoken to him, he’s completely certain that she is the woman for him. Sometimes she sits, pulls out her laptop and an intimidating book or two, and he’s reassured of this because she's clearly the most brilliant woman he’s (n)ever met, on all levels. He can feel it, just feel it.

His goddess.

He’s tempted to write the story. He’s tempted, nearly every day since he first saw her, to take out his notebook and write down exactly how he and this woman will live happily ever after. Because if he does, and if he reads the words out loud—that's the trick, you see—like he had dozens of times when he was a child, then whatever he writes would, probably, in some way or another, come true.

That's his true blessing, and truly his curse. It’s just a thing he could always do. And indeed had done, without compunction, throughout his early childhood, because it wasn't like he'd written stories of world wars or abusive step-parents, now, was it? He'd written stories of parents getting better jobs where they were home more, of pets finding their way back home and cars going on adventures. He had been a child.

Turned out, though, that even the most innocent of meddlings could have dire consequences, something Merlin had learned first-hand one day: He had been scribbling words onto page during a boring section of his lessons, only to be interrupted by his tutor saying his mother was in the headmaster's office and Merlin should take his bag with him because he wouldn't be coming back that day. Or the next. The tutor's face had looked summarily ashen, and Merlin had known, in his gut, that his life would never be the same.

It had taken a few hours before his mother would, or could, explain it to him properly, and a few days before he had truly understood. It had been an accident, she'd said as she stroked his hair and cried. An accident involving a lorry on a route it wasn't used to, and a driver who had got lost, and it all meant that Merlin's father wouldn't be coming home again.

Merlin had nodded, and cried, and held his mother when she couldn't seem to stop crying, but something was wiggling in the back of his mind. Something awful.

Then he had startled awake on his third day home from school. He'd grabbed at his bag and pawed through it until he'd found his notebook— His notebook in which he'd scribbled a story about— about a lorry driver, with ice cream in the back, headed towards Merlin's school—

It wasn't a stretch, for the mind of a child. For a grown-up, it would've involved a lot of disbelief and research and self-exploration. But Merlin had no trouble making the leap to the obvious and inescapable fact that somehow, he had caused this awful thing to happen.

At that moment, he had understood, with the heavy weight of the knowledge of children, that playing with fate was a gift he had but could not use. His small stories, his tiny wanderings, were like throwing stones into a pond. He'd never know how far the ripples went. And he couldn't possibly live without his mother. If his stories took his whole family, he'd be lost.

He'd thrown his notebooks in the curb side bin that very night. Torn them up first, tears eventually blinding him until he didn't really know what he was doing. Just that it had to be done.

And he had thought it'd be enough.

His mother had died anyway, but not till he was nearly twenty-two, and he figured that was only fair. Fate’s way of balancing things out.

Making him pay it back.

Fifteen years after the death of his father, Merlin is convinced he’s still paying this unfortunate debt he owes the fates for messing about with them. He lives in a flat by himself, no family, a few friends that aren't close, a woman he pines after from afar, and a cat. A cat that is incredibly unhelpful in every way but sitting on whichever book it is Merlin's trying to read.

Well, and it's nice to pretend he has something to talk to while at home, instead of just talking to himself. Which is really what he's been doing, and he knows it.

He just tries not to dwell.

But don't worry, change is on its way. A big change. And it will drag him, kicking and screaming, into his destiny.

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Always the Last Place You Look: Prologue

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