thewitchmorgana | Everyone needs a castle to call their own...

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Everyone needs a castle to call their own...

Getting to the castle, for most people, was impossible. Even her Merlin couldn't find his way to where it lay by the sea in Cornwall. But with Morgana's help anyone that she wished could enter, and so she brought him to her castle. To the place she had called home for centuries, where she had raised her family, kept the treasures of the old world. Kept all the secrets of the old ways she could in case Avalon became lost to even her, eventually.

Morgana walked through the tall wooden doors of her great hall, the doors opening by themselves and showing, when they did, a room that looked both like she'd kept it this way since she had first gained the castle, well before it had become obvious to anyone but herself that she wasn't going to start ageing again any time soon. Great arched windows let Cornwall's cool grey light into the room decorated with tapestries and fine cloths, flowers here and there making the place seem a little more alive. A great hall befitting the Royal Court itself. There was a rug under foot, newer than most of the tapestries but still old... yet soft and warm to the touch. Enchanted to withstand the ages.

Slipping off her coat (which promptly floated off down a corridor of it's own accord) she turned to Myrddin, a slight smile curling her lips as she considered him.

'A castle is a castle is a castle... but it's home.' though, this was only the hall. There was much, much more to this place than the Great Hall.

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“Arthur gave you this castle?” he looks at the structure through a slightly shifted lens, listening to her next statements about such a gift not being pragmatic because she was not one to stay in one place at the time. “I suppose that might have been the purpose of the gift, so that he might know where to find you, even if it was as simple as his mind’s eye. If he provides this place for you, he can imagine you in this place.”

He walks through the corridor with her, deeper into her keep, his hand warm on her the silk bare skin of her wrist. No other beings feel present in her home, outside of animals and such. He can feel them though, aware of him, aware of her. Ties across the living. “I am in your home Morgana, I am at your whim,” he smiles in response to her question.

'He did. And a lot of the land surrounding it... I visited every year, if only to attend to things that needed the land owners personal attention. But Arthur also paid someone to keep it safe for me... he only wanted what was best.' Her smile is sad, a little, when she speaks of Arthur and his concerns for her, his friendship. His love. 'Merlin didn't like it, but...' she shrugs and traces her spare hand along the cool stone wall as she walks.

'Arthur knew I would hear him whenever he called for me, that I would come... he need not have granted me such a grand home. But perhaps that is why, at least in part.' Even these days she could hear him when he reincarnated. When he realised who he was and whispered her name on the wind, and she couldn't not go to him. Couldn't stop herself from the urge, he meant just that much to her.

Morgana's spare hand moved from the stone to sit over Myrddin's on her wrist, a small sigh falling from her lips as she considers. 'Have you eaten?'

As he keeps his arm with hers, his touch remains to her wrist, his thumb idly across where her veins and blood press against her skin. She listens to her talk of Arthur often followed by her mention of the Merlin from that strand of time. Part and parcel, he guesses, that their mention should be together. What did she say, tangled like razor wire.

“It is a grand home,” he allows as he again lets his sense slide across the expanse and large number of rooms. “My home is equates to your hall, I think.” He smiles, though, his home is imbued with magic as well, so in as much as the walls and rooms are modest, they hold endless promise of space for whatever this or that interests him enough to bring it home, mainly comprised of maps and books and artifacts, some plain, some magical.

She brings his attention around with her hand on his. “No, I have not eaten.”

'I don't suppose it'd be a good castle if it wasn't, though I'm almost surprised it survived Maeve and Ciaran... little terrors that they were when they were young.' she smiles when she mentions them, and it's happier, warmer. She laughs when he says his home is about the size of her hall, inclining her head slightly.

'Oh? I think I would go mad if I lived in a small place for long... I like space. Though, it was nicer when I still had servants. Less... quiet. Laughter in the kitchen, the laundry. In the stables. Though size of the home by no means makes it less in other ways...' she thinks about her other homes, some small, some equally grand... but this? This is the place she loves. This is the place she keeps from the sight of most. That hides a labyrinth of well loved yet wild gardens. That keeps so many important relics safe and books upon books that should have long ago fallen to pieces out of harms way. The taste of the sea that lingers on windy days.

'What would you like?'

“Your children, were they small together?” he asks, noting the change in her demeanor as she speaks of them. “Did you raise them with magic from their first breath?”

“I like space, I have spent more nights of my life sleeping outside than inside. As of late I suppose, I have kept the same home and enjoyed having a place with a familiar feel on my feet and a familiar bed for my head.” He smiles, pausing in his stride to think about what he might like.

“To eat, I would like something sweet,” he admits, “though, what did you have in mind?”

'More or less, Ciaran is about eight years older than Maeve. As to their magic, well... they've always had it, they couldn't not have magic with their parents being who they are. And they have always known it, even before they were strong enough to wield it, even unintentionally.'

Morgana listens to this and considers it, biting her lip slightly. 'I mostly end up sleeping outside on Beltaine and sometimes the other holy days.' Once, though, once she had spent years at a time mostly sleeping out or in tents. With only the warmth of friendly bodies and furs to keep her from the freezing cold.

'Something sweet is fine, it will meet us when we get to where we're going.'

"Unintentionally," he smiles repeating her word. He imagines that could have been both entertaining and taxing. He remembers many things he came to realize unintentionally, as a reaction to threat usually. "Did you help them come into their own?"

"Do you enjoy Bealtaine and the welcoming of summer when you sleep out underneath the skies?" He continues to follow along with her as they walk through her home. "Some nights I welcomed the skies, other nights I would have preferred the comfort of something more sheltered. For some number of years I had a wolfhound to keep me warm. She was a good companion.”

'Lets just say it's good their mother can fireproof an entire castle...' she says with more amusement than most would greet the idea of their children being able to set fire to their home with. 'Help them, yes... it's confusing when it's all new. Their powers grew, still do, as they aged. And so.' she shrugs slightly. She was never planning on letting her children go through all the pain and fear she did before she knew what she was. It would be cruel.

'The festivals, I still play my part in them. There are still those loyal to the Old Religion and though some of the events have been modified as years went on... well. The hunter needs his huntress come may eve. It is a privilege to do something that means something.' she smiles slightly at the mention of a wolfhound before stopping at a set of doors. Large enough, but not overly so. They open before she even reached out to the handles and she walks in, a sitting room, of a sort. One large ornate window giving light to the warm room.

Listening to her speak of her children makes him smile. “You provided them a good foundation. I was fostered by my mother’s people, left to my own devices to figure my worth at an early age, and figure on how to hide that away from those around me who would not understand.” He thinks about that time, “I think when people who are destined to be tall grow, they hurt in their bones and muscles. I remember hurting like that, but it had little to do with my growing to be tall.”

Stepping through the door with her still on his arm, he is aware the doors close quietly behind them. Her will, his will, the castle’s will, does not matter, the end is the same. Privacy, and in a home the size of this, practicality in helping to keep the rooms warmth. “At times it is nice to keep to the old ways,” he admires the heavy glass and intricate structure of the window, and the colored light flooding the room.

'A good foundation is the best a parent can hope to give their children... especially back then.' she listens to him speak of growing, and frowns slightly. She was raised by Uther for better or worse, since she was only a young thing of ten and oblivious to the dangerous - in that house - nature of her existence. 'I was in my twenties when I really understood what I am. Or began too... Uther. Uther banned all magic, good or bad, in Camelot. After Queen Igraine died... Uther would have seen me dead, even though he loved me, for the nature of my being if he had known.'

'So I was left in the dark. Those who suspected didn't dare tell me, even though I trusted them.'

She pulled away and went to sit in one of the bugger, more comfortable chairs, legs curled up under her and her head resting on her hand as she considered it. At the same time a silver platter of cakes and sweets appeared, easing it's way onto one of the small tables in the room. 'Only at times? Do the gods not sing along your very nerves? Does the urge to jump through the fires not rise in you? To run, free and naked as the day you were born?' This brings her smile back, half teasing half genuinely pleased at the memories, ideas. There was one thing that could never be mistaken about Morgana. She was very much, even under centuries of sorrow and pain, an alive, vibrant, magical and sexual creature... and it was perhaps the one thing about her that changed so little.

“Back then,” he smiles wryly over that modifier. “Seems as if that would be timeless.” He watches her expression change from warmth of speaking of her children to something distant as she talks of herself. “You were in the charge of a man who cared for you deeply and despised your nature. That would be difficult to make sense of, that mixture of message. And that there was magic around you, and that magic did not protect you…” he doesn’t quite finish that thought, but it is clear that he does not think well of that. He assumes again, the magic that was around her was in the Merlin she knows.

He remains standing, feeling the cold of his arm where her touch once was. Reading out he selects a strawberry coated in a very dark chocolate. Taking a bite he considers her question. “The urge to dance naked and jump through the fires is not limited to an evening that welcomes the growing season. It is something I actively work to suppress on a daily basis,” he smiles as he takes his second bite of strawberry.

'Times were harder,' she says by way of explanation. Things simply weren't the same back then, even if her children had never gone hungry or wanted for warmth or comfort or anything it didn't negate the fact that what they often saw around them was death, chaos, a country over run by strangers from far away lands. 'It was not so difficult to make sense of when he put his hand around my throat or locked me in the dungeons. Sometimes chained like a common criminal.' and all of this before she had known her nature, nevermind Uther knowing of it. 'No well, said magic didn't even have the guts to tell me I wasn't alone or going crazy. So.'

'Oh? One could never tell... though I never said it's something I do only once a year. But it is my duty one a year.'

“Times were different, and I think they were more apparent, but I don’t know that they were harder. In some respects seeing what was coming and what was around you was easier than walking through parts of today.” He pauses from eating the strawberry as she speaks of Uther again. Really, that she should live in such a place when magic was there to keep magic and nothing was there for her is appalling. “I cannot conceive of such a view of your life as you have looking back across being young, knowing what you know of the magic so near you.”

He looks at her, thinking of her duty once a year. “I believe you are wondrous to watch on such an evening.”

'Most people in this day and age live in relative safety, have access to medicines we could barely have dreamt of back then. Time are easier now, even if the wars grow more sinister.'

Uther, though, Uther was an entirely different subject and perhaps more complicated than even Morgana would willingly admit too. 'I wish it were that I could not, but I remember as though it were yesterday. Merlin did seem to wonder why I turned away from him, even after he poisoned me, held me while I was dying... I didn't know what he was. He sent me to the druids then forced me back because the idiot didn't have the wits about him to think that Uther just might take badly to his ward going missing. I wanted to stay. They were the only people that were like me that I knew... they felt like home. This was before he betrayed me and poisoned me, but it hurt to have some place, a people that were so close and so like me and then be denied their company.'

She smiles slightly, Beltaine is... Beltaine is when she truly is as close to being a Goddess as any human ever is, when she is her own, unchecked self. If only because higher magics than her own rule that night, and the participants within. 'I wouldn't know, I suppose, as I have never watched myself. Though Arthur did once say something to that effect.' and he had been her hunter more than once.

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Everyone needs a castle to call their own...

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