#morgwenmicrofic

And it's harder than you think telling dreams from one another

Morgana’s magic felt like darkness, for all that she kept accidentally starting fires. The uncontrollable bursts of power made her recoil. In the end, she could not conceal her magic from anyone.

The windows in her bedchamber were draped with heavy fabric now, as if she could snuff out the horrible light within herself if she refused to let in the sun. But no matter how she shrouded herself, her friends would not leave her to the festering darkness.

Merlin tried to reassure her, but Morgana knew that she was dangerous. She envied his control and his patience. And most of all she envied the way Merlin could reach for Arthur without fear.

Morgana would cut off her own hand before she harmed Gwen. If she were strong enough, she would refuse to see Gwen at all. But she was weak and Gwen was stubborn and it was only a matter of time before she got hurt.

The nightmares came less frequently now, though she doubted they would ever truly stop. Merlin told her that was progress and she wanted to believe him. Their training had done little for her magic thus far, but a few nights of untroubled sleep each week were their own victory.

This night was not one of them.

Morgana woke with the blankets twisted around her legs and her throat raw from screaming and with Gwen’s warm, calloused hand clasping her own.

Morgana opened golden eyes and the two remaining candles in the room flared high and bright.

“Go away,” she croaked, and tried to pull her hand free.

Gwen’s hold tightened. “I will not leave you.” Her voice washed over Morgana, cool and calm as a lake, quelling the fear and shame that burned within her. The candles dimmed and flickered. “I’m not afraid.”

Morgana closed her eyes as the room plunged into darkness.

“I said beside the window, not beneath it, were you even listening?”

Nimueh heard her before she saw her, her voice clear and striking as pipes before battle.

“Not there, you imbecile, do you know what direct sunlight does to ink on paper? If this is what passes for service in Camelot—”

Leaning in the doorway, Nimueh took in the sight of the young Princess Ygraine, newly arrived from Tintagel, at the center of a whirlwind of servants scrambling to fulfill her every whim. Their king had commanded them to make their future queen comfortable, after all; and already the princess had been forced to endure water that was too cold and then too hot, food which was too rich and then so light she must starve, and rooms which were indecently close to those of her betrothed. Nimueh very much suspected that as soon as the servants got this room arranged to her exacting standards, it would be so far from the royal chambers as to be deeply insulting. What Uther thought of this mercurial behavior, Nimueh neither knew nor cared. She looked forward to watching him dance to Ygraine’s melody himself, as soon as he could be spared from dancing for his lords.

“If a single thing is broken, I’ll have you hanging from a dungeon wall by your thumbs,” Ygraine was snarling at a terrified page who had dropped a case he was unpacking when Nimueh decided to step in.

“All right, you’ve had your fun, my friend,” Nimueh said lightly.

Ygraine stiffened. She looked Nimueh up and down, sneering no doubt at the simplicity of her dress, at the way she’d bound her hair in a scarf like a peasant woman might to keep out the dust and detritus of real work. Nimueh repaid the favor, indulging in the chance to truly look, beyond the haughty arch of that swan’s neck and those delicate features. There were circles under her eyes beneath her powder; and her war-march around this chamber was as much to hide the fact she was shaking as much as it was to terrorize the servants. She wore a deep purple dress glittering with beadwork and frothing with lace, every bit as rich as the girl inside it: but against the bold fabric Ygraine herself could have been a ghost.

Who are you, really? Nimueh thought. Hungered for it.

“Do I know you?” Ygraine asked coldly.

“My name is Nimueh.”

Ygraine tilted her head with a glittering, icy smile. “So I don’t know you. And yet you call me friend.”

“Was I mistaken?”

“I could never have a friend who was so improper.”

“And I could never have a friend who could be such a brat,” Nimueh teased back and was rewarded when Ygraine’s perfect pink mouth fell open with shock. The fleet of servants attending the princess were, to a woman, beating a hasty retreat, but Ygraine seemed not even to notice, all her focus on Nimueh, who felt her grin sharpen, only missing lion’s teeth, wanting lionlike to roll over and show her belly until this girl fell for her trap and pounced.

“Tell me, Nimueh. Do you know how to sing?” Ygraine asked.

“Hm?”

“My lord must have sent you to entertain me. Or must I make you sing for me?”

There she was. Nimueh laughed, imagining Princess Ygraine charging her with a hairpin, imagining tripping her up with a single spell-word and sending her sprawling. Imagined helping her up and getting a closer look at that face when it was blushing.

“I’d like to see you try,” said Nimueh.

“Why? What are you going to do to me?”

Nimueh knew what it was like to be plucked from her home to serve a higher purpose—how heavy that burden was, and how lonely. Queen and priestess: they were not so different. But Nimueh wasn’t quite ready to lay the truth at Ygraine’s slippered feet. She’d have to do at least a little something to earn that prize, after all.

So instead Nimueh just hooked her arm in Ygraine’s, as improper as she’d been accused, and pulled her from the fortress she’d been trying to make, out into the castle, into Camelot proper.

| prompt: light / "i know" | (the 'getting together' part is implied for the future) | words: 396 |

| pre-relationship morgwen | other tags: hurt/comfort, implied past torture/imprisonment, magic reveal |

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Brigid is the radiant Irish Celtic goddess of healing, poetry, smithcraft, and the sacred flame. Brigid was a goddess full of contradiction. She was a goddess of healing and motherhood, but also of smithing and fire. Her name refers to the goddess’s connection to sunlight and fire, meaning “the High One” or “the Exalted One.” The Morrígan is the fierce Irish Celtic goddess of war, fate, sovereignty, prophecy, and death, often appearing as a shapeshifting crow or raven who incites battle, foretells doom, and embodies both destruction and the power to determine victory. Appearing before great battles, the Morrígan offered prophecy and favor to heroes and gods alike. Her name can be interpreted as either “Great Queen” or “Phantom Queen."

Brigid (Light) vs The Morrígan (Dark) - the perfect Celtic contradiction of creation and destruction, both triple goddesses, both daughters of the same divine bloodline, yet polar opposites. Together they form the complete cycle of the Celtic feminine divine; light and dark forever spinning in eternal, beautiful contradiction. (x)

Queen Guinevere gave Lady Morgana a ring that was nearly identical to the one she later gave to her lover Lancelot. This shared symbolism between the queen and her former close companion adds subtle sapphic undertones to their relationship. - Extracted from Lancelot-Grail Cycle: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, ed. Norris J. Lacy (Vol. 2, Prose Lancelot).