Days later, he would laugh about the situation around dinner with Gwyn and Brisen. But the smile would feel awkward on his face. The two still bugged him to tell them how he had managed to get so lost. He told them, joking loudly, about how he'd slipped into a hole that the drwyds had passed over. But in the night, while an owl hooted in the chill nighttime breeze, he rolled over in his sleeping roll, unable to sleep. The light of the moon didn't permeate inside the oilcloth tent where the other two newly initiated drwyds slept, and he had to guess where their forms exactly were. The smell of the crushed grass beneath them filtered through the tent, reminding Merlyn of his father. Or, the man he thought of as his father.
To be fair, it wasn't as if he was ever going to stop thinking of him as his father, and he was away enough for it to matter less than little anyways. "Merlyn?" Gwyn's soft voice was pitched even softer to avoid waking his cousin. "Are you awake?" The boy had gotten more daring since the trial in the cave. There was a confidence to him. Not overnight, but growing in strength slowly. Still shy, but now unbearably so. Merlyn nodded, then blushed in the darkness when he realized Gwyn couldn't see him. "Yeah. Can't sleep," he whispered. Gwyn hummed in agreement. "It's all so strange, coming here. The trial, starting our lessons. The drwyd teachers. I didn't realize not all of them would be around for our training. What an awesome experience you got to have, growing up in a drwydic family."
His voice was wistful, and Merlyn frowned knowing the darkness hid it. "It wasn't so awesome. Just like have a dad whose away all the time and an uncle who has an uncanny sense of where you are when you run off to play," he complained. Gwyn laughed softly. "Hey, Merlyn?" The question in the other boy's voice surprised him, as did the direct way he asked it. "You were caught in the dreaming longer than us, right? That's why you weren't able to be found. You were stuck between here and the Otherworld." Merlyn shook out his hair, freed from its leather tie for the night. "Yeah. I had so many visions I thought it was never going to end," he said, sitting up.
There was rustling in the far corner of the tent and he could just make out the darker than darkness outline of Gwyn's head and shoulders. "You should tell your uncle, or one of the teachers at least. Or even the archdrwyd if nobody else!" Merlyn's mouth went dry. "No!" he said, sharper than he intended. Brisen stirred, mumbling softly and both boys froze. When she settled again, he repeated the word, softer. "No, I feel this is something I need to keep to myself. I didn't even want to tell you but you guessed, I don't want my uncle to worry. Besides, it wasn't supposed to happen and I don't want to get in trouble."
Gwyn sighed. "Okay, I won't tell either. You're really interesting, Merlyn. When I first met you at initiation I was scared of you. Impressed, I guess. But now, only a few days from then and I feel like we're all going to be good friends, you, me, and Brisen." Maybe it was the way the night was, or maybe the leftover dreaming from the initiation, but Merlyn felt those words closing in around him with their enormity. Friends. Good friends. He'd never had many friends, aside from Taliesin. That was a thought, what Taliesin would think if, no when, he met Brisen and Gwyn.
Merlyn hoped he would like them. But aside from occasional visits, they were the drwyds' for nine years of training. There wouldn't be too much time to relax, save one day of every month. All that time would be devoted to learning. "I think so too. I'm sorry I wasn't nicer when we first met," he said softly, hearing the truth in his own words. Gwyn's laughter in the dark softened his guilt. "This is the most I've spoken to anyone other than my mom or Brisen in years. Don't be sorry. I know why." Merlyn bit down on the objection welling in him. Instead he sighed, lying back down, head against the soft pillow stuffed with straw and owl down.
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