The Speechless Sea

Chapter 10

Nimueh scowled deeply into her caldron. The lines marring her beautiful face like the craggy ravines of the moon. She frowned at the laughing image that glimoured on the magical service of the dark liquid. It bubbled boilingly with her wrath until she dismissed it with an irritated wave of her hand and the photoreal picture of Merlin and Arthur dissipated.

"No," she muttered evily under her breath, gills flaring in anger, her numerous tentacles waving in the light current of the sea.

"This cannot be allowed." She intoned her voice a dark cackle as she scooped various magical sea ingredients into her flailing limbs.

"Merlin must fail... I'll see to him. And his little prince too." she cracklied, pushing herself off the rocks of the cold and dank seabed swiftly, her tentacles behind her in a streamed line, swimming her way up to the crest of the sea, nefarious deeds pittering through her evil brain.

---

The moon shone brightly from her place high in the velveteen sky, illuminating the planes of Merlin's cheeks and face. Arthur's eyes kept roaming from the small rowing boat he was pushing from the shore line to the milky efferescene of the other man's skin. It sparkled like the ocean in the moonlight. Merlin, for his part, returned the rugged prince's glance shyly, a small smile living on his face when he thought the other man was too engaged in the business of the boat to notice.

"Come on Mer-lin" shouted Arthur, kneeling on the benches of the boat and offering his strong hand to the man who stood wided eyes and knee deep in the lap of the gentle ocean. A trill of apprenhencion ran down his spine. While he had spent years watching the mystical things float above him, he had never been in a boat before."

"It's not like you've never been in a boat before!" called the prince, wrapping his calloused hand gently into Merlin's and helping him delicately into the bobbing boat. He steadied him with a calm hand as the dark haired man stumbled, letting his hand linger over the white linen of Merlin's shirt, his blue eyes drawn upward to wear the neckerchief from earlier was settled cosier about the raven man's scrawny neck, like a embrace.

"Alright?" Arthur checked with the secret former merman. Merlin nodded in enthusiasm in response. His eyes and incredibly wide smile which was painted across his face telling the story of his excitement. He wished, in his mind, that he could tell the prince how he felt, that the way the prince looked at him in the night made him as unsteady as the little boat made his new legs.

"Don't worry, we'll get some seaman spark into you soon" Arthur minxed with a smirk. Merlin gave him a cute little frowning moue, which made Arthur's inside coagulate like boas and writhe warmly. He wanted to kiss that expression off the other man's face. His delight was cut through with a radiant pop of a cork and the musical tinkling of Merlin's laughter, as champagne ran freely down the side of the champagne bottle and onto his hadn. Arthur strangle a mermur as a little pink tongue poked out of the other man's mouth and creeped along his palm, licking up the sweet liquid like a baby otter.

Far below the shallow hull of the 10 foot rowing boat, Nimueh watched ensconced in seaweed, through dark eyes, listening to Arthur speak with magically enahnced hearing. She hissed in rage and spat out the words:

"Kuhikihi i ka moku!" she pointed her hand the a shot botled out of her hand, glowing green it flew upwardsa and struck the swell of the small boat, jolting it hard to the side. With a splashing crash the occupants landed in the water and she darted away into the darkness cackling.

The bat threw the pair into the ocean which broke and swayed saltily around them as Arthur started a strong crawl, his muscular arms moving rhythmically as Merlin trod the same water and floundered desperately.

"You really are the most useless..." muttered the prince under his breath as he crawled back to the other man, scooping him securely into his arms and holding him tight against his chest as he lent onto his back and swam them both to the safety of the dried land of the soft sandy beach. Merlin's heart filtered in his fine chest with every stroke, surrounded by the feeling of Arhtur's knightly safety.

Reaching the bank, they pulled each other up, supporting each other in their mutual arms. They shared an electric look. The moment only being shattered like a precarious crystal on a cold marble floor by the icy shudder that laced its way down Merlin's spine, a spike of cold as he stood in the moonlight wetly. Arthur laughed in manful rue.

"Come on, let's get you home." He muttered, trying desperately to ignore the way his heart sang like a swoopy seabird over the ocean vents at the thought of the castle being Merlin's home. Resting his hand propreitly on the boney small of Merlin's narrow back he led him back away from the water's edge.

***

The next day dawned crisply ans misty, the sun rising over the gentle sea, it's lapping waves seemed muted to silence by the hanging vapur, a quite shush agains the tiny pebbles of the sea shoor. It was not lont pas dawn that arthur found himself drawn to the coast, to the beach where he had met MErlin.

Merlin. He could not help but turn his thoughts to him as he walked, he was all that filled the princes mine since he had found him speechless and alone on the sand. His raven hair and snowy skin in perfect balance almost a monochrome background to the brilliance of his blue eyes as blue as the sky, surrounded by stars that shine not only in the sky but also in the earth beneat; rays of light brought inside his body and shining into his heart. Though he could not speak Arthur felt a connection to him, stronger than a mere attraction, something deep in his heart the pulled them together and when he looked into MErlin's kind, beautiful, ethereal face....he knew the other man could feel itt o.

It wwasn't the first time he'd felt it, on the beach, after the shipwreck, he had awoken to that same feeling, and blueeyes and raven hair....and a voice. A voice he had no heard since that sounded like the se itself, both gentle and terrible, calm and stormy, shallow as a rock pool and deep as the marianas trench. A voice that made Arthur want to wrote love poetry to hid shadowy raven haired nymph, so he could hear that voice recite it. A voice that wave a crack into his heart when he thought about it too much a voice that he longed to belong to the other man, but that was an evanescent intangibility.

He sighed, his angst dancing ethereally past his chill face and into a grey puff in the cold and headed down the sandy beach.

Suddenly, a sound sucked the sorrow full man from his flight of fancy. It was a mysterious sound enough to shake Arhtuer's thoughts awy from the man that they have circled and dragged him back into the moment. It was the voice.