To Gwen, there was something threatening in this chicken's small and beady, beady eyes.
A penned animal as such wouldn't be called witted normally— see a sheep, for instance, falling into ditches and needing help every moment of living—but this bird had evaded enough hands that Gwen knew the hen had a cunning plan.
It was succeeding at it and humiliating the handmaiden at once.
-—-
Let's start from when Gwaine did something earlier to cause this event:
He tripped. He tripped and fell into a fence, which then fell with him, and collapsed. Not to judge the shoddy workmanship of the fence, or how neglected it might've been, but the fence shouldn't have been crushed so thoroughly.
Gwaine destroyed a fence, which was guarding some goats, and let two of them free.
He was burdened with rebuilding the fence and capturing the goats before things got out of hand.
And... Well...
Things got out of hand, to say the least. The kids, young goats, went out of their way to be in Arthur's chambers (where a curtain was nibbled), the kitchens (where food was taken from countertops), and the armory (where everything was intact, somehow.) By means unbeknownst to himself, Gwaine caught one of the goats at midday.
The second one was evasive and had maneuvered out of everyone's grasp. So, Merlin, Gwaine, and even Percival didn't catch it until later— when Lancelot chased it through a gate to corner it.
This was after it had chewed on a fence nearby, and released the chickens.
That fiasco was exactly as the goat disaster had gone.
-—-
Maybe it was luck, or maybe it was magic, but Gwen finally caught and held the bird with two hands.
The bird squawked and she sighed in relief, sitting heavily onto a nearby stack of crates.
Then came the manservant.
Stomping in and crushing hay underfoot, Merlin smiled and took the chicken into his hands.
"Finally got her, huh?" There was a sparkling smirk that Gwen saw on his face.
He'd unquestionably assisted with magic.
Guinevere stood up and swiped at her hands, dusting off. "With your help, yes."
They began walking to the chicken's original home.
The chicken squirmed in his hands and Merlin did under Gwen's gaze. "Well— it looked like this day was getting worse and.. yeah." He was being a bit sheepish, not wanting to fully commit to his actions. "I— yes. I helped. Of course, I did, Gwen."
She stared with the slightly disappointed and disbelieving stare that Gwen had down pat from dealing with Arthur and Merlin for all these years. "Be careful with that— but thank you, Merlin."
The chicken clucked in the silence and was soon dropped softly next to its coop-mates.
Thanked and hugged by the chicken's owner, Merlin and Gwen escaped the day's events.
-—-
Guinevere tugged Merlin to the smithy one day.
YOU ARE READING
Mostly because dead people don't talk back
FanfictionVery often and sometimes a bit too many times for his taste, Gwaine found himself in very unique situations when near to Merlin. The smell of blood and dirt smothered his senses, and Gwaine couldn't get up the energy to remove himself from this sit...
