First Words

New Merlin fanfic! This one was written for the Pod Together challenge 2019. If you're not familiar with that, it's a podfic challenge that includes many more fandoms than just Merlin, and people write fics and make podfics in groups. I teamed up with brokenfannibal and together we produced one fanfic and one podfic to go together with it. You can read the fanfic here, on ao3 and ffn, and the podfic is available on ao3 (the story and podfic are posted together as one story) - link below. I hope you'll enjoy the story, and please do listen to the podfic! You'll hear Aithusa talk and it's adorable! :)

You can listen to the podfic here: archiveofourown.org/works/19901533

Disclaimer: We don't own Merlin.

FIRST WORDS

...

Arthur shielded his eyes as he looked over his city from one of the windows, stopping there to appreciate the view on the way back to his chambers. The sun was setting in the distance, casting long shadows everywhere the eye could see, and despite it being evening, it was still rather hot.

Arthur wiped the sweat off his forehead with a tired sigh. He was just returning from a training session and was looking forward to a quiet evening in his chambers, preferably in a bath that Merlin was hopefully preparing for him already.

He turned away from the window and finally approached the door to his rooms when – he heard Merlin's voice, yelling something. He frowned and listened behind the door – it wasn't just Merlin, it was someone else too!

"Please, just stop running!"

Running? Now, what on earth-

Arthur opened the door abruptly and was greeted by quite a sight - Merlin was standing there in the middle of the room, nervous as hell, sweating, looking at Arthur with fear in his eyes, trying to simultaneously look like everything was perfectly fine, which – obviously – nothing was, and a little white dragon was sitting there on the floor, partly hidden behind his legs and partly looking at Arthur with big curious eyes.

Arthur blinked.

"Arthur!" the dragon shrieked and jumped from behind Merlin's legs right up at Arthur, climbing up his body in barely a second and settling around his neck, very uncomfortably moving around, never staying still.

"Oh, hey Arthur," Merlin grinned. Arthur just stood there, frozen. "So this is Aithusa, the dragon I told you about. She just learned how to talk!"

Aithusa shrieked something again and used Arthur's head to bounce off of it, suddenly leaping into the air and flying above their heads.

"And fly!" Merlin added. A nervous laugh followed.

Arthur stared at the little dragon and at his incompetent servant, and finally started moving again. The first thing he did – he quickly turned around, shutting the door behind him.

"Merlin!" he hissed. "What on earth is happening here?!"

Merlin immediately lost his grin. "I'm sorry! I was in the woods with her earlier and I didn't realize she was following me!"

"Sometimes, Merlin, I seriously wonder how on earth were you even able to lie to me about your magic for so long without getting yourself executed the minute you walked into Camelot. It's like you attract all problems in the kingdom!"

"Arthur!"

They both looked up to see that Aithusa was now flying all over the room, getting dangerously close to the windows. Arthur immediately ran to close the one closest to him, while Merlin closed the remaining ones with magic.