When Merlin is five years old, Hunith uses the last of their flour to make what she knows will be the last of their bread.
It's been a long, hard winter. She doesn't know what she'll do tomorrow. She doesn't know what she can do.
But Merlin is five, so she doesn't tell him this. She kisses his forehead and tucks him into their shared bed and when he complains that he is still hungry, she promises him that there will be plenty of food tomorrow.
It is a lie. It is a stupid lie, and Hunith wishes she could take it back the moment she says it, but it helps him sleep better for tonight, and she'll find a way for them to pull through, she has to.
Merlin has none of these doubts. He is five years old, and his mother's word is law. If she says there will be plenty of food tomorrow, then he believes her.
When they wake in the morning, there is so much food in their cupboard that the door is starting to strain, just as his mother promised.
Merlin is not at all surprised.
. . .
He doesn't trust Gaius in quite the same way as he trusted his mother back then. It's hard to trust anyone the way you trust people when you're five.
Especially here, in a place where he's always one breath away from disaster.
But he trusts Gaius implicitly when it comes to medical matters. Gaius knows so much; Merlin can't imagine he could ever be wrong.
When Gwen falls sick with an autumn fever, Merlin nearly drives himself to sickness trying to find some way to help her. Gaius tries to no avail to get him to slow down, but it's hopeless. Merlin won't stop until he knows she'll make it.
In desperation, that's exactly what Gaius tells him, that Gwen has turned the corner and will recover.
It might be true; it might not. For all his experience, even Gaius is unsure.
But Merlin believes him, wholeheartedly, and he finally allows himself to be ushered off to bed, grinning like a loon.
By the time he wakes in the morning, Gwen is perfectly fine.
. . .
Arthur insists that he needs some sort of weapon. Merlin reluctantly concedes to getting a knife.
The merchant assures him it's a good knife, an excellent knife, even, and it's not too expensive, so it's a good deal, really.
Merlin is not an idiot, but he's also still fairly new to the city, and it's not like he knows anything about knives. It certainly looks like a good knife to him.
It is not, in fact, a good knife. It is a terrible knife.
But Merlin falls asleep convinced that even Arthur won't find fault with his choice, and by the time he presents it to Arthur in the morning, even the prince has to admit that it's a very fine knife indeed.
. . .
(Merlin does not trust Kilgharrah to have his best interests at heart. Frankly, he doesn't even really trust Kilgharrah not to eat him.
But he does believe that Kilgharrah knows what he's talking about, particularly when it comes to magic. He laps up the lies the dragon spoon feeds him about his glorious destiny because at last he feels like maybe he was made for something more. Maybe he's not a monster.
The dragon might have been more careful about promising a golden age for Arthur Pendragon if he had known just what he was doing.
But Merlin believes, and Merlin goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, the druids are convinced that they have always had prophecies of a Once and Future King.)
