Today's #flashfiction #MerlinsTeacher

“From each according to his abilities, to according to his needs.”

Groucho Marx*

My friend CJ is over for today, and as usual we are not scheming global domination.

Merlin's Teacher

        Despite the fact that over the years he's gone a little, okay, really, nutty I can't help be proud of my student Merlin. Hi, I'm the great and powerful witch Gerini (My parents tried to pick a traditional wizard family name. Didn't end well. So I have everyone call me Stephanie.) I didn't cheat death in quite the same way Merlin did. I chill as a ghost. He decided to experience multiple lives through memory-keeping reincarnation. I told him not to do it. Did he listen to me? No. Well, he didn't listen to me a lot when I was teaching him so I wasn't to surprised when he did that too.

       It's a really pity he went batty. He's not the first immortal wizard to do this. Near all the other ones have had their names faded into history. Merlin's just the one currently on the radar if you know what I mean. I'm proud of him getting so much magical talent. Going beyond all the incredible powers I've taught him, but of course, turning into one of those crazy wrathful wizards makes me regret teaching him. I don't know where he came up with turning people into toads as his favorite curse. I've taught people the same powers he had but none of them tried to go for the madness that comes with immortality. And oddly enough when Merlin came to me he seemed the nicest.

       He came to me humble and with simple robes. Improvised really. They weren't the usual silk or anything. He took shirts or probably whatever he could find that he could make look like a wizarding robe and made it into one. He also improvised a wand. I'm a very good witch and I could tell it wasn't store bought. But I could tell it wasn't stolen. When I took him in I gave him one of my own because what he crafted would have probably exploded eventually upon use.

        His vocabulary almost seemed entirely comprised of “please,” “thank you” and “I'm sorry”. It took me awhile to figure out exactly why he was at my place. At first I thought he was someone pretending to be broke. A panhandler. But in a few minutes intuition told me he was actually broke.

       He explained to me he was from Earth. I thought to myself “Oh great, an Earthling.” Ah, think I sound like some sort of creature with tentacles saying that? No, I assure I'm very human. You just don't get how realities work. So many of them that reflect each other. On Earth I'm speaking something called English but where I come from it's called Prorri. Just as other realities share beings like humans they also share languages, often with a few changes in name and some word differences but not too many. You'd probably have to scour an entire dictionary to see em all besides the name. The current Merlin usually reincarnates into worlds that have some form of English because he's too stubborn or lazy, whatever you want to call it, to learn another language. At least another language besides the ancient magical ones.

      And I've been to a few Earths, spoke my fair share of “English”, and Earth isn't one of my favorite worlds to say the least. A few versions I like. Preferably the ones with magic. There was this one with this very fine wizarding school. That is until this one boy with a scar came and brought nothing but trouble. I swear kids can be such trouble. Different Earth versions can be in different relative time periods from each other. I've seen some future variations and it still isn't the best place.

I had some feeling that Merlin was not going to be the best student.

       But he actually had a purpose to learn besides just the sake of learning. He actually had a quest. He wanted to help someone. Someone destined to be king of his land. It was a pure purpose. Earnest. Other students wanted revenge on people or to conquer things. I usually learned this after I taught them. Which is why I started to ask people why they wanted to learn from me. Eventually I learned that this king hadn't even been born yet. It had been a vision. The wizard wanted to do good so much he was willing to help a vision.

Arthur was his name if I remember. As I ghost I “lived” long enough to see him become legend but not history. Interestingly enough Arthur's significance was so great that his legend echoed into the many of the instances of Earth along with Merlin.

        I remember Merlin's purpose over these many years. Not sure if Merlin, through his many reincarnations through time, remembers or cares about it any more. I hope he does really. There's not much of the boy I remember left in there.