"'Tis only a simple charm. You really have no faith in me," Teddy teased Kathleen, smirking at her indignation.

"You know that is not true." Kathleen flipped her long black hair over her shoulder and tried to keep a straight face. "You have my complete confidence."

"Well then," Teddy walked around the table to open Merlin's charm book. "Watch this."

The redheaded sorcerer-in-training read the rhyme word for word.

"Just as inspiration should come from the heart,

Paint should be used to create art.

So up, colors, work for your pay,

There is no sense in wasting the day."

Immediately, the paintbrushes Teddy and Kathleen had found earlier began dipping themselves into the jars of blue and green paint. Teddy closed Merlin's spell book and turned to face Kathleen. She spread her hands. "See, I never doubted you. 'Twas a simple charm, just as you said."

Teddy laughed and leaned against the table watching the paintbrushes float towards the paper he had set out earlier. For some reason though, they were moving too slow, sloping paint across the floor. Teddy stopped smiling as the blue paintbrush slung it's color onto a stack of books. Kathleen ran to grab the green paintbrush before it started drawing on the walls of Merlin's library, but it splattered her face as she reached for it. By now Teddy had Merlin's book reopened and was frantically searching for a spell to make it stop. The paintbrushes were going wild, tossing blue and green streaks of color all over the library.

"Teddy!" Kathleen hollered at him. "Stop this, quick!" She was trying to hold one of the struggling paintbrushes while looking at something out the window. "Merlin's coming up the path!"

Teddy scrambled through the pages. There had to be a counter spell somewhere. Why didn't he ever think to look these things up ahead of time?

Finally a rhyme caught his eye. He rushed through it hoping desperately that it was what he needed.

"There is a time for art and a time for play,

Yet now it is time to put the colors away!"

Instantly, the paintbrushes flopped to the ground like lifeless fish. Teddy backhanded his forehead and surveyed the mess. Before he could do anything about it, however, the door opened and Merlin entered, balancing a stack of blank scrolls in his arms.

"Good After- What happened here?!" Merlin nearly dropped his scrolls, as he glanced at his paint splattered library and the two sorcerers also covered in blue and green.

"'Tis my fault." Teddy moved forward, his head down, like the ashamed puppy he had been turned into for a time, years ago. "I practiced a spell that ended up going wrong. Like normal." He admitted.

"But he said it correctly." Kathleen's defense perked Teddy up. " I know we should not have been fooling around when you were out, but I don't understand why it made such a mess." She rubbed a patch of green paint off her face in as dignified a manner as she could. Merlin set down the scrolls and patiently looked through the spell book.

"Here is your mistake. You did not have a wand." He closed the tome and faced Teddy and Kathleen. "Now I don't forbid you from practicing charms unsupervised like Morgan does, but I do expect that you know enough not to attempt spells that you know you are unable to preform." He smiled like the kind longsuffering mentor that he was. "I am going to work on these scrolls for a bit while the both of you clean my library. When you finish, I have a list of errands for you to run in town, so hurry before it gets dark." He fingered his long white beard, adjusted his spectacles, and headed into the adjoining study, noticeably stepping around puddles of paint.

When the door closed, Teddy smiled apologetically at Kathleen. "'Twas kind of you to defend me. But this is entirely my doing." He motioned to the paint streaked room. "You should not have to waste your time cleaning up. I will do it."

Kathleen shook her head. " You except me to sit here and watch? I did not realize you needed a wand either. I share in the blame as well, Balthazar." Her use of his real name meant that there was no point in arguing any further. Teddy hadn't gone by Balthazar since he had met Jack and Annie over three years ago. It had always sounded to him like "Balthazar" meant he should be taking a bath with a tsar or something of that sort, so he had been truly happy to receive a better nickname. Unfortunately, when he had told Kathleen his real name she had thought it was funny, so he hadn't succeeded in escaping it altogether.

Teddy grabbed a mop and began scrubbing the floor. Kathleen knelt beside him, offering company in her silence. She worked for Merlin for weeks at a time, in between visiting her own time period and her selkie family. Teddy had accompanied her home for almost half of her visits, so in a way her parents and sisters felt like his family too. Yet, not family enough to make Kathleen his sister. She was far too pretty for him to think of her that way. Teddy snuck a glance at his friend as she wiped paint off the table legs. In the past he had worked for Morgan, which had meant he didn't get to spend as much time with Kathleen. Over the past few months, however, with Morgan off doing other business, Teddy had been allowed to stay and train under Merlin. He was less stern than Morgan, and Teddy liked Merlin's library better as well. And then, of course, there was the benefit of being around Kathleen all day. She was smart and playful and gentle and beautiful and Teddy thought he was the luckiest guy in the world to have her as a best friend. He missed Jack and Annie,- it had been almost a year since he had seen them,- but he wouldn't trade his time with Kathleen for anyone.

Teddy finished scrubbing the floor and moved onto wiping off the covers of the library books. Kathleen was humming a selkie song on the other side of the room, and Teddy joined in on the chorus, purposely off key.

"You birdbrain!" She threw her towel at him, laughing, after several minutes of terrible singing. "My sisters all the way in Avalon can probably hear you, and they're all probably cringing in pain."

"You mean to say that I'm not theatre worthy?" Teddy put on a look of mock hurt, and Kathleen laughed even more.

Merlin opened his study door. " I'll say you best forfeit all dreams of professional singing, and head to town to do the shopping before 'tis too late." He surveyed the half-cleaned library. "You can finish this work later in the evening, after you get back, but as I said before, hurry. If my predictions are correct, there is a storm approaching, and I don't wish for the two of you to be caught in it."

Teddy and Kathleen put down the mops and towels as Merlin found his list of errands. He handed Teddy the money and the list, while Kathleen grabbed her coat, and opened the creaking door, letting in the blustery fall wind that lost no time in stirring the pages of the library books.

"Don't get into trouble!" Merlin called after them, as Teddy and Kathleen stepped outside.

"Trouble?" Teddy repeated to his fellow sorcerer-in-training as they started down the path that wound across the hill and into town. "I don't believe I have heard of such a thing."

Kathleen just laughed.