The Council of Magic was gathering for the fourth time in two years. For the Sidhe, this was an unusual sort of frequency that they didn't often entertain. Brígh didn't mind as much as her peers, having worked closely with mortals long enough to understand the strangeness of their fleeting lives. Still, she had existed long enough to see the same souls walking the same paths time and again with differing results. It was, she had come to know, the defining characteristic of humanity, magical or not, that they could take the same actions and end up somewhere new simply because of their placement in time.

Emrys and Pendragon, for example, were in a place she never would have imagined they'd be if she took the actions and circumstances of their previous lives into consideration. And yet they were thriving.

And late. She remembered only now that she was sitting in her place in the Council room that they were going to be late on this particular day, as would most of the Council as they celebrated the binding of Morgana Sangster and Leon Westbrook. She regretted choosing to leave her usual entourage behind if only for the lack of company she was currently experiencing. But this was meant to be a Council meeting with their allies, and the cloud of Lesser Sidhe that followed her were less than helpful in such endeavors, perceiving any moment she gave ground for a compromise as a personal attack against her being.

If her siblings thought her more important, they would have ensured that she had attendants loyal to all of them in her entourage to spy on her actions, but they cared little for the world beyond Avalon, and so she was left to her own thoughts and whims. As long as she never promised to open Avalon to the mortals, they never cared what she did when she was outside of their border.

The sour taste of her own bitterness at their disregard for her efforts sat heavy on her tongue.

"I thought I might find you here."

Brígh turned to see Aithusa stepping into the room and unfolding from the mortal form they borrowed. The perpetual spiciness of dragons assaulted her senses as the bitterness melted away.

"The mortal perception of time is difficult to measure," she protested.

Aithusa chuckled, tinging the air with the syrupy sweetness of amusement. "It's quite the contrary, I've found. They have been devising ways to measure time for longer than you or I have existed."

"It's messy. Affected by perception contrary desires." Humans had so many phrases for it, how time dragged or sped away depending on the activity one was involved in. She'd never had occasion to observe humans during these periods, to see whether it was merely a matter of perception, or if they were unconsciously warping their local reality to conform to their unconscious thought of how time should move.

"And the Sidhe are not affected by their perception in similar ways? I seem to recall that some entrances to Avalon are closed unless one of your siblings wishes it so. And Celyn has earned himself a reputation among the longer-lived for his fickle nature and changeability. Many wonder why he was made the Gatekeeper of Avalon in the first place."

Brígh sighed. "He was the only one who would take it seriously. For all the trouble he causes, he does keep it safe. Our paths are secure and unblemished by the unending march of mortal consumption."

"And so the humans have their failings, the Sidhe have theirs, and the dragons are not immune to the effect either."

"Your children are not with you today?" Usually Sotrios and Efthymia were mere steps behind Aithusa. It was unusual to see them without the twins. Each had their own distinct flavor to her senses. Sotrios, beneath the spicy taste of dragon, had a richer flavor, something thick and creamy. Efthymia was tart. Blunt, like her nature, but not terribly biting, like lemon without its acidity. Aithusa's flavor was different, almost like blood or copper. While their children were softer, brought up on the tales of war without actually suffering one, Aithusa demanded attention with their taste, drawing Brígh back to the days when Avalon was closed to mortals for fear of what they would do to beings who existed and subsisted on magic.

"Sotrios chose to stand guard over the wedding, and Efthymia wanted to stay with him. They will come later with the others." Aithusa moved around the table to their place. "I know that you have much you wanted to discuss and we have not yet had the chance. Now we are alone, and you are free to ask whatever you wish."

"Mortal bindings are strange. Their lives are so short, and yet they tie themselves to one another in spite of the loss they will experience in the future." In all her contact with them, humans only served to surprise and mystify her with their determination to exist beyond themselves. That was the only way she could explain the drive they felt to make connections and fight against the tide of time.

"There was a wise human who once said that it was better to have loved and lost than to live one's life without love. Humans are conscious of their mortality and the mortality of those around them, but they choose to embrace the time they have with those they are closest. In some ways, they can transcend even us in all this." Wistfulness tasted like cotton, and it was a familiar sensation on her tongue, both from herself and from Aithusa. While they never desired to be human themselves, they had shared with one another the wish to have some of the fearlessness of the humans, to go armed with that against those who stood in the way of their work.

"And Emrys and Pendragon?"

Aithusa laughed, a full and reverberating sound that filled the room. Brígh's tongue was drowning in a knowing sort of mirth, as if this was a joke they alone knew the end of. "They already show the step beyond what even normal humans experience. They were bound together before I was called from my egg, and I have no doubt they will continue past even my death, in whatever form that continuance takes."

Brígh narrowed her eyes at Aithusa, suspicion sitting like sulfur in her mouth. "You have meddled again."

"No. I learned my lesson in that respect."

"You have not," she accused, as though she could not taste the truth in it. "You just hide it better."

Aithusa looked down at her with annoyance, but she had long since managed to stand up under the attention of those larger than her. Her elder sister had a fiercer glare when she thought Brígh had taken her favorite headdress. Even after she had managed to convince Sorcha that she hadn't taken it, the threat of her wrath as it was meted out on Dairine was far more frightening than anything Aithusa would ever do to her.

"Perhaps you have not meddled," Brígh allowed. She was more willing than her siblings to admit an error, especially when she could taste lies in the air like the clouds of gunpowder they were. "But you know something, something you know I don't know. What is it?"

"Allow me to ask something first."

Brígh sighed but nodded. She wanted answers more than she valued any degree of untouchability she had. And it wasn't as though Aithusa was truly asking for much.

"When I came to you for your help, why did you decide to help me?"

Brígh blinked. She well remembered the first and only time Aithusa had ever come to her for something. It was in the wake of a poor day for mortals and all magical kind, a day when Aithusa had wreaked havoc on innocents and risked the safety and security of the magical community. It was the worst day she could think of for either of them, and Brígh had been in the mortal world on the day Merlin died.

That in and of itself was terrible. All the world was thrown into mourning the moment Merlin breathed his last. Magic was weaker, darker, and Brígh hadn't been able to cope with the feeling of wrongness. It was like life was being siphoned out of everyone to cope with the loss of Merlin, and it still wasn't enough. She had no other way to explain it, but everything faded the moment Merlin was no more, and it kept fading over the years with every visit she made to the mortal world.

But the day Aithusa had burned their villages, Magic had screamed and the effect was felt through the worlds. Even deep in Avalon, it rang as though it originated there. It was in response to that sensation that they attacked. Merlin had been killed yet again, and the forces of the world were in uproar, crying out for vengeance that their avatar had been murdered. He had been murdered. This was something they tried not to mention, that there was someone or something in the world that knew Merlin was being born into it over and over again, and it sought him out to kill him. They still weren't sure who or what that had been, or if they even knew they were killing Magic every time they did it.

"I was... curious." Brígh confessed. "And perhaps a little vain, thinking I could play with souls in the way you asked of me. And you came to me as a friend."

Sidhe of her station did not have friends. It was naive and silly, and any other Sidhe wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of any friendship she extended to them. And yet the mortals craved it, devoted stories to it, built entire civilizations, all in the effort of connecting with one another. She had been dragged into this state of being by the first Council of Magic, by a world-weary but determined Merlin who refused her apathy. These were the days when Kilgharrah still flew from his mountain home, when Aithusa was a silent child, and the Sidhe gave little thought to the mortals except how their actions impacted magic.

"Tell me again how you managed it," Aithusa demanded. "Tell me what you did to the souls."

Brígh frowned. "I was a student then. You cannot hold the mistakes of the inexperienced against them when they actively work to better their understanding."

"I am not judging what you did, I am curious about the process."

Brígh wasn't sure she quite believed that, but decided it wasn't worth arguing about. Aithusa could not affect souls with their magic; that took a power outside the mortal world, a power the Sidhe themselves rarely dared to wield. There was hubris in the attempt she'd made, though she wouldn't admit that to Aithusa. The dragon thought her a capable and powerful friend and Brígh rather liked that distinction where she was considered fairly average among her siblings. She was more powerful than regular Sidhe, but Aithusa's estimation of the power she possessed among her siblings was greatly inflated. She never told the stories, but she never bothered to correct any assumptions anyone else made.

"Touching souls is a difficult thing," Brígh told them. "It's taxing and, if done wrong, it can be painful for the soul and the one doing it. I had never had cause to do it myself before you asked it of me, but others had tried and I didn't want to make their mistakes. The only way to do it is to connect with the Wellspring, which is why many failed in their attempts."

Aithusa frowned. "You never mentioned this Wellspring before."

"You never really asked." She sighed. "Although, to be entirely truthful, if you had asked, I would not have told you for how deeply it unsettled me. The Wellspring is the place where magic flows through Avalon and into the mortal world. It is not a place we are meant to go, and those who do often receive grave punishment meted out by Magic itself."

"Then why would you? Simply because I asked you? Why would you risk that?"

Brígh blinked at the unexpected anger, leaning back away from Aithusa. Anger was not something she usually encountered with them. Annoyance and smugness occasionally, mirth and sorrow with more frequency, but rarely ever anger, and never over something she had done for them. There was an undercurrent of fear as well. She could taste it in the air. Tilting her head to one side, she stared up at Aithusa. "Why are you afraid?"

"You could have killed yourself because I asked you to help me. I know your kind are not incapable of being killed. Kilgharrah told me several had been killed in the Purge before Avalon closed its gates. Why would our friendship cause you to take such a risk?"

"I don't know." Brígh had once resolved never to worry about what she did for her friends. In the days before she called them her friends, they were willing to guide her, to explain the things she didn't know by virtue of the imposed isolation.

Merlin had been the one to tell her what friends were and what they meant to one another, bearded and saturating the air with cotton-flavored wistfulness. "After all," he'd said, "you never know the lengths you'll go to for them until you come up against the impossible and try to beat it anyway."

"I wasn't hurt," she tried to explain. "Magic knew what I was trying to do."

Brígh was shaking, as if it had just happened so deeply had it affected her.

"What happened?"

"Magic had a voice when I stepped into the Wellspring because it borrowed my own. It told me I would be allowed to continue what you asked of me without consequence, but I was to never attempt it again. It showed me what would happen if I tried." There was some distance between the images it had shown her because she had never attempted to enter the Wellspring again, but they still lingered in her mind. The most horrifying was the image of her magic slowly leeching away until she didn't have the energy to even open her eyes, trapped in the terrifying darkness as her life bled away into it. "I will never do it again."

"And what did you do?"

Brígh sighed. "I wasn't sure how I was supposed to accomplish what you wanted, and Magic offered no suggestions, so I took what I knew of the situation and attempted to link Merlin and Arthur's souls together so Merlin wouldn't return until Arthur was in the world."

Aithusa laughed. Brígh frowned at the heavier taste of amusement, certain she hadn't said anything as amusing as Aithusa seemed to find it.

"You asked," they began, once they managed to get their laughter under control, "what I knew that you did not. Truthfully, I didn't know any more than you did what I was asking for when I came to you. The end of the effect is what we have seen blossom between them. Their souls are tied together, far deeper than any mortal soul has ever been connected to another, so much that they have recently discovered the ability to share magic between them. I have a theory that the only reason Arthur is in possession of magic is because he has been blessed by his connection with Merlin, who is, as we know, Magic made flesh."

"Perhaps. But what does that mean for them, for the future of Magic?"

Aithusa smiled once more. "I suppose we shall have to see. But then, the Council is part of forging that future, so you and I will both be here to watch what happens. As for Merlin and Arthur, you have truly made them one, and that, I think, shall serve us all well."

As if they were waiting for their cue to enter, Arthur and Merlin arrived, leading with them the rest of the Council.

"Oh!" Merlin said when he spotted them. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

"Not too long, I don't think," Brígh assured him, relishing the decadent chocolatey taste of love they had brought with them. "But if it was long, there was good conversation to be had."

For a moment, she could see it, the way Merlin and Arthur's souls twined around each other, melding and flowing apart before melding again. It was a gift from Magic, it had to be, showing her what a vain and rash decision had become with its guidance, how this must have been the plan before any of them thought to meddle in mortal and immortal affairs.

"Shall we begin?" Arthur asked, taking his place at the table beside Merlin. The others had dispersed to their seats, looking expectantly to the Pendragon.

"Yes," Aithusa said, traces of iron respect and lilac deference in their tone. "Let us begin."

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