tamingthemuse | Prompt# 116 - A Rolling Stone Crushes Toes - The Walk- Tekia

Title: The Walk
Fandom: Original
Prompt: A Rolling Stone Crushes Toes
Warnings:
Rating:
Summary: Merlin and Saya clash. Part of my Merlin series. Here, here, and here, in order.

“Merlin!” Saya called as she and Rurik raced down the dirt path toward their old mentor. Said old man paused in his slow lumbering trek to glance back at them, his blue eyes still bright and sharp. A slight twitch to his lips betrayed his pleasure at seeing the two youths.
As they caught up with him, Rurik clasped his hands on his knees and bent over, panting heavily. Saya stared up at him, her own eyes sparkling with excitement.
“The Grail has been found.”
Merlin felt a shiver pass down his spine at those words, but firmly pushed his fears back in the past, where they belonged.
“And what importance is that to us?”
Saya huffed a irritated breath. Rurik resumed his full height and worried his bottom lip. “Doesn’t the Grail belong here?”
Merlin shrugged. “It will return here when the time is right.” He turned away to continue his walk. The two fell into step behind him, like the proper students one of them wasn’t. He smiled up at the leaves covering them from the sun’s light, at the birds chirping happily above them. In a second, Saya was going to start an argument with him. She took a breath to begin and Merlin nodded to himself, pleased that he had predicted her path.
“It’s been over a thousand years, perhaps longer,” she frowned as she tried to recall just how long ago the Grail had been lost to them. “I would think that it is past time for it to return to us.”
Rurik bent to take up a small stone and began tossing it from hand to hand. “How would you go about getting it back?” Merlin paused again and looked at the duo.
She pursed her lips. “I’d steal it, just as it was stolen from us.”
Merlin sniffed, turning away. “A rolling stone crushes toes.”
Saya glared at his back while Rurik glanced between the two of them, a slight frown between his brows. “Are you saying-”
Merlin held up a hand. “I haven’t said a thing.” He smiled at her over his shoulder. “It is up to you to make your own decisions. Life is full of choices. And the worst part about that is that nobody can make them but you.”
Saya stood with arms akimbo, her foot tapping rapidly on the tightly packed dirt under their feet. After a moment, she turned her sharp glare to Rurik, who had been slowly moving closer to Merlin.
“Fine. Have your way. We’ll go home with our tails between our legs.”
Merlin smiled again and reached out to ruffle her hair. She smacked his hand away. She copied his earlier sniff and began walking down the path. “The Grail is a part of our history.”
“It’s a part of human history as well, do you forget?”
She hunched her shoulders and shoved her hands into pockets sewn into her rough cotton gown. Merlin looked her up and down, noting the tiny tears and splatters of mud on the deep red fabric and smiled. While she was still a child at heart, and a wild one at that, she fit the image of an unstoppable rolling rock.