8 -A Concert Cycle
He stood before the massive tree, its branches towering above him. It certainly was quite a feat of magic, the tree itself appeared to be hollow with a living space existing inside. The great tree was even still growing!
"Quite...extraordinary..." Merlin muttered, before continuing on inwards through the double doors in the trunk. The inside was as equally amazing to the venerable Wizard, the walls piled with books. The interior was filled with the the musky scent of pages and ink, of memories and tales transcribed. The air hummed with the power of those that had poured hours, days and even years into these pages. Merlin oft found that this was the power of books and the like, the ability to be remembered and enjoyed, to spread the love that had gone into their make.
"Hey, you can't-WAH!" A small ball of purple leathery skin and green spikes tumbled off of a propped up ladder, landing with a thump in a mixed up pile of books and flailing limbs. "You can't just walk in like you own the place-" the obscured creature stated with a groan, pointing a claw towards the ceiling to further its point.
"Why ever not? This is a public library, is it not?" Merlin asked, with a knowing grin directed at the young dragon as it attempted to 'drag ' (Merlin let himself indulge in an internal giggle at his little pun) itself out of the pile of books.
"Well...it...yes? I guess? Sort of? I...er..." the young dragon looked a bit flustered at the question, unable to form an appropriate rebuttal. "This is-"
"-Where you live, yes yes yes! A wonderful abode to be had indeed, so much knowledge, and in such a neat little package!" Merlin had by this point started rifling through the shelves, a frantic bolt of activity, scanning for whatever he might find. He came across a spine declaring The Wonderfully Wacky Walruses That Went West to Wake the Wishing Whale. "Ha...these ponies...so delightfully quirky, wouldn't you say so?" he directed to the small dragon, his mouth gaping and closing, imitating a fish.
"Well...I...yes?" He seemed to find himself with a distraught dragon. He didn't want to frighten the young one, after all.
"Well then," he grasped the dragon with his magic, placing him on the ground while piling up the books he had fallen into in a series of three neat stacks. "I was sent here by an amiable fellow by the name of Big Macintosh, to ask for a couple cans of tomato paste to help get rid of a persistent stench. He stated that he overheard from his sister that you might have an excess?" Merlin smiled deeply at the young dragon,
~--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~
"HE WAS HERE?!!?!?" Twilight Sparkle shouted at the top of her lungs, causing a certain nocturnal avian to flutter out from the rafters, hooing disdain at the offending source. Spike himself found his claws clamped tightly down upon the spines lining his earholes. He glared at his equine sister for a couple seconds, finally sighing before confirming her query.
"You know, it doesn't make you look very smart when you ask a question I JUST told you the answer to." Spike huffed, having had just explained to Twilight how she and Pinkie had missed the elderly unicorn from the hydra attack the other day by mere minutes.
"Urrrrghh, Spike, this is no time to have an attitude! That gentlemane cant be wandering be wandering about in his condition! He could really end up hurting himself" She punctuated this statement with her hoof, slamming it into the floor in a dull thud.
"Condition? Pffft. He had a cast on his leg, but he seemed perfectly fine to me." Spike did a half turn, gesturing to the library walls. Twilight noticed that the room was completely clean, she couldn't see a single book out of place or even a single spec of dust. "He helped me clean up, he even organized all the books based on a...a...a dewy...decer...system thingy?" Spike voice trailed off, as he tried in vain to remember the name of the organizational system the old stallion had described. "Besides, if was really in such a bad state, would he really be out doing farmwork?"
"Farmwork? He's...I...wait, what?" Twilight asked, confusion clearly stamped across her features.
"Yeah, apparently Big Mac sent him up here, you told Applejack we had a bunch of cans of tomato paste, more than we could use?"
"I..yes, I was talking with Applejack about that the other day...but what possible purpose would Big Mac have with that?"
"Cutie Mark Crusaders." Spike stated blithely, eliciting a knowing shrug and sigh from Twilight.
"Maybe they were trying to get their marks in pasta making!" Pinkie yelled, poking her head out from a pile of books.
"What?!!? I, I just cleaned in here Pinkie!" Spike yelled irritatedly at the offending party pony currently buried neck deep in a pile of books pulled from the nearest self. For what reason he couldn't fathom, and Pinkie dove back into the pile before he could properly ask her. Digging into the pile just added new questions, seeing as she had disappeared without a trace.
Staring dumbfounded at the pile, Twilight sighed once again, knowing that to follow this along the line of the known laws of physics would only develop into a blistering migraine. "Well then Spike, do you at least know if he said where he was going?"
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Merlin whistled a jaunty tune as he walked down the road, three large jars of tomato paste concealed within the large spacious purple saddlebag the young dragon had lent him. Merlin didn't mind the color, but the uneven weight caused a slight swagger to his walk. It put strain on his leg, unable to bend at the joint from the cast entrapping it.
"Blasted thing, I dare say if there was a single pebble in the entire road, this stupid thing would find someway to trip me on it." Merlin hissed at the inanimate hunk of plaster covering his leg. He paused at a line of benches lining the road, resolving to sit down and think of someway to lose his hobble. Ponies walked and cajoled along the road, and even a few of them sat on the provided benches. One such couple sat a bench close to Merlin, laughing and talking amongst themselves. What had drawn Merlins eye was the green ones unusual sitting position, where she had chosen to sit straight up with her legs dangling off the front. Surely not a very comfortable way to sit, but it would suit his needs just fine.
He leaned his back against the rigid boards behind him, eliciting an amused glance from the green one and her friend. It didn't matter. Merlin closed his eyes, and peered inwards,sending his energy coursing and churning inside. He took stock of the state of his body, noting each crick and miner ache. His soulfire had cleansed his body of the toxins that had plagued his body during his stay at the hospital. It hadn't taken his body more than a few hours to fix most of the internal damage, but there was still the matter of the inch wide hole that was trying to heal. Merlin took a deep breath, and found the edges of the wound in his leg with his mind. Letting out the breath in a controlled release, he forced his magical energy into a tight wad, gushing out and around his wound. He felt it as his skin and flesh grew and stretched, filling the small hollow that had formed under the scab. With a sharp pop and a crack that raced down the length of both sides of the cast, it fell off his leg neatly in two halves.
"Hey, are you alright mister?" Asked the mare sitting beside the green one, her voice tinged with concern.
"Why yes my dear," Merlin said, flexing his leg experimentally before leaping off the bench and clicking his back hooves together. "I daresay I feel fit as a fiddle!"
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"Who left this fiddle in the middle of the bucking floor?" stated a unicorn mare with a frizzy and spiky two toned electric blue mane. She had tripped over it in her haste to greet her friend, a grey earth mare with a long black mane and tail.
"Maybe if you simply watched where you're walking, instead of stumbling about with your head in the clouds. I'm simply amazed you can see anything with glasses as dark as yours, honestly."
"Hey, these are...umm...tray...magnifier? What the lady who KNOWS about fashion said." She stated, nodding with satisfaction.
"Tre magnifique, my dear Vinyl. And," she paused, clicking closed several latches on a medium sized case. "I will of course have to bring this up in the next musicians guild meeting," she stated disgustedly, looking around at the disarray coating the floor and seats of the hall. Instruments lay strew about, either rested on the floor or lying against or on the numerous chairs and musical stands. "It matters not if we CAN leave our stuff lying about, it doesn't mean we should. " She poked at a piccolo, scrutinizing the initials on the side. "Pennywhistle. eauughk, she didn't even clean out the spit-trap, where is that mares mind?"
"Yeaaaaah, you don't exactly need to prance-kiss a record table to make it play music, so I think I'll stick with my area of music." Vinyl stated snickering at the grey mares disgust as she tried in vain to find somewhere to wipe off the saliva that had affixed itself to her hoof.
"We need to get going if we want to make the start of the play, Vinyl." She had made her way over to the great swinging doors leading outside. "C'mon, we don't want to be late, do we?"
"Coming Octy!" the doors banged loudly behind them as they departed, and silence overtook the hall in their absence.
The doors opened once more, and Merlin poked his head in, looking back and forth to see if anyone was still within the hall of music. Seeing no one at present, he entered fully. Peering around before he closed the door behind himself, he indulged in a quiet laugh. "Ah...its been too long, too long indeed since I had a concert hall of instruments at my fingertips. Heh, figuratively speaking of course."He walked to the centerpiece of the hall, a stand with a conductors baton. Propping himself up on his hind hooves, he grabbed the baton in a cloak of yellow tinged aura, holding it near his front right hoof. With a flair of the tip, he tapped it twice upon the stand in front of him, and looked out among the empty seats, his gaze focused on the myriad of instruments left there. Merlin smiled, happiness deep in his breast.
"And a one, and a two and a-"
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That's genius.
4855928
~yay~, praise!
Noooo, the chapter can't be over already....I feel sad, I need more.
right when It was getting good....
Ahh I was hoping the see arthur oh well nice to know that this story is still going.
I'd pay to see the concert Merlin is about to conduct with those instruments. I liked seeing Lyra, Bonbon, Vinyl, and Octavia in this chapter. Will Dr Whooves get into a debate about all things Timey Whimey with Merlin???
Please update often
4856482 I wanna see that deleted comment!~
4856069 my headcanon has the cmc at 6 to 7 years of age, and both Arthur and Hazel at about 11 to 12 years of age, with Rarity being the oldest of the main six, topping out at about 19 years old, but being a mature and responsible adult.
merlin him self is about 7598423748732749579473847974937942942379437598... well, really really old. Lets just go with that.
4856503 it was a bunch of typos it's was pease if gate ofken
4856482
I'm gonna try to get back to it. and not let such long periods go inbetween.
4856368
sorry, just seemed like a good place to end....
Wha... I... It's so short... Darn...
Merlin's about to conduct a musical number? I don't know whether to be jumping in joy or worrying.
Merlin doesn't exactly have the best luck. (Not his own fault. It just seems like something always comes to mess up his plans.)
Great job so far and I hope to see another update soon.
I don't know about the other reviewers, but I just keep waiting for Celestia to catch Merlin, call him 'Starswirl' and complain about being gone for centuries...
4856450 I bet it would be something like this
4856450 Unfortunately for certain enthusiasts, Dr Whooves will only serve as a cameo, same as Lyra, bonbon, DJPon3 and Octavia. But I will manufacture a run in of sorts. Just nothing too lenghty. Whether or not he will remark on anything "timey" or "wimey" can be anyones guess.
5036832
She does that occasionally.
4932136 Holy crap, YOU?! I daresay good sir, you have fine taste in fiction.
5174739 Well, what can I say? It's a small world
(and The sword in the stone was one of my favourite movies as a child)
5176683 Same here! Man, really is a small world...
any word on an Update?
5610029
2k words, not even gonna think of publishing it till I get it to three.
This story is good. You have captured the character of Merlin very well. I look forward to updates.
5655363
You might end up waiting a bit...sorry...