Work Text:
When dreams hunted Will to the ends of his own earth, he found himself on his knees in a ruined field. The ground was pockmarked, as if by some great battle, one long enough ago that weeds had crept back over it with sharp, mending fingers. Bindweed and thistle and nettle and spurge, a dense stinging carpet; but where Will knelt there was only yarrow, rising straight-stemmed and white-crowned, under a storm-sky heavy as bronze.
Then, impossibly, Merriman was there, as if he had been all along: straight-backed, white-crowned, heavy brows stern as bronze. ‘Come, Will,’ he said, ‘on your feet now. Get up.’
‘I can’t.’ This, at least, was familiar: the pain that bordered on dizziness. Will shook his head, fought for breath. ‘I can’t.’
‘Old One.’ There was a ring in Merriman's deep voice, as of a blade unsheathing. Nonetheless his hand was gentle as he raised Will’s chin, the light behind his dark eyes warmer than Will had ever seen it. ’You were not born to bleed like this.’
Like this. Like this: the fabric of his self fragmenting, frayed into fog. Like yarrow leaves, called milfoil for a reason, each one nothing but a thousand fernlike edges. Will had lost sight of his own. But he remembered them now, perhaps, faintly: in the fragrance of those leaves, as they set the green perimeter, circled and warded. A scent like respite--steadying, warm.
And Will let himself be pulled to his feet.
A rumble of thunder sounded, still distant; the edge of the wind teased Merriman’s cloak and set the yarrow into rustling motion. Will brushed his fingers over flat white flowerheads, upturned as if defying the promise of the storm.
Merriman stooped slightly from his great height, broke off three long sprigs and pressed them into Will’s hand. ‘A talisman,’ he said. ‘Heed well your herbs, Will. They will not steer you wrong.’
Will’s fingers tightened, involuntary, around the rough stems. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll try.’