Merlin's magic (Oneshots) 1

CoVid-wars

Disclaimer:
This story is crack and therefore not to be taken seriously. 
Arthur lives, 
Merlin is a tree. 
(The art is mine. I know it's a confusing piece. Please forgive me)

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If someone had told Arthur he would one day wake up in the future, he wouldn't have believed it. At least not at first.
It would have taken a lot of conviction. A lot of persuasive phrases that convinced him it was possible, as long as evil magic was involved.
Then, certainly, he would have been convinced of almost everything. Because when evil magic was involved, anything was possible.
However, certainly not.... this.

Arthur grew up in a world that despised magic. He grew up being told that magic was the one true enemy.
The very moment of his death, however, he learned that his best friend was magic itself.
And if Merlin could be magic itself-.
Let's just say, Arthur would sooner be afraid of a rabbit. Those beasts could at least lure you into a trap or a rabbit hole into some delusional kind of magic world that you would only see after a certain set of very specific mushrooms entered your digestive system.

Merlin couldn't hurt him if he tried.

Waking up thousands of years in the future, however, required a whole different kind of imagination.

Especially a futuristic world like this.

Arthur woke up, found by people who lived huddled together in caves in what used to be the Albion forests. At least Arthur liked to think that's where he was.
The trees here were huge and dark. Unfamiliar and much older and darker than he remembered.
But not as dark as the mood that the people were spreading and living with.

There were a few things that Arthur had learned since he woke up. First of all, he had to learn an entire new language, because he barely understood a word. Though the words seemed quite similar to the ones he grew up with, their pronunciation was so off, that it took him several weeks to figure them out.

Secondly, people didn't believe in magic, but something else that they called technology.
Apparently it was some kind of advanced science that Arthur didn't understand. And that had also, unfortunately, died out hundreds of years ago.
Arthur didn't know what electricity was and it didn't seem like anyone was blaming him for not knowing. But perhaps they thought it was some kind of translation error on their part. Arthur still had trouble understanding these people. And they seemed oddly confused, when he understood almost none of their references.

Seriously. In the name of all the five kingdoms, why would he need to know what a meme was?

Thirdly, the clothes they wore were odd. People wore all kinds of things. Nothing even remotely similar to the stuff Arthur used to wear. These things were more colorful. Were made of thick fabric that was sewed together from multiple layers of clothing and seemed like amateurs patched them together. Then again, Arthur had long come to label these people as peasants anyway. They didn't use money, they exchanged simple goods and helped each other build things. They farmed and harvested and collected edible things.
Just like peasants. Some things never change, no matter in which century.

Nothing they did spoke of any kind of civilization. Kingdoms? That was an idea of children's tales for these people. Arthur didn't get what a democracy was. Let alone the difference between a dictator and a king. But he understood it so that a democracy was basically what Arthur had tried with the round table. Which people seemed to accept as a good.
A dictator seemed to be the tyrant version of a king. Like Cendred. But worse. Of course Arthur knew that life wasn't as black and white as that. But that's the way he understood the terms for now.

These people appeared to reject any version of holding power over one another. Which struck Arthur as odd.
And hardly possible.
He didn't understand it. Then again, it was hard to understand the minds of people who had survived the collapse of their governments.