The year: 2013

38455, Moking Street,
Oadley,
Albion

[Marty's POV]

"Mum, have you seen my research file?" I yelled as I turned my neat and clean room messy despite being aware that my mother no doubt spent considerable time fixing it. 

Of all the books, shows, and comics I had read about the Legend of King Arthur of Camelot, NCC's show, Arthur and Merlin, was undoubtedly my favorite. While others depicted Merlin as an ancient sorcerer with great wisdom, NCC's program took it in a whole other direction, with a young Merlin starting his magical journey and ultimately becoming the greatest sorcerer to walk on Albion's soil. Of course, there were things that I thought they could have handled differently, but well...

"Marty Wyllt! It looks like a tornado hit your room. I just fixed it!" Mum lamented, stepping inside my recently messed up room. "Whhhhyyyy!" She dragged and left an exasperated sigh. 

"Mum, I promise I will fix it," I reassured, but the look of exasperation on her oval face stayed put. If anything, it worsened. "Trust me. As soon as I find my research, I will fix it." 

Approaching my mother gingerly, I offered her my most charming smile. It worked. The exasperation turned into pity. I knew what she thought of my life choices. I knew it kept her up at night. "Marty, your friends have either enrolled in community colleges or have already started earning. Yet-"

I knew what was to come: an unnecessarily long lecture followed by tears. I didn't want that. 

"Mum, can we not do this now? Listen," I sat her down on my messy bed. Ever since I had told her that I would be taking a trip to see the creators of the show after it had ended its nine-season run on New Year's Eve (leaving me in a pool of tears) because I wanted to know what had inspired the creators, she had taken to staring at me like I was not a fit nineteen year old but a patient suffering from a terminal illness. 

The truth, however, was quite different from what I had told her. I was actually planning to go to Farnfoss in South Wales. I had been dreaming of a place, a lake at the edge of an evergreen forest. After much research, I found it. I was sure that the things I had been seeing in my dreams: random castles; an inferno; a woman dressed in black; a man who got called 'brat' (a lot), and villages that belonged in none other than Arthurian legends, would make sense if I just went there.

When Arthur and Merlin aired, I saw a striking similarity between what I had been seeing and what was depicted in the show. It cemented my belief that it couldn't all be fictional. I became obsessed with knowing the truth behind the Legend of King Arthur. 

When my room started getting a few years later, I pleaded with Mum to get the useless coffee table out of my space. It was then that Mum lightheartedly mentioned how, when I was about three, I had become obsessed with the antique furniture and was convinced that it spoke to me; laughing, she added how I had punched my favorite pillow with my tiny fists and demanded the furniture be placed in my room. And how I had continued till she had relented and shifted the piece of furniture in my room. 

'It was like you had found yourself some friends, son. You were so cute when you spoke about Arthur, who was, according to you, a Brat, and Akurra, who only spoke lies.' She had recalled before waving a hand as if dismissing the memory, smiling pitifully.

I hadn't thought much of it then, but now I could not overlook it. The coffee table was back in my room after a decade of spending time next to the flat-screen TV: its original spot. I was not even ashamed to admit that I had tried to initiate a conversation with the alleged talking table more than a few times.

Alas, I had nothing to show for my efforts.

I sat beside her and asked, "I have to do this, or I will regret it for the rest of my life. Mum, I promise, if I don't find what I am looking for, I will enroll in the course you suggested and open a café with Henkley; a week is all I am asking for. Don't worry about my future. I will not leave you like Dad did, alright?"

That seemed to do the trick. 

Mum gave me a small smile; she followed it up with a playful slap on my head and asked, "Did you check on the coffee table?"

Sure enough, the file I was looking for forever sat pretty on it. 

How had I missed it? 

Moreover, how did she always know where to find things? 

How was it that she always knew where I hadn't looked? 

'Magic,' that's what it was.

A week later, I returned home and enrolled in the course Mum had chosen as my backup plan, and shortly after, on Mum's insistence, I started working part-time at the café my family co-owned with Hensley's.

The cafe, Dragon's Den, unlike its name, was a mediocre café that offered everything that a regular café did, except it boasted rustic furniture and an overall dingy ambiance.

Disillusioned, I packed all my emotions and obsessions into two-by-two boxes and shoved them in the basement, locking the door to my childish fantasies; it was time I stepped into adulthood, a place where there was no place for magic.