He was far removed from the time and place he lived originally, the people leaving or changing around him. Things came, things went. Yet some things never seemed to change.

The old man quietly watched the deserted square that even now seemed to be waiting for the arrival, who would be there on the morrow.

"Are you certain about this, Merlin?" A soft voice asked from behind him and he turned to face the questioner, a man who in another time and place would have been called a Steward.

"Quite certain, he still lives. And will prove his birth right, you'll see."

The worry on the face did not let up but the man nodded silently.

He returned his gaze to the square and the sword stuck in the stone in pride of place and his thoughts drifted back to another time and place. The one this small town waited for was of a greater linage then they knew, then any would ever know save those who lived through the events. And those were few and becoming fewer. He hadn't been directly involved in those events, but like any who'd lived then he'd known about them.

His attention was drawn back to his companion as he spoke, "If you say so, Little Hawk."

He turned his gaze back to his companion as he nodded then turned and moved quietly away.

"Nightingale actually." The old man murmured softly as the man vanished from sight, his thoughts drawn back to the fair beings who had tagged him with the name all those eons ago. They'd been forgotten in all but myths that were more fantasy then fact now, their language lost in the mists of time. Forgotten much like the origins of the line of Kings that they even now waited to return from the dead...again. Like the sword that even now lay waiting, again, for the right hands to take it up...again.

He smiled and turned to leave the square, he was Merilin, Istar, Maiar, wizard. Though the name the Elves had given him had been distorted in the mouths of men, who had never heard the language of the Elves nor even knew they were more then myth, to something near unrecognisable. And he remembered, for he lived through the War of the Ring. And even now he waited, eons later, for the return of another King of that line to a very different throne in a very different world. Another Heir, hope of his nation, and one of the last to bear any Elvan blood. Even now that Heir road towards his destiny. Similar and yet different to his many times removed grandfather, Arthur rode a similar path.