🐢 How Squirt Became the Time-Twirling Turtle

Filed under: Arthurian Artefacts, Accidental Magic, and One Very Determined Nephew

You know that feeling when you plan a chilled walk… and accidentally trigger a Druidic time spell?

No?

Just me, then.

It happened at Arthur’s Stone, a weathered, sacred place on the Gower Peninsula, where the legends cling to every rock like mist. They say King Arthur fought a giant not far from here, that he struck him down, and Arthur found a stone in his shoe; he threw it, and this is the resting place of that stone. True or not, they say the ground remembers its true origins (we’ll ignore the boring academics 😉).

I was there to photograph it, mid-February, no golden hour light slipping over the stone, just a boring, dull blue hour. But it’s a place steeped in myth. The kind that makes the hair on your arms rise a little when the wind goes quiet.

Squirt was there for sticks & snacks.

While I circled the dolmen, lining up a shot, he’d found one. Not just any stick, mind you. One that had runes. Smooth wood, carved spirals, old symbols… and just enough mischief in it to make me worry.

He twirled it. Once. Twice.

And then a third time, with flair.

The ground shifted. Not a quake, just that strange pressure drop you get when something big is about to happen. The air thrummed. The shadows stretched like they were reaching.

And then, poof, he vanished.

No bang. No vortex. Just gone.

Only a faint puff of smoke. And an echo that didn’t belong.

I yelled. I panicked. I considered performing a blood sacrifice on a protein bar.

Then, pop.

He reappeared.

Helmet askew. Smelling faintly of mead. Holding… a stone? No, a pendant. A charm. It had the same runes as the stick.

I asked where he’d gone. He shrugged.

Later, he drew a picture of a giant with one sandal and very bad breath.

The giant, how Squirt drew him.

Since then, things have been… different.

Squirt’s stick, what I now call “The Twig of Temporal Misfortune™”, seems to respond only to him. He doesn’t mean to do it. It’s not deliberate. But every so often, he twirls something and reality bends.

Squirt now has what I can only describe as unpredictable magical abilities, mostly triggered by spinning sticks near ancient sites. He’s been to:

• The court of Owain Glyndŵr (briefly knighted)

• A Roman bathhouse in Caerleon (got banned for “inappropriate splashing”)

• A misty forest filled with talking badgers who offered him a crown (he politely declined)

• A scroll that just says, “Tell Merlin he still owes me a pint”

He never remembers much. He always smells faintly of the century he's just left. And sometimes I catch him looking at hedgerows like they might open up again.

Squirt twirling Merlin’s stick in front of Arthur’s Stone, golden light swirling

And as for the original stick?

I tried to take it from him once. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Not wise, Uncle Gav.”

He was five. And a turtle 🐢.

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Squirt meets Merlin.

Arthur’s Stone, Gower Peninsula, taken in mid-Feburary 2020.

So here it is. The day Squirt became a time-traveller. Not by fate. Not by bloodline. But by picking up the wrong stick at the wrong stone.

Or… maybe exactly the right one.

The story isn’t over. I’ve got a feeling it’s just begun. Because if the runes are right…

Merlin knows.

And I don’t think he’s thrilled.

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Filed by:

Gav.
Accidental Witness. Unwilling Sidekick. Chief Scribe of the Weird.