Merlin’s POV
It's the smell that hits you first. As you lug open the unwieldy, russet-painted door adorned with its tired hinges that creak like the moaning of cantankerous old men, a puff of the sweet, musty odor of last summer's straw presses from your first, slow breath into your nose. Then you detect the undertones: the stuffy musk of animal fur and the stank of old, dried-out dung and droppings, and maybe the sharp smell of old, oily metal and machinery. Soon after the smell, your eyes compensate for the dim pallor of light, and you begin to make out the shapes of dusty frames of wooden stalls and poles, and the heavy bosom of the loft that hangs from the ceiling just as its brown-bat companions cling to the rafters.
The barn blossomed on the hill amid the grass and the meadow flowe
