"My dear girl," Merlyn begins, then harrumphs and starts again. "Time, you see, is something of a slippery slope. No, no, we oughtn't to dive directly into that, it seems to confuse people far too easily. No, let's start at the beginning, and keep it simple. Hm. Perhaps the simplest way to explain it," he decides at last, "is that I am very, very old. Very old indeed. I've lived through a lot of stories in my time, very few of them my own. From the twenty-first century to the... twelfth, if memory serves? I'm afraid it all merges together after a while. And, of course, I was tricked into a cave by that dratted Nimue - shouldn't speak ill of her, really, she was only following her own fate, I suppose, as we all must. And she was charming company, while it lasted. In any case," he goes on, dragging himself back to the point, "I spent a good four or five centuries in that cave, talking to myself. I got some debate in on the relative merits of the Hellenistic philosophies as applied to the modern day, but of course when I got out, the modern day had quite changed. The moles were a blessed relief, to tell you the truth. One can have a good conversation with oneself, if one tries very hard, but after a few decades the discourse does begin to grow a little stale."