and straight on ‘til morning
☽-★-☆-★-☾
Puck moves like liquid shadow between the trees, feeling more free than he has in a long, long time.
Just a few days ago, he'd left the mainland, striking out on his own for adventure. He'd managed to create a distraction, pulling King Oberon's attention elsewhere - and in the brief window where the stallion's back was turned, Puck had made his escape, darting away from the fairy glade his mother had brought him to four years prior. It had been fun, at first: going on a grand escape with his comet-streaked dam, swimming across the ocean towards uncharted territory, brought to a land of mischief and trickery and given the title of Prince without ever having to earn it. He knew Oberon wasn't his true sire, but it didn't really matter. Titania had never let them meet, had refused to even speak of her time on the Lost Islands, and with nothing else to compare him to, Puck had loved him instantly.
But then his mother left. She went back to the Islands, and life in the glade got really boring, really fast.
As it turned out, being a Prince meant more than getting to do whatever you wanted. Oberon wanted him to learn how to lead, to live up to his so-called "potential," and that included doing an absolute plethora of things he didn't want to do. Meet this horse. Go patrol the borders. Don't fraternize with those horses, especially their daughters, and especially without a chaperone. Games turned into chores, mischief into careful plotting, and as he aged, his life began to turn out so much more different than he'd ever expected it to be. It all pointed to one thing, thrown at his face every time he made some foolish mistake, as some kind of reprimand: King Oberon wanted him to grow up.
Puck never wanted to grow up.
He wanted to see the land of his ancestors with adult eyes, the place his dam had disappeared to for years, the place she'd tried so hard to keep him from. He wanted to see for himself what was so bad about it that he'd had to stay on the mainland, that he'd had to leave in the first place.
He wanted to see her - eventually. For now, he was content to follow the sound of other horses, drawn like a moth to a flame towards the light of the open field beyond. He flicks his bicolored tail across his lightly-spotted hindquarters, dark eyes considering the scene before him. Swaying yellow grasses blow in the crisp Autumn breeze, clouds of heather grey scuttling by overhead, and below them, strangers are gathering, clustered together in groups of two or three. Puck doesn't see them as strangers - he sees them as potential, as seeds with which to grow this brand new chapter of his short life.
Grinning like a colt, he breaks from the shelter of the forest and trots out into the open, foolish and ignorant and ready for whatever fate may bring.
☽-★-☆-★-☾
puck - stallion - black tovero blanket - 15.2hh
lost boy of titania and rehoboam