The Lagoon was a curious place; bursting with the sort of excitement that Jaskier had hungered for all his life. But now that he was cast into the wide, open, unfamiliar world— now that he faced it alone, the brindle male found that adventure was an ordeal. There was no joy in being cold and damp, no satisfaction in finding secrets that he couldn’t share. Like the faint trail he had followed through a bramble-thicket, ignoring the bite of its wooden teeth. Though the dying hollow was not a beautiful place, the young stallion thought that his Enya might have enjoyed it all the same. And that thought was enough to send a stab of emotion twisting through his insides; a combination of anger and grief where each one was inseparable from the other.

In another life— one without the golden mare— the bright buckskin might have belonged here. Before he’d come to the islands, he would’ve traded anything (except Larkspur) to have brothers like these. To chase trouble for the thrill of it, or lie dormant in the cool brown mud. To laugh and live unburdened by anything but his own selfish desires. But the mare he’d met in the meadow had shown Jaskier a different course. She’d shown him what real strength was and what it could achieve. She’d awoken a wildness in him to match her own. And after that, even a place as unrestrained as the bachelors’ land felt like a prison.

Though he might have sought out company to wile away the days of his sentence, the truth was that he wasn’t the sort of visitor that inspired conversation. Especially since the first hints of winter could be tasted in the numbingly-cold air, the crackle of frost beneath his hooves. Shortly after, his captor— Tear or whatever the hell his name was— had fucked right off with his two women and left Jaskier here to rot. It was beyond irritating, worse than any insult he’d suffered at Hyacinth’s side. Worse even than the time she’d tried to drown him, because at least his sister had always considered him worth the time and energy of tormenting. As far as the great dumb brute who’d stolen him appeared to care, he could keel over dead. They'd probably just shrug and find someone else to take his place.

Pacing the small clearing to the pounding rhythm of his heart and the incessant noise of his internal diatribe, Jaskier missed the soft thuds of the young boy’s hooves. Missed the telltale rustling of his passage. Sullen and restless and feeling so very wronged by the world, the first he knew of the colt’s arrival was when he barged straight into him. Their bodies tangled briefly together and then parted again as the white-striped stallion leapt away cat-quick, burying his ears in the inky sea of his mane. “What the hell, kid,” he snapped, an unexpected thrill of pleasure tangled up with his resentment. It felt good to redirect even a fraction of his frustration on someone who was (presumably, at least, by the gawkishness of the boy’s form) even more helpless than he.

“Is the stupid here contagious, or do they start teaching it to you guys young?”