Puck's Amusement


The half-wise say that the "arrow of time points in one direction" and that "things change". “It's for the better,” they'll say; “we've got technologies now that extend our lives, help us to communicate more, and keep us safer.” That’s all fine and well. I'm just tired of hearing it. And something always seems missing.

It came time for me to walk away, and find some sanity alone with the Land itself. The land beckoned, the sacred repository of all our woes and triumphs, all our hopes and dreams. The land is the long-standing bearer and revealer of all our wonder and all our lack of wisdom. Common mother to us all, all-provider, always underfoot, she is the most accessible comfort for all who feel lost in this world.

When I walk through the hills and sit by the quiet streams, I sometimes see a lonely figure sitting further up on the turf looking down at me. It's old Puck, looking no worse for wear, and always with a tiny smile on his face. He won't speak to me, but I know that he sees me. Somehow, just from seeing his gaze distantly, I know what he's thinking: he sees the busses and trains and cars flying by, and he's amused at how quickly people sold the most important things in life away to the new wizards and their contraptions.

When I look back, Puck's gone, but I always glimpse him darting to and fro in other places, especially in the deep places where the sounds of the nearby highway don't reach. One day, maybe, he'll teach me how to hear what birds are really saying, or how to divine the future by looking at the moon's rippling reflection on the water. Or maybe he won't teach me anything at all. For all my love of Puck and his forgotten world, it may be that even I'm too far gone.


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