(no subject)
The thing is, Puck never has seen things quite the way mortals do. He noticed it in Gotham, and in Montreal, and while he may hold a fond place in his heart for the trappings and the toys of the modern world, he cannot help-- at least upon occasion-- viewing the entire spectacle of human progress as something of a hostile takeover.
There's the question, of course, of whether it can even be hostile; he has been under the impression for quite a few centuries now that mortals haven't the faintest idea of what they're doing. Nothing has any agency save themselves, under most popular philosophies, and when they appropriate and co-opt the things that blossom and shine and burn and run on all fours ... they very seldom seem to view it as such. Not that Puck dedicates much time to philosophy-- or any time, to be perfectly accurate. But he sees quite well when he bothers to look, and he has seen the connoisseur's gleam in mortal eyes, he's seen them expand their reach through avarice or curiosity, and now here they are.
They can't fool him, of course, he sees their tricks for what they are: harnessing light, harnessing friction and heat, fire to fuse the elements of earth until they're what they want-- please, it isn't alchemy. It's just reshuffling the deck. And so it is that their towers rise up and up with iron skeletons, and they've taught themselves to move faster in vessels that reek of oil and fire and metal, and without even meaning to they've thickened the air and blotted out the stars, and Puck is beginning to suspect that when this brave new world does roll around at last, there will be no room in it for him.
(It was a little like this when he broke faith with Oberon, or at least he remembers it as if it were, though there is nothing save intuition to connect the two. It's the feeling that's the same, that spinning in his head and sick certainty like a punch to the gut that he was utterly and irrevocably without context.
Oberon always did love mortals.)
There are not times that Puck hates them for it. He does not look around at what the world will become and feel envy that it will be they who make the changes, whose bovine unbelief will bleed the earth dry and flat as paper. He doesn't because he won't, most likely, because if he pretends it isn't happening then it can happen without him and he needn't have any part in it. So for now he ignores it when he steps onto Berlin's sidewalks, he ignores the encapsulation of the earth in concrete and the low buzz of electricity and iron threaded through like blood and bone, and he ignores it when the cars roll by like thunder, like things with their own will, and he hasn't quite been able to ignore that sky of smothered stars, but give him time and he'll ignore that too.
It's possible, however, that someday, farther into the future than he can currently see, he'll admit that there is no world he wants to belong to anymore.
There's the question, of course, of whether it can even be hostile; he has been under the impression for quite a few centuries now that mortals haven't the faintest idea of what they're doing. Nothing has any agency save themselves, under most popular philosophies, and when they appropriate and co-opt the things that blossom and shine and burn and run on all fours ... they very seldom seem to view it as such. Not that Puck dedicates much time to philosophy-- or any time, to be perfectly accurate. But he sees quite well when he bothers to look, and he has seen the connoisseur's gleam in mortal eyes, he's seen them expand their reach through avarice or curiosity, and now here they are.
They can't fool him, of course, he sees their tricks for what they are: harnessing light, harnessing friction and heat, fire to fuse the elements of earth until they're what they want-- please, it isn't alchemy. It's just reshuffling the deck. And so it is that their towers rise up and up with iron skeletons, and they've taught themselves to move faster in vessels that reek of oil and fire and metal, and without even meaning to they've thickened the air and blotted out the stars, and Puck is beginning to suspect that when this brave new world does roll around at last, there will be no room in it for him.
(It was a little like this when he broke faith with Oberon, or at least he remembers it as if it were, though there is nothing save intuition to connect the two. It's the feeling that's the same, that spinning in his head and sick certainty like a punch to the gut that he was utterly and irrevocably without context.
Oberon always did love mortals.)
There are not times that Puck hates them for it. He does not look around at what the world will become and feel envy that it will be they who make the changes, whose bovine unbelief will bleed the earth dry and flat as paper. He doesn't because he won't, most likely, because if he pretends it isn't happening then it can happen without him and he needn't have any part in it. So for now he ignores it when he steps onto Berlin's sidewalks, he ignores the encapsulation of the earth in concrete and the low buzz of electricity and iron threaded through like blood and bone, and he ignores it when the cars roll by like thunder, like things with their own will, and he hasn't quite been able to ignore that sky of smothered stars, but give him time and he'll ignore that too.
It's possible, however, that someday, farther into the future than he can currently see, he'll admit that there is no world he wants to belong to anymore.