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And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearnèd luck—
A new figure stepped onto the stage—not one from the cast list, and not following any stage directions. He wore dark, unremarkable clothing, a small bandage upon his brow over one eye, and a truly infuriating smile.
The actor playing Puck glanced over at the newcomer. Then a gesture paused all the mortal breath of the audience. Any blink or fidget, half-begun, remained unfinished. A dropped cup remained unfallen, and a coin only halfway picked out of the pocket. A pigeon taking flight hung suspended between wingbeats in the air. And in the sudden silence, the actor, now truly embodying Puck, strode angrily toward the visitor, who was still smiling, watching Puck approach him.
"No, you do not get to interrupt my play—my closing speech—soon to be my applause!—especially not so you can make one of your"—Puck sniffed, disdainfully—"silly little announcements advising people which silly little paperwork thing they should buy to keep them safe from silly little you."
Mayhem pouted. "Aw, not even after all the good work I did for you tonight?" The pout dissolved into a chuckle, and he murmured smoothly into Puck's ear, "I am insufficiently specific instructions, given in careless haste—causing you, following them in good faith, to drop the love-juice in the wrong Athenian's eyes." He leaned back, checking Puck's face for reaction with smug confidence. "And didn't you have a good time tonight? Wasn't it more fun that way?"
Puck's lips turned up in a sly and scandalized smile, eyes glittering with the pleasure of finding something to be appalled about as he stalked around Mayhem. "You never caused my lord's tongue to slip."
Mayhem waggled his eyebrows silently in response, as if suggesting so many possible follow-up jokes about tongues and what else he might cause to slip that he couldn't possibly pick just one, and inviting you to imagine them all.
"Oh, very well." Puck sighed and waved Mayhem toward the center of the stage. When Mayhem reached his mark, he looked expectantly at Puck, and Puck sighed again, louder this time. "No, you don't get my audience. Interrupt half a dozen lines from the end! The nerve! But you can practice delivering your bit from the stage." He made a leg sarcastically and gestured for Mayhem to proceed.
"Hm, I bet someone could come up with ways of writing in breaks, places where you could naturally stop and deliver messages like this," Mayhem mused. At Puck's muttering and rolled eyes, he said, "Okay, okay!" and gathered himself, and then his voice rang out against the walls of the theater. "I am a tempest! Awaiting your ship laden with fancy, expensive cargo. And if I break open the bottom of your ship's hull, you could find that all that money you've sunk in? Is now sunken at the bottom of the sea. Get a Bottomry loan for your ship today, while it still has a bottom—or you could be paying for all that yourself, when it meets mayhem like me." He looked over for the reaction of his only audience.
Puck tsk-tsked and shook his head. "The stage has been too bottom-heavy with this play already; you'll need to find a sweeter pitch to make."
Mayhem made a "you can't win 'em all" shrug (and he should know.) "Hey, I heard you can put a girdle round the world in forty minutes? And here the official speed of news, for insurance purposes, is presumed to be only three miles per hour. We could have some fun with that."
"Isn't mayhem everywhere? Why would you need me to run your errands for you?"
"Why did Oberon need you to fetch and carry and deliver the flower juice for him? Sometimes you want to see someone else doing the work. And," he said, leering at Puck up and down, "it is a pleasure to watch you work."
"You are not my lord, to command me," Puck said.
"That's not what you said last—" The power of the glare Puck shot him cut him off (and ignited a small puff of fire in the shoulder of his jacket, which he absently brushed off). "Okay, okay! All I'm saying is, I think there's much greater potential in the areas of paperwork and insurance for mischief and fun that you would enjoy than you've previously given them credit for."
"And you want to…show me these pleasures, do you?" Puck said, with affected boredom, but a small smile played around the corners of his lips.
"Well," Mayhem said suggestively, as Puck drew closer and started to pluck at the singed fabric of his jacket. "Oh, hey. You wanna set more of my clothes on fire? You can set more of my clothes on fire." He sounded cheerful and eager. (The latent words "I am a puppy" seemed to float somewhere about his being.) Puck moved his fingers from Mayhem's shoulder to pinch, not gently, at the bandage on his forehead. Mayhem gasped softly. "You wanna give me more cuts and bruises?" He sounded entirely delighted by the idea.
"That might mean more if I didn't know you could only really be hurt if you want to."
"I could want to. After all, mmm," he said into Puck's hair, as Puck went after Mayhem's neck with his teeth. "I do hear you make amends after."
Puck said reflectively, "I find I tire of hearing 'Bottom' jokes tonight, and would prefer to take action and pierce the bottom of something."
"The bottom of a ship?" Mayhem said, hopefully. "I could be the ship with the inattentive helmsman, and you could be, what, the rocks they run aground on? What would your pleasure be?
"Perhaps I could be persuaded to also pierce the ship—if you make it worth my while."
"Wanna also be the fire that burns me down to the waterline?"
A moment divided came to its end, without a whisper or flicker of awareness from anyone that it had been any different from any other moment.
—We will make amends ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call.
The actor, now only human, continued his speech, as Mayhem and Puck, invisibly and undetectably to the audience or the players, slipped themselves in between moments and shadows and chances and luck, and took themselves away.