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[drownerbrains]

I hope in s4 fringilla gets to kill more people

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Value Study of Yennefer 🖤🤍🩶

[ID Grayscale painting of Yennefer facing towards the right. She is looking out towards the sea after failing to save the royal princess from an assassin. End ID]

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Fringilla💗

[ID: grayscale painting of Fringilla in profile with a yellow/red ring behind her. End ID]

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[drownerbrains]

lol I forgot about this doodle I made of Geralt picking up on Vilgefortz’s flirting during their fight and turning him down

😔 it’s tough out there being a weird monster man that everyone wants to fuck

I think this is what I wrote behind them-

“um I’m flattered and you’re very attractive. It’s not like trying to kill me is a turn off but you do have some sort of evil plan for Ciri. That’s a no for me plus I’m pretty sure Yennefer wants you super dead because of Tissaia so that’s a double no.”

[drownerbrains]

Leyendecker style study

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witchernetflix News from The Continent!

Laurence Fishburne will be joining The Witcher family as Regis, a world-wise Barber-surgeon with a mysterious past.

okay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[drownerbrains]

✨💀💜🔥

yenny bo benny

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Queen Yen

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horsewoman of war

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CIRI's Belleteyn outfit (costume design by Lucinda Wright)

[drownerbrains]

ficletvember 2023 - day 18

calanthe/meve (implied meve/reynard)

During a Cintran banquet, Meve and Calanthe reminisce on their time together as girls. this is a twn & book canon-blended calanthe because i love her show versions voice and poise but not her whole genocide thing. with that shaved off, the character's fairly similar.

The Cintran banquet hall was as loud with song and laughter as it ever was for royal visits. Though perhaps there were some monarchs who earned a more lavish welcome. Meve had some suspicions that the kings of the North would have not been welcomed with such excess and excitement.

The Queen of Rivia and Lyria visited Cintra once per year at Calanthe's invitation, just as she had visited as a girl. 

Much had changed since the first time young Meve had arrived by humble carriage accompanied only by her elderly handmaiden. Her figure had still been boyish and her hair a tousled mess, endlessly paining her poor handmaiden by tugging her neat plaits free the moment she was out of sight. 

These days, she refused to travel meekly in carriages but rode at the front of her retinue on her favourite grey stallion, wearing ceremonial armour in brilliant gold and waving to huddles of peasants stopped to watch the procession, occasionally breaking ranks to leave the march and kiss the crowns of offered babes.

She and Calanthe had changed a great deal since their girlhood days running through the castle's hallways hand in hand and up to trouble, but that spark of mischief still gleamed in Cali's eyes.

“Do you remember the time we stole those cavalry horses?” asked Calanthe beside her at the head table, nudging their shoulders together. 

“How could I forget? My handmaiden threatened to paddle me raw,” said Meve into her goblet of wine, mindful of being overheard.

“Not even for the theft!” Calanthe laughed, far less mindful. “But for–”

“Riding astride,” Meve finished.

She remembered the day fondly despite its end. She and Calanthe had dressed as stableboys to tack their horses, wearing caps over their hair and almost giving themselves away with their breathless giggling. They had ridden from the stables without being caught, their mounts frothing at the bit for a gallop.

In late summer fields sweet with the scent of fresh-cut hay, the girls had leaned over the sweating necks of the horses to race headlong beside one another, their caps blown off by the brilliant speed, laughing.

The girls would have been in far more trouble than they were when they returned by evening, had anyone known what they got up to together when dismounting to bathe in a sunlit pool. 

Though crow's feet now wrinkled at the corners of her eyes, Cali's smile was the same as it had been then, a secret thing for Meve alone. It seemed far too bold to look at her in ways that warmed through Meve's body in full view of the entire banquet hall. 

Not a soul seemed to notice or care.

No one had noticed back then either, or if they had, their girlhood dalliances had been dismissed as nothing but a trifling distraction, unimportant as long as they respected their betrothals to their kings. 

There had certainly been moments of private disrespect leading up to their wedding days. Cali amused herself greatly with a recurring jest where she mixed up which of their future husbands was king of where and who was marrying who. 

There had been frequent disrespect after their marriages as well. Her tumbles with her oldest friend continued as they always had, Reginald and Roegner none the wiser.

“I would have married you instead,” Cali had said once, her lips moving against the skin of Meve's belly. “If I had a cock, we'd sire an heir ourselves.”

Meve had burnt pink and said, “if you had a cock, you'd have too many bastards to determine the line of succession.”

Meve shifted in her seat, wishing she had waited to recall that memory when there weren't still hours left of feasting before she and Calanthe would be alone together.

A commotion in the crowd of revellers below served as a suitable distraction.

“Young Cirilla's spent some time of late on Skellige I see,” said Meve.

The young princess, ten summers and every inch the duplicate of Calanthe, had seemingly been involved in a conflict with several boys twice her size. Though her guard had stopped the girl from clambering over the top of the table to scrap with them, she still brandished a fork in a raised arm like a Skelligen raider would have a spear.

Calanthe snorted in amusement.

“Poor lads. I dread the terror she'll be to manage once she's of age and discovers how much every young boy fawns over her,” said Calanthe. “She detests them now but…”

“Simple retribution for the stress you caused your late mother,” Meve said. Together, they watched the protesting princess escorted from the hall for bed.

“Pity she wasn't a son,” Calanthe sighed. 

“Would be no guarantee to solve your troubles. I fear my own sons won't be fit for the crown.” 

Villem had just aged thirteen but was as soft and meek as a maiden, and Anseis had inherited his father's dull mind along with her temper.

“At least you're free to rule as you please in their stead,” grumbled Calanthe, followed by a few choice vulgar words under her breath about Cintran lawmakers and where they could shove their decrees.

“I always wanted a daughter,” Meve confessed. During her first pregnancy, she had been convinced by every old wive's tale she knew that the babe she carried was a girl. Perhaps that had been some premonition of Villem's nature.

“There's still time, isn't there? Remarry.”

Meve laughed. “No man would agree to a marriage unless I conceded the throne.”

“Then don't remarry. Every northern king's sired a dozen bastards apiece. Why should a queen be any different?”

“I fear I have few prospects for such a venture,” Meve said with a sigh. As if she would ever consider planning something so improper. Though she could not deny the appeal of finding a man to bed. There were some days and especially some nights when she found herself recalling even the uninspired sameness of Reginald's dull love-making with nostalgic yearning.  “There are few men these days who I would trust to bare my ankle before, let alone to…”

Meve set down her goblet. It was becoming apparent that she'd imbibed too much already.

“Hmmmm I can think of one suitable prospect,” said Calanthe, leering. “If you don't, I will.”

Meve followed Calanthe's eyes to where General Odo stood at stiff attention at the end of the table, arms clasped behind his back.

Trustworthy described Reynard well. Reginald's former adviser took very seriously his late king's deathbed request to extend his devotion to Meve. 

And Meve could not deny that he was handsome. Would be more handsome still if he were not perpetually frowning.

But no, the general's interactions with her had only ever been courteous and withdrawn. Given Meve had never heard a single bit of gossip in regards to Reynard and courtship,  she was beginning to wonder if he did not prefer the company of women at all.

“He's been looking your way all evening,” Calanthe murmured suggestively.

“Hush,” said Meve. 

General Odo did not look her way and largely looked like he'd rather be in bed than amongst the drunken crowd. She knew he would not retire until she did, distrustful of the sobriety of Calanthe's guards.

The hour was late. Soon, the minstrels would pluck their last notes and the masses would begin to stumble off.

Though ordinarily Calanthe prided herself in outlasting most of her cavorting subjects and remaining in the hall well into the night, that evening, she leaned close to Meve and whispered in her ear.

“You have no need of a man tonight,” she said, her voice barely a breath. 

Meve and Calanthe retired together arm in arm, giggling like girls once they'd reached the secluded passageway that led to the royal chambers.

The mattress was as soft as air, and Calanthe’s touch was firm and focused.

In another life, perhaps the marriage bed she had shared with her late husband would have been happier, had Meve never known from Cali the heights of pleasure a woman could reach.

Bare and sated, they caught their breath against sweat-warm skin and kissed long and sweet.

“Come with me to the islands this summer,” Calanthe said against her lips. “Eist and I have an arrangement, you know. We may share him, if you’d like.”

Meve went pink at the thought. It would be nice to allow herself a moment of rest. Perhaps Cirilla and her sons would get along. 

“Summer,” she agreed. 

“We’ll be horse thieves for old time’s sake. Gallop across the sand,” said Calanthe. Her eyes closed as she spoke, trailing fingers along Meve’s flank. “We’ll strip down and leap into the water. Like we did then. I’ll kiss you like the first time.”

Calanthe kissed her in a swell of breath, as thought to demonstrate.

Before the summer, Cintra burned.

[drownerbrains]

I can always fit more yennskier into the nebulous period of time they were at kaer morhen post s2

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ficletvember 2021 - day 26

yenralt modern au... I have been listening to evermore too much again can you tell. this one is based on tis the damn season.

Geralt's truck rumbled into the parking lot, fresh snow tumbling through the bright cut of his highbeams, and for a moment, Yennefer considered cutting her own lights and slumping down to hide.

She could send him a quick text saying she'd gotten hung up with work and wouldn't be driving several hours to their middle of nowhere college town to meet up for the weekend after all. Sorry about that. Catch up some other time maybe.

Nevermind that the rustic couple's retreat airbnb cabin she had paid for didn't accept last minute refunds and that she was already waiting in an empty parking lot on the far side of campus. That she had sent off a text less than half an hour ago saying I drive a black Mercedes now. Meet me at our old spot.

It was too late to back out now.

She hadn't seen Geralt since summer after graduation five years ago, their last sun-drenched week together spent at his family's secluded camp on the river. Despite the November chill and grey skies, she could close her eyes and be back there lying with him on the floating dock, her fingers trailing patterns on his bare sternum. 

Yennefer had had a fancy gig waiting for her in the city before the end of the summer, but she'd spent half of their last week together wishing he would ask her to stay with him instead. She spent the second half thinking maybe she would ask him to come with her but knowing he'd say yes and suffocate there, that he'd lived out in the country his whole life and would try to make her happy and be miserable with the exhaust and muck and noise of the city.

They'd spend undergrad tangled up in each other, never quite fitting together for very long, never quite putting who they were to each other into words. They were fuckbuddies and distractions from schoolwork and moonlit nights walking to the gas station for cigarettes and hookah smoke blown behind a dorm building and drunken tumbles in Yen's old beater in this very same parking lot.

Sometimes things got heavier, Geralt resting his cheek against her belly and shuddering out a sigh like he wanted to tell her something, wanted to ask if she'd be there in the morning, and then he'd turn and kiss her belly with a meaningful slowness that Yennefer didn't quite know what to do with and they'd let the silence linger. Sometimes Yennefer caught him looking at her like she was likely to drift away like smoke, all raw and tight and longing.

That last summer week together, neither of them had said a word like they always did, just let the other slip away into separate post-college lives. 

Life had gone on, and she couldn't say she was displeased with it, no more than she ever had been. Still, in the quiet moments alone in her apartment with a bottle of wine, looking down over the glitter of city lights, she wondered if Geralt thought of her just as much.

His truck pulled up snug beside her car and parked.

When the door opened, a familiar ache kicked up in her chest just to look at him. He'd filled out more and his long, greying hair had gone full silver along with his beard, the awkward-looking wildlife biology major whose main hobbies had been birdwatching and D&D grown into someone who'd look at home in a gym, his flannel stretching across broad shoulders and strong arms. 

But when he smiled that crooked smile and rapped tentatively on her window, she knew he hadn't changed much, not really. She still loved this man man with a fierce flare of pain in her breast. God, she loved him.

Yennefer wondered what she looked like to him. If she had changed in his eyes.

The fond grin that lit up his face as she rolled down her window, all golden retriever puppy dog bright the way he only had ever been with her, told her what she already knew, that some things didn't ever fade.

Stay with me this weekend, Yennefer had texted him the other day, after some light hearted catch up messages veered serious. She had rented the cabin on impulse, her hands trembling, had to go pick up the keys in an hour. Stay with me.

Ok, Geralt had replied, and she knew it wasn't really an answer to the schism of their different lives. It didn't mean that Yennefer wouldn't leave Geralt in bed on Sunday afternoon and drive back to her studio apartment to sit with the lonely volume of the city echoing around her. 

Stay with me too, he said with his eyes but didn't say aloud. Maybe someday he would, and everything would be very different. Maybe she would still drive away from this again. Or maybe some forevers just took a lifetime to spell out, and they'd meet each other when they were ready.

As the snow swirled to crown Geralt's pale hair, Yennefer felt that someday might be soon.

[drownerbrains]

"ANYA CHALOTRA and JOEY BATEY are officially reprising their roles as YENNEFER and JASKIER in The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep." — Redanian Intelligence

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ficletvember 2023 - day 9

twn francesca/fringilla

In the wake of Thanned, Fringilla and Francesca both struggle with sleep.

Returned to Xin'trea, Fringilla slept poorly.

There had been a time when she found the beds in the capital to be the most luxurious she had ever slept in, the rooms indulgent and inviting. The halls had gleamed with brilliant marble. The gardens had flourished, awash in color.

Nilfgaardian army camps knew few comforts, even for high-ranking mages, and she had spent months on a threadbare bedroll among stinking latrines and crass infantrymen. In the wake of defeat at Sodden, she had endured grueling marches as she pushed the stragglers and their prisoners south.

After the pillow of tree roots and seeping night rain, even the most plain Xin'trean bedchamber had been an exquisite comfort. 

It should have been the same after freeing herself from a reeking dungeon. No more mildewed straw and muck of the overflowing chamberpot. Returned victorious from Thanned, the favor of the Emperor once more hard-won, Fringilla should have slept like a milk-drunk babe.

Instead, despite her bone-deep exhaustion, she lay awake.

She needed a drink.

With freedom from the wine-stained dungeons, it should have followed that she could not stomach the stuff, but instead it was the lucidity of the sober quiet that she could not bear.

The corridors that led to the palace wine storage were familiar enough now for her to navigate in the faint light from the moon, so familiar that there was no need to even leave her bed. She closed her eyes, followed the path with her thoughts, and tugged a bottle from a shelf into her hands.

A frivolous waste of magical energy. 

Fringilla could not bring herself to feel any shame over it. Not any longer.

A hot curl of shame did strike her when a knock came in the small hours of the morning and she opened the door of her chambers to a tear-stricken Francesca. The elf was resplendent in a gauzy nightdress, exceedingly beautiful even in her grief, and Fringilla’s heart dropped to her stomach at the sight of her.

If either of them had good reason to drink themselves to sleep each night, it was Francesca. 

In scarcely a year, she had lost her long-awaited newborn babe, her brother, her partner, and countless kin. Even the elves’ recent victory at Thanned and glorious return to Xin’trea had come at the price of denying the Scoia’tael from its refuge. It was a city of elders and the sick. Francesca herself a puppeted queen of a scorned realem

What sorrow had Fringilla ever known that compared to that? 

She had stared down at her uncle’s body and felt nothing at all. No kinship. No regret. 

Nothing to compare to the burden of Francesca’s loss.

Beckoning her in, Fringilla burgeoned the fire high with a word and summoned a glass to pour wine for the both of them, as though she hadn’t been sitting up in bed taking long pulls straight from the bottle.

She felt almost sober, though these days, it was hard to tell. 

Rather than settle in a chair by the fire, Francesca accepted her glass of wine and settled in Fringilla’s bed. The covers had been mussed by her endless tossing and turning, and something about the sight of the elf sitting there, light by the fire and staring pensive into the blood-red wine, made Fringilla feel like weeping herself.

Neither spoke. What could truly be said? 

Fringilla settled cross-legged on the bed, feeling like a girl. Though as a girl in Aretuza, she had never sat beside another in the dwindling hours of night the way other girls had. No one had liked her enough. Too uptight, too bookish. Francesca would not have liked her then. Perhaps was only here now because Fringilla had inserted herself into the fray at Thanned at the last moment and by chance, she was still her now. 

As Francesca leaned to press their wine-stained mouths together, Fringilla’s first thought was imagining the likelihood of such a thing occurring in a world where Filavandrel had lived. Elves were not chaste and monogamous partners by any means, but what could Fringilla give that another lover couldn’t? 

All that drew them together was the loss they had shared. 

In the pool of the sheets, Fringilla touched her mouth to soft skin that she had ached to touch for ages and wished to be more wine-drunk than she was.

[drownerbrains]

There is another ghost that haunts us... what I did to you. S3E1- Yennefer of Vengerberg