#weed and witcher my favorite things

[quillfulwriter]

This song always makes me think of trans headcanons for Dandelion in The Witcher books tbh

Shortened lyrics for reference:

When I was a little girl, my mama said to me "What's your favorite flower, darling? I'll get you the seed" I said, "Dandelion! Dandelion! That one’s so pretty" She said, "Child, that one's not a flower; that one's just a weed"

Oh, what a shame Now it don't look the same Guess it don't look the same Oh, what a shame

Call me what you want (Dandelion, dandelion) You can't stop me multiplyin' Pull me from the dirt (Dandelion, dandelion) No, you don't want me in your garden

I still loved those mellow yellow petals anyway What's that thing they say about a rose by any other name? Then my fragile flower turned into a ball of grey So, I took a breath and made a wish and blew them all away

[selflearningbotany]

Flower Information Inspired By The Band "The Amazing Devil"

My current favorite band is The Amazing Devil. It consists of Joey Batey and Madeleine Hyland. They sometimes use flowers in their songs or name their songs after flowers such as their song Blossoms.

Forget-Me-Nots

In their song Elsa's Song, they mention Forget-Me-Nots. The last sentence in the song is, "Out of all the flowers you picked, I knew you would forget forget-me-nots."

Forget-Me-Nots, also known as Scorpian Grasses, are small five-petaled blue flowers with yellow or white centers. They grow in woodsy or boggy areas and prefer moist soil in full sun. Their growing season is mid to late spring. They have a slight citrus smell. They are non-toxic and edible. They represent true love and respect.

2. Sage

Also in their song Elsa's Song, they mention sage, lilies, and roses in the line, "You'll strew some sage and lilies and roses where I rot."

Sage is a rather famous herb and is constantly being used in cooking. Sage plants produce blueish-purple to pinkish-purple flowers during the summer. Sage flowers have a small lip or opening. They are popular with bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. The flowers, much like their famous leaves, are edible. The flowers are said to have a fruity taste. They represent good health and wisdom.

3. Lilies

Next in line are lilies.

Lilies are large, colorful, six-petaled flowers with long and noticeable anthers. They are often bell-shaped. Lilies come in white, yellow, pink, red, and orange. Lilies can be safe to eat when properly cooked, but they are extremely poisonous to cats and can cause feline kidney failure. A type of white lilies called Calla Lilies are used often in funerals. Lilies represent purity, innocence, and rebirth.

4. Roses

Finally, we have roses.

Roses are round multipetaled flowers that grow on spikey thorn bushes. They come in red, pink, yellow, white, blue, orange, and black. White roses can be dyed different colors when watered with a mix of water and food coloring. They prefer loam soil and full sun, but full sun can bleach them and cause the color to fade. Partial shade can reduce fading but will result in smaller buds. Rose petals are edible and are said to be sweet. Soaking the petals in water creates rose water which can improve skin and gut health. Different colored roses represent different things such as red roses meaning romantic love, yellow roses meaning friendship love, and blue roses meaning mysteriousness.

5. Rockroses

In their song The Rockrose and The Thistle, The Amazing Devil mention rockroses.

Rockroses, aka Cistus, are large, soft, and colorful flowering evergreen shrubs. They are tough and can withstand rain, strong winds, salt spray, and draught. They come in pink, rose, yellow, and white. Each blossom lasts for only one day and is naturally wrinkled. They prefer dry, sandy, and rocky climates in full sun. They have a warm and balsamic smell. They are non-toxic, edible, and can be used to treat stress and anxiety. Rockroses represent imminent death.

6. Thistles

Continuing from their song The Rockrose and the Thistle, thistles are spikey plants with purple puffs of flowers. They grow in average soil and prefer full sun. They are often considered a weed as they have an advanced root system that easily allows them to spread and grow. The spikes are irritants and can cause harm and rash. Some trimmed thistle leaves and peeled stems are edible. It is said that they taste like slightly sweetened celery. However, milk thistles can be considered toxic and may cause gastrointestinal distress. They are great for pollinators. They are tough and difficult to fully remove. Thistles represent overcoming adversity, protectiveness, good luck, and strength.

7. Buttercups

One of the lead singers, Joey Batey, plays a bard named Jaskier in Netflix's adaptation of The Witcher book series. Jaskier means buttercup in Polish.

Buttercup flowers are small yellow flowers with yellow puffed centers. They can have anywhere between 0 to 23 petals. They are often fine with full sun or partial sun but are pickier with their soil by preferring it to be light, cool, and well-drained. They have thick layers of yellow pigment, but they catch air under the layers which causes the flowers to become glossy and shiny. They are often considered weeds. Buttercups are extremely poisonous and can cause blistering of the mouth. They represent joy, youth, purity, happiness, and friendship.

8. Dandelions

Joey Batey's character Jaskier was renamed in The Witcher video games to Dandelion.

Dandelion flowers are yellow puffy flowers that can change and develop into balls of gray seeds. Dandelions are often considered weeds because their roots can break hard earth and can cause erosion. Dandelions can grow practically anywhere. The entire plant from roots to flower is edible and can be eaten cooked or raw. Undisturbed dandelions can live for up to 10 years. Dandelions represent rebirth, strength, power, good luck, success, and wishes.

[romeulusroy]

hi!! id love if you could ship me with a succession character :) thanks for doing this and i love your writing !!

i have long curly hair, am 1.67m/6'5"ft and from brazil. im a psychology major and im thinking of going into research and possibly teaching (in universities) eventually. i have autism and adhd, i speak 2 languages fluently (pt-br & english) and know a bit of spanish and i love intellectual conversations. im a somewhat quiet person but i like learning and sharing knowledge so i can get excited and into a conversation quite easily. i like routine and organising things and i kind of a worrier, i think too much about the future and am seldom "present". i hate parties and nightclubs, dislike attention, am a quite private person and prefer to be alone (also i NEED time alone or i go crazy) or with a small group of people. also im a ravenclaw in case it wasnt obvious lol (unlikely).

im very nerdy, im a star wars, doctor who, lord of the rings etc fan and i also love video games (currently playing witcher 3 and stardew valley <3). i love musicals and i listen to many different genres, but mostly alternative and pop.

i dont feel the need for luxurious things and big houses and expensive cars, my dream house is a small 1 room apartment with a balcony in a big city (like london or barcelona). my dream life would probably be said apartment, a cat, a job that i liked and being able to wake up and have breakfast in my balcony just listening to the birds sing and watching the people walking on the street. i like anonymity and just being another face in the crowd, being able to just observe the world around me; which is probably one of the reasons im so drawn to big cities.

in terms of my type, i love smart people that can hold interesting and deep conversations. i also dislike rude people and immaturity and stupidity annoy me a bit (i dont mind it in friends but i think that if i spent too much time with someone like that id murder them lol). i smoke weed but i dont feel the need to date someone that does as well, since i dont do it that often – and its the only drug i do.

hope this isnt too much or not enough djcjsksk anyway thanks again !!! have a good day :)

Hi my love! I ship you with: Shiv Roy!!!

She loves how nerdy you are. Every time she sees something about Lord of the Rings or Doctor Who or Star Wars she thinks of you. It could be something little like a key chain or something bigger like an all-night screening of the Star Wars movies, it always makes her smile. She's not the biggest fan of it, but when you're watching she can't help but enjoy it. She loves how excited you get when you talk about it, about your favorite characters or the plot. It brightens her day. She also loves how smart you are. Shiv is surrounded by idiots, mostly her brothers and father. To be able to come home and use her brain and have a stimulating conversation with you, it brings a smile to her face. You're incredibly intelligent and she can't get enough of it. You have worked so hard to get where you are, put in so many study hours, she can't help but feel proud of you.

You love how driven she is. Shiv knows what she wants and what she wants, she gets, even if she has to take a lot of shit from those around her to get it. She works so hard under her family and you couldn't be prouder. She puts everything she has into her work and unfortunately doesn't get the recognition she deserves. You're there to remind her that she's doing an amazing job, that she's Shiv Roy and that people should be scared when they hear her name.

Your relationship is smart. The both of you are fiercely intelligent go-getters. You don't have time to waste on mind games and wondering what the other is thinking and small things that should worry you as a couple, but doesn't. You talk openly about your wants and needs and feelings. Shiv figures she plays enough mind games at the office, with clients and her brothers and her father, she can't come home and do that there, too. It would be exhausting. You both know what you want in life and you get it, easy as that. You want to go out to dinner for date night so you do. You want to take an impromptu vacation so you do. Your relationship is easy and comfortable and to the point.

Your first date is for drinks. She takes you to this place that she knows that won't be too crowded or busy or flashy, but of course her definition of flashy is far different than yours. It's there she is able to open to you, ask questions, relax. It's rare you get to see this side of her, you welcome it. She laughs a lot when she's around you. She can't remember the last time she felt so at ease around someone. She wants to keep feeling this way, she wants to keep spending time with you.

Relationship Headcanon: Shiv surprises you one weekend to a little apartment she bought in London just for you. She surprises you with breakfast in bed and makes your dream come true. It's a beautiful little place you two can escape to when things are stressful and you need a break. You people watch from the balcony, just the two of you, letting the day slip by. It's one of the most wonderful days you spend together.

Thank you my love!!! Hope you like it! 💜💜💜

[skaldingrayne]

For the writing asks:

🥺🎯💔🎢🤭

Love you friend ❤️

Ahhhh! You asked and I get to play one of these, yay! You are a lovely friend, thank you 💜💜💜

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🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels? Y'know that moment of hesitation before a character asks an important question you know has been bothering them, they stand their shuffling their feet in that liminal space, anxiously chewing their lip, looking anywhere else around the room but at the target of their nervousness, stammering a bit over what they are trying to say? Maybe there's a little hoarseness in their voice, a suspicious sparkle in their eye, the scent of salt in the air? Ooo, love it bc you know that whatever it is, it's gonna be something big

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🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which? Oh gosh - I'm certain they have, I have very clever readers. The problem is I have many plot points and an awful memory. I consider it a win when readers can guess a twist though - it means I've foreshadowed thing correctly. I've heard of some writers (cough cough Game of Thrones) would rewrite scenes when they thought fans had guessed to closely but that just seems silly to throw all your hard work signposting your plot points and character development out a window like that when really, it's a sign folks are enjoying/caring about your thing, right?

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💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart? I'm not going to spoil them by explaining why, but: we are known by the stories we share (multiple points in the story), Keeping the Fires Burning, and Burn

And now here is the one that always puts my 💖 back together for me after: of Weeds & Wretched Things

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🎢 Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride? we are known by the stories we share hands down. epic giant monster battles, cozy fantasy, slice of life, saving your bro from the angry spouses that want to kill him while debating sexual technics, found family, gremlin Ciri, angst, fluff, massive amounts of deep canon lore and world building both, multiple near-death experiences, and an entire fleet of tattooed singing sailing witchers

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🤭 Do you have a favorite tag to use when posting your works? "Lambert doesn't just have issues he's got the whole back catalogue he keeps bagged in mint condition" & "Friends to Lovers to Idiots to Lovers" are my two favs i've personally come up with and would like to use more; @round--robin's amazingly brilliant Kaer Morhen's Fanon Hot Springs; and no beta we die like witchers never fails to make me grin but I HAVE an amazing lovely fantastic beta reader so i don't often get to use it

Thank you again @trickstermoose67 for giving me an excuse to play! 💜

[bard-llama]

WiP Wednesday: Happy Weedmas #420

I have a couple of fics that I started for 420, but sadly, only one of them is really in a state to be posted (see These Edibles Ain’t Shit). However, WiP Wednesday means that you get unfinished bits soooooo, enjoy! 

First piece is a random crew of folks smoking at a party in Nilfgaard, 2nd one is Meve’s first time getting high. 

Smoking in Nilfgaard

The thing about diplomatic banquets was that they were long and boring, and if you were at all connected to anyone important, you were expected to stay for hours.

Truly, the only way to make it through was to bring something to strengthen one’s spirits. Specifically, a strong something.

“Hot Shot called this blend the Devil’s Tatas and he swore it would make any evening survivable,” Gascon reported, as he packed his pipe. They’d ducked out into the royal gardens and he was positive they weren’t the only ones smoking. He was also positive that his weed was better than anyone else’s.

“Better deliver,” Vernon muttered, glaring suspiciously at their surroundings. Considering that was pretty much his default expression, Gascon didn’t make much note of it, instead lighting the pipe and taking a deep hit, exhaling slowly.

Vernon did the same, settling onto the bench next to Gascon, and for the first time all evening, some of the tension actually began to unwind from their shoulders.

“Shit, that does actually smell good,” said a muffled voice from the other side of some hedges. Gascon was pretty sure he recognized that voice, though, and from the way Vernon startled, he did too.

“Geralt?” Vernon called.

A moment later, two figures rounded the hedges next to their bench – one very clearly the infamous White Wolf witcher, who Gascon had met in passing once at the Battle of the Bridge, and the other a dwarf, who was nursing his own pipe.

“Sure smells better than our shit,” the dwarf laughed, though that didn’t stop him from taking another hit.

He wasn’t wrong, though, their weed smelled rank.

Gascon coughed, wrinkling his nose. He shared a glance with Vernon, but hey, the more the merrier, right? “Join us?” he invited.

“You sure?” the witcher asked, frowning uncertainly.

“Of course,” Vernon said easily. “C’mon, Geralt, sit down. You look like you could use a good hit.” So saying, Vernon tugged the witcher down into place next to him and stuck the pipe in his hand, relighting it for him.

Geralt shrugged, inhaling deeply and letting it out with a low hum, passing the pipe over to his companion.

“Oh, that is good,” the dwarf reported. “Thank you. Name’s Zoltan – nice to meet you.”

“Hi Zoltan, ‘m Gason, this is Vernon. So how’d you two end up stuck at this shindig?”

“Ugh,” Geralt groaned dramatically and Vernon laughed.

“Dandelion is performing,” Zoltan explained. “And from long experience, he cannot be trusted to look after himself. So…”

“So you’ve gotta do it for him,” Gascon snickered. “Fair enough. Always wanted to meet Dandelion.”

“Really?” Vernon cocked an eyebrow.

He flushed, shrugging. “Seventeen year old me had a huuuuuuuge crush on him,” he admitted. “Him and Calonetta were like my bisexual awakening, okay?”

Zoltan guffawed. “They’d both find that delightful.”

“Oh gods, you cannot tell them,” Gascon pled, face red. “Anyway, it’s not like it was anything special. Every teenager has a crush on Dandelion and/or Calonetta! They’re the heart throbs of the continent!”

“That’s beyond horrifying,” the witcher said blandly.

“Yeah, it hasn’t affected his ego at all,” Vernon snarked.

“You know him?” Gascon blinked. “Like, personally?”

“He worked for me for a while, as an informant,” Vernon shook his head. “Submitted all his reports in fucking iambic pentameter.”

Geralt and Zoltan both burst into laughter. “Of fucking course he did.”

“I’d recognize that braying laughter anywhere,” a brash voice said from across the garden and then three people were approaching them. “Ha, told you I smelled weed.”

“Never said you didn’t,” the other man accompanying the speaker said, “just said it didn’t smell very good.”

The woman with them just rolled her eyes, but she waved at them. “Hey, Geralt, Roche. Hiding from the party?”

“Yes,” Geralt said easily. “Okay, Keira I get being here. But what the fuck are you two doing at a diplomatic party in Nilfgaard?” He stared at the two men who, now that Gascon looked closer, had the same cat-like eyes all witchers had.

“I like parties,” dark-skinned man said. “And Lambert likes dressing up and judging people.”

“Speaking of,” Gascon felt the need to say, “your dress is gorgeous.” And it was – while relatively simple, it was a lovely deep red and had been tailored precisely to show off the curves of his body, from the way the high collar and lack of sleeves emphasized his shoulders, to the way the skirts flared out with a slit at the hem to expose the length of his leg.

Lambert smirked, painted lips curling coyly. “Thank you. It should maybe be noted that he likes parties because they make for easy marks.”

“Shh, don’t give away my secrets,” his companion shoved his shoulder lightly, eyes alight with amusement. “I’m Aiden. Would you mind if we joined you for a smoke?”

“Sure,” Gascon shrugged and introduced himself. “And I assure you, my weed is the one that smells good.”

That made all three of them snort, taking the pipe eagerly. The woman – Keira, apparently – was actually a mage, and revealed this fact by setting her fingertip on fire to light the pipe.

It was the kind of dramatization that Gascon adored, even if it freaked him the fuck out when she did it.

“So, what do we think of this shindig?” Vernon asked after a long moment of silence in which they circulated the pipe.

For the prompt: “first time high, now they’re really horny 😈😈😈”

Meve shifted, sitting next to a number of soldiers and Strays around the main camp fire and wondering how she’d ended up in this position precisely. It had started, she was fairly sure, with Gascon.

Most of the trouble in her camp these days seemed to start with Gascon.

Gascon had ended dinner with a claim that his man ‘Hot Shot’ had come through with a new blend and that tonight promised to be a good one for any who imbibed. It had, in all honesty, taken Meve several minutes to realize that Gascon was referring to a blend of intoxicants – specifically, herbs that he packed into a pipe and lit easily. But by the time she had that revelation, the pipe was already circulating the camp and, well, it wasn’t truly as if this could be much worse than the effects of ale on her army. 

She did make a note to cut off the liquor supply, though. The last thing they needed was anyone getting sick from overindulgence.

By the time the pipe reached the table near her, Meve had half-dismissed it from her mind, refocusing on her meal and on the paperwork she’d brought with her. So she was entirely unprepared for Gascon to step up and stick the pipe in her face.

“Want some?” he asked easily, as if the queen getting intoxicated alongside her troops would be no big deal.

“I shouldn’t,” Meve shook her head, pushing his hand away and signing a report with a flourish. 

“C’mon,” Gascon weedled, “you said it yourself – the camp has been overly tense of late. Besides, if you partake, then your General has no excuse not to, and frankly, both of you could use a night to unwind.

It was… oddly tempting. But… “at least one of us should remain in control of their faculties,” she pointed out.

“Okay,” Gascon agreed. “Then let it be me. I had a hit earlier, but I’m already sobering up. Seriously, you need a break, Meve.”

Meve frowned, looking up to meet his eye. He stared back at her evenly, face unusually serious. 

“One night,” he bargained. “Doesn’t have to be drugs, but however you wanna relax, do it. I’ll be on guard for the three of us tonight, all right?”

Slowly, Meve nodded. She supposed… if he insisted, then there wasn’t truly any harm in trying it out… was there?

“All right,” she murmured. “Then how do I do this?” she gestured at the pipe he was holding and he lit up, grinning at her and passing it over. 

“Hold it like this,” he instructed, moving her fingers into place. “Then, when I light it, inhale deeply and let it out slowly. You’re gonna wanna cough, and that’s okay, just breathe in what you can. Ready?”

At her nod, Gascon lit a match and held it to the bowl as she breathed in. 

He was right – she definitely coughed. But aside from that, she did feel kind of pleasantly lightheaded, the world almost starting to spin around her.

“Feel okay?” Gascon checked.

“Mm,” Meve hummed, closing her eyes, unaware of the way she was swaying slightly. “I think so.”

“Good. Now I’m gonna talk your General into taking a hit.” He winked at her, then sauntered off towards Reynard, who looked mildly alarmed to be the sudden target of Gascon’s attention.

Meve giggled to herself, finishing her food and just watching her soldiers as they laughed and smoked with each other. The floaty feeling in her head was nice, and it made her unaware of the passage of time, but when she next thought to look for them, Gascon and Reynard had both left – and suddenly Meve needed nothing more than to see them. Moving her body felt like swimming through molasses, but she staggered to her feet and headed off towards the command tent, mostly out of habit. That was, after all, where the three of them spent 90% of their time.

“No,” she could hear Reynard snap, “I’m not interested in your drugs.”

“Fine,” Gascon sighed, exasperation clear in his tone. “So don’t use drugs. But for fuck’s sake man, if you don’t take that stick outta your ass for even just a few hours, you’re gonna end up having a fucking aneurysm.”

Meve ducked into the tent just in time to see Gascon grab Reynard’s shoulders and look him seriously in the eye.

“Look,” Gascon said, “I promise I will not let anything happen to Meve or your men or anyone else, but seriously, you need a fucking break. It’s just one night. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Staring past him, Reynard caught sight of her and his eyes widened, “Your Majesty.”

“He’s right,” she said softly, licking her lips. “It’s… I didn’t think I should either, but feeling this way now? Yeah, I needed this.”

“See?” Gascon waggled his eyebrows. “The drugs make it easier. But the point is giving yourself a break.” He held out the pipe again, offering it to Reynard.

Meve thought back to what she’d seen some of the soldiers doing, how she’d seen them sharing the smoke between them. She could – she could do that with Reynard.

She swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry. 

Vaguely, she was aware that, were she in her right mind, she absolutely would not do what she was about to do. But at the moment, it was difficult to care. Instead, she took the pipe from Gascon’s hand and held it to her own lips, waiting for him to light it for her. Then she inhaled deeply, stepped close to Reynard, and dragged him down into her, until she could force his lips apart with hers and breathe the smoke out into his mouth.

Reynard inhaled sharply, breath hitching and choking lightly, but he didn’t pull away, even when she ran out of smoke but didn’t quite feel like withdrawing just yet. 

“Oh,” Gascon gasped next to her ear, and she drew back slowly, eyes fluttering open to meet Reynard’s shocked hazel ones. “Well, uh, that’s one way of going about it,” Gascon said, clearing his throat. 

There was something off about his voice, but Meve couldn’t seem to look away from Reynard for long enough to check. Instead, she brought the pipe to her lips again, a question in her eyes.

Reynard’s lips parted in answer and she kissed him, exhaling the smoke into his lungs. 

It was easy to lose herself in Reynard, in the movement of their lips against each other, especially once he began to respond in turn. But even so, when the gravel turned under Gascon’s boots as he moved away, her brain made note of it and she dropped the pipe, reaching out to grab Gascon’s wrist instead.

The clatter of the pipe against the floor startled Reynard, and he licked his lips, stepping back and staring at them both with wide eyes. 

The world spun around Meve a little too fast, and the way her blood pumped through her body was making her restless, making her hips shift. She could feel her heartbeat in the sensitive flesh between her legs, which she was fairly certain was not a regular occurrence, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad sensation, just an empty one. 

She knew how she could potentially fix that.

“Um,” Gascon coughed, tugging on his wrist lightly, though he didn’t pull himself out of her grasp. 

She frowned, and when she spoke, the words felt weird in her mouth, like they didn’t quite fit. “Where’re you going?”

“I dunno, go on watch, I guess,” Gascon shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. “So you two can cut loose.”

Meve couldn’t articulate her thoughts, but she did not like the idea of Gascon leaving right now. Reynard, it would seem, agreed with her, because he staggered over to the chair next to them, sinking into it and snagging Gascon’s other wrist.

“Uh?”

Inspired by Reynard’s move, Meve had the brilliant idea to push Gascon back until he collapsed onto Reynard’s lap. Before he could recover, Meve crawled up into his lap, hoping absently that she wasn’t crushing either Reynard or the chair.

That was how they ended up with Gascon stuck between Meve and Reynard’s bodies, all of them breathing a little too quickly. Meve leaned close, her chest pressed against Gascon’s, pinning his back against Reynard’s chest. Like this, she was just a little bit taller than all of them and she straightened in delight, enjoying that for a moment before she dipped down to kiss Gascon.

Gascon startled, but his mouth was soft and giving against hers. “Meve,” he whispered, sounding wretched. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’d never do this sober.”

“Says who?” she asked, squirming closer until the throbbing between her legs pressed snug against his pelvis. 

He let out a strangled sound, head falling back, and she couldn’t help but lean down to nip and suck at the exposed skin of his neck. Reynard likewise seemed to find it irresistible, because the General buried his face against Gascon’s neck opposite Meve – and if sometimes, while mouthing at Gascon’s skin, their lips met… well, that was just a bonus treat.

Gascon’s hips bucked, twitching as he tried to control them. “Meve,” he said seriously, “you’re not in your right mind. You and Rey-nard.” His breath hitched halfway through Reynard’s name and he arched as Reynard worried a mark into his skin. His hands circled her waist, but they were careful to remain respectfully placed. “You don’t want this.”

“Rather think I can prove that wrong,” Meve scoffed, grinding her hips down against his. She could feel the way his cock twitched and grew against her and it made her hungry for more.

“Fuck,” Gascon whimpered, and he wiggled, either trying to get away or to get closer – but he had no leverage in this position, and there wasn’t much he could do except be held between Reynard and Meve.

His movement rocked over her clit and it made her shudder, grabbing his face and devouring his mouth once more. His grip on her waist turned bruising and he swore against her, kissing her back like he couldn’t help it. She rewarded him by rolling her hips in deliberate circles, enjoying the varied pressure against her cunt, especially as his cock continued to grow. She rocked against it, practically riding him through their clothing, and she could see the way it affected both of them. Gascon, of course, was obvious – arching and bucking and whining, no longer trying to convince her that she didn’t want this. But below him, Reynard was equally affected, and Meve could tell from the way his dark eyes watched the movement of their bodies, from the way he muffled his low moans against Gascon’s neck, from the way his own hips jerked on occasion, even his iron clad control faltering in the face of this. 

Meve shivered, kissing Gascon again and again and again.

[reinvent-and-believe]

48 from dialogue prompts + 50 from wordless i-love-yous for geraskier?

Dialogue Prompt 48: “You make me want things I can’t have.” Wordless I-love-you 50: buying them a special treat when you go out shopping

--

It catches Geralt’s eye while he haggles over an outrageously priced jar of alchemy paste with a none-too-impressed herbalist on the outskirts of Novigrad, a buxom widow with thick-braided auburn hair by the name of Irmina.

“This for sale too?” He picks up the brooch from the countertop where it rests in a beam of golden light streaming through a dingy window. He examines it. It’s simple enough metalwork, a brass oval with a scalloped edge, but inlaid in its face is a single pressed yellow flower framed by tiny white blooms encased in resin.

The herbalist’s dour demeanour brightens immediately. “It is indeed!” she answers, her brown eyes shining in a plump, suddenly pleasant face. “Made it myself just last week. It’s something of a hobby of mine, making pretty knick-knacks from the flowers we can’t sell. Got plenty more like this if you’d like to peruse ‘em, master witcher! Forget-me-nots and arenaria, hellebore, violets, any flower you might like.”

A buttercup, he realizes belatedly. That’s the yellow flower in the center.

“No.” He sees Irmina’s brow furrow in offense, so he hastens to appease her. “No need, I’ll take this one. I...I’m partial to buttercups.”

Her freckled face breaks into a sly, knowing smile. “Oh, aye, I’m sure someone is partial to buttercups.” She winks, waving away his stammered attempts at an answer. “Never you mind, I know a man besotted when I see one, and it seems a witcher’s not so different. Tell you what. Fifty crowns for the paste and I’ll throw the brooch in for only ten.”

-

Leaving the herbalist’s shop with an overpriced paste, a lighter purse, and a useless trinket, Geralt curses himself for a fool.

He’s not sure why he bought it.

He knows buttercups are Jaskier’s favorite, of course. “None but the noblest of flowers for my sobriquet!” Jaskier had squawked indignantly when Geralt once made the grave mistake of referring to the pesky things as weeds after he’d stopped Roach from chomping on a patch of the bright, poisonous blooms.

They are weeds, buttercups. They serve no function. They can’t be used in any of the potions, decoctions, or oils Geralt brews, nor do they have any particularly helpful curative properties for humans.

“As ever, my dear witcher, you have no sense of poetry,” Jaskier had sighed in a most put-upon voice when told as much. “Their function is they’re pretty. Their function is to enrich our lives through the beauty of the natural world.” He’d looked to the sky, tip of his tongue between his teeth showing through his frown as was his custom when puzzling through the right way to turn a phrase. “From a strictly utilitarian perspective, perhaps the buttercup has less value than, say, moleyarrow, or verbena, or chamomile, even. Some plants provide nutritional or medicinal or alchemical qualities of various sorts. But some exist to make life worth living! To transform the banal into the sublime.” He’d plucked a buttercup from the roadside, twirling it between his long fingers. “It’s graceful and balanced, effortlessly beautiful. It’s vibrant, bright like...like sunlight, on a summer afternoon! And when you see it growing alongside the various and sundry flora, it fills you with the loveliest burst of warmth, like a lover’s smile.”

“So...it’s a pretty weed.”

“You’re incorrigible, witcher, that’s what you are.” Jaskier had huffed dramatically before tucking the buttercup behind Geralt’s ear, his face alight with a delighted grin.

Like sunlight on a summer afternoon.

-

The Kingfisher Inn is crowded when Geralt arrives. He goes to the bar, orders an ale from Olivier, and leans against the counter to take a look at the stage.

Jaskier loves playing the Kingfisher. In many of the inns he plays across the Continent, he’s relegated to a corner to try to sing over the clang of dinner, his only option to win the common folk over a raucous drinking song or a filthy ditty. And while the bard doesn’t shy away from such vulgarities, the patrons of the Kingfisher tend to be of a more artistically inclined ilk, responding with appropriate gusto to the virtuosic art songs that he rarely performs outside of competitions or Oxenfurt.

Or so he’d explained to Geralt when he’d suggested they meet up at the inn.

Jaskier sits atop a tall stool on a rather large stage framed by crimson curtains, his sky-blue doublet a vivid contrast. The audience, enraptured, listens to his ballad, a melancholy tale of a fair maiden who’s violently killed before she can profess her love to a farmhand in her village, a beautiful, strong, kind man whose hair shines like a blaze of pale fire in the sunlight. Her love for him tethers her to this world, and her spirit—bitter, weary, and endlessly yearning—calls the men working in the fields to join her dance at midday, when the sun is in its zenith, hoping against hope for the chance to finally confess to her beloved.

In the end, the brave, noble farmhand sacrifices himself, hoping to stop the spirit’s killings by listening to her song and joining her as she beckons. And as they are reunited, as she finally kisses the lips she’s longed for in a blinding blaze of sunlight, they pass on together, their spirits becoming one.

It’s a contract Geralt worked a few years ago, a noonwraith outside Oreton—or at least something close. As ever, Jaskier has taken artistic liberties, romanticized the actual events (“Sometimes, in our pursuit of Truth, we must sacrifice the facts,” Jaskier loftily explained on more than one occasion. He seemed quite taken with the profundity he seemed to find in the statement. Geralt called it pretentious once and Jaskier hurled a chunk of bread at his head). Once it might have bothered Geralt, but he’s grown accustomed to Jaskier’s rather malleable relationship with veracity in his ballads. There’s no denying the impact of his storytelling: when Geralt glances around the inn, he sees several patrons discreetly dabbing at their eyes.

It’d been an ugly case, leaving him feeling empty, drained. Noonwraiths haunt his thoughts far longer than most the monsters he dispatches. They’re victims of circumstance more than anything, young women who’ve been transformed into bloodthirsty, violent spirits through no fault of their own, through the violence inflicted upon them. Nearly forty men had fallen prey to her before the farmhand distracted her with his kiss—though Geralt would hesitate to classify his grotesque, gruesome sacrifice as such—so the witcher had a chance to strike her down with silver. Jaskier has spun the miserable tale into something beautiful, moving, something that clearly resonates with his captivated audience, that speaks to a greater force at work than the chaotic, banal evils the witcher sees every day, and Geralt thinks he understands, for a moment, what the bard had told him of Truth and facts.

(Geralt doesn’t know what greater Truth is served by changing the beloved farmhand’s hair from the dull brown it really was to “a blaze of pale fire,” but then, Geralt’s not a poet.)

The final notes hang in the air, all eyes fixed on Jaskier for a rapt, breathless moment before the room bursts into wild applause. Jaskier stands and bows deeply, once, twice, a third time, surveying the room as he offers his thanks. When his gaze catches Geralt at the bar, his expression of showman’s grace vanishes, a flash of something that looks almost alarmed for a split second before it’s replaced by a small, gentle smile.

Geralt nods and raises his mug toward the stage in cheers, draining the remainder. Jaskier is quickly swept into the swarm of captivated fans, accepting their praises with a gracious, if distracted, smile.

The witcher turns back to the barkeep to order himself another ale along with a glass of wine.

“Geralt!” Jaskier swerves to avoid a near-collision with a frenzied barmaid on his way to join his companion at the bar. He grabs the wine glass with a groan of appreciation, taking a swig before asking, “Is this for me? Gods, but you’re a marvel, darling, I thank you.” He takes another sip and sends a disarming, roguish wink to a pair of girls staring at him and giggling to each other. “I wasn’t sure when you’d arrive, but it wouldn’t have mattered, I suppose, they only had one room to let when I checked in and it hasn’t cleared out since. You’ll share mine, of course, but I’ve been here a week so, you know, best brace yourself, I’ve quite made the place my own.”

Geralt snorts. He’s stayed in enough rooms that Jaskier has made his own over the past decade to predict with some certainty what mess he’ll soon venture into.

(Doublets draped over furniture after they’ve been discarded; crumpled sheets of paper tossed near, never in the fireplace; a few near-empty bottles of wine; a shirt hung to dry over the modesty screen between the sleeping and bathing areas; bottles of a dozen oils and perfumes and soaps scattered haphazard near the tub; an unmade bed that may well contain an abandoned undergarment or forgotten stocking left by some well-satisfied guest.)

“Have you eaten? Shall we? I’m starved, felt jittery all afternoon and didn’t eat a damned thing which was all well and good until I got onstage and suddenly wished for a fainting couch. Or we could take your things up to the room first, of course. Oh! We could have them bring our dinner up to us, it’s awfully crowded down here tonight and I’m not sure I’m up to socializing all evening, to be honest, I’ve been dreadfully out of sorts, did you notice, Geralt, that I’ve…”

Jaskier continues his ramblings, and the witcher can’t help a twinge of worry for his friend. It’s not unheard of for Jaskier to be in a heightened state over a particularly important performance, but usually afterwards the nerves dissipate and he seems more himself. Not to mention, why would playing in an inn prompt such anxieties? Even if the Kingfisher clientele trends toward the more refined than the country folk he often plays for, it’s still rather a low-stakes environment to trigger such stress.

“New song?” he asks casually. Jaskier always beams when he notices such things, when he makes an effort to ask about his music.

Instead, Jaskier blushes, looking away with an expression that almost seems guilty. “Ah, yes, well, I wasn’t certain when you’d be arriving, of course, I thought I might try out something different, a sort of test audience, as it were, to feel out the piece before I use it for anything important.” The look he’s fixed on Geralt seems almost wary. “Did you...like the song?”

Geralt shrugs. “Not quite how it happened,” he grumbles, out of habit more than anything.

A smile, genuine and rueful, breaks out on Jaskier’s face. “Gods, I’ve missed you, my friend,” he says, shaking his head and looking away quickly.

“Hmm.” He reaches quickly into the coin pouch at his side, thrusting the trinket from the herbalist into Jaskier’s hand with a brusque, “Here.”

“Whatever have we got…” He cuts off as opens his palm. “Oh.”

There have been so few times over the years that Geralt has seen Jaskier speechless that he begins to worry he’s offended him. He turns the brooch over in his hands, once, twice, his thumb swiping gently over its smooth enamel face. He doesn’t look up.

Even in the crowded room, Geralt can smell the shift in his demeanor, the muted sickly-sweet anxious smell becoming something sharp, metallic, pained, like he’s been stabbed. “You’re upset.”

“I...no.” Jaskier shoves the brooch into his trouser pocket, a tense smile on his face, not at all reaching his eyes. “Thank you, Geralt, it’s lovely. Shall we take your bags to the room now?”

“I didn’t...I didn’t get it to upset you.”

Jaskier laughs, a broken thing, and Geralt grows even more alarmed. “You didn’t, it isn’t that, sometimes I want things I can’t have is all.” He grabs the saddlebag sitting at Geralt’s feet, not meeting his eyes as he rushes past him up the stairs to the last bedroom in the hall.

Geralt follows after a moment, giving his companion a respectful distance. There’s a tightness in his shoulders, a knot in his gut that only grows as he watches Jaskier’s hand tremble on the key as he unlocks the door.

It was a stupid idea. He knew it was stupid when he bought it, yet he bought it anyway, somehow ruined everything anyway.

“Here we are.” Jaskier’s voice is filled with a forced cheer as he sets the bag down, hand never leaving the doorknob. “I’ll go fetch us some supper. Or, actually, you know, now that I think of it, I’ve a few errands to run before it gets too late, meant to do it earlier but you know how it goes, lost track of time…”

“Jaskier.” Geralt moves toward him but stops himself, helpless. “Please. I’m sorry I upset you.”

Jaskier stands in the doorway for another moment. He takes a deep breath, closes the door, and walks slowly to the writing desk in the corner. He pulls the chair out, moving the doublet strewn across it before sitting. He doesn’t look at Geralt.

“You didn’t.” Every word is calculated, deliberate. “What kind of ungrateful wretch gets upset over...over an exceptionally thoughtful gift from a friend after a time apart?”

Geralt sits on the edge of the bed. His elbows rest on his knees, fingers locking together as he stares at the floor. “You’re not a wretch. The fault is mine.”

“Dammit, Geralt, there isn’t fault, I only—why did you bring me a gift?”

Geralt frowns. “I’ve bought you things before,” he says slowly.

“Things, yes!” Jaskier vaults from the chair, pacing listlessly about the room, no longer trying to mask his inexplicable distress. “Lute strings when I broke a string and I was low on coin. The lute is my livelihood, it made financial sense for you to replace the string so I could pull my own weight, help you when we pass through several towns in a row with no contracts. Boots when you noticed the hole in the heel of my old pair, because I slow you down limping about in footwear that’s falling apart. Room and board, sometimes, because you know I’m good for it, I’ll cover you the next time.” He’s stopped pacing, stares silent into the fireplace.

“Wasn’t keeping a tab.” Geralt’s voice is quiet. “You needed strings and boots and food and a room.”

Jaskier doesn’t turn to face him, but Geralt sees his hand slip into his pocket, pull out the brooch. His head bends, studying it.

He’s not offended or annoyed or angered by the gift. He’s hurt. But why?

Except...

Jaskier looked guilty when Geralt brought up the song. Like he’d been caught red-handed. Did you like it? he’d asked. Incredulous.

The noonwraith singing her song in hopes that her beloved hears her confession. That he’ll hear her song of longing and come to her.

Hair like a blaze of pale fire, not dull brown.

Sometimes I want things I can’t have.

“Geralt?”

The witcher snaps back to attention, eyes fixed on Jaskier, finally facing him.

“Why did you get it for me, Geralt?”

Geralt frowns. “It’s...pretty,” he starts lamely. “I thought you might wear it when you play. You wear gaudy things.”

Jaskier snorts, a small, crooked grin on his lips.

“It made me think of you,” he confesses quietly, his eyes tracing the wood grain of the floor. “Sometimes...things don’t have to have a function. It was a buttercup and it was pretty and it…made me think of you.”

When Geralt dares to raise his eyes, Jaskier’s staring at him, brows drawn together and mouth slightly agape. After a moment, he walks toward the witcher, sitting carefully beside him on the bed. He reaches his hand towards Geralt’s and presses the little brooch into his palm.

“Will you pin it on me?” he asks softly.

Geralt nods.

His fingers feel thick and clumsy as he fumbles with the delicate clasp. The top few buttons of Jaskier’s doublet, as ever, are undone, but it closes neatly just beneath his exposed neck. Geralt slips a finger beneath the satin fabric to pull it away from his throat, cautiously piercing the fabric with the thin pin and sliding it into its slot, locking the clasp with shaking hands.

His hand doesn’t move from Jaskier’s chest. A sword-calloused thumb, seemingly of its own volition, grazes lightly over the bobbing Adam’s apple.

“Geralt.”

He looks up, almost pulls away but for the flushed cheeks, the tongue that darts out to wet pink lips, the hooded eyes beneath dark lashes fixed on Geralt’s mouth. Jaskier’s breath is warm against his face. When did they draw so close?

“Are you going to kiss me, Geralt?” The breathy whisper is laced with wonder.

And he didn’t...didn’t buy the brooch to entice Jaskier into anything, didn’t mean to solicit any sort of reward, and he opens his mouth to tell him so, yet as his rough hand moves to gently cup the back of Jaskier’s neck the words that tumble out instead are, “I’d like to.”

And Jaskier throws back his head and laughs, a euphoric, intoxicated sound, as his lovely hands cradle Geralt’s face. He brings his forehead to rest against Geralt’s as they still, breathing each other for a moment before Jaskier surges forward to capture his lips.

His kiss tastes like sunlight.

[brighteyedjill]

Why censor a fandom event?

Do the mods for a fandom event have the right to  make restrictions on content? Sure. They’re volunteers running their own event. 

But. Fandom is a culture that we build together. If we were just people enjoying media in our own homes, we would not be a community. But we’re not. We talk to each other, reblog each other’s amazing art, comment on AO3, squee in Discord channels over ideas, and so on. That’s what makes fandom great: we build it collectively. And like any culture, we have some shared norms. For example, since AO3 is a big influence on our culture, tagging has become a cultural norm in fandom. We tag for the “big four” warnings on AO3, and increasingly, tag more and more details of content to help people find what they like and avoid what they don’t. 

Fandom events like Big Bangs shape fandom culture, too, though. They bring together people who might otherwise not know each other, and have a tendency to dominate the fandom conversation for a time. Restrictions in a Big Bang have a chilling effect on content creators. That means that some work will not get written because of these restrictions, and also that people’s opinions towards this kind of content may be influenced on a larger scale. I personally find this unfortunate, as some of the things on the restricted list are things I’ve written about, uh, a lot. But aside from just me, there are larger implications to consider. Read more about the history of strikethrough and content restriction to learn about who is harassed and excluded when fandom culture turns against “questionable” content. 

I posit that restrictions like this are not always The Norm™ in fandom events, nor should they be. In a fandom like the Witcher, whose canon includes everything on the restricted list, most of them graphically, I believe content of a similar nature should be welcome in fandom content. I ran my first Big Bang in 2009, and have participated in half a dozen bangs and reverse bangs since. None of them had content restrictions (here’s an example of a Big Bang without content restrictions that’s been running since 2011). Some Big Bangs do; sometimes this is dependent on the canon content, more often it depends on who has power and influence in the fandom. Here’s a case for why not to include restrictions in future events.

What are these restrictions meant to do?

As I understand it, these restrictions are meant to make things more inclusive by allowing more people to participate. Are they successful in that? It’s possible they allow different people to participate. As with many things, there are competing access needs here. More on that below. But let’s look at what “making things more inclusive” means in practice. 

Problem: We want to allow participation from people who don’t want to come into contact with dark content. 

OK. Let’s help participants avoid coming into contact with dark content if they don’t want to. How might they come into contact with dark content?

1.) People might hear upsetting conversations in Discord chat

Solution: Ask people to post in the appropriate channel. Use a “walk away” rule to encourage people to leave the channel if a conversation comes up that they’re not comfortable with. If you want to go further, you could have people warn for certain topics, or restrict darker topics to a specific channel, though this runs up against a different issue (see below).

2) People might see content in the claims that they don’t like, or don’t want to work on. 

Solution: Usually in a Big Bang the artists look at a list of summaries and tags and choose which fic(s) they’d like to work on. No artist is going to be forced to work on anything they don’t want to. Even artists who enjoy dark content are often illustrating something other than the darkest, most graphic, or most explicit moment of a fic. In a claiming situation, you can have writers tag their fics, just like they would on AO3, to allow artists to filter out content they’re not interested in or that they would find upsetting. 

2.5) We won’t find any artist to work on certain pieces.

Solution: This happens sometimes. You could put out a call for more artist participants, allow artists to claim a second piece if they want, or you may have to tell a creator that there’s not a match for them. That is a bummer, but this happens sometimes, especially in fandoms where writers vastly outnumber artists. But in no scenario will any artist be forced to write for a piece that squicks them. 

3) People might see content in the Big Bang collection that they don’t like. 

Solution: This one’s pretty easy. Tagging. Tagging has been used on AO3 since its inception to help people avoid content they do not want to see. People don’t have to engage with content they don’t want to see if it is properly tagged. 

4) The mods don’t personally want to engage with the content. 

Solution: Find a mod who will, so that mods who don’t want to don’t have to! You can get a volunteer to do this, I guarantee.

5) I want to encourage the creation of lighter or SFW content.

Solution: I get that. Say so! Explain what content you welcome, and phrase what you’re looking for in a positive way (e.g. “We require that content be T rated or below and have a generally positive outlook and an upbeat ending.”) rather than what you don’t want. Be clear, specific, and up front about it, so that you connect with the creators you’re hoping will participate. 

6) I think this content should not exist. 

This is the one I can’t help you with. If the reason you’re banning content is because, consciously or unconsciously, you think that it’s morally reprehensible, or that the people who make it are bad, I do not have a solution to offer. 

Competing Access Needs

I’m not going to get too far into the weeds on how making a list of restricted topics is impossible, because others have addressed this point. No matter what list you come up with, someone out there will find something you failed to list, but that you feel should be restricted. What to do? If they’ve already completed a fic, tell them to leave? Tell them they have to change it? Let it slide? There will be endless questions about what is and isn’t allowed, which is time-consuming and exhausting for mods, and paralyzing for creators. How do I know if this scene is un-graphic enough? Will I need to revise my whole fic? Will I get kicked out entirely if I write the wrong thing? Will some participants get preferential treatment or the benefit of the doubt because of their identities or their connections?

Censorship brings up competing access needs. Someone doesn’t want to see non-con. Someone is writing non-con fic to work through their own trauma. Someone is writing it for other reasons. Can you accommodate all these folks? I would say yes, in the ways detailed above. But when you start restricting content (as in Strikethrough or Boldthrough, discussed in the history link above), you’re not wielding a scalpel. You’re wielding an anvil, and you’re gonna crush things you didn’t mean to crush. Again, check out the history link to see who gets crushed. 

So… what to do?

Do I think people should change the rules for the events they’re running? No (john mulaney we are well past that.gif). As I said, people who are running their own events have the prerogative to restrict them for whatever audience they’re hoping to reach. Questioning fandom practices is not “shitting on” anyone (and hey--no scat allowed). 

What I would really like is for Witcher fandom to have a think about how we want to proceed as a community. What should be the norm? Witcher fandom culture (in its current form, i.e. big) is still relatively young. There can be variation, sure: Discord server vibes vary wildly, for example. But in the big events or activities that we hope will be open to the largest part of the community, how do we want to intentionally foster the maximum amount of great content about our favorite things? There are ways to be inclusive that do not involve censorship, and I believe we should use them. 

[dapandapod]

Midsummer dreams

Happy midsummer!!! As a swede, there are a ton of wierd traditions on this day! But I must confess this one is one of my favorites. 

Please enjoy this little thing!!

On Ao3 here!

It always rains when midsummer is celebrated. It’s just how things are. Geralt and Jaskier are staying at a small hamlet somewhere in the north. The air is hot and humid, a taste of thunder waiting to happen. Every drop hitting the leaves like a whisper, the birdsong soft and muted.

They are standing in the middle of a field, helping to gather flowers and weeds to dress the maypole.

“You know, somewhere even up further north there is this tradition,” Geralt says, voice gentle like the chorus of the summer rain.

“Oh?” Jaskier asks, picking a big flower with white petals. Daisy, Geralt thinks, and imagines putting one behind Jaskiers ear.

“Yes. You might have heard of it? You pick seven types of flowers and put them under your pillow on midsummers eve. And when you fall asleep you will dream of the one you will marry,” Geralt tells Jaskier, picking a bright red poppy. But it is fragile, and three petal falls off it as soon as he lifts it.

“That is very romantic. Did you ever try it?” Jaskier asks him, plucking another two daisies and adding them to his growing collection. Geralt shrugs, more petals falling from the poppy.

“I’m a witcher. Who would marry me?” Geralt asks, and Jaskier predictably says nothing. It was not a question he expected an answer to.

They keep gathering flowers, grass, leaves, anything that they can weave into crowns or decorate the maypole.

Geralt doesn’t say, but he makes sure to pick out at least seven kinds of flowers. It can’t hurt.

The festivities are merry, full of dancing and singing and food. As a bard, Jaskier is busy most of the night. He sits with his lute on a hay bale and sings, a flower crown a bit crooked on his brow. His smile is wide and his eyes are sparkling, and Geralt finds it hard to look away.

When night falls, they return to their rented room. Jaskier is happy, soft with drink and kind words, and in his hands he holds seven kinds of flowers.

“I want to try it. Why not? It sounds like fun, and perfect for a song.”

This time Geralt is the one being quiet. He is not sure why he doesn’t say anything, but from his pack he takes out a small bouquet of flowers. With seven kinds. He doesn’t think too much about it before he stuffs it under his pillow quickly, pretending he is fluffing it up.

Geralt barely dares to look at Jaskier as they change into their night clothes, and when he falls asleep, it is to the smell of wild flowers and home.

In his dreams, he dances with Jaskier. Warm hands are resting on his shoulders, and Jaskier does that goofy crinkle of his nose when he laughs. In his dreams, they travel together on horseback. Watching the world and learning its secrets. In his dreams, Jaskier kisses his forehead and calls him ‘mine’.

As morning comes, the smell of wild flowers lingers. When Geralt opens his eyes, they catch on the sleeping bard’s form across the room. His hair tousled in sleep, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed, resting on the floor.

Oh.

Geralt doesn’t dream much. When it isn’t nightmares, or the dark plains of unconsciousness, it is blue eyes and soft smiles.

Maybe that is what this feeling is. What wells up in him when Jaskiers tongue pokes out in concentration, when Jaskier glares at him for a bad joke, when Jaskier is sleeping, just like he is doing now.

Maybe he can be allowed something good after all.

Just as the thought passes through his mind, Jaskier wakes up. Their eyes meet, and Geralt hopes. Hopes that his bard dreamt of him too.

And as Jaskiers cheeks colour, and he blinks awake sleep, Geralt thinks maybe, just maybe, the flowers let Jaskier dream of him.

[alittlebitmaybe]

comme un écho

AKA whoops i talked to @yoursummerfrost about orpheus and eurydice and then tripped and fell on this very weird ficlet that is only sort of what i meant it to be. uh oh. (title lifted from “it’s never over (oh orpheus)” by arcade fire because i’m incredibly literal sometimes)

warnings: off-screen major character death

*

The mage had told him to perform the ritual in a field of wildflowers.

“Plenty of life,” she said.

Jaskier had asked, “For what?”

“To feed it,” she said, and did not elaborate.

And as he follows her instructions, surrounded by blooming weeds and swaying grasses, he sees that she was right. As the herbs and other unmentionables in the bowl burn, scorching the wooden sides, the green around him darkens to black. He feels the magic tugging at his energy and resists it. The ruin spreads from his epicenter, cursing the very dirt on which he kneels. A slow but inexorable exchange, and Jaskier thinks it fair. Geralt had watered the earth with his blood and now the earth must give back.

“You’re out of your depth, bard,” the mage had said as he turned to leave, her lips pursed. Was she amused or disapproving? Jaskier didn’t care, nor, he suspected, did she. Her pockets were full, and his own empty.

He hefted the lute higher on his back, clutched at the strap across his chest.

“And yet,” he said.

“He will not come easily,” she said.

“He never did,” Jaskier replied.

The flame in the bowl burns out with a flare of noxious smoke that stings Jaskier’s eyes, makes him cough. The world hums. It’s a tune of his own, as of yet unsung, plucked from his consciousness. It reaches out to him and burrows under his skin. Pulling. He follows it.

Between two gnarled, ancient trees, in the arch of their overlapping branches (Which belongs to which? Where does one stop and the other begin? If one was broken, would the other suffer for it?) the air shimmers.

The tune fades and in its place is a whisper saying, Come.

*

The stairs spiral downward for hours, days. Jaskier’s legs do not ache and he does not hunger, but it is ever so quiet. He takes the lute from his back and plays every song he’s ever composed in Geralt’s honor. Maybe Geralt can hear them. Maybe he will know Jaskier is on his way.

“Get ready, Witcher,” Jaskier says to the darkness. “Gather your underworldly things. You won’t be coming back any time soon. I can promise you that.”

And he says, “I’m sorry that you were alone. I’m sorry that I was too late.”

And he says, when the darkness presses upon him, when it seems the stairs will never end, “I don’t know when I began to love you, but it has been long enough that I don’t know how not to.”

And he says, “I’ve done this for you. You deserve to have a better life. You deserve to live.”

And he takes one more step and trips, for there is no stair where he expected there to be one. He taps the toe of his boot against the ground. It’s solid. He lifts his hand in front of his own face and it is invisible. There is no breeze, no sound, no smells, no light. There’s nothing down here.

In the face of such vastness, Jaskier is insignificant. He is nothing. You are nothing. You are less than a flea clinging to the fur of a great beast. You will be mine. You will become a part of me. You will cease. You will be forgotten.

“Hold on now,” Jaskier says, head whipping around. “Who’s there?”

I am everything that has been. I await everything that is. I anticipate what will be. I am.

“You’re Death,” Jaskier realizes, perhaps belatedly.

There is no such thing. I have no name. I have no need of it.

“That’s okay,” Jaskier says. “I don’t give a rat’s arse who or what you are.” His heart thumps arrhythmically, and sweat drips from his brow. He swipes it off on his sleeve. He is far under water. His lungs fill. He ignores it, swallows. Throws back his shoulders. “I’m here for Geralt of Rivia.”

There is no Geralt of Rivia.

“Bullshit.”

You are insolent.

“I’ve been told.”

You will be mine.

“Perhaps.” Jaskier licks his lips, an unbreakable habit. “But I will live on.”

You will not.

He laughs a little, despite himself, a nervous little giggle that he stifles as quickly as he can, clearing his throat. “On the contrary, I am an artist. I shan’t die as long as my art lives. And art does not die.”

Art? Art is not living. I have no use of it.

“Exactly,” he says. “Yes, precisely. It does not live or die. It simply is. Whatever you—whatever you are, being of, ah, all-ness…or what have you—whatever you are, whatever comprises you, you have none of art. You have no music, no stories, none at all. You will always lack it.”

There is a thoughtful pause.

I desire it.

“I can give it to you. Did you hear? I played my whole way down.”

I heard.

“Did you enjoy it? Three words or less.”

It was pleasing.

Jaskier exhales. “That’s actually a decent review, as these things go. I’m glad. I mean, would you like more? I could write you a song. Got a decent hand at improv, me. Won’t take a moment.”

A song. For me?

“Yes,” Jaskier promises, feeling the weight of it as it passes over his tongue, “a song, only for you. I shall never play it again. Well, um, on one condition.”

You want Geralt of Rivia.

“Oh, you were paying attention. Smart one, you are, Your…um, Majesty.”

I can retrieve him. If I am careful. He is me. I am him.

“Truly, I understand. His loss, for me, was…” Jaskier struggles for adequate words. “Irreconcilable. But you will always have the memory of your song to take his place.”

You sang of him.

“I do. Rather habitually. Every day of my life, in fact.”

Hmm.

“You sound like him already. So, whaddaya say?”

Play for me.

*

He plays, and every note that vibrates out from his lute, every note that leaves his mouth disappears from his mind. It is absorbed from him upon conception. He doesn’t know what the last measure was, nor what the next will be. He does not know what key or time signature his song is in, but he knows it’s a song. And that is all he promised.

It ends, and Jaskier does not notice. Possibly his jaw hangs open stupidly for minutes after it is over. He closes it.

“Was, um, was that…”

Yes. I will give you your reward.

“You will?” Jaskier asks, surprised despite himself.

I will release Geralt of Rivia, for you have given me something in return. And I will regain him, as I will gain you. We will meet again, bard.

“I—How do—”

You will walk forward. You will ascend, and he will follow. Until he emerges above, he is still a part of me. You may not look upon him, as you may not look upon me. You must not look back.

“How will I know he is there?”

He will follow.

“How will I know it is him?”

You must have faith.

“How—” Jaskier chokes now, tears welling up. He is glad no one can see. “Will he be—himself?”

Entirely. Once he emerges.

“Thank you,” Jaskier whispers.

It is time. Walk forward. In three paces, you shall begin to ascend. Be well, bard.

*

Jaskier climbs. The stairs remember his tread, the shape of his feet. It’s easy.

There are footsteps behind him. Are they Geralt’s? Do they match the way he shifts his weight, the deliberate heel-toe steps that Jaskier has been hearing for decades? He’s not sure.

Jaskier is afraid. More afraid than ever before. There could be anything back there. Anything at all. He must not look.

But he is not forbidden to talk.

“Geralt?” he says, tentatively. “Geralt, is that you?”

A grunt. “It’s me, Jaskier.”

And it is, thank the gods, it is. “Sounds like you,” he says, voice carefully measured, lest he sob in relief.

Silence. Four, five more stairs. They will not end. When will they end?

“How’ve you been, Witcher? It’s good to hear you again, my friend.”

“Where are we?”

“Well, who’s to say,” Jaskier says lightly. “Tell me, what do you last remember?”

“Bleeding out in a forest. I couldn’t get up. I waited to die. I…died. I died, didn’t I, Jaskier?”

Jaskier chooses to take that as rhetorical, and does not answer.

“Anything else?”

“Not until now. Is this a dream?”

“To my knowledge, no, Geralt, it is not. I pray that this is not a dream.”

“Then where—?”

Jaskier picks up his foot, sets it down. One stair at a time. There have been hundreds, there will be more. Is that light above? No, a trick of his eyes. He is still blind.

“Not to worry. We’ll soon be outside. It’s a beautiful day, you know. Big blue sky. Everything in bloom. Your favorite time of the year. We’ll have to do some foraging, stock up for potions. I have your things, of course, but I don’t know the shelf life of your concoctions.”

“A quarter year.”

“Ah, might have to make fresh, then.”

But no, it is growing brighter. Jaskier can see the faint silhouettes of his hands, the edges of the stairs to come. If he were to turn back he might be able to see the gleam of Geralt’s eyes, but he mustn’t.

Why mustn’t he? Oh, yes, the warning. He—can’t look back. He must not—

“Jaskier,” Geralt says again. “I’m dead.”

“You are, Geralt, yes, is that what you would like to hear?” Jaskier says, a little hysterically. “But you won’t be for much longer, if we just keep going.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where? Where?” His pitch climbs with the staircase. Around and around. Dizzying. So many circles. “Above, Geralt. Back home, of course.”

“Why?”

Jaskier has to stop himself from whirling around. “Good gods, you ask me why? I follow you for decades, I immortalize you in song, and the witcher asks me why.” He draws in a great lungful of air, releases it. “I love you, you great idiot. I have loved you.”

The response comes, so softly, a mere rumble, “I know. That’s why I asked.”

The stairs are made of warped stone. He can see that now. They are well worn, dipping in the centers. It can’t be far. “Please, Geralt, we’re almost there.”

“You haven’t answered me. Why you would do this.”

“I was supposed to let you rot, huh? I was meant to live on as if it was fine? As if nothing was missing?”

“Yes,” says Geralt. “You didn’t ask me if I wanted to come back.”

“Of course you did. Of course you do.”

“I don’t,” says Geralt.

Jaskier stops, and behind him the second set of footsteps also halts.

“It was peaceful. It was my time.”

“It wasn’t,” Jaskier whispers. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

There is a touch to the small of his back, a gust of air across the nape of his neck. So familiar. He aches.

“Jaskier.” A strong hand closes around his wrist. He doesn’t look down at it, not even a glance. “The world doesn’t need me anymore.”

“What about the monsters? The wars?”

“There is Yennefer, and Ciri, and Eskel and the rest. There will always be someone.”

With dread creeping through his limbs, Jaskier says, “You’re telling me you don’t want to come back. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

He can almost hear the creaking of the intertwined, ancient trees above. It is just a few more steps.

“You can’t tell me that, not when I—”

Arms come around him, and he shuts his eyes. “Jaskier, I would rather have done what I have done and no more, than continue on and overstay my welcome. I would rather have my peace.”

“What if I need you?” Jaskier breathes.

“I am with you.”

“You weren’t.”

Geralt’s hand comes to rest over his heart. It is not cold nor hot through Jaskier’s doublet. It simply isn’t much of anything at all. There, but insubstantial. It trails its way up his jaw, traces over his bottom lip. “You forget,” Geralt says, “that I am in your words. That I will live on. Isn’t that what you said? Art does not die.”

“You heard.”

“I must have.”

“That’s not fair.” Jaskier sniffles, knowing full well he sounds like a child. “I came all this way. I have always followed you. What am I supposed to do now?”

“Whatever you wish.”

“I will sing of you until I can’t any longer, to anyone who will listen, and to many who will not.”

A smile, pressed to his ear. “I can think of no better way to be loved.”

Something nags at Jaskier, and he can’t say what. He is surrounded by a body he knows as well as his own, yet it’s not right. Why?

The body releases him. It says, “Look at me, Jaskier. That’s all you have to do.”

“You’re not Geralt, are you,” he says with trepidation, eyes still squeezed tight. “Are you? Don’t lie.”

“Jaskier.”

He breathes in. Opens his eyes. Grips the lute strap in both hands. Turns.

Silvered hair, sad golden eyes, a sharp nose, wispy around the edges.

“Geralt,” he whispers, reaching out even as the form dissipates. Called back to the bottom of the stairwell.

“Thank you, Jaskier,” it says, and then it is gone.

[the-wotog-collection]

some new(ish) kids

“new” as in they didn’t exist yet when we last posted. so some of them are at least 9 months old. anyway!

list under the cut:

CAS

- they’re a half-elf monk! but now that i think about it it would be kinda funny if they had a level or two in rogue

- honestly? they’re a frat boy, but one who drinks respect women (and everyone, really) juice

- complete thembo. they have a -1 int, but +5 dex and +3 cha so who’s really winning here

- seriously when i say they’re a thembo i mean it. cas can dodge bullets all day but they don’t know that a tomato is a fruit

- they’re a people person and respectful and are very much work hard play hard. i love them

PUMPKIN

- now this is a bastard right here

- he/they tiefling rogue. yes they stole that crown what about it

- very much like mollymauk tealeaf i’m not gonna lie. they’ll charm the pants off of you and run away with your whole coin pouch

- smth i love about pumpkin is 1) their last name is pye 2) they have aliases bc in nearly every town they’ve been in there’s a warrant out for his arrest

- pumpkin pye (persona), a flirty rapscallion. if they had to pick one alias to stay as, this would be that one

- apple pye, a quiet sweetheart. kinda country bumpkin-esque

- pecan pye, taciturn but honest (as he can be while using an alias and on the run from the law and generally up to no good) and a hard worker

 - underneath all the layers? he’s kinda sad and lonely, still a flirt and a rapscallion but considerably less, and sometimes he just wants to stay in bed instead of going out and getting into all kinds of trouble

- oh also! he’s self conscious about his freckles, and usually uses some kind of makeup to cover them up if hell brain is acting up/he’s causing trouble

TENJIN

- i’ll be honest i do not remember if i still have their picrew

- i do nvm

- this is tenjin! iirc they’re a drow enchanter (homebrew class my cousin made) but ig in a legal game they’d be a divination wizard

- he’s such a sweetie, oml

- fun fact he has autism! mostly nonverbal and gets overwhelmed super easily, and has a whole pouch full of trinkets that they fidget and stim with

- baby. baby boy

- really fun to play actually

BEE

- she’s here to kick names and take ass, and she’s all out of names

- a whole lesbian. most of why she does what she does is to protect pretty girls

- human (shocker, i know) cleric of a storm god that i forgot to write down

- anyway!

- do no harm but take no shit is her motto. her methods may be borderline illegal, but hey, as long as the thing gets done it’s fine

- usually.

- basically her only method is swing a bat around until people talk and if the bat hits anything/anyone, well. that’s not her business

- oh yeah her bat. it’s infused with electricity and deals lightning damage as well as bludgeoning. it’s sick as hell

- she’s pretty rad

RAY

- everyone needs a weed druid

- okay but seriously. they eat every plant they come across to 1) figure out what they do (they have insanely high con dw) and 2) for magical power

- are they high most of the time? yes. are they really sad actually? also yes

- they aren’t religious, but they do worship the deity their childhood best friend (turned lover, yes) worshipped

- i might talk about that more later :)

- anyway they’re super chill and also one of the few drows i have, iirc

WALKER

- okay now we’re starting to catch up

- his name isn’t actually walker, but it’s what everyone calls him so that’s what he goes by

- he/they (wow theres a lot of he/theys huh) fallen aasimar gloom stalker ranger

- basically think of the edgiest anime boy you can imagine and go “what if he went to therapy”

- he’s such a good boy! yes they still do the adventuring thing, but make a point of going to therapy every week

- they’re making some great progress :)

- while he’s basically a witcher and gets treated like one (i.e. poorly), he just wants to settle down somewhere quiet when there’s no more evil in the world to grow vegetables where the only one around to judge him for being mute is his crow

- the picrew didn’t have a crow so please pretend that’s what the pigeon is

VAL

- valor is a tiefling fighter who came into existence bc i rewatched netflix castlevania and was super gay for striga so i made a character inspired by her

- also has autism, but in addition, she has ptsd from her days in the royal army. she’s seen some shit yall

- isn’t very good with social interactions, a lot of stuff goes right over her head and she’s just awkward as hell, but get her talking about her special interest (military tactics) and she will talk for hours. please let her

- fun fact she met her wife bc she was fishing in a bog trying to catch dinner and fished out a wholeass lady instead

- she’s buff as hell. she could use literally anything as a weapon and make it hurt

UNNAMED WIZARD

- i don’t have a name for them yet BUT i do know that they’re a bitch

- yet another he/they, this time we have a neutral evil wizard who doesn’t care who gets hurt as long as they get results for their experiments

- think albedo genshinimpact but with almost no morals

- yes he’d cast ninth level spells on his party if he was researching something. no he would not feel remorse. probably

- idk i haven’t fleshed him out yet i just know that he’s a bitch

MOUSE

- finally! my favorite character on this list

- this is maisy, but she’s so tiny that everyone calls her mouse

- when i say tiny i mean she’s a halfling and also seven years old. she’s fucking little

- little human druid girl who basically raised herself in the forest and can & will make friends with literally any animal she comes across

- her arcane focus is her flower crown, which also has berries growing on it. they grow back every time she picks one to give to her friends :)

- she’s so fucking pure oh my god. actual cinnamon roll and everything that’s good in this world

- her rat’s name is rat. he’s her friend :)

- and also dog sized compared to her it’s hilarious. she has a little leash for him made of vines and particularly spry twigs

- have some bonus art bc oh my god cutie

[gayregis]

netflix witcher and netflix witcher fans really showcase the absolute Audacity of americans using foreign (in this case polish) words they don't understand and cannot pronounce right at all for absolutely no fucking reason like what was the point?? what was the point of butchering my language haven't yall had enough???

really agreed. sorry if this sounds like kind of off-topic or a tangent, but i swear i’ll loop it back around to your point eventually — i was discussing about jaskier’s name in the server earlier with @nightimefairy and the decision from lauren to keep it in polish in the [obv. american but important for content] netflix adaptation.

to an english-only speaker, the word “jaskier” doesn’t sound really different than any other name in the witcher, it does not translate the meaning that it’s the name of a flower.

jaskier/dandelion’s name being obvious to the audience as being the name of a flower is important, because it helps define his character if only by name. i remember when i first learned of the character, i really was like, that’s a strange name, no one is called dandelion from birth, and why would someone be called after a flower. of course months later when i read the tower of the swallow (or perhaps minutes later when i read the wiki, because i wanted spoilers ahaha) it was a mystery that was solved for me. but if he hadn’t been named his translated name — dandelion — i would have totally had missed this and not understood at all that his name is the name of a flower and not like, a “normal” name that one would totally give to the child they bore. but overall, this name of a flower suggests to the reader that buttercup/dandelion isn’t his real name, making them wonder what it, and thus his other identity, could possibly be. and we all know that artist-types tend to have a stage or a pen name under which they perform or publish, so dandelion having this name cements for the reader that he is such an artsy-type.

then of course, a buttercup or a dandelion being a small yellow flower makes it not an especially masculine name, and additionally these flowers are largely considered weeds... that’s two things we can tell about the character right off the bat. and since they are yellow flowers with golden petals, we can understand another thing about him — he’s blonde, it’s a fitting nickname due to his hair color. and of course, blondes carry with them many different literary and modern media tropes.

additionally, the name not being translated in english adaptations prevents it from carrying any other linguistic cleverness or connotations — for example a similar-sounding word for the original polish jaskier, “jaskrawy,” meaning vivid/vibrant/brilliant, or similar-sounding words for the english translation dandelion, “dandy,” a historical term for an effeminate or foppish man (think “yankee doodle dandy,” who ‘stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni’... i.e. basically ‘did something foolish and called it fashion’) and/or an colloquial expression to indicate pleasure or happiness (“oh well, that’s just fine and dandy!”, sort of like “swell!”)

although it’s not a perfect 1:1 translation, as a dandelion is not the same flower as a jaskier (buttercup), the name carries a very fitting connotation with it for the character, which can be used to understand him (and of course he is not the only one, for example, milva being named after a red kite, regis meaning king)

however, when you don’t translate “jaskier,” and leave his name as-is, this leaves the english-only speaking audience completely missing everything i just talked about. you won’t understand a thing about his character by knowing that his name is jaskier, because english-only speakers don’t know what a “jaskier” is, and they also don’t have the vocabulary in polish to understand the connotations in that language ...

and this is the entire point of translations. to translate meaning from one language to another — often imperfect, as is the nature of language, but necessary when trying to bridge gaps of understanding.

and when you deliberately don’t translate, you get english-only speakers thinking that they know how to pronounce words in polish because their favorite british boys on screen said a polish word aloud a few times. and you get anglicizations of words that don’t make any sense at all — for example... “jas” or “jask” as a nickname, when that’s not how polish language functions (to my knowledge) and there are specific conventions for making pet names or nicknames in the languages (with diminuatives?) (to my knowledge).

to me, it demonstrates, from both the american creators and the audience, the white american perspective that other cultures and languages are easy to understand and take from, as long as you think that you are being respectful (not that you ARE being respectful, only that you determine yourself to have good intentions). the approach lacks any actual respect, carefulness and preciseness, and most importantly actually talking or reaching out to people of that culture & language, so you are not just trying to do something yourself that you don’t know shit about, but that you can learn from others (and make friends along the way hopefully).

but as you said — what was the point?

in my opinion a lot of the point of including untranslated polish words in the netflix adaptation was part of the marketing towards the polish audience (and perhaps books audience?) that they attempted, with relatively little success. lauren proclaiming on twitter that she’s loved these books and read them dozens of times, the youtube videos with the actors reading scenes from the books with sound effects edited in (to me, reminiscent of the polish audiobooks, but the polish audiobooks have better quality), the games with the actors trying to guess what witcher-relevant polish words mean in english.

when in reality, it’s obvious they didn’t really care (or at least, the people making the top decisions) didn’t really care about making a books-faithful adaptation (this isn’t even attempting to touch the topic of making an adaptation that respects the origin culture of the witcher).

of course from the trailers (and casting... re: cavill and batey, who don’t look like their characters’ book equivalents) everyone could tell that this wasn’t an “adaptation of the books” like they sometimes advertised it. but if they were able to show, hey, we didn’t change this one name of this one character to english, hey, we have read the books, look, we are literally reading them on camera! ... then they might get some more polish books fans to give the series a watch, meaning more people to buy into a netflix trial which then all too easily leads into a subscription because people forgot to cancel or enjoyed the convinience of netflix and ‘hey what’s $10 anyways,’ which leads to money for them, which is how they gauge their success. they don’t give two shits about respecting anything, because that doesn’t give them any money.

i do find it amusing though, because they’re like “we have the amazing minds so much better than sapkowski to improve on the witcher and we’re truly just visionaries who are taking the books into an inspired direction and it’s not an adaptation, it’s so much more” while also being like “we respect the books so much and we worked with sapkowski and we really wanted to be faithful to the books and this is an adaptation where we really thought about the canon material” like just choose a marketing ploy and run with it, you’re going to tire yourself out running between both camps. though it does look to me like finally in season 2 the mask will be off because they’re adding so many new OCs and plotlines they really won’t be able to pretend they cared about the books at all (e.g. geralt throwing axes from trees)

[somedrunkpirate]

AO3 Writing Tag

Name(s): Somedrunkpirate  Fandom(s): The man from uncle, The Witcher, Good Omens, Inception,  Where you post: Ao3  Tagged by @iamanonniemouse Tagging: @theheirofashandfire (good luck lmao) 

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos):

This year: You’re a dream, darling, Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 11k

There are two very important facts: 1) Aziraphale is dead. 2) None of this is real.

-----

Crowley’s throat tightens. “My angel,” he says. “My best friend. He’s dead, you know.”

Aziraphale blinks and then blood drains from his face. “No, no. Crowley. No. I’m here. I’m right in front of you.”

“I know,” Crowley says. “Isn’t it amazing, what a dream can do?”

Of all time:  On The Matter Of Touch, Good omens, Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 9k

“On the matter of touch,” Crowley begins, waving his teaspoon in what he hopes passes for idle curiosity. “Thoughts?”

---

For two ineffable husbands, they don't really touch each other much. Here is a story on why that might be.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter (by kudos):

This year: A Lover’s Lament, The Witcher, Geralt/Jaskier, M, 25k

So,” Jaskier begins, as casually as he can, “you are telling me, that in theory, if I were to be in love with someone — anyone — that person could well be in terrible danger?”

Of all terrible and ridiculous things that have threatened Geralt’s safety, Jaskier had never thought that loving him might be what will get him killed.

Of all time: Drowning Deep, TMFU (pacific rim au), Illya/Napoleon, M, 101k,

Don’t follow the rabbit. He knows this. Don’t fall into the rabbit hole of memories. You’ll drown.

But Illya lives there, deep in the past, it’s the only way he gets through the day.

Favorite story you’ve written so far:

This year: The Golden Ocean, TMFU, Napoleon/Illya, 85k This story taught me to write for myself in the best and worst way. It is so hard to keep writing a prequel if it doesn’t receive a similar amount of feedback as the initial story. But I worked through it and got it done, for myself and my beta who supported me all throughout. And in the end, it’s probably my most original story I’ve written. 

Of all time:  A Lover’s Lament, The Witcher, Geralt/Jaskier, M, 25k I think this story really shows how I’ve learned to become a better writer over the last couple of years. It’s densely packed with original lore, worldbuilding, fun character interactions and has a plot that reveals more about the characters on a second read. It also has an original female character that I feel is my first 100% successful 3d side-character who has a whole story of her own outside of the main ship plot.  Honorable mention: Cold Frost and Sunshine, TMFU, Napoleon/Illya, 50k What initially started as purposefully the most trophy thing I’ve ever written (it’s a Hockey AU, for crying out loud), turned into an actual honest exploration of therapy and recovering from mental illness. I still get the occasional comment on it from people who said that the mental health parts really spoke to them, or that they even showed passages to Real Actual Therapists because it verbalized what they were feeling. This is the fic I always return to when I feel like my writing is worthless. Even the fic that I intended to have no deep value from the start, ended up being meaningful to people. It helps to remember that. 

Fic you were nervous to post:

You’re a dream, darling, is a story where the main character experiences intense dissociation and believes his reality is a dream. I am very aware that this is an actual thing that people experience, and I wanted to make sure I was careful and respectful when handling the topic. I based the story on what I had researched and what I experienced once myself while having a bad reaction to medication + being high (really be careful with weed and adhd meds folks). I was so nervous to post it, and worried that I hadn’t trigger warned it clearly enough or something. But in the end I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from people who experience dissociation, and that meant the world to me! 

How do you choose your titles?

Nine times out of ten the title is just kind of There, sometimes before I write it even. If not, I usually take inspiration from a line somewhere in the fic. Only once I needed to consult the poetry gods. 

Do you outline?

Does daydreaming the story a bunch count as outlining? I usually have some vague ideas about upcoming scenes and possible endings, but for my larger fics those ideas get thrown out and I flail around for something else. I think Lover’s is so succinct because I had most of it already in my head when starting, whereas with Drowning Deep I had no clue what had actually happened to break the characters apart until like chapter three. So I guess it depends on the fic and whether I have to due to a big bang sign up or something. 

Complete

51 fics (556k). This year: 9 (180k) 

In-Progress: 

The Angel of Greenwich: A good omens detective story set in the 1920′s, 22k. In The Dark We Travel: Geraskier (the witcher) sci fi au, 28k.  They’re both on a hiatus because pandemic times are fucking with me, but I’m chipping away at them and could use the encouragement.  Coming Soon/Not Yet Started:

Tragic Superbat alternate universe shenanigans: Clark gets switched with Alternate Universe Clark, who has been in a relationship with Bruce for years. Bruce falls in love with AU-Clark while also trying to get his Clark back (who he is convinced still hates him). 

Amnesia Jaskier with magical powers: Jaskier gets kidnapped and made into a powerful sorcerer, but the process removes all his memories. Geralt finds him completely dependent on the same mage that kidnapped him, and has to convince him that 1) Geralt is his friend and 2) Jaskier is not a dangerous monster, as the mage has convinced him. Very tragic all around. 

Original femslash idea, Stern Orc Woman with golden heart and ADHD Monk. Can only end in chaos. 

The Bullington Club: an original idea of a group of idiot lords looking for treasure and taking their longsuffering servants/guards with them on the ride. Aka that thing that completely got out of hand brainstorming with @theheirofashandfire

[bard-llama]

Oh hell yeah

[calling-the-angels]

it was all yellow

read on AO3 [here]

Jaskier hummed as he chewed the edge of his quill in his mouth. His eyes slid to Geralt, on the other side of the fire from him, his visage flickering in the light.

The warm glow from the fire seemed to reflect in Geralt's eyes, turning his normal yellow gaze into a golden honey, drawing Jaskier in like a trap. When gold flicked to blue and Geralt raised an eyebrow in question, Jaskier hummed and turned back to his notebook, jotting down a few more words for the song he was composing.

It was one that had come to him earlier that day and a decade ago, echoing in his mind of now and then, following him just as he follows Geralt. A song his heart had been composing for years before his mind caught up.

It had demanded to be written, just a little while ago, after almost an hour of Geralt pointing out the different constellations in the sky and explaining their meaning to Jaskier. His low voice had been murmuring just to Jaskier's left, the both of them laying on their backs in the field where they made camp. They had been laying for only a few minutes before Jaskier had tilted his head, watching Geralt watching the stars instead of looking at them himself. It wasn't the stars he was fascinated by.

Jaskier read through the words he had already written, humming a short melody to himself. 

Look at the stars

Look how they shine for you

And everything you do

His eyes once more slid to Geralt, with his golden eyes and the fire casting a soft, yellow glow on him. He adds a few more words.

And it was all yellow

Julian was 5 the first time he managed to slip from his nanny's watchful eyes and start his first adventure. It wasn't far, his short legs carrying him as fast as they could as he ran through his family's estate to the fences on the far side. He had never seen what lay beyond and the excitement had him tripping over his own feet. His small hands grabbed at rocks and hauled him up onto the top of the fence. He remembers his shock.

The other side of the fence held rows and rows of corn, their pale yellow tassels waving gently in the wind. Bright flashes of yellow corn peeked out of the field, winking joyously at him. As far as his eyes could see, yellow hands waved hello at him. His own grubby fingers waved back, a gap-toothed grin wide on his face. He doesn't remember how long he sat there before he felt his nanny's arms wrap around him and haul him back to the ground, her shrill voice background noise to Julian’s thundering heart. He doesn’t remember what she said, cause it was all yellow.

And that was where Julian's love of yellow began. From then on, yellow was Julian’s favorite everything. He sought it out in his textbooks, learning the names of all the brightest yellow flowers, even choosing their names for his own. He was 12 when he first demanded to be called Jaskier, after the flowers found in the meadows the cattle grazed in. He was 17 when he chose Dandelion as his stage name, finding comfort in the resiliency of the yellow flower everyone considered a weed and disregarded.

Jaskier was 18 when he approached a brooding stranger and felt his heart stop as his blue eyes met yellow. 

I came along

I wrote a song for you

And all the things you do

And it was called “Yellow”

The song that Jaskier wrote was called “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” at least the song that everyone sings. But this song started that fateful meeting in Posada, born of the longing that Jaskier felt that day, that he had always associated with yellow. That made him chase Geralt out of that inn.

So then I took my turn

Oh what a thing to have done

And it was all yellow

Jaskier’s quill scratched across the paper, the fire crackled, Geralt’s rag made soft sounds as he polished his swords, and Roach stamped softly in the flowers.

The flowers.

Just a few short hours ago, they had been traveling the Path on their way to a contract in Verden when they reached the crest of a winding, uphill path. The trees had opened up onto a plateau filled to the brim with yellow wildflowers. The slowly setting sun cast a hazy golden glow across the entire area. 

Jaskier had turned to Geralt to make a comment about appreciating the beauty of the world when the words had died in his throat. The soft yellow light, the backdrop of yellow flowers, the piercing yellow gaze… Jaskier’s heart had flipped in his chest. He’s always been a simple man, well relatively simple, especially when it came to yellow. He wanted.

Geralt took one look at his face before he sighed and swung off Roach. “You’ve got your composing face on. Let’s make camp.” And he walked off into the field of flowers, leaving Jaskier gasping for air on the path.

With a rueful huff, Jaskier brought himself back to the present, jotting down a few more words in his notebook.

Your skin

Oh yeah, your skin and bones

Turn into something beautiful

You know, you know I love you so

You know I love you so

That’s how it’s always been with Jaskier. When he felt desire, when he felt contentment, when he felt love... It was always yellow. 

It hadn’t been easy to love Geralt. He tried so hard to keep everyone away, his animosity and snarls creating an ocean, a chasm, between those who would love him and himself. But that doesn’t mean much to Jaskier, because Geralt was yellow. When Jaskier had seen those yellow eyes glaring back at him in Posada, he was intrigued. But as he got to know Geralt more, know his goodness and his noble heart, it was no longer just interesting. Geralt was yellow. And Jaskier wanted.

I swam across

I jumped across for you

Oh what a thing to do

'Cause you were all yellow

I drew a line

I drew a line for you

Oh what a thing to do

And it was all yellow

Oh how he had tried, at first. He had tried to build a line to signify what he wouldn’t do for Geralt. To create some sense of a separation between where Geralt ended and Jaskier began. But he was helpless to it. Jaskier had always been drawn to yellow, and Geralt, well… Jaskier met yellow eyes across the fire and sighed. Geralt was yellow.

Your skin

Oh yeah your skin and bones

Turn into something beautiful

And you know

For you I'd bleed myself dry

For you I'd bleed myself dry

There wasn’t anything that Jaskier wouldn’t do for Geralt. Sometimes he thought that Geralt knew, that he knew how much Jaskier loved him and that he knew how much he would do for him. But it was all wishful thinking, for Geralt never said anything.

“Will you sing it at the next tavern?” Geralt’s gruff voice called across the fire. Jaskier smiled softly.

“No, I think this one will only be for my own ears, dear heart,” Jaskier replied, as he wrote a few more lines of the song. The song that his eyes reflected and his heart sang. His love was yellow.

It's true

Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine for

Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine for you

Look how they shine

Look at the stars

Look how they shine for you

And all the things that you do

They left at dawn’s first light in the morning, and Jaskier trailed behind Geralt a few steps as he watched the yellow morning light crawl across the yellow wildflowers and tangle in Geralt’s hair. He may not be looking at Jaskier, but he knew Geralt’s eyes shined yellow. Geralt was yellow.

And Jaskier followed.

[lunarthedragon]

Demon!Jaskier Part 5

Previous Part: here | Ao3: here

+++

He doesn’t remember where he started. Or where he ended.

He stands in the middle of a glorious-unending-miserable-fascinating existence with no brackets on either side.

He thinks his earliest memory is of a cave - or is it his last? - with a child crying and bleeding and dead-but-not, hurt in a way that can only be inflicted by others.

The child cries to the cave and the cave answers. “You poor thing,” it says, pity and sadness rolling out like tumbling stones. “They have hurt you, those monsters. Those humans.”

“They won’t stop,” sobs the child. The child’s eyes are not older than their body like so many poems claim they should be. They are just abused and hurt and begging for answers that can never come.

“They won’t… But I can make you greater.”

His first-last memory, and he does not remember if he was the voice in the cave or the child.

+++

“How often does that happen?” Geralt asks when they set up camp a few miles away from the mountain. He’s been quiet in a way he’s usually not. Considering. Worrying. Restraining.

Jaskier looks at him from across the fire, confused as to what the Witcher means. “Does what happen often?”

“Earlier,” Geralt says, then hesitates. He swallows. His discomfort feels like an itch that can’t be reached, deep under the skin, turning red. “On the mountain.”

“Have I been yelled at by an idiot before? Yes,” he drawls, expression bland, and Geralt flinches and looks away. There is still a tsunami coming, Jaskier refuses to be it, but he is still allowed his retribution.

“After that…” Geralt says lowly, looking at the fire and not Jaskier.

“When I was upset?” He clarifies, finding himself surprised, and furrows his brow. Geralt nods. “You’ve seen me upset before…”

“Not like that.”

Cracking. Ripping. Screaming without noise. Bleeding from a heart that doesn’t want to beat.

“Ah… that…” He looks to the fire too. “Do you feel worried?” It would just be his luck that after so many years, after taking a step towards healing, Geralt would start to look at him like all the others have before.

“Should I be?” Geralt asks, leaning forward just a bit, his eyes narrowing. “Are you hurt?”

“What?” Jaskier looks over at the Witcher, surprised, because what does his wellbeing have to do with this?

Unless that’s exactly what this entire conversation has been about and he was blinded – tying the cloth over his own eyes, ignore, flee, don’t be a fucking hypocrite – and he feels like a complete idiot.

Geralt worries. Worries about Jaskier when he doesn’t have to. Never has to. But he does. Jaskier should be used to it by now but it still sends his insides churning. Burning. Fluttering. Collapsing.

“No, Geralt,” Jaskier says, a smile, sad but honest and loving, growing on his face, “I’m not hurt.”

He pauses, making sure he has Geralt’s eyes, his attention. “Not anymore.”

The stutter that twitches around Geralt’s edges is sudden and shocking, surprising both men, until sunlight curves through the new cracks like rays through a canopy.

Jaskier recognizes it as relief and so, so, so much love it puts his own songs to shame.

+++

Sometimes Jaskier flickers, twitches, and is yanked to a new corner of the universe. He doesn’t know what causes it, if it is himself or something else, but he doesn’t question it anymore.

It is common. Every few centuries classifies as a normal occurrence for him.

He tells Ciri that, once, and she giggles. She doesn’t giggle much after she lost her parents, but Jaskier has helped regrow the response in her lungs. Cultivate her happiness and love and cover her in affections royals are often denied.

Calanthe makes a point of telling him off, in front of other important – posturing, selfish, egotistical, cruel – people, but afterwards the guards mysteriously begin turning a blind eye to the bard that appears in their halls.

“What kind of places are you pulled to?” Ciri asks eagerly, her big eyes twinkling in interest, her dolls momentarily forgotten.

“All kinds,” Jaskier sighs wistfully, putting on a dramatic show of his exploits, “Sometimes forests. Sometimes plains. Sometimes oceans. Always for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“I don’t know until I’m done,” he replies, tapping his chin.

“How do you know you need to do anything, then?” Ciri looks confused and pouty, like she doesn’t really believe Jaskier, but he just smiles back at her.

“Sometimes all we have is a feeling. Deep in our gut. In the back of our skull. Hovering over our shoulder. We can’t see it, we’ve never heard of it, it has never been felt before. We must follow it, though, so that we may one day give it a name. Have you ever had these feelings before?”

“I… think so…” Ciri says hesitantly, her tiny face turning downward, her whole essence, so sharply radiant, dimming to shivers-fear-anxiety-deep breath after deep breath. Too tiny a response to too large a girl. “They get scary…”

“Do you fear your fingers and toes?”

“What?” Ciri looks up, blooms of lilies in her surprised smile. She is the smell of flowers on a breeze and Jaskier hates for it to sour. “Of course not!” she giggles, the breeze making windchimes jingle.

“What about your joy? Your laugh?”

“No!” Ciri keeps giggling, finding entertainment in the bard’s seemingly random, ridiculous questions.

“It’s such a silly thought, isn’t it?” Jaskier smiles to the music of the little girl’s laughter, “To be afraid of a piece of yourself? So, then, why fear the thing you have yet to name?”

Ciri pauses, a twitch of her face, and then she is pouting again. Thoughtful. Like a scholar but not quite.

“Do not fear a piece of yourself, even when it is new. Learn it. Understand it. Give it a name,” his fingers twitch, black under the fingernails, “And move on.”

+++

When Nilfgaard makes a move for Cintra Jaskier feels it. He feels it like a surge, cracking and tumbling levies so carefully constructed by the hearts of man. Boarders, unseen in the earth but respected nonetheless, shatter and crumble to dust, obliterated under the war drums and thunderous rage.

Manifest destiny thrums through the army, tasting of bitter weeds the doctor claims are herbs. A placebo for their righteous arrogance.

Jaskier’s seen it so many times before and his hackles rise, teeth bared on armor-clad throats, his fury personal and unbiased all in one.

The army is like the nail in the coffin that splits the wood. The final judgement for something that already came and went. Opening the box for Schrödinger’s cat but the box is already empty.

They are like a tsunami, Cintra’s army going out to meet them like the receding tide.

He screams, blood in his teeth, frost in his claws, and he is gone.

+++

“What are you doing in here?” Jaskier asks when he stands in front of the bars of a cell. The thrum above him is familiar – thin spaces for him to hide in, squeeze through, smelling familiar and alien with grief – and he doesn’t know how long he’s been gone.

“You’ve been gone a while,” Geralt says, eyes shut in meditation despite his mind snapping straight, like a soldier, the moment Jaskier reappeared.

And… apparently, he’d been gone for “a while.” Lovely, Geralt, thank you very much.

“I felt the Cintran army move where they shouldn’t,” he replies honestly, glancing around. No guard has noticed him yet.

“Fuck,” Geralt curses, opening his eyes and standing. He is agitated but not surprised. Disappointed. It hangs in the air like moss cracking the foundation of his bones. It always makes the base of his ribcage hurt, the muscles tight.

“They will die. I can feel it,” he continues. The void that feels like him is large as a chasm, opened under the feet of the soldiers, but they are too distracted by purpose to notice. A tear rolls down his cheek, staining his skin like soot, as the vibrant twin stars of Calanthe and Eist are engulfed.

“I have to find the princess,” Geralt says urgently, stepping towards the bars of his cage. Wrong. Wrong. A wolf does not belong in a cage. In a prison. It makes Jaskier’s chest hurt for a different reason. “Can you get me out of—” Geralt reaches to grasp the bars, likely to lean towards Jaskier, but his hand finds nothing and he stumbles forward into his freedom.

Jaskier raises his hands, grasping Geralt’s arms to steady him even though it isn’t needed.

Geralt blinks back at the cell, freed of the metal confinements, then looks back to Jaskier. “Do you just pick and choose when you help me?” he asks blandly.

“Depends,” Jaskier replies, voice thinned by the grind of his misery, the urge to rip out the pain in his gut a tempting pull, but he swallows down stones to keep moving. He is distant, but he is here.

“Ciri is in her room,” he says, “Hold your breath.”

They are there, and then they are not, and then they are there again but somewhere else. Geralt stumbles, hands flying up to grasp his own head, pain like a ringing bell trilling out his ears. Jaskier lays a hand on his shoulder, ignoring the startled cries around them.

“Sorry. It was quickest,” he apologizes to the Witcher.

“That’s what that feels like?” Geralt groans in disbelief, the tumbling of an avalanche in his stomach that wants to come up, up, up.

Geralt gags once, then swallows, and forces himself to stand straight and not glare at Jaskier too hard.

“Jaskier!” comes a gleeful voice and the bard swings around, arms already out, to catch the laughing princess as she runs at him.

“My favorite princess!” Jaskier replies just as gleefully and for a moment he fills into his own cracks, fitting back together again, but only for a moment.

“Geralt…” Mousesack says thinly, standing just behind the princess and eying the Witcher nervously. “You’re here.”

“Hmm,” Geralt hums, not sounding pleased at all, and giving the druid a glare that screams, ‘no thanks to you.’ Jaskier should know. He speaks Geralt’s facial language.

“You’re not stopping us,” Jaskier says firmly, stepping away from the princess just enough to look at Mousesack.

“She needs to be protected,” Geralt says, his voice holding more natural authority than Jaskier’s, which is helpful. “I can protect her. I should have done so much earlier.”

“What’s going on?” Ciri questions, looking around the room for answers before settling on Mousesack, her eyes confused and desperate. There is a tang to the air, sharp and bitter, left in the wake of the army’s departure, and it sits especially heavy on Ciri’s back.

A presence without a name.

“Princess Cirilla,” Mousesack begins slowly, anxious, and Jaskier tilts his head, his eyes turning black and veins bleeding under his neck and fingers.

“Tell her,” he bares his teeth – too many teeth, too sharp – and Mousesack and the nearby guard stutter, falter, retreat without moving. “You all should have told her so much sooner.”

“You had just as much an opportunity to say something,” the guard, only mildly familiar, like a face in a dream, says vindictively.

“That was not my duty.”

A heavy hand lays on his shoulder and he takes a breath, loud and long, until the room tilts and he stops. He raises his own hand to pat Geralt’s, like the eye of a storm, calm amidst the turmoil.

“Too many fingers,” Geralt says lowly, before releasing him and stepping forward. Jaskier looks down at his hands, counts eighteen, then shakes them out. When he counts ten, he thinks he’s got it right.

The conversation has been continuing on around him and he looks up, pulls the words that have already been thrown into the silence into him so he might understand what he missed, and steps forward. Ciri looks shocked and lost, but there is so much worse under her skin. Hidden under a poorly placed rug.

“We have three days,” he says abruptly, feeling how the void closes in and changes course. A crack is forming under the city and he knows it will be next.

“Take a day to do what needs to be done,” Geralt says, looking to Mousesack, no longer asking. “After that we can at least be two days ahead of Nilfgaard.”

Mousesack looks to Ciri, clearly torn, pulled between his duty and his knowledge-belief-morality. Ciri looks back, pulled between her duty and her anger-confusion-anguish.

Jaskier looks between them and knows how this must end, and they all know too. Cintra is already lost. The only thing they can do now is minimize their losses.

“You know what needs to be done,” Geralt says lowly, mostly to the druid, while Jaskier’s eyes flicker to Ciri, her body stiff as her insides shatter.

“In the meantime,” the bard says, stepping up and hooking his arm with Geralt’s, his eyes back to blue and a gentle smile on his face, “We will wait in the guestroom down the hall. Sort through this as needed. You have some time.”

He pulls Geralt out of the room grudgingly, swift steps against sluggish minds. The beginning to the end to the beginning.

+++

“H̵e̵l̶l̷o̷,̶ ̴D̵u̶n̷y̵,” he greets on an echo, standing in an office while armies clash vassals and provinces away.

The man, well-groomed and well-dressed, behind the desk looks up. He is familiar but not. Not quite right. Not quite wrong. He doesn’t flinch at Jaskier’s sudden appearance, as if he’s had a few years to get used to it.

”Did you know everyone thinks you’re dead? Buried under the waves with Pavetta?” the bard continues, a bit more solid, a bit more himself. He stands in the corner of the room, dark and larger than the space he occupies. There is no gleam of eyes or shimmer or pale skin. He is darkness, absence, void.

He is furious.

“I am ‘Duny’ no longer,” says the man, voice aristocratic and booming. Like a toddler in a cathedral. “I am Emhyr var Emreis. White Fla—”

”White Flame of Nilfgaard. Yes, yes, I know. Spare me.”

Duny, because Jaskier refuses to call him anything more, straightens up, eyes thinned. “Careful, demon. Cintra may have disregarded me, but here I am seen as a proper king.”

“I preferred you as a hedgehog,” Jaskier twists, like a tilted head without the head. The shadows in the room grow longer, reaching for the torches and pinching them out like candles. “Or dead, for that matter.”

“I know your weaknesses, demon,” Duny continues, confidence where intellect should be. “I know what will draw you short. Years in that castle and you did not expect me to take something from your visits and stories?”

Another torch is pinched out and Jaskier spreads, poison in the veins, madness in a crowd.

“I could snuff you out with a snap of my fingers,” Duny continues and from the depths of the shadows teeth are bared, thinned into a smile. And then another. And another.

“I could snuff you out with less than that,” he says just beside Duny’s ear and finally the monarch jerks, startled, and stands. He glares back at the shadows, uncertain which are real and which are scripted.

He bares his teeth, blunt and rounded, and hot coals fueling his justice shake, uncertain. “Nilfgaard brings prosperity to these people.”

“Nilfgaard brings death,” Jaskier huffs, unimpressed, voice resounding through the room, everywhere-but-nowhere, wrong-but-right. A hand slowly creeps onto the top of the desk, black as night, staining the wood like ink. Then another. And another.

A hand wraps around Duny’s ankle and he seizes back, eyes wide, and the shadows surge forward. A massive, crumbling, broken face presses towards the monarch, only vaguely reminiscent of a human. A mirror. Cracked and honest.

“I allow you to live today only for what you once were,” he says, massive jaw moving, unhinged and broken, dripping onto the floor. ”But if we meet again, if you do not make a change, I will not hesitate in plucking every bone from your body like feathers from a chicken. Your arteries will be my strings and you can finally, properly, play the part of puppet to your predecessors.”

Duny stares back at him, blood run thinner and thinner, skin beginning to sag, cartilage turning brittle. Decaying where he stands.

The massive face tilts, morphing like a smile, and the laugh that bursts out shivers the walls like cold on skin. Dewdrops form like goosebumps. “Ah, did you hear that alliteration at the end there? I didn’t even do that on purpose! How lovely,” and then he’s releasing the man, retreating and compressing back into the corner, a thing so unknown his shape has no name.

“There must be rules,” Duny suddenly says, moving forward, leaning against his desk until his weight creaks the bones. Something shifts the way it shouldn’t and he straightens up, clutching his hand as pain, pain, pain thrums out of his throat.

”Oopsie,” Jaskier sing-songs, smirking with no mouth but too many as well. “Feeling fragile there?”

“There must be rules,” Duny repeats, clutching his hand, then falling back into his seat when his legs threaten to crack and bend. “Something as ancient as you… There must be rules against interfering with our politics. Our history.”

Finally, the dictator was understanding just how much of a threat he was under. How little chance his armies stood if the entity before him, around him, within him, actually decided they should be eradicated.

Jaskier takes a step forward, pushing out of black, inky shadows like mud, his eyes pitch black.

”Oh, my dear rodent,” he says, lips unmoving, purring like bug wings. ”It is because I’m so ancient that I don’t waste my time with rules in the first place.”

+++

When Queen Calanthe returns to Cintra it is to empty streets and houses. Barren walkways and stores. Buildings frozen in their last moments of life.

The city is a whisper in a vacant corridor.

Soldiers bring the injured queen up to her chambers, castle a skeleton of its former glory, where Jaskier stands alone.

“Your people have been evacuated,” he tells the queen as she is laid out. He looks up at the soldiers. “You should leave, too.”

“We will not abandon Cintra,” says a man in a captain’s uniform.

“Then you die for nothing.”

“Cintra will fall…” Calanthe heaves and Jaskier sets a hand on her stomach. A wound opens on his own center, bleeding black and red, pain taken from the powerful woman momentarily. He cannot heal this wound. It is already filled with void and death and endings. He cannot remove himself.

“Cintra will fall,” he agrees.

“But the people live on,” the Queen ripples, a stone into a pond, and her pain turns to relief. She orders the last of her soldiers to go after their people and live to fight another day.

“Mousesack leads them,” Jaskier explains, almost conversationally, dripping with Calanthe’s pain alongside her.

“And Cirilla?”

“Geralt has her. I will join them after. We will not allow her to fall.”

“Keep her safe,” Calanthe orders, weak and strong all at once, and dewdrops form in the corners of her vision. Jaskier reaches over to wipe them away. A strong woman allowed her weakness. “Keep her laughing.”

“We can do that.”

Silence. A thunderous wave in the distance. Closing in.

“I will fall with my city,” Calanthe says when the drums can be heard. Jaskier releases a breath and it comes out shaking. The Queen reaches up a hand to wipe dewdrops from his eyes in return.

“Yes,” he says, looking to the window, pinpricks of torches amidst the swarm on the horizon. “But so will they.”

A wicked, vicious, vengeful smile pulls at Calanthe’s lips and her hand flops back down.

“Good.”

+++

When the army fills the empty streets of Cintra, blades aloft but bloodless, the final, manic laughter of Queen Calanthe fills the air. A surge for the castle marks their end.

Hands, black as shadows, large as mountains, stretch across the sky. Earth shatters like glass, buildings tumble like dominos, and the city falls, crumbles, cries.

The hands press down against screams, loud like an explosion, roaring like a fire, and crush.

The tsunami comes and goes and all that is left of Cintra is a fissure, a crater.

A void.

+++

He stands on the edge of the destruction, death licking at his feet and charring the grass brown.

There is nothing left. No army. No city. No castle. No queen.

The pain that blossoms has him reaching for his chest but he stops short. He wants to crush his heart, demand it stop this torture, but he can’t. Not when he holds a soul in his ribcage, dragged inside before she perished, before she was pulled somewhere not even he could reach.

A chance at another life. A promise at another attempt. Another cycle.

“I will only do this for you once, your majesty,” he says lowly, weak in every piece of himself. The essence flutters, strong as an ox and stubborn as a weed. If he isn’t careful she may even take root in his ribs.

He reaches out, searching for an empty vessel just as he does for himself, and releases her upon latching onto a stillborn little girl in the far, far eastern lands across the sea.

A new beginning. A new chance. Separate from this anguish and—

He cries out when something comes slicing through his hand.

He falls, black ripples pulsing out of him so violently his body tears and falls apart. Clutching his hand, an agony so racking it sends his screams into a new octave, the trees dying, pillars of magma erupting around him.

The earth bleeds with him, screaming and crying, clouds spiraling like vultures.

A glowing, white arrow pierces all the way through his right hand, burning out, out, out, the light as sharp as its tip.

A holy arrow.

No…

He scrambles, trying to rebuild his hands, collapsing and crashing, rippling and spiking with every pulse of torture like a heartbeat.

He cannot pull out the arrow, he simply falls apart around it. He sobs, the pain still tearing through him, and he can’t remember what eyes are, what hands are, what bodies are.

“Hello, J̷̖̯͎͍̗̐̉̑̈́á̸̛̮̠̫͇͒̑̕͘͜ș̵̨͈̲͖͔͖̄͑̆̿̒̀̀̍͐͝k̵̡͈̩̮͚̆ȉ̷̡̧̫̘̼͓̱̥͠e̷͔̖̍̾̊͌̈́̕̕͠r̸̛̞̙̀̅̾̔̌͛̒,” says the entity behind him and he looks, twists, forces himself into a reality he does not belong.

A single figure stands in the center of the crater that was once Cintra, yet his voice sounds as if he is right beside Jaskier. Or Jaskier is right beside him. He wears armor, black, with a helmet like a bird. In his hand is a bow and on his back a quiver, filled with arrows that glow as if forged by dying stars.

A snarl ripples over the decimated landscape, deep as the churn of the abyss. Jaskier rises, pain making him spark and jolt but fury making him burn.

He pulls at the other, tears and rips until he finds the name for the body it now possesses. Severs it from the silence.

“C̷̘̦͇̣̟͚̦͗͐̊͊̚͘a̶̖̖̰͙̭͎̝̾ͅḧ̷̫̹͈́i̵̡͖̗̦͈͖͛ͅr̵̹͇͆̔̓̈͊͑̊̔̌̚,” he booms. His brethren. His enemy. Himself.

Death – Death come to collect – Death weeping – Death free of its bonds – Death hungry, hungry, hungry – Death – Rebirth – Death –

Black eyes stare back at him.

“How dare you wield that weapon against me,” Jaskier rattles, gnashing teeth. He remembers teeth. He needs more teeth. He makes more teeth until they dig into the earth, sparking new spurts of molten stone.

”Times are changing,” replies Cahir, a cold whisper, frost inching across the ground towards the rushes of magma that still crack and bleed around Jaskier. ”There are no new challenges in these worlds and I am bored.”

”Bored of constant change? Of life?” Jaskier argues back, stepping forward, leaving a print on the ground that glows hot. It isn’t human. He doesn’t know what it is.

”It is time for an end. For all of us,” Cahir sighs, wistfully, and raises his bow. He takes an arrow, the smell of burning flesh and sulfur sparking through the air where he grasps the holy weapon, and notches it.

Black eyes take aim and Jaskier surges back, searching, latching, and pulling.

The arrow is released but he is gone before it can make another landing.

+++

When he tumbles into the gathering hall at Aretuza he gags and vomits out black. His hand, and it is a hand again, glows like fire from the hole that goes straight through it, stinking of sulfur and blood and the vacuum of space.

There are cries around him and he pulses, trying to retake his shape, rebuild himself, and he thinks he might be close but not entirely right. Cracks cross over his face, chest, limbs, glowing like the wound in his hand, like the earth beneath him.

“Jaskier!” comes a familiar voice by his ear and he clings onto Yennefer when she crouches beside him. He must be a sight if even she sounds so frightened. That’s usually Geralt’s job.

”I’m sorry,” he sobs, the black tears falling from his eyes burn against his skin, like ice shards. ”Couldn’t let Geralt or Ciri see me like this… Please… help…”

“What is going on?” comes another female voice, powerful as Yennefer’s but not her. Jaskier is too exhausted to pull out her name.

“Your hand?” Yennefer asks him, then lower so only he can hear, “A holy weapon?” He nods, at least he thinks he does. His awareness slips away like water, oil staining his insides, unable to be rid of.

“I need to help him. Move!” the sorceress orders, the strength in her voice, power in her presence, returning like a crack of thunder.

“Hold on just a moment,” comes a male voice and, unfortunately, Jaskier does know who that is, memory of the man bleeding on Geralt’s mind, loud and miserable.

”Fuck you, Stregobor,” he hisses, high as a kettle, vicious as a beast, before his consciousness comes to an abrupt stop.

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Let me know what y’all thought! Hope you enjoyed!

[edensbuttercups]

Golden lights - Chapter seven

Pairing: Jaskier x reader Summary:  It takes months to reach the coast, but once there a happy home awaits. Word count: 1.7k A/N: It took me so much longer to write this chapter, so first of all I apologize. I knew where the story was going, yet didn’t know how to write it. I think I figured it out in the end ;) Hope you enjoy and as always, warm hugs 💕  

Part one Part two Part three Part four Part five Part six Part eight Part nine Part Ten Part Eleven

As you travelled, your belly grew, day after day, until a clear pregnant bump was present. You usually wore flowy dresses for comfort, but you’d occasionally pull the cotton around your waist to look at the sign that showed proof of the life growing inside you. Jaskier adored lying next to you to talk to your bump and would sing a lullaby every night before going to sleep. Geralt would study you from afar, not wanting to intrude in the intimacy of pregnancy, but he’d always make sure you were comfortable and well enough to face the day, doing anything he could to make you feel better. 

You reached the beach on a sunny day; you were all worn out from the journey and just wanted to rest for more than a mere night, so when you saw the sight of the sea you all cheered, Jaskier jumping off his horse and helping you off it too before running towards the beach like a kid. Geralt hummed happily at the sight of the waves, the warmth of the sun on his skin, and the look of happiness on your face. He looked out of place with his white hair and black armor. You decided to look for some more appropriate clothes in the days to come. You placed a hand on Roach, stroking her mane while you absentmindedly looked towards the sea. “Shall we join him?” you asked, before letting out a small yelp. “Are you alright?” Geralt jumped off Roach, protectively placing a hand on your shoulder and calling Jaskier. “The baby just kicked!” you smiled up at him and turned towards Jaskier, whom was running towards you with a panicked expression before seeing you smile. “The baby kicked! Come!” you grabbed the hands of both men and placed them of your stomach, while you all waited patiently. You didn’t wait long before the baby kicked again, making you all smile happily. “That’s out baby? That’s our baby moving in there? Wow, really going for it!” You laughed and nodded. He took a step towards you ang gently hugged you. When you pulled away you noticed a small tear fall from his eye as you placed a small kiss on his cheek. “We’re almost there, right?” “Yes, the cottage should be just over that hill.” 

You reached the cottage and stepped inside, breading in the scent of wood. You opened a window and walked around, Jaskier and Geralt following you while peaking around. You walked into one of the bedrooms, and looked around, taking in the simple furniture that adorned the room: a simple bed that you’d paint with your favorite colors when you had the chance, a mirror hung on the wall, a couple of chests where you’d place your clothes. The next room had a small bed into it and another small chest with a toy duck placed on it. You smiled picking it up and showing Jaskier, who smiled in return, grabbing it and making quacking noises at Geralt. You explored the house and pictured where you’d place flowers, drawings, curtains, and small mementos from your old life. “It’s perfect” you finally said. “It needs some fixing up” Geralt said, pointing to the garden, where some plants had died and some had taken up most of the available room and where the wooden fence had started rotting and falling apart. You smiled while you looked out before looking around the living room, where some planks where characterized by cracks and where long overdue for a change. “It does need some fixing up” you said smiling “and if we start today, we might have a fixed home before the baby gets here. Are you willing to help us some more, Geralt? You have every right to leave if you don’t-“ “I’d love to help. I’ve been on the road for a long time, it’s nice to stay somewhere for some time.” He looked around awkwardly, still unsure about his place in this new part of your life “I’ll go get some wood for the fence” He walked out, grabbing a small axe that was resting on the edge of the fence outside, before walking towards the forest with Roach by his side. “So. New home. Like it?” Jaskier ask, shyly. “Love it.” You replied, placing a warm kiss on his lips. 

You sat together in silence for some time, taking in your new space, the place where your life was going to change in so many ways, yet keep the same taste it had for the past year. A hand slipped behind your back, finding its way to your shoulder and pulling you into him, your breaths synchronized, sleep wrapping you in a sweet embrace, dragging you both in a tender sleep. You woke up a couple of hours later, both of you still holding on to each other, a soft red blanked draped over the two of you. You guessed that Geralt had placed it on you when he got in; you smiled and slid out of Jaskier’s grasp, silently walking out towards the garden, where the Witcher was working hard to remove the weeds that infested the soil. “I see you’re working hard” you said kneeling next to him, grabbing the roots of the first nearby plants and pulling upwards, releasing it from the ground. “I see you’re awake” he said back, quickly glancing towards you. The hot sun was burning on your skin as the cool breeze flew through your surroundings, lifting your hair over your head and making the grass around you whisper in delight. “I don’t know how to thank you, Geralt.” You said, pulling another weed up towards the sky as you exhaled the last word. “You don’t have to thank me. You offered me a place to stay and food. That’s all a Witcher really needs.” “I see what you’re doing. You still feel the guilt you felt when you uttered those words many moons ago. Jaskier has a kind heart, and he’s forgiven you. What you’re doing is noble, and right, but don’t do it out of guilt. Do it because you want to, do it because he’s your friend, and you care about him. You’re not in debt with us.” His golden eyes studied his hands, looking for something else to rip out of the ground but finding only dirt, the terrain now clean and ready to bear new plants and fruits. “It haunted me for so long.” He sighed, before carrying on. “There’s something about him, isn’t there?” he huffed, sitting on the floor to face you. You mirrored him and sat down, looking at him before glancing at the horizon. “He’s something else.” You agreed. “I fell in love with him many years ago yet didn’t have the guts to share my feelings. If I could go back, I’d scream it from the top of the world.” “Love so strong is rare, you should keep it hidden.” “Life isn’t a constant battle, Geralt. People aren’t going to use my love for him against him. No fool would make that mistake” you said laughing, earning the same from the Witcher. “Did you always love Jaskier?” “Oh Gods no. When I first met him, we hated each other. The first night we saw each other we got in a heated argument about whether freedom or praise was more important in life. We were essentially saying the same thing in different ways and ended up arguing for most of the night. The next day he came up to me as if nothing had happened, chipper as can be, but I’m stubborn and decided to keep my grudge and avoid him. He slowly won my friendship by paying for my drinks while staying out of sight, by singing songs that he knew I liked, and by trying to sneak next to me and casually start a conversation” you smiled fondly at the memories. “slowly I gave in, and then we were inseparable. We were young and played pranks on everyone, but we also ran to the forest and talked about songs, and the future, and politics, and books. And in that forest is where I first realized how far I had fallen. Not long after that he left. I tried but never could shake him off me.” Geralt nodded. You stood up and offered him a hand, which he took gladly even though he clearly didn’t need it and walked together towards your home. You walked towards your bard, still sleeping under the cover, and placed a soft kiss on his cheek waking him up from his sleep. “Hello” he whispered as he stood up. “Hello.” You walked towards the kitchen where Geralt sat at the table. “Do we have anything to eat? I can go scavenging if needed and-“ you stopped as you felt water dripping down your leg and looked up,  scrunching your nose in pain and grabbing the closest chair. You turned and saw Jaskier already next to you, his eyes jumping from you to Geralt in a panicked expression. “The baby?” Geralt asked, trying to hide his panic behind a strong face, waiting for an answer before bouncing into action. You looked at both of them, nodding and blurting out what they had to collect for a safe delivery. You hadn’t delivered many babies, but you knew enough to guide them through it. It was going to be a long night.

Hours went by. When the moon was high in the sky, a piercing cry was first heard. A new life had been welcomed into this world. You held your child close to your chest, smiling at her as Jaskier held you close and Geralt stood near you as you basked in the golden light cast by the candles that had been lit around you. You looked up at them and laughed sweetly, before closing your eyes and drifting into a deep sleep, knowing that the Witcher and the bard would be sure to keep you and your sweet child safe.