#Jaskier about to cry: you...you got me a cool rock...best muse ever...

[castillon02]

Geralt has a network of people who don’t mind trading with Witchers. They set things aside for him sometimes: herbs that he’s bought before, books or armor that he’s asked after. In return, he makes room in his saddlebags for metals the smith can melt down, books for the bookseller’s cart, and monster organs that can be added to an herbalist’s potions. 

Business. An exchange of goods and coin. Nothing to do with the way Ensa’s eyes light up at copper and silver, with the way Broc’s hands rub together upon seeing a rare text, with the way Tusson smiles and leans closer when Geralt starts pulling eyes and tongues out of his bag. 

Those smiles are for his money and his wares, not for him. He’s worth nothing to them if he’s not buying or selling. 

---

(Ensa makes bells with some of the metals Geralt brings her. The hammer of her profession has taken some of her hearing, she says; he tells her when the bells ring true, and she tells him the latest gossip, updates on which nobles have money and monster problems. She’s in Kaedwen, one of his first and last stops on the Path.)

(Geralt finds a few scrolls written during one of the Conjunctions stashed in a troll’s cave, and when he shows them to Broc in Novigrad, Broc shoves a book of armor diagrams into his hands along with a hefty purse. Hmm. Witcher gear must be out of fashion at the auction houses.) 

(Tusson gives him live herbs from their garden and asks him to plant them at a crossroads. “Propogation is good for business. More places to harvest from.” Eventually, the ingredients for Swallow flourish around all the crossroads in Aedirn. Easy healing for Witchers passing through; easier pickings for herbalists who live there full-time.) 

(Useful. He’s useful to them. At least they don’t mind being useful to him in return.) 

---

Jaskier gives him gwent cards, sometimes. (“Won it off my comely companion from last night. Strip gwent, Geralt! You should try it.”) 

Pastries, other times. When they encounter a baker, Jaskier usually pulls a spare coin from his boot and buys whatever’s apple-filled---Geralt’s favorite, because then he can share half with Roach. (“I got one for Roach too, of course. What do you take me for?”)

Mostly money isn’t involved. 

Instead, Jaskier does things like steal all but one of Geralt’s hair ties for a week and return them when they’re dyed black enough to suit his fancy. (“Now they’ll go with the rest of your outfit!”) Like anyone cares how a Witcher looks, least of all the Witcher in question. 

Jaskier sees winter cress on the path and says, “Oh, those match your eyes!” He spends an hour weaving an elaborate flower necklace, only to give it to Roach for a snack when they’re going through a bog.

When there’s enough light to write by, there are stories scribbled on spare parchment, tales that Jaskier modifies with increasing ridiculousness, trying to lift the stern shield across Geralt’s face and get him to reveal an amused twitch of his lips, a mirthful crinkle around his eyes. (“Oh, Sir Fair, I fear that your penetrating log---your banquet-sized sausage---your hip-heaving halberd---aha, there it is!---I fear that your hip-heaving halberd will leave me spoiled for all other polearms.”) When Geralt leaves for Kaer Morhen, he finds them stuffed in his saddlebag with a note saying that he can use them for kindling if he wants. He brings them to the keep instead. 

Once, Jaskier spends ten minutes staring at stag beetles fighting on a log before noticing that Geralt is staring at him, and then he abruptly begins a stag beetle dialogue, underdog challenger versus heavyweight champion, and he leaves room for Geralt to voice the underdog if he wants.

(“And what do you have to say in the aftermath of your stunning upset victory?”

Geralt sighs, finally gives in, and says his most satisfied-sounding, “Hmmm.”

Jaskier dedicates the resulting beetle battling poem to him in order to commemorate the occasion.)

Black leather. Apple tarts. Poems. A Witcher’s life hasn’t prepared him for this kind of economy. What’s the value of a flower necklace, braided and eaten? 

---

On the path from Kaer Morhen, Geralt sees an ammonite poking out beneath the melting snow, the curl of its shell perfectly preserved, and stops Roach so he can pick it up. It’s not anything special. The land around Kaer Morhen used to be a sea, long ago, and the rock-wrapped bones of her old inhabitants are everywhere. 

He slips the ammonite into his saddlebag. Still plenty of room for Ensa’s future bells when he finds them, and some people haven’t seen this part of Kaedwen.

As he crosses the Mahakam Mountains, one of the region’s massive vultures wheels above him and drops a primary feather right in his path. Tusson bought most of the monster parts from his saddlebags, but even if they hadn’t, a feather is hardly a burden. He stores it in one of his longer potion vials. There’s a joke he might make about songbirds versus scavengers.  

In Novigrad, Broc hands him a small purse in exchange for the books Geralt took from a bruxa’s lair, and then he slides a little pamphlet across the counter to him. 

It’s a copy of Jaskier’s beetle battling poem. 

“Not a coin, but I thought I would toss it to you anyway, seeing as you’re in the dedication. I particularly liked the allegory about getting your muse to speak to you.” Broc winks at him. “Never hurts to invest in young artists.” 

Broc has never winked at him before, not in twenty-odd years. Geralt stumbles through his thank-you. Jaskier is clearly a terrible influence. 

A terrible influence that he might just run into again, given that he’s near Oxenfurt. But that’s all right. Geralt has made his preparations, the way he always does with monsters, with merchants, and now with bards. 

The next time Jaskier gives him something useless, Geralt will be able to reciprocate. 

#castillon writes #geraskier #bitcher #beginte prompted me with 'store' and this is what came out #the witcher #Jaskier about to cry: you...you got me a cool rock...best muse ever...

[epicballads]

( x ) | @ghostofaformerself

My muse is dead. Tell me how yours is dealing with it.

-----

Tears were gathering in the corners of Jaskier’s eyes just when he had thought he was finally done crying. Because of it, his vision blurred. And because of that, the stone he was looking at became a scrambled mess of different shades of grey in a vast ocean of dark sky. Jaskier was sitting on a rock. His bag was at his feet and the lute he carried was lying on the soft grass next to it. The grass, too, had taken on a dark gray bluish color in the dead of night. Behind him, quite a distance away, a bonfire was burning. Neither heat nor light really reaching him. He could tell it was still there but it seemed ethereal. He was trapped in a world between life and death in this moment. Rayne would have liked this place, he thought. If she had to stay anywhere forever, the fringes of human light, just barely out of their reach but still visible from a distance, was the perfect spot for her to be resting. Jaskier thought she hadn’t intended to be a hero and maybe she hadn’t been one. Not in the traditional, all encompassing sense. Maybe there were no heroes like that in the world, not truly. But if there were, Jaskier was sure, she had been the closest thing to it. Maybe the people who had never asked for it but couldn’t help themselves despite actively trying not to get involved with the world, were the ones who made for the best people.

That wasn’t all the reason he was almost crying, of course. She had been his friend and he had loved her. He had loved her deeply, and he never got to sing her a song about it. She would have loved the irony, he was sure, of him sitting at her grave thinking she would be alive if she hadn’t met him. She had been so concerned she would be the end of him, she had left him behind at one point in their lives, trying to get rid of him. Not terribly insulting as it wasn't the first time that happend to him. He had done it to enough people himself, he could barely complain. Naturally, he still did, but he couldn't reasonably. He had found her, in the end, and if he hadn’t she would not have given her life so that he would live.

Despite knowing better, he couldn’t shake the feeling this was his fault. She was dead because she had died for him. How was he ever to think that was not on him? He wasn’t made for this life. He was made to sing about it and tell the tales but he wasn’t meant to live through it, he was sure. Every death he had to see tore at his soul. A jagged knife, running circles in his eternal self to chip away what he was at his core.

His heart was pounding as he raised a mug into the cool night air to toast the woman he had lost. Then he drank, the mug well more than half emptied when he stopped. Drops of the mead he was having were running down his chin, collecting and dripping onto the ground and his clothes. Today, it didn’t matter. Quietly, he began singing an unruly and fidgety tune. “How far away you are, since we parted last, And every hour the distance grows farther, In the notes made by the quiet of the night There is nothing but regret I lean onto my pillow to search for you in my dreams The last place you’re still alive Where I can tell you… I loved you in life and I found the courage to tell you only in death, it seems.”

Silence fell around him like a heavy blanket, threatening to suffocate him. There was laughter and cheering and yelling in the distance, where the light of the bonfire reached the hearts of the people close to it. The sounds were like heralds from a different world that he could be part of but wasn’t. Not now, at least. Now, he was upset.

“What a waste,” he said, finally, his mug banging hard against the stone he sat on. The song he sang was unlike the songs he usually wrote and would sing for crowds in a lot of ways. He hadn’t thought about it before and he was singing it to a tune he already knew from a song he had written before. There was no lute, no tune to carry his voice other than his voice itself, and he had just thought up the words as he went through the lines. It was personal and he didn’t need to remember it for later. This was the first and last time he’d sing those words.

“You’re a horrible idiot, Rayne,” he concluded, tears finally rolling down his face. “And I’m so incredibly sorry..” In the end, the darkness wins. Someone had once said that to him, and he had taken it as the gloomy ramblings of an old fool, too blinded by his own bad faith to search for a brighter future, to believe in something and hope. Seeing Rayne fall reminded him of those words. She had been stronger than he had thought was humanly possible. Still, in the end the darkness won. There were only two things left to tell her story. Her rotting bones, lying beneath the surface covered by dirt and his voice. Her bones were trapped here but his voice could still travel.

Travel he would. But not today. Today he was upset and he knew he would be for a while to come.

Jaskier got up and walked over to Rayne’s last resting place, feet touching dirt that was still wet from being dug up and put back down.

“Goodbye, love,” he said quietly to her, nobody there to hear it. “I wish…,” he started, his heart aching as his mind already went through the words who had been meant to follow. As if an invisible vice clenching his heart, he could feel the pain he was in like it was a physical illness. “Goodbye.”

#ghostofafromerself. ( meme reply. ) #ghostofaformerself #hi this was too much for an ask