abraxaslogs | [ CLOSED ] hands like skeleton bones

Entry tags:

[ CLOSED ] hands like skeleton bones

Who: Geralt + the Queen, Yennefer, Various
When: After Nov. 12
Where: Castle Thorne, Nott, Cadens
What: Geralt goes on an Adventure and has a great time
Warnings: Blood, violence, trauma

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He wasn't the horse I learned to ride on, but he was the first animal I ever had that was mine, really. Even before that, I never had any little pets like you get kids, hamsters and shit. Closest I ever had before that was a goldfish I won at the fair, and that thing died the same night. [ As goldfish kept in plastic bags tend to do. ] Ridley was mine though. Whenever I couldn't go to the farm for a week or so, then came back, he'd almost knock me over from nudgin' so hard, and he'd cry if I walked away from him before dinner time. My uncle would always say he could smell me on the wind, 'cause he'd paw up a mess before I could get out there.

[ She chuckles at the visual of a frustrated old witcher wrangling a bunch of little boys; she knows it's probably nothing like she's imagining, given what she's gleaned about their origins, but kids are kids everywhere, right? A group of them is enough to drive absolutely anyone insane, and she can hardly believe that giving them superpowers (her grasp of what constitutes "mutations" is tenuous at best) makes it any easier. ] If he wasn't completely off his rocker, then yeah. You ever tried to make a bunch of kids listen to you? You'd have better luck herdin' cats.

Kaer Morhen. [ The sounds are just the tiniest bit off in her accent, vowels too rounded, the rs just a touch too sharp, but at least she didn't read it first. Jaskier had been visibly perturbed by her initial assumption of how to pronounce his name. ] Does that mean somethin'?

[ Geralt knows not at all what a hamster is or why one would win fish as a pet rather than food. He tries to imagine a common river fish as an animal companion. Maybe it's not too far off from catching a frog and putting it in a crate. (Is the purpose to simply watch it swim? Are they decorative? Like a fancy pond?) ]

They say a horse is the best friend you'll have on the Path [ And that was true, wasn't it? For a good part of his life. But he's trying not to think of Jaskier or anyone else for the moment.

Children are indeed children everywhere. It's a wonder any of them sat still long enough to do their readings. Vesemir would probably claim that none of them listen to him to this day, a century later, and he'd be right. ]

Keep of the Elder Sea. Sea dried up centuries ago. Now it's stone and fossil.

[ As far as he knows, Kaer Morhen has always stood. He's not old enough to remember a time when it wasn't there. It's bigger, really, than the one Julie has visited—but he can only span so much of the Horizon. ]

The path? There's only one, in the whole country?

[ Look, Jaskier has already confirmed that the concept of zoos, of keeping animals just to have them, is a thing in their world too. Is it so hard to imagine people keeping fish for looking-at purposes? Giving them to dumb kids at the local fair as a prize for throwing a ball in a cup is a different story entirely, but just the idea of pet fish cannot be that unfathomable. The prettiest fish are all toxic anyway, so what else can be done with them?

Her brow furrows a little with thought as she considers what he says. She knows that whole oceans have dried on Earth before, but it was millions, if not billions, of years ago; now that the worry is the opposite, it seems almost unbelievable to live in a castle that witnessed such a thing. ] Y'know, back home, before the superflu hit... we thought it was gonna be the other way around. The seas were gonna overflow and wipe out billions of people, and the other disasters would take care of the rest. They said we had fifty years to fix things before it would be too late, mankind would be doomed.

Guess God didn't feel like waitin' it out.

No, it's— [ He makes a vague gesture with his hand, like he realizes it's a term specific to not only his world, but his people altogether. ] What we call it. The life of a Witcher.

[ The fish in his part of the Continent are mostly plain, grey, and you can look at them by stopping at any lake or river in the forest, that's the real disconnect here. One day, she can show him a koi pond or an exotic tropical tank, and then he will probably watch it for good while.

His head tilts, thinking about it. The sea drying up in that area is an ancient thing, back in the time of the elves. The name Kaer Morhen is in Elder, just a bastardization of it after all this time. There are fossils of creatures at the base of the keep. Maybe an elven construction once laid beneath the keep itself. Who knows? Much of that history has been buried. ]

A prophecy? [ He's curious, that's all. Seas overflowing sounds not unlike the world dying in an unfathomable winter. Prophecies are all his world has when it comes to predicting doom; several of them, changing across time, existing concurrently in different shapes and forms between villages. The one that he refers to, though, is older, more well-known as far as prophecies go. Its connection to Ciri is still something he hasn't fully grasped, but for a long time, they were only words, recorded in books and academic works. Lately, he's been less sure. ] The elves have one that speak of an unending frost.

I suppose "the Path" is better branding than "wander around and hope you stumble on a monster worth killin'". Catchier. [ Her tone is light, humorous, but honestly, it's not the worst way to live your life, she thinks. It doesn't sound particularly lucrative, since it apparently also requires someone willing to pay to get rid of the thing, but it at least doesn't sound boring.

It would still be better with a car, though. As someone who has travelled a very long distance on foot, she is positive that being a Witcher would be infinitely better with kitted-out van.

Wrinkling her nose, she tries very hard to figure out how to explain global warming in a few sentences. She has definitely read at least a few Cosmo articles about it. ] Mm, more like a certainty. See, in my world, people have fucked nature up real bad, and it's a big ol' mess now. Because of shit people did over the last hundred years or so, the world is gettin' hotter. When it gets hotter, the ice caps melt. The top and bottom of the planet have these big... chunks of ice, basically, and as they melt, they're makin' the oceans flood over. And everything gettin' hotter does other stuff, too. Wildfires, hurricanes. Fucks with animals that hibernate or migrate. Probably for the best that we got snuffed out when we did.

Oh, but we did have ice ages before, that must be what the elves are talkin' about. Millions and millions of years ago, there was a huge comet that hit the Earth, and all the dust that it blew into the air blocked the sun from hittin' the ground. Everything froze over, most things died out, all the dinosaurs.

[ She pauses thoughtfully. ] Oh, dinosaurs were these giant lizard monster things. But they were really more like chickens... I'm sorry, this shit is confusin' for people who grew up with it. It must be impossible for y'all when we try to explain.

[ His laugh is quiet, short, but it's there. He misses when it was only that. Wandering until he found something worth killing. Doing it until the first sign of winter, and then he'd start north.

He picks up his mug again, rests it on a leg. Climate change is not a concept that's yet introduced into his sphere, but people fucking up the planet is nothing new. He thinks of Julie saying billions, a population size he can't fully comprehend but which, now that she says it, only makes sense the world might collapse under the sheer scale of it. The Continent holds a few million at most. Curious, though, that their ice age came to pass and the world seems to have recovered. He supposes that's always what happens. The Conjunction had not exactly wiped out all life. Just threw it into turmoil and now here they all are. Surviving on the same piece of land someone had predicted the end of.

Dinosaurs, though, hold more familiarity. ]

They're draconids. For us. [ Geralt sounds thoughtful, too. He presumes they're roughly the same. Related, at the very least. What else could monster lizards be? ] Like a wyvern. Some mistake them for genuine dragons.

[ How long ago did she say. Millions of years? He tilts his head, considering what this means. ] Your world may not be so devoid of monsters after all. Maybe they simply died out before your time. Became stories instead.

[ ~~If that's what he wants, maybe he should stop fucking around with Destiny, huh?~~

Julie has never known a world population counted in millions, although she does know that the population boom is fairly recent in human history. But from what she has gathered, most worlds that aren't simply other versions of her Earth seem to be much smaller, many with less people on the planet than just the population of America. Some have sounded even tinier than Kansas, which is a terrifying thought for a number of reasons. Even the size of Abraxas unnerves her in its minuteness, and from her best understanding, it is not nearly as small as the homes of some of the others.

She hums and nods, thinking again about the only kinds of dragons she can really imagine -- European-style ones and Chinese ones. Ciri had said that wyverns were basically flying snakes, which to her just sounds like Chinese dragons, and who's to say that there weren't, once upon a time, enormous snakes with wings? There are plenty of huge animals that don't exist anymore. Why is it categorically accepted that dinosaurs aren't monsters? They sure sound like monsters to her. ] Maybe. I know there's some mythological animals that they just didn't understand what they really were. Like mermaids were probably sailors describing manatees, which just says a lot about men in general, but then there's other stuff that we don't really have an answer for. Monsters that every culture seems to have its own version of, even though they really shouldn't because of how far apart they were. Like, if two groups of people on different continents both have dragons, then there must have been somethin' that made 'em both think that.

Ciri told me about wyverns, they sound a lot like these dragons that they have on the other side of the world from where I lived. Long snakey dragons with tiny lil' legs. Dragons from my culture, they breathe fire and have wings, I think they really like gold, maybe? Or like, treasure. They have big piles of it. And they look more like dinosaurs than snakes. So it would make sense if they were different animals.

[ If anyone had told her a year ago that she would end up spending this much time thinking about monsters, she would have told them to fuck off. ]

Edited 2021-12-05 23:40 (UTC)

[ Geralt pauses, bemusement crossing his face. Is that what they say in her world? ] Merpeople exist. They prefer to be left alone.

[ They're not only women, though, inasmuch as some sailors want to believe so. He idly smooths down the edges of a bandage. He's gathered, by now, that Julie's world is larger, but the concept that everyone knows so much about the cultures of multiple continents is...new. Other landmasses back home are so far across the seas, Geralt isn't sure what can be said about them: if they're a continent of their own or an island or something else. He's travelled far, but not that far—has only occasionally encountered the rare trade merchant once in awhile.

Funny. He didn't think he'd be here talking about dragons and wyverns, either. But it's a decent distraction and he finds himself curious, exactly what's shared between all of their spheres. Sometimes it feels as though each one has undergone some sort of Conjunction. Just in different eras, with different outcomes. ]

Dragons are sentient. [ That's really the main difference, for him, rather than the shape of their wings or the size of them. ] And nearly extinct. Their parts are valuable. [ He shrugs a shoulder. ] I don't kill them.

[ Men have done that enough on their own; they don't need a Witcher for it and he's never held interest in the first place for getting involved with dragons. Except the once. Now and again, he thinks about that egg. Maybe it managed to stay safe afterwards, maybe there's a hatchling dragon flying on the peaks of the Caingorn Mountains these days. Who in the hell knows? It's nice to imagine, he supposes, whether that's the reality or not. ]

I mean, as far as we know, merpeople don't exist, but then we've only mapped like ten percent of the oceans, so there's probably a ton of shit we don't know about down there. But I know that what old-timey sailors called mermaids were definitely manatees. Sea cows. They basically look like big gray potatoes with eyes and fins. [ So, like she said, judgment passed on men.

There's a sympathetic noise, for dragons, and when he shrugs, she straightens the bandage around his back, where it's loosened from movement and getting wet. ] Yeah, we got plenty of animals that people have killed off for parts, or gotten close to it. People eatin' weird shit because some asshole decided it would make 'em strong or wise or their dick work better. Usually that last one. Now we have laws to protect animals like that, especially the smart ones. Elephants and whales and apes. There's people who spend their whole lives just workin' to save animals from goin' extinct.

[ She ties the bandage back off and presses gently on his shoulders with her fingertips. Explaining basic animal conservation for the second time in only a few weeks has reminded her that she promised Jaskier she'd make Geralt rest. ] C'mon, back to bed.

[ His lips quirk. He hasn't got a single clue what this animal she's referring to is, but he's been to Skellige, has seen them feast, and has absolutely witnessed how they drink both on land and at sea. He does not doubt her claim that a great variety of sea creatures have been mistaken for beautiful women. Besides, it's hardly always necessary to believe a creature to be a woman, or a man for that matter, to—

Anyway. Let's just say he's encountered many reasons for one to be found dead to some monster or other, over the years. ]

Hadn't considered you have your own version of alchemy. [ Even without magic and monsters. Was that simply something people did, no matter where they were? Find parts and herbs and make a potion out of it? Appears so.

He slides gingerly off the stool, taking her help if she offers it. His clothes, he leaves where they are. He's not keen on struggling with that for no reason. Nadine's already looked him all over while she tended to him; he really cannot care what Lloyd gets an eyeful of. He follows Julie back to the room and eases himself back onto the bed. She needn't tell him twice. He wants to be back on his feet sooner rather than later, and he knows he won't get there by refusing to rest. ]

[ Look, the problem is not monsterfucking, Julie would like to be very clear on that. Fucking monsters is perfectly fine as long as the monsters are into it, and as long as they do not look like big, conscious rocks with tails. Or, if they do, they have to be smart enough to not get repeatedly hit by boats.

These are official rules and Geralt is free to take them back to Kaer Morhen to be written in monster guides or whatever. ]

I don't know if I'd call it alchemy. Ain't alchemy when you turn stuff into gold? With people eatin' animals they shouldn't, I guess we'd say it's traditional or folk medicine. Stuff that hasn't been proven to actually work. Like I said, it's mostly shit people are doin' to fuck better, or more or whatever.

[ She helps him up and through the door before she turns back to throw his clothes in with all the other bloody linens (she does not know where she's going to find more clothes in his size, so she's just trying as hard as she can to get the blood out), then grabs the mead and follows him back out to set it on the bedside table. ] Now, I'm not Nadine, so I'm not gonna tell you what you can and can't do while you're laid up, but I did promise Jaskier that I'd knock you clean out if you don't get enough rest.

[ Converting what into gold? ] In legend, perhaps. Practically speaking, the substances make other substances.

[ Nothing so valuable as gold. It's chemistry, really, mixed with magic and herbal medicine, but Geralt doesn't know that to make the comparison. Occasionally also used to make people fuck better, to varying degrees of effectiveness.

The mead winds up back in his hands soon enough. His head has not stopped throbbing since he left the cells. It's the one aspect Nadine's medicine doesn't appear to do much for, probably because having his mind magically torn apart is a different sort of injury altogether. Presumably. Who the hell knows? He's never had it happen before and he'd rather not test it a second time. Either way, alcohol will help ease it or it'll put him to sleep. Both are acceptable solutions.

Right. Point taken. She'll find no argument from him. He's already sitting back, in his best attempt to find a position that will not jostle one thing or another. ] You're certainly more capable of that than he is.

I mean, turnin' stuff into other stuff is just science. I only ever heard of alchemy as takin' cheap stuff like iron and lead, then turnin' it into gold. It ain't real, though, not back home. You can't turn one element into another, you'd have to be able to add electrons or somethin' like that. We got a whole table of all the different elements and how many particles are in each one.

[ Welcome to high school chemistry with Julie. She can remember certain vocabulary words, but don't ask her to define them. She's honestly not even sure about that electron thing, but it sounds good. Next lesson, papier-mâché volcanoes.

Without much thought, she pulls the blanket back over him once he's in bed, then sits in a chair to swap her shoes into sturdier boots. ] Right, so don't make me take you down, boy.

Okay, I gotta go back downstairs, put dinner on the fire, then I have to brush the horses, 'specially that one you came on, he's a mess. I'll be back up to put more of Nadine's salve on your back later, I'll bring supper then. Need anythin' else?

[ Julie has clearly maxed out his capacity to follow along; he's been doing fairly well for a bit with the dinosaurs, but being upright for this long is starting to wear on him and half of what she's saying no longer makes any sense. She gets a vague grunt of acknowledgement for her attempt to explain, one that says he'll just take her at her word.

Right. The horse. He nearly tells Julie the horse is hers to keep, that he'll be worth selling or renting out—Thorne keeps good horses at the castle, or at least this one is—but Geralt decides it doesn't need to be said; she's likely gathered that already. Where else is the horse going to go? It's not a matter of owing her—after everything she's done for him, what she's said, he knows better than to try to repay her in any material way, that that's not what any of this is about—but the horse is already here and coin is coin. Always worth having, if you can. Not like he can take the animal with him, where he's going.

He shakes his head. Getting on the bed seems to have abruptly reminded his body that it needs more sleep, and his eyes are already half-shut. ] I'll be fine.

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[ CLOSED ] hands like skeleton bones

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