abraxaslogs | [ CLOSED ] hands like skeleton bones

[ He frowns. His message was perfectly clear. It contained a single explicit instruction. Where's the confusion? (Beyond the utter dearth of detail or reassurance.) Besides— ] I wasn't expecting to make it out.

[ Never let it be said he lacks efficiency, last words included. The comment is made offhand, as though it's just something which happens now and again, these occasions where he's certain he's well and truly fucked. What's important is that he—isn't. It leaves a fresh set of problems on his hands, that he's sort of clawed his way this far and now hasn't got a clue what's waiting for him if he reaches the city gates as planned, or if the portal will even take him to the right place, but Geralt has long perfected the art of compartmentalizing. He will get the blood and dirt out of his hair. Everything else can wait.

Lye is all he knows, so he expects the unpleasant harshness when it trickles over the healing cuts. He ignores the burn, works the crusted blood out from under where his nails have torn. He wants to ask if Ciri sounded...all right. As if the answer isn't obvious. He knows she'll be upset he chose not to reach her directly. (It can wait.) ]

What amount of rest does a drink qualify for? [ Just asking. ]

Edited 2021-11-26 08:37 (UTC)

[ She just laughs softly. Frankly, the fact that he was able to send one out from the dungeons is interesting in and of itself, but it definitely was not a clear message. Besides, now he knows what he's going to get yelled at for once he's home.

Running her nails over his scalp, she works out the worst of the tangles, then dips her fingers in the water beside him to clean them off. With another chuckle, she traces the scar on his shoulder, scratches lightly. ]

We'll say it counts double. Rinse, I'll be right back. [ She dries her hands and stands, then walks out of the room. ]

[ Reaching up around is difficult, so he leaves Julie to his hair. He doesn't mind, exactly. She untangles it with far more delicacy than he would've on his own, if he'd have ever bothered in the first place. It's a small thing, but he's finally started to feel part of the living again by the time Julie steps out.

If fortune favours, he has a chance of actually getting himself back to Cadens without anything else going to shit. (Fortune rarely favours.)

He finishes rinsing. While she's gone for a spell, he takes a minute to put his face in his hands and close his eyes and just breathe. He considers draining the water or getting out of the tub, but those are distant thoughts. He thinks he understands that time Jaskier picked up a cushion and screamed into it. He stays that way for too long, probably, not quite listening to any footsteps how he normally would've. Only when he hears her at the doorway does he drop his hands, looking up. ]

[ When she comes back, it's with a pitcher and tankard, both filled with mead. One thing that Nott has going for it is a strong brewing culture, and the innkeeper's wife likes to keep things interesting when she brews -- the current offering on tap is blackberry. When Julie decided to ask for a job downstairs, it was half on the idea of not paying for good drinks.

In the doorway, she catches sight of him before he drops his hands, and she pauses for just a second. Then she can see his face again and she doesn't say anything, just crosses the room to hand over the flagon, set the jug on the floor next to the stool. ]

There you go. [ She sits on the edge of the tub, and when she tenderly cards her fingers through his hair again, it's not a gesture of grooming, but comfort. ] Hey. I know it's a lot, but for right now, you're okay. Don't worry about anything else.

[ The temptation to ignore the flagon in favour of the jug is extraordinarily high. He resists, if only by virtue of the fact that reaching for it requires effort. Her touch is almost startling. Something inside him coils tight before he exhales, and tries not to overthink. Anything.

For awhile, he's quiet. He does not, usually, care how close to death people see him. Not like that. If there was a time where he was fussed about his pride over simply getting back on his feet, it was too long ago to remember. But the unrestrained concern for his wellbeing he's found here threatens to overwhelm him in a way he can't explain.

He keeps it to himself, making a wry, thoughtful sound instead. ] Used to be I only needed to worry about getting back to my horse.

[ She takes her hand away with a sense of alarm at the way he stiffens, worried that she'll trigger a flashback or something. She doesn't actually know what happened to him at the castle, and she feels like she's walking on eggshells that she can't even see, trying to avoid further harm without knowing what could possibly cause it.

Ultimately, she stands, takes a step away, reasoning that she can't fuck things up if she keeps distance. He likes distance, despite the fact that they haven't bothered with much of it so far, but she knows that he does with others. She'd rather not be just someone else pushing and prying at him right now.

Fuck, why couldn't it just have been a booty call? Fucking Thorne.

Collecting various blood-stained cloths to put in the sink and soak, she lets out a bright noise, suddenly remembering one of the messages she had promised to pass on. ] Oh, I almost forgot. Roach is safe and being spoiled by Rinwell, according to Ciri and Jaskier.

[ She refrains from asking why one would name a horse Roach in the first place. ]

[ His head turns when she retreats, like he's sort of belatedly aware he keeps—shit. Showing too much of his hand. And really, he doesn't mean to push the brunt of it onto Julie. It's just that she's the one who's here and he trusts her and he finds his guard keeps slipping.

He sets the flagon down; finally clears the darkened, bloodied water out of the tub. He's spent more than enough time sitting in his own filth as it is.

Wait, Roach? Geralt does, in fact, seem to perk up at that. By now, he's gathered Ciri and Jaskier must've found something: his campsite, his gear, even scant evidence of his trail would say much. He'd left a good amount of blood in the sand. Ciri is a skilled tracker and he'd told her what he was hunting before he left. But he'd largely given up his horse as lost, either killed in the fight or fled far into the desert. ]

Didn't think she'd make it home. [ The fondness is unmistakable. For once, much of his ambivalence is absent. Facing people is complicated; the concept of returning to his mare waiting for him is not. It's what he could use right now. ]

[ It's not entirely his fault -- Julie is incredibly unused to being the person who helps instead of wrecking shit up further. It's easy enough to go through the physical steps, clean, heal, feed, but knowing how to actually handle it... well, frankly, she would be much more comfortable if she could just shoot at the problem. Is that an option, just inventing the shotgun and firing on the castle? Because that would be great.

His tone makes her smile, like it surprises her in some way that he cares about his specific horse. ~~Not enough to give her a decent name, but enough.~~ It doesn't, really; it was never that she thought he didn't care, just more that she assumed it was more of fond detachment. ]

Can't underestimate horses. Leave a horse somewhere and it'll get back home, as long as it stays alive.

[ Just wait, Julie, until you find out they're all named Roach. Every single one he's ever had.

Something in her smile leeches some of the tension out of his shoulders. It is, he thinks, true. That this Roach has a home. She never has before. Home was simply where he took her and set up camp. Except in the winters, he supposes.

He makes his way out of the tub by inches, settling on the stool near Julie. There's a vague attempt to dry himself off with a towel, though there's no helping some of the blood that will inevitably seep into it. ]

Nadine said she never saw a real horse before this world. [ Actually, Nadine said she'd never rode a real horse, but to Geralt, the two concepts are the same. If she hasn't ridden one, he presumes that means there were none around. So it's curious that Julie seems more familiar with horses, if they come from the same world. It's not a significant point, really. But Julie's right: he can't do anything about Jaskier or Ciri or Thorne. Not for the moment. May as well talk horses. ]

[ Horse names are free, Geralt. You can have as many of them as you want, you don't have to reuse the same one.

Satisfied that he's backed away from whatever mental edge he had been at, she approaches again, holding the last clean towel left in the room. It's fine, she'll just steal some of Nadine's while the pile of them that she's got in the sink dry out. There's still a certain wariness in her movements, but she's never exactly been one to let that stop her from doing things, so she stands behind him and dries his hair. ]

I'm sure she's seen a horse, but back where we're from, most people don't ride anymore. We have cars to get around instead, and most people don't live with enough land for horses, or really any animal that can't live inside with them. Most people live in cities, so they don't have space for pastures or stables, and they don't move around enough to keep a horse happy. But our country is a huge one, and she and I are from different places in it. She's from up northeast, where there's a lot of industry, factories and stuff, and there's not much land. I'm from Kansas, in the middle of the country. We have lots of farmland because we grow most of the food, and there ain't as many cities around. Not everyone there is a farmer, but everyone knows someone who is. My uncle and aunt, they had a little farm, only big enough for them to feed themselves, really. I used to stay with them as much as I could while my parents worked, and usually they put me to takin' care of the animals, 'cause that's easy for kids. That's where I learned to ride.

[ No one's ever accused him of creativity.

He settles a bit while she dries his hair, listening to an explanation that he doesn't fully understand. He only sort of vaguely grasps it from having seen a city not unlike what Julie is describing in the visions he shared with Sam so long ago it seems a lifetime past—but it's still new to him, the idea that a city would be so packed, so full, that it had no room for a few stables. Even the largest city in Redania has them.

Farms, on the other hand. That he's familiar with. ]

Sounds peaceful. [ Whether or not that's true, it does so to him. A small farm with a horse or two—yeah. It's not a life he's ever experienced, not really one he's imagined much. For the most part, he tries not to let his imagination wander towards places he will never go himself. Every now and again, though, he thinks...if he'd have liked it, a quieter if shorter life amongst some crops. Or would he have found it dull, yearning ironically for a chance to travel? ]

Few places on the Continent are short of farms. [ The land is not always fertile or worth tending, but people will try. ] But I learned to ride on the mountains.

[ She's been by, he knows, those mountains. Only one person that glittering collar could come from. He will not admit it, but the absurdity of the thing on a wild wolf does make him smile. ]

Peaceful's just a nicer word for boring. [ She's maybe a little disgusted by it, the idea of spending her whole life on the farm, had spent years trying to figure out how to get away from it. Peaceful isn't perfection; living in the quiet of the country doesn't mean escape from stress and unpleasantness. It just lacks the noise and resources of the city.

There's a small pause, and she sighs, gets a comb from the shelf. Her tone gains a thoughtfulness when she adds, ] But there was this one back meadow that no one really had time to take care of. And in the spring, April and May, the whole thing would be covered in wildflowers, mostly weeds. Daisy weeds, milkweed, dandelions, that kinda stuff. When I was outta school for spring break, I'd wake up and put everyone in the pasture, then take the horses out there and let 'em run. Ridley, that was my boy, he was a big ol' draft horse that someone worked too hard, sold him for a song when he couldn't pull weight anymore. My uncle, he had a real soft heart, wound up buyin' him just to keep him alive, and I got put in charge of gettin' his weight back up, makin' sure he recovered. Just basic stuff. He wound up livin' until... [ until Captain Trips killed most of the animals ] until things went bad, and he loved that field. Even if I wasn't ridin', he just wanted to lay out in the sun and eat clover, he'd bother me all day if I left him in the paddock instead. That was peaceful.

[ She hasn't exactly been paying attention to what she's doing with her hands while she talks, and she realizes abruptly that she's long finished combing out his hair. It's not something she usually thinks about, the actual parts of her life before the pandemic that she'd liked; it's almost always easier to keep those memories tucked away in locked boxes in the back of her mind. It's simpler to remember all the things and people she hated, that Trips let her slough off like dead skin in her journey to Vegas, because losing things you wanted to lose anyway doesn't hurt. But Ridley, the horses -- she'd always planned, in her mind, to have horses once she was away from Kansas, when she was rich and famous and had everything she wanted.

Careful to avoid the nasty welts marking his back, she drapes her arms over his shoulders, leans to one side to better see him. ] That castle, is that your home? It's beautiful. We don't have nothin' like that in America.

[ She treats that wolf no differently than she would treat a little yap-yap lapdog. People food and cuddles and belly rubs. It's not like she's never met a wolfdog before. They were very legal in Kansas. ]

[ As he tends to be, Geralt is quiet while she talks: not interrupting, not even commenting. It's a pleasant story, a pleasant recollection. He finds he likes it when people tell him of those. World is shit as it is. It always will be, he thinks, but there are moments and maybe they're made all the more significant in their rarity. As much as he would not describe his childhood, his life, as happy, the feeling wasn't altogether absent, either. There were pockets of gentler memories here and there. People. Perhaps it's good to know Julie has a few of the same. ]

Was he your first horse? [ He remembers his first horse with an especial fondness. He outlives all of them, eventually, a fact he's come to accept a long time ago, but he hasn't forgotten any of them. In some ways, it feels less as though he's left each one behind when he gives his next the same name. They're good, loyal companions. They make the endless roads less lonely.

When her arm settles around him, he turns to glance up at her. Hm. A wistful expression flickers over his face. ] We call it Kaer Morhen. I grew up with a handful of other boys and the old man to keep us all in line. I imagine he fantasized a hundred times of kicking us off the highest wall.

[ The fortress is marked with plenty of bloodstains and corpses, but it's home. It's where the doors will always open for him. It's the only place where he can be sure of that, where no matter what, he knows he won't be turned away or abandoned in the cold. Deep down, that's where he really wants to be right now. (Vesemir would know what to tell him.) ]

Edited 2021-12-02 21:25 (UTC)

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.

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