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

(( placing starters in the comments below. find me at

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ CLOSED ] hands like skeleton bones

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject