[ CLOSED ] let these bones be the giver

[gynvael]

Who: Geralt + Various
When: Mid-January
Where: Cadens, Horizon
What: Dealing with a sudden onslaught of new memories
Warnings: Spoilers for The Witcher S2, trauma, discussion of torture, etc. NSFW marked.



placing starters in the comments below. find me at discontinued or at Noa#1979 to plot stuff!

since geralt has been officially canon updated to the end of s2, just let me know directly if you want to have a zero spoiler interaction and i can set the threads pre-canon update for these cases.

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[gynvael]

[ Last time she said she had something to show him, it was the dinosaur. (Which he can now look at in a bit of a new light.) He doesn't try to guess what might be up there now. Another creature? A spaceship? He's learned what that is, in the loosest of terms.

Turns out, it's a bubbling pool of water tucked within her plants. A lake or a pond, really, except indoors. He pauses to take it in. He's found rocky lakes with small waterfalls before. But he's never seen one constructed within a building. The water steams gently into the air.

He strips down, follows her in, careful not to knock over the colourful drinks on the side. Oh. Mm. As much as he appreciates running water out there in Cadens, a cheap inn room shared with at least four means he's largely washing in cold water. Which he doesn't mind. Freezing lakes are a staple of the Continent; he's used to it and at least Cadens has the kind of heat that makes a cold bath desirable.

This is simply more pleasant. He sinks in. ] Can I convince you to keep it?

[princessvegas]

[ Look, sometimes you get a dinosaur, sometimes you get a life-size Nativity, sometimes you get a hot tub. It's always a gamble with women like Julie.

Though there don't appear to be any kind of visible controls, the jets kick up as he sits, a quiet whir of unseen machinery from somewhere under the water. She settles on the ledge inside the pool, takes one of the drinks and sips from it as she chuckles. ]

Mm, you'll make me think you only like me for the modern amenities. [ She squeezes the lime into her drink, then discards it. The steam is already dampening her hairline, curling the strands too short to be swept up with the rest. ] Kaer Morhen is the kinda place this would normally be. We do that in my world, put hot tubs out in the snow. It's a whole thing, for vacations.

[gynvael]

[ That brings something of a furrow to his brows, the sudden stream under the water, which is as close to startled as she'll ever see him. Give him a second or three to ease into it.

He huffs, but the expression on his face is warm. ] Not only.

[ He can't explain, really, that people do not show him things. Not usually. They assume he's seen it all and back home, that's largely true. She's sort of the first. Maybe it's simply a welcome change, that not everything new he discovers indicates an impending darkness over the world. ]

Seems luxurious. Nobles, I assume.

[ He can't imagine any common folk digging into the snow to build a bath when natural springs exist. It sounds frivolous as fuck.

His head tips back; eventually, when their conversation wanes, she might find he's starting to nod off in here. Which probably says more about how much sleep he's been getting lately (none) than the bath itself, but he's only ever going to blame the bath for it if asked. ]

[princessvegas]

[ She giggles into her margarita over his momentary shock, rests her head in the corner of the hot tub. It never gets old, exposing past people to things that barely warranted a blink back home. Julie's world had been terribly jaded -- she has never known a life without constant invention, innovation, every week a new "next big thing". In only months, both the people of Vegas and Boulder had essentially re-created functioning society, including electricity, television, remote cameras. She knows it wasn't always like that, that most of history did not run at breakneck speed, but it's all she was ever exposed to. ]

Well, rich folks, yeah. They love goin' to the mountains. [ Nonexistence of nobility aside, she cannot fathom being wealthy enough to not only go on vacation, but to go on vacation to somewhere cold. She has known people who could afford to take an occasional vacation, but it seemed to be a universal rule that you went somewhere warm, relaxing. Skiing and chalets and shit, that's only for people with enough money that going to the beach or Disneyland isn't enough anymore.

When she catches him beginning to doze, she'll coax him out of the water, get him somewhere that he can actually nap. Horizon sleep is better than none, and if she can ensure at least a bit of it, she will.

She expects that she'll need to do that more frequently in the next few weeks. ]