[ He is drinking slower now, though he's still reaching for the whisky. His preference will always be for strong liquor if it isn't ale.

For a moment, he's quiet. ] I used to assume he'd leave. When he started following me, I thought—a flighty bard, with all his silk and perfumes. He'd tire of the blood and shit that lines a Witcher's path.

[ That he'd tire of the Witcher. It's too intimate a confession. Geralt does not say it. He isn't sure, precisely, when it happened. All he knows is that at some point, he no longer told himself it mattered none if Jaskier didn't show, and started allowing himself to expect Jaskier to be there come spring. ]

After a decade passed, I stopped trying to understand it.