"Why wouldn't you travel by main roads?"

Episode 6, Rare Species - Yennefer

Okay, it's time for the sixth episode.

You may or may not notice that these chapters get more unwieldy the more character overlap there is. At this point, everyone's together except Ciri. So this is going to be a nightmare, and thank god that the dragon kicks the group apart again at the end of the episode.

We ended on Yennefer last time, so let's try sticking with her.

Going by the timeline, this episode takes place six years after the previous episode, and twenty-two years since Yennefer quit working at court.

Yennefer is here for the dragon hunt. Now, it's presumably coincidence/Destiny that Geralt is there at the same time. But...

Geralt: "You've wasted your breath, Borch. I don't kill dragons."

...

Geralt: "The answer is no."

...

Geralt: "I'm in."

...Geralt chooses to go because he sees Yennefer's there.

And Yennefer's first lines in the episode are remarking on this to Geralt, indicating that this has likely been happening a lot.

Yennefer: "How is it that I've walked this earth for decades without coming across a witcher, and then the first one I meet, I can't get rid of?"

If you knew nothing else about Yennefer, this would be very much in line with the Yennefer she tries to present. She's suggesting he's clearly chasing after her while she's disinterested to mildly annoyed by him. The power is all on her side here - he desires her, she wouldn't care if he fell off a cliff.

But not only are we about to see just how upset she is at the idea of him falling off a cliff, with what else we've seen of Yennefer, the reason she's bringing this up is because she desperately, desperately wants to hear him say that's what he's doing. That it isn't somehow just a coincidence. Or maybe that he'll let her accuse him of caring without trying to defend himself. That he not only cares but isn't ashamed of people knowing he cares.

Think about what little we've seen of Yennefer's previous relationships. They're marked by secrecy. Her relationship with Istredd is a secret. While it was known that she was Tissaia's student, that she meant anything more to Tissaia was something Tissaia tried to keep secret to the point that in the first months it was a secret even from Yennefer. Even going as far back as with her mother, we're told Yennefer wasn't allowed in the house and we know she wasn't doing chores with the rest of the household and her father hits her for trying, so it's pretty likely what time she had with her mother and any other siblings had to be done clandestinely. If people care about Yennefer, they treat it like a flaw. From an outside view, that's because everyone Yennefer's been around has been deeply messed up too, but in Yennefer's experience, she's the common thread.

So Yennefer's absolutely invested and pretending not to be here. And she's doing a pretty good job at pretending, which is another point to consider. Yennefer's act is going to be better or worse depending on how much time she has to prepare. In this case, she's had a couple years of running into him on and off. That means even though this is a huge issue for her, she's probably spent a while thinking over exactly what she'll say next time and got it down to this gem. But when surprised or under more stress, she moves closer to showing her actual feelings.

And, of course, she does snow Jaskier on this one, although as I said last episode, Jaskier is extremely bad at reading Yennefer so that probably didn't take much.