Of Bards and Witchers

First

    He is newly twenty-one when he makes his great escape. Professor Engerran bustles at his side, hands outstretched as if to snatch at the fabric of his sleeve and stop him— "This is madness-!" He says, sucking in a breath. "You've taught one year, made hardly a dent in your career, and yet here you are running off into the woods with practically nothing- Jules, slow down!" — but he bounds for the gates with the vigor of a man enchanted by endless possibility.

    Eyes alight— yes, he must be enchanted, for he can't begin to describe the all encompassing feeling that's befallen him— he looks to Engerran— Roderick, a good friend— with a grin so wide that he might just burst open at the seams. He is under the spell of some witch that he'd bedded and wronged, most certainly— yet if that is the case, he never wants to be free of it. "I suppose you're right," he says, giddily. "I must be mad, Roderick!"

    "Julian—!"

    The wayward man relishes in the feeling of the sun against his face, as if he is feeling it for the first time. Roderick cannot hope to keep up with him; he follows as far as the main gates to the city and there the man stumbles to a rest against the archway. Hands on his knees, taking in gasping, heaving breaths, watching after him with wide eyes.

    He laughs airily, and closes his eyes as he sprints down the bridge.

    —

    A week later he arrives in Barrowmill and performs for the first time. It goes horribly. He learns that people turn to hate when they do not understand something, that to uneducated ears words like happenstance sound like jibberish at best, spellwork at worst— yes, spellwork! They throw rotten fruit— a memorable patron tosses ale onto the front of his coat— and despite it all he is elated. The next night he performs again; this time ditties that have been engrained in his head since his youth, and it is much better received. A patron offers him a coin at the end of the night.

    "How goes it, bard? What are we to call you by?"

    It spills from his lips easily, despite it being well over a decade since he's last heard it. He plucks the coin and pockets it, grinning from ear to ear.

    "Jaskier."

    The man snorts, but the bard's grin is infectious.

    —

    Jaskier is twenty-one and a half when a puppy finds him on the very outskirts of a little village called Blackwater; a shepherd's dog who'd come waltzing out of the brush at the sound of his lute. It snuffles at his boots, excited to stumble across a man ( and quite possibly at the prospect of being fed ) and wags its tail fervently. It looks up at him with eyes wide and alive with an innocence only beasts and children could muster, such a deep and profound blue that they he might've mistaken them for sapphire crystalline had they not been peering back up at him.

    "Oh," he breathes.

    The puppy follows him excitedly— he couldn't bring himself to leave it behind, not when it looked at him like that— bounding and prancing and weaving between his legs as he walks. "Oi," he says, "settle down!" And the pup looks up at him again. Maybe it's just the panting, but it might as well be fixing him with a grin. He kneels on the path, for once not minding the dust clinging to the knees of his trousers, and scratches just behind its ear.

    "At least mind the boots, little beastie-!" he grins, eyes bright- "Oh... that's quite a good name for you, isn't it?"

    They walk until the first dregs of nightfall. Beastie does his damndest to help him put together a little camp— and by help, he means to say the little whoreson kept running off with the sticks for his fire. He manages despite this ( eventually he'd thrown one far enough that when the pup bounded after it he was able to light the rest ). Pleasantly warm, the bard props himself and his instrument against a tree and digs through his satchel. Waterskin. Clothes. Soaps. Scents. Dried meat. Bread. Barely a handful of coins. He's poor, starving, maybe-quite-possibly-definitely lost and his feet are aching, but at least he'll be well dressed and smell nice.

    He laughs.

    Beastie saunters up beside him and he runs his fingers through the pup's fur. He feeds him bits of dried meat, listens to the rustling of the leaves above him, the faint crackling of a stream in the near distance, and finds his chest feels ready to burst with both excitement and yearning and lack-thereof all at once. Enchanted, indeed. He thinks of silk sheets as he gets himself comfortable against the tree and stuffs bread in his mouth. Thinks of fine wines and dainty hands fluttering about his collar; he sets his things aside and wraps his arms around himself.

    "Julian—!" She cries.

    He closes his eyes.

    And wakes at the crack of dawn to Beastie slobbering all over his face.

    "Gah-!" The bard blanches. He practically wrestles the pup away and into his lap, blinks the tiredness from his eyes as he rubs the slobber from his face and then strokes the dog's back. "Absolutely disgusting!" There's no heat to his words, but he feels unclean. Melitele's sake, who knows where that mouth has been and— Oh.

    "Gods," he whispers. "It's gorgeous." The fire's gone out, it's chilly, but he's too engrossed in the first dregs of sunlight breaching the horizon to care.

    Beastie rolls onto his back, relishes at the tenderness with which Jaskier's lithe and calloused fingers work through the fur on his belly. He's just happy to be doted upon.