Yenna

A Horse

And then, finally, while making their way through a decidedly less than maintained forest road, Jaskier runs across Geralt. Or, well, Roach runs across them.

"Geralt!"

Geralt's expression brings to mind an elk that's just taken an arrow between the eyes. He nearly falls out of the saddle in his rush to dismount - what was he even doing riding Roach on such poor ground, it's not like he's hurrying anywhere, moving on your own schedule is one of the few benefits of wandering monster hunter - and then, without so much as a hello, beelines for Yenna.

"Yen," he says.

"Oh sweet Melitele," Jaskier curses, "you know this one too? Did you entangle yourself with every last Yennefer on the Continent or did you at least limit yourself to just the ones from Aedirn?"

Yenna, being, well, Yenna, has reacted to being charged by a witcher by freezing in place and screwing her eyes shut. Honestly that's pretty good by her standards. Geralt stares at her and Jaskier considers that he probably didn't need that discussion about faking tears because Yenna's about to burst into very real ones.

"Yen?"

"And since when do you act like - like this -" Jaskier gestures at Geralt's entire witchery looming and sudden complete disregard for personal space. Yenna has used up whatever very paltry store of courage she has and begun to shake. "Honestly. At least take a step back and give her room to breathe. So, this is Yenna, who apparently you met at some point, or maybe you didn't, you're the djinn expert, what would I know about how your bad decision worked out. We're headed to Gulet, get her back to her parents -"

"Gulet?" Geralt says, and yes Geralt, he knows it's a long way, he's quite familiar with traveling by now. "That's not -"

"I lied," Yenna blurts out. "They're not. They're not really my parents. My real mother's dead."

"Uh," Jaskier says. "Alright. That's - alright. But anyway, so -"

"She's not my real mother. She. She didn't know, none of them know."

Geralt, for whatever reason, grabs one of Yenna's arms and pulls back the sleeve to look at her wrist, because apparently Geralt has entirely forgotten how to interact with human beings since last Jaskier saw him. Has he stopped sleeping again or something? He doesn't look quite that bad.

"My real mother's dead, they killed her already, I swear!"

"That's -" Jaskier starts, and is saved from having to figure out what he was going to say next by Geralt rounding on him, grabbing him by the arm, and dragging him away from Yenna.

"What the fuck did you tell her?" Geralt yell-hisses in his ear.

"What did I tell her?" Jaskier retorts, pulling his shoulder free because he needs both arms free for gesturing if there's even a hope of expressing just how outrageous this is. "Me? You nearly tackle some kid and you think she's scared because of something I did?"

"Jaskier!"

"I have been doing nothing wrong, like always, and have been tirelessly working to improve your reputation, you know she told me she'd heard witchers were corpses raised into service by sorcerers -" And that, at least, gets some sort of flicker of startled recognition breaking through Geralt's scowl, so apparently he's heard such nonsense before even if it's new to Jaskier. "Right, yeah, exactly, so you're familiar with what I'm working with, and you, you boar, you just barrel in like -"

Roach doesn't even have the grace to nicker. There's just the sudden clop clop clopclopclopclopclop of her hooves picking up speed.

As one, Jaskier and Geralt turn around to watch Roach and Yenna disappearing.

"And would it kill you," Jaskier continues, "to learn how to train a horse not to let literally anyone steal her? How many times has this happened now, Geralt? Because by my count that's the sixth time just while I've been around, six times, and do you know how often I've seen this happen to anyone else, never, that's right, no one else, yet two of your horses in a row haven't the sense -"

"Shut up, Jaskier."