Yenna

A Choice

She can do magic after all. What they said was true.

She walks along the road, and she's too scared to speak to any of the people, and she tries to tell herself she just doesn't know where she is, that the bits and pieces she thinks look familiar are because she's never been lots of places and maybe they all look similar.

She keeps telling herself that until she comes to the river. Because she's in Vengerberg. She's in Vengerberg and her family isn't here.

She sits down and cries.

That's - that's the good thing about being by yourself all the time, no one cares if you want to cry about things.

She lied that her mother was dead. She lied because she didn't want her mother to die, because she didn't want her mother to die because of her, and now her mother's dead. And she's sick now at the thought somehow it was saying that that made it happen, that if only she hadn't said it, it wouldn't have turned out to be true, and there's a clutching begging in her chest that maybe it doesn't have to be, that this is so impossible maybe there can be another impossibility, maybe it can go back to how it's supposed to be if she just, if she just...

But it won't. Even if there's some way it's possible it'd never work for her. She only ever does the wrong thing.

"Useless," she mumbles. She doesn't know why everyone is so afraid of her as an adult when even having magic only means she gets to go from one bad place to another bad place. There's nowhere in the world she wants to be now. Nowhere in the world that wants her.

Not that...not that there ever was, really. Even her family didn't want her. She'd wanted them.

Almost nothing means she was worth something, she supposes.

But not nearly as much as she'd cost them, not when they'd kept her longer than any of the pigs.

Maybe it's a good thing, being in the future. Because she'd go back to them if she could, and this way she hasn't got the choice, so she's doing right by them for once in her life.

She stares at the river and wonders if it'd have been better if her mother had drowned her. Why didn't she? Yennefer tried so hard not to be trouble but she knows she was. Just a useless mouth eating their food and getting in the way. And it's not like anybody else would've cared, it's not like anyone else would have stopped her. It's not like Yennefer could've stopped her.

Yennefer's seen it with the pigs. Every time there's always some piglets that end up smothered or savaged, the runts or, or just there was something wrong and the mother knew, they can tell, it's not sad, there was something wrong with them.

Why'd her mother even go all the way to Vengerberg, she only had to do that because of Yennefer, because nobody there knew what Yennefer was, maybe she's stupid but she's not that stupid, she knows it's her fault. If her mother was going to get rid of Yennefer why did she wait so long? Why did she keep her and bring her food and say she loved her if - why would her mother lie, nobody was making her lie so why did she lie?

Why is Yennefer alive?

Yennefer could fix that now, only, this is the upstream side. She's supposed to make sure to walk all the way downstream of Vengerberg first or else she'd be polluting the water, she was told that clearly enough when people felt like talking to her, and she doesn't want to get up.

They arrive again while Yennefer is trying to decide if she cares about the inconvenience her body would be to everyone else.

There's a brief argument when they see her. The whole thing is conducted far enough away Yennefer can't make out the words, just that it's half-muffled angry snarling at each other. The witcher wins it, it seems, maybe because the sorceress looks already exhausted for some reason or maybe just because witchers can kill mages like he said, and he approaches and sits next to her.