here there be chaos

“What?” Jaskier stopped strumming to confusedly stare at him. “No there’s not.”

“Yes.” Geralt returned the look. “There is.”

Every time he’d walked this road he’d run into at least one set of unlucky or foolhardy men looking to rid him of his valuables and life. He’d have avoided it for the bards sake but Jaskier had a festival and after several contract based delays they had no choice but to take the route or miss it entirely.

“I use this road all the time Geralt and I have never once met a bandit on it.”

“Then you’ve been incredibly lucky.”

The seemed to be true of the bard in general. He carried no weapon,  no flint for a fire, barely any food at all in his case. Yet he remained hale and healthy, even during their travels apart. 

“We’ll see about that.” He snorted, like he thought Geralt was the one being ridiculous. 

They would.

It was near to sundown when he heard them aproach. Pulled out his sword and readied himself for the fight.

Jaskier stupidly strummed on ahead, singing to the trees. If bolts started flying he could aard him down at least. Hopefully they’d recognize what little a threat he posed.

The one on horseback stepped onto the road ahead of Jaskier.

Fuck. Kidnapping the helpless one. Good play. Aard would still spook the horse, knocking the man off before he could get away with the bard.

“Jaskier!” The obvious bandit bellowed. Jumping off his horse and embracing the man.

He blinked. 

The bard laughed and returned the embrace. “ Jakub! How are you!”

“Better now for hearing you! Come come! Our camp isn’t far and I know you’ve not the supplies for a night alone!”

“Tonight I’m not alone but my friend and I would love for your company!”

It was only then that the bandit even seemed to register his presence. His grip on Jaskier’s shoulder tightened and his face paled.

He listened to the three other heartbeats hidden in the shrubbery still. Rapid. Fearful.

He eased his sword back into its sheath and raised a hand soothingly. “Don’t want trouble.”

“Right.” The pallid man nodded. “Won’t find any here Witcher.”

And they didn’t. Not on the way or tucked inside the bandit camp or around their fire as they ate stolen food. Jaskier playing and dancing and making merry long into the dark of the evening. Eventually tiredly flopping down next to him and in a few short minutes falling asleep against his thigh.

Jakub watched him, eased by the drinking and calm of the night from his deathly white shade. He looked as warmly at the bard as the rest of his men did. As warmly as they were wary of him.

“You’ve met him before.” He said simply.

Jakub grimaced at him but nodded.

“You didn’t rob him.”

His grimace deepened into a scowl. “Could have.”

“Would have been easy.”

“He’s penniless half the time.” Technically more than half but-

“And rich the other half.”

Jakub considered him and took a long drink of his stolen ale. Eyes drifting down to Jaskier, sound asleep. Curled around his lute and pressed into his side.

“Could have robbed him. Robbed him blind.” He nodded. “But imagine the cost.”

He frowned as Jakub stood, tossing them a blanket. “Got an open bed in that tent. Feel free.” He staggered into his own tent, humming one of Jaskier’s songs all the way.

He cocked his head before picking the bard up and carrying him to the tent. Setting him down in the bed before shoving him over enough to get in himself.

The bard rolled over into his chest and drooled onto Geralt’s arm.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.