#bardic magic

Their next earliest memories were of Bards.

Vague, hazy memories returned first. Their first pinfeathers, and the way their parents had used both their beaks and their hands to help them along. Family bathtime, especially important during molting season, and the way they all preened each other after— so careful to make sure each feather was comfortably in place. Drying off together, all fluffed up and warm and safe.

Kenku were a cursed folk, and they would never forget it. But that didn't mean they had to suffer for it.

Community parties were bright, vibrant affairs. Bards were common, weaving stories and songs, teaching communities new words and phrases. Cricket remembered one, a few weeks before they had been taken. The day had been stormy and cold, but the night was clear. It had been a double new moon, one of the darkest nights of the year, but the stars always shined so brightly.

They lived in a smaller, poorer community in one of the outskirt towns. Communities took turns hosting the Dark Nights, Bright Lights festival to commemorate each double new moon, and this time, it was their turn. The community had gone all out— hosting the festival was an honor, after all. Worries loomed, though— that the impending storm would keep folks from coming, discussions were held over how much food was reasonable in proportion to cost, or even whether they could afford to host at all, based on how crops were looking.

But Kenku are Kenku. They love a party, especially when it can be an excuse to help. Kenku are known for their trickery, after all. And what better trick than to try to help folks without it being noticed?

Their next earliest memories were of community, and the value of cooperation.

It ended up being the largest festival their community ever hosted.

The typically night-long festival lasted for three days. Everyone brought in food from neighboring communities and recipes from far off travels. They gained new crops and learned how to help them thrive, and even built some simple greenhouses— something they hadn't had the resources or blueprints for previously.

When everyone finally left, it seemed that nearly everyone "accidentally" left something behind. But no one could be bothered to come back for that big cooking pot, or their old tool set, or all those "old scraps of fabric" that happened to be more than enough to make new quilts for everyone in need.

This was how stubborn communities supported each other without stepping on toes. Because Kenku are know to be prideful folk, after all.

This inner world, though, is known only to Kenku.

"The outsiders made up their minds about us before we ever had a chance," they remembered their father saying one night. "They thinks us thieves, they think our lack of words means a lack of intelligence. But they are wrong." Cricket listened to the array of voices, woven together effortlessly, as he spoke.

"[Thieves]," they repeated, head tilted.

"We steal voices, so they assume we steal everything else. We are intelligent, so they assume we scheme. Let them assume."

Kenku were a cursed folk, without voice or wings and most of them unable to imagine new things. But that didn't mean they had nothing.

Far from it.

One night, Cricket asked their father why the outside hated them so much, if bards existed to travel and share. Couldn't the bards explain it?

"Kenku are outcasts, my dear. Our beloved bards who bring us song and dance and voice and ideas are the bravest of us all. They face an unkind world. They do not sing and dance out there, they would be captured. Instead they travel, under cloak and pack, and listen. They listen and watch and sneak and read, and bring all of that back to share with us."

Cricket absorbed his words. Words spoken in voices that had long since passed. Voices passed down through generations.

They absorbed words in all the songs they heard, capturing voices along with the sounds of the instruments that accompanied them.

"They say that we're accurs-ed/ They say that we all lie/ But if you ever met us/ You'd know we'll share our pie"

"Voices come and voices go/ And there are some that linger/ No one here is truly gone/ When we share their voice together"

"I sing for you and I sing for me/ And for all who came before us/ We claim these voices as our own/ So why don't you now join us?"

Simple rhymes, simple melodies, dozens of voices, but they had heart.

The melodies trickled back as Aspen preened their feathers that first night, but it was weeks before the words returned. It took a few months before their mind and voice and feathers were all whole enough to really begin thinking about the bards again.

"The bravest of us all," their father had said, and having now faced the outside world, they agreed.

They began to wonder if there was a way for them to find other Kenku, to begin sharing their own stories. Maybe one day they'd become a bard themself. Maybe they could be brave, too.

Masterpost

He was used to being woken up with varying degrees of violence and showers of insults first thing in the morning. He had been subjected to cuckolded spouses brandishing their blades at him, wives coming at him with brooms and rolling pins, parents screaming blue murder and friends attempting to pay him off like a common whore before throwing him out of the house. There had been hey stacks, inns, ditches, state beds, lakes and humble bedrooms.

Over the years, he had made his way up North and South again, had seen the East and tried to go West, beyond what he knew to expect. He had met many people and fallen in love with most of them for a while. He had gotten used to sleeping under the stars and never forget how comfortable a bed near a fire could be. He had worn down countless pairs of shoes and bought trinkets and gifts for people he would never see again. His senses grew keener and yet, he never saw the trouble coming for him before it struck.

Jaskier felt himself being tugged and torn into all four cardinal directions when he stayed in one place for too long. When he had been a child, he had not known how to identify the urge to dodge the nursemaid his parents employed to keep him out of trouble, run away and leave Lettenhove behind to find his way in a world not equipped for a nipper like him. He had not known why he did not feel at home in the warm, loving embrace of his mother who cuddled and coddled, why he felt like his father could not teach him what he craved to know, why he felt like he was free when he got the opportunity to run free into the direction he felt like going to.

His parents had allowed him to leave, go to see the world for himself, eventually. He had gotten as far as Oxenfurt before he got stuck for a bit, still fighting the urge to follow the tug to wherever it felt he should be without knowing why he would be supposed to leave. There was no name for it and despite all the time he spent on studying the seven liberal arts, no concept of destiny and providence felt big enough to cover the way he felt whenever he thought about it. He learned how to direct his awareness towards that point behind his ribs where his heart beat against the cage he had constructed around it, containing his wanderlust, and tried to channel it into his creative inspiration.

Even the position offered to him as one of the youngest professors at the esteemed academy could not hold him there for long. He had needed to move, wander and see the world again. He had made his way east, met a Witcher and experienced real adventures for once. Given the nature of Geralt’s path and the constant travelling beyond the boundaries of all the lands Jaskier had seen, it felt only right for him to join his new friend on his travels.

Still, he felt the tug drawing him away again every once in a while, away from Geralt who did not question his departures, taking off without a good-bye more often than not himself. It grew stronger, sometimes, as if there was some urgency to it but by the time Jaskier found a place to stay and willing company to distract himself with, the feeling subsided, let him have his peace for a night before he was woken up again by angry spouses and inn keepers demanding the night’s bill be covered immediately.

When he travelled with Geralt, he tried to listen to the way his heart beat, whether it demanded he take off again or let him stay and relinquish the futile wandering. More often than not, he got to follow Geralt for weeks before it got stronger, hungry and demanding.

He had no explanation for it but it made a great subject of songs speaking of the lost, wandering bard, damned and cursed to leave every place he grew to love behind, breaking hearts where he planned to take root and ended up leaving again on the first gust of wind blowing him away. The songs were popular and he sang them whenever he got the chance, they were soft and melancholy, tormented by fate and destiny, made men weep and women want to warm his heart, believing it cold and lonely.

It worked; the songs made sure he did not have to sleep by himself or on the side of the road all too often when he was on his own, did not have to dream of the horrors he could not place when awake, did not see the darkness swallow the light and song in his life, night after night, again and again. Company in his bed and by his side helped him get up in the morning with a smile in his eyes and a song on his lips as he climbed out of windows and ran along muddy streets to escape the looming punishment he was to receive, were he to stick around. His songs made his feet fall easier on the road, allowed him to skip over brooks and rocks, dance under the sun and thread through raindrops. They provided shelter and coin for him, sometimes more than just that. Sometimes, they procured a first smile that lay the foundation for the night ahead.

He knew his songs were catchy, he had written them to be. People knew them already before he performed them at inns and taverns, they had been carried through the continent by many bards sharing his work and firmly taken root in their ears and mind by the time he took his lute out of her case. Once they realised he was the creator, the true poet behind the sweet tunes and that he was with them, in their home, he got his fair share of patrons buying drinks for him, asking questions, seeking council.

Jaskier had met young women close to despair of their fiancés, young men desperate to find out whether they could dare to approach the girl of their dreams, women in tears about their husbands and what they felt was missing in their lives. They came to him, the wordsmith, seeking a remedy, a way to right the wrongs they perceived. He listened patiently, consoled and soothed them, with a hand to the shoulder or a kind word, gave advice where he felt it was needed and played match-maker by stepping into someone’s way, forcing them into a tumble to be caught by their favoured. The words he could give were his medicine for the world, his way to give back.

He took pride in his success rate and shared his experience and secret knowledge with those in need of a revival of their love life. He took pride in the number of happy couples promising him an invitation to their weddings, the amount of times he was asked to sing as they danced as husband and wife for the first time. He tried to be there, be part of the reasons making their big day memorable.

He tried.

The invisible hook, the tugging siren’s call of his life that dragged him across the continent without warning him of where he would end up, the shard of destiny he could not explain, locked in place behind his ribs, not always allowed him the pleasure of seeing where his efforts led. Sometimes, he found himself back on the road long before the wedding ceremony even began. Sometimes, he forced himself to stay but weddings were something connected to bad memories and the taste of storms and ashes on his tongue. It felt like fleeing, whenever he had the time to think about what it made him move again. He had learned not to question it. The real trouble arose only when he chose to fight it.