"she eats them" and all the context pops into my head and gets me laughing at least once a week! every bit of context makes it more funny. possessed horse who's actually just an asshole. geralt's absolutely ridiculous dedication to the fucking joke (dude you are half DEAD). the bafflement of everyone when he tells them. the healer's message-delivery method. jaskier's reaction when he finally gets it. geralt doing All That to show jaskier is important to him. it's just *chef's kiss*
[I’m still going through responses to the askmeme from way last week ago, I am really enjoying drawing it out and thanks y’all for indulging me. :)]
I really had so much fun with that. Little Fishie was originally intended to be rather a short story, but when I got to the end of that first bit and Geralt still hadn’t explained the meaning of the horse’s name to Jaskier, I realized that it should be the punchline, and I should have it come at some moment of tremendous duress, and, well. It kind of snowballed, the story’s over 40k.
I think the part I liked most was having an excuse to write Geralt laughing so hard he couldn’t speak. You don’t get a lot of that with him, and I was just delighted I could plausibly manage it.
(Also it was a fantastic excuse to have an outsider POV of Geralt being dramatic as fuck, literally dying and blood everywhere and he’s so blasé about it.)
“That’s the solution to the riddle,” Jaskier said. “The riddle that I don’t know what the riddle even was. The riddle you had to tell me on your deathbed! But only the answer to! Are you trying to kill me now?”
Gerat was laughing too hard now to answer, and only a small coughing fit finally reined him in. “Come on,” he said, a little feebly, waving a hand, “come on, Jaskier. What did I promise to tell you, but only if you lived? What have you been pestering me to know, for literal years now?”
“I don’t know!” Jaskier said, flinging his hands wide. “Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?”
“Come on,” Geralt said. “You taught me all of those poetical terms about it.”
“Poetical terms,” Jaskier said, baffled.
Geralt considered it, now. To name a horse after a notable foodstuff she preferred, was that a metaphor? “I suppose it is metonymy,” he said.
“Roach,” Jasker shouted suddenly, and it was a good thing horses didn’t particularly care about answering to their names. It was also a good thing there weren’t likely to be necrophages in these woods, or anything else for that matter, because they could have heard him for miles. “Oh by the gods, that’s it? That’s it? She eats them?”
“She eats them,” Geralt said.
“Aargh,” Jaskier said, flinging his arms wide, and then flopping back against the log he had his back propped against. “Argh oh by Melitele’s tits I can’t believe you made me wait years for that stupid punchline!”
Geralt was laughing too hard to answer, and after a moment Jaskier started laughing too. “You ass,” he managed to gasp, after a little while. “You fucking ass.”
