#thewitcherkin

I have days when I really just hate living in this world. Not in an "I plan on leaving it ASAP" way, just in a "for fuck's sake, IS THIS WORLD SERIOUS?!" way. Like, how can this world make it so difficult to find a half-decent lute for a half-decent price? I know people seem to prefer the likes of Geralt and Yennefer, but bards like myself certainly have a place in the media of this world, and often with lutes! Honestly, I'm within one more straw of becoming a luthier myself just so I can have a lute of my very own. But then I suppose I'd have to find one who knows how to make them and who's willing to have an apprentice who very specifically wants to learn how to make an instrument that apparently most modern luthiers don't make (at least not commercially in my area, I've looked several times), despite still being called LUTHIERS, from the French luth meaning LUTE! This world can go fuck itself right now. It's not even funny, so much was taken from me, and now I can't even get one of the most important parts back? I was offered some tiny 3-course monstrosity in good faith but it felt like an insult. I need a lute, and I can't even tell most people why.

I desperately miss such small things. The way Geralt would look at me when I started up That Song (♩ Toss a coin to your Witcher, oh Valley of Plenty ♩), it was... Almost annoyance. But ever so slightly, he was suppressing a smile. I think. I'm pretty sure it was a smile, I mean, it's hard to tell with the whole brooding thing but he seemed to appreciate it eventually. After I told him that I had tried writing songs like what he would have wanted, the truth of the situation, and no one listened. They all just wanted stories of fornication, of glory, of treasure, of romance... And even then, when any of it goes out of the norm, out of what is deemed acceptable, the bard is the one who suffers for singing it. Geralt was far, far from the first (or last) to punch me for my words. But he was the most justified in doing so. Most were just annoyed that my song upset them or their delicate sensibilities.

To all iterations of Ciri, my daughter,

Geralt, if you’re out there — I still miss you dearly.