#witcher ciri

She finds the incantation on accident, only flipping through the book to see if there is some magical cure for the nightmares Ciri still struggles with. But then she pauses, staring at the list of ingredients needed for the complex and difficult piece of magic.

She’s not foolish enough to think that turning Ciri into a young girl would truly give her back her happiness. She’s well aware that Ciri’s age at the time was not the source of her happiness, that the witch cannot give the princess back her parents or grandmother.

But maybe…maybe the spell could be used still, to help with Ciri’s control. She knows the girl should have had training for her chaos at a younger age, that to have done so would have been vastly helpful for her in the present and even years in the future. Yennefer had thought there was nothing to be done about that, but now…

(The witch tries not to think about how the spell may just be the thing she needs, too. That it might allow her to regain what she’s longed for so desperately, that she’s spent so many waking and dreaming hours thinking about.)

The witch explains the spell to Ciri and Geralt in the corner of a tavern while the bard plays for coin. She resolutely ignores the knowing look the witcher is giving her, forcing herself to focus on explaining how this could be good for Ciri. And when the girl agrees, well, Geralt wasn’t exactly fond of the idea of her leaving for her own Path in only a few short years. At least this way, he gets a bit more time, to prepare her.

So Yennefer gets to work gathering the needed ingredients. Or rather, the bard gets to work buying them from various apothecaries and markets, being the most inconspicuous member of their ragtag group. Yennefer expects him to ask questions, to be a bit curious about what everything he’s been buying is needed for, but apparently the bard learned his lesson the last time and wants nothing to do with Yennefer’s “magic lessons”. The donkey ears he’d been stuck with for four days had been enough of a deterrent for life, thank you very much!

So when the witch is finally ready to perform the large piece of magic, Jaskier is sitting on a stump at the edge of the clearing, studiously ignoring…whatever it is, the witch is doing. And that’s completely fine with Yennefer—she’d discussed with Geralt weeks ago how even though it was an area of effect spell, the witcher would likely not experience anything besides maybe a few scars disappearing, and Jaskier was—well, Jaskier.

The wind that brushes through the clearing as the words of power are spoken kicks up dust, the harsh flash of light one that isn’t mentioned in the book—

Yennefer looks first at Ciri, and then Geralt, as soon as the glow has faded. They look…well, the same, if a bit sadder. And when Yennefer searches within herself with her chaos, she isn’t surprised when she finds the same empty space.

She does freeze, however, at the sound of loud swearing coming from behind her. She blinks, trying to process what she’s hearing—what she’s seeing—except it doesn’t make sense.

Because where Jaskier was sat is a young boy, no older than ten, cursing loudly at the witch and demanding she tell him what she’s done this time. Which she does. She thinks. She’s not entirely sure what her body is doing, actually, still mentally reeling from the scene in front of her.

Because this didn’t make sense. She would have noticed if the spell had backfired, or went wrong in some way, or if there had been other magic somehow simultaneously performed on the bard at the same time she cast her own spell.

She resists the urge to frown, to reach out to comfort, at the boy’s pained, resigned look after her response. That look shouldn’t be on a child’s face, shouldn’t be on Jaskier’s face. Not Jaskier, who is always happy—

Yennefer pauses as she flips through the book the spell had come from for the counterspell. Because somehow it has just occurred to her, that no one is happy all the time. That the bard is, first and foremost, a performer. That people are more willing to give coin for a smile than a frown, at least to those in Jaskier’s profession.

She stares at the list of things she needs to get for the counterspell, well aware that she has a narrow window in which she can fix this. She needs to focus. She can’t—she refuses to wonder if she can actually fix this. To wonder what good she could do for the bard who had apparently not found a shred of happiness in traveling with his self-proclaimed best friend for the last two decades.

She looks up again at the sound of the lute being plucked, at the smile now plastered to the boy’s—man’s—face. She tries not to notice how it looks so similar to the thousands of grins the bard has given out, of how she and the others had no way of knowing, really, that none of them were real. How could they, when they’d never had a real one to compare it to?

(Yennefer doesn’t let herself think about what might have taken the bard’s happiness at such a young age. And she definitely doesn’t think about how strong the bard is, to be able to foster and welcome so much happiness in others while being utterly bereft of his own.

It doesn’t make her feel guilty. It doesn’t.

I've just finished my Ciri and her Zirael fanart and hope you like it.

Literal hierophant and aged druid? No fucking worries. That's your little girl, you raised her. Emperor of Nilgaard??? Well!!! There's enough of her to go around!!!!