askmeme, exrayspex
via https://ift.tt/2ScL5nH
[I’m still going through responses to the askmeme
https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/629959327385600000/alexs-prompt-folder-anonymously-or-not-tell
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.”
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