where did you come from, baby dear?

[blacklisle]

accidental child acquisition meme

For all your "whoops I guess I have a kid now?" needs. Did you always want to be a parent? Did you swear you'd never ever be a parent? Doesn't matter now.

Possible scenarios include, but are not limited to:

• Left on your doorstep with a tearjerking note
• Wandering around unsupervised
• Entrusted to you by a friend/stranger/enemy
• Has apparently adopted YOU
• Product of your past indiscretions
• Product of your PARENTS' past indiscretions
• Summoned from another dimension
• Rescued from a mad scientist's lab

The kid in question can be whatever character tags yours, or you can enlist that character to help you wrangle your new NPC rugrat. Suit yourselves. Have fun!

Comments

[morethandestiny]

Since getting out of Cintra, finding the mysterious Geralt has been the only driving force pushing Ciri forward. She'd given no thought to what might happen after, concerned only with surviving long enough to actually reach that point — and now that she has, she's no better prepared for it than he seems to be. There's an oddly adrift feeling, of having reached her goal, fulfilled her grandmother's final command, and then... what?

Geralt doesn't seem any more equipped either, and not for the first time in the last couple of days since leaving behind the cottage in the woods does Ciri wonder, what makes this her destiny? A stranger, a "Witcher," an unknown man Grandmother had never even mentioned before that night?

There's no doubt that this is who she was meant to find, though. The mistrustful suspicion bordering on paranoia that's dogged her journey seems at ease with him, a skittish animal finally sleeping in safety. She's uncertain, quiet — but not afraid of him at all. It's only that that doesn't really tell her anything except she found the right man.

His words bring Ciri's drifting focus back into alignment, and she blinks at him from across the snapping campfire. "Oh," she says softly, the thought reminding her that her stomach exists, and that two nice meals with the farmer's wife aren't enough to offset weeks of scraping by on vermin and weeds. "Yes, a little."

[chaffed]

[ooc; sorry for the delay! this week has been a Trial]

He supposes he can stick to routine to take care of a horse, he might as well try to keep much of the same with a child. Not that Geralt thinks Ciri is a horse, but both tended to need more attention to vital basics than he did.

The answer prompts him to check his pack for rations. The kind man Yurga and his wife had left them with a few meager supplies and Geralt was still may be another day or two away from returning to his strength. Although he no longer limped, nor he felt he was at full strength to stand at a real fight or to hunt.

The witcher hands over a portion of bread still wrapped in waxed parchment, the middle of it still soft and spongy, slightly honeyed. He takes none for himself. Settling back down on his elbows before the fire. Ears on the woods, though he hadn't sensed much on the way in. The roads around them well enough traveled not to attract anything lurking too deep. The occasional crack of a tree branch, rustle of leaves, nothing to urge him to look up.

"How did you end up in Sodden?" He asked, suddenly at the edge of a breath, as though the question had been eating at him some time. Of course, he knows why, the intrinsic property of fate -- one of which he still partially rejects. But he'd been looking for her. He'd stood under the same roof as her as he tried to take fate into his own hands. Why did, of all ways, they end up together here? So close to everything else.

[morethandestiny]

[ no worries, i totally get that! take your time! ]

Taking the offered bread, Ciri doesn't quite fall upon it like a ravenous beast, but it's a near thing. Twelve years of royal meals, and somehow nothing has ever been as good as that simple little loaf.

How did she end up in Sodden? It feels like she's been up and down the map for weeks, turned every which way trying to escape one threat only to barrel straight into the next. Nilfgaard on her heels, and death on all sides around her.

"I ran," she says, the words heavy. "I just... ran. There was an elf boy, he helped me for a while. I came to a Cintran camp, and then the Brokilon forest, and then a village... And everywhere I went, something -- happened. People died." The camp, the boys she thought were her friends, even the real Mousesack, so far away.

Geralt seems at ease enough in the dark, but every too-close sound makes Ciri glance over her shoulder now. She's safe with him, but what if he isn't safe with her? What if it's like Dara said, and she really does bring death wherever she goes?

[chaffed]

There had been traces of her, following her path. He managed to put together that as much Though he didn't know where she was heading, what she was looking for. What felt like something so sure had become a complete obscurity. The whole of the Northern Kingdoms, and the Continent had become far more vast than ever before.

She describes, and he listens. Expression sympathetic, but it still reads muted compared to most people. Not for the lack of feeling, just a lack of expressing. Not feeling the need to press her further into any details she might not want to share. He'd seen the Slaughter of Cintra and the slaughters she may have seen on her journey. It isn't his expression to have her relive them. She gave the answer he needed.

"We're fine," Geralt assures once he sees her twitch. Fluttering eyes flitting about the darkness. After a tentative moment, the witcher hands over a waterskin as well. "If there's anything in these woods worth worrying about, I'll hear it before you do." Not to suggest she should let her guard down, but maybe relax.

[morethandestiny]

The reassurance does help a little, and Ciri nods as she accepts the waterskin, trying to unknot some of the tension wound up in her shoulders. Zola had been right, after all: Nilfgaard had completely overlooked the small farm, tucked away in the forest, and there was no reason to suspect anyone could possibly know where she was now.

Though that does raise the question of how, too, did Geralt find her?

Watching the fire is a small distraction, until staring too long brought back the memory of Cintra going up in smoke, screams and the sharp tang of spilled blood. Shaking her head, Ciri casts for something else to think about.

"... What does it mean, that you're my destiny?" she finally lands on, the question she had been meaning to ask for weeks now. "Grandmother never told me anything about you until -- until Cintra fell. I don't understand."

He's a Witcher, taking her to a Witcher fortress. Does that mean her destiny is to become a Witcher too? What would that even mean?

[chaffed]

A mistake, or is it in fact destiny. Geralt isn't as sure anymore. The knowledge of Ciri has eaten away at him for years, damned fool for himself for staking a claim for which he didn't understand. Hoping to have walked away with something far more meaningless, because back then he didn't believe in the law of surprise. He didn't believe in destiny. He still isn't sure, all the ways and means they'd ended up together. It sits wrong in his stomach to think that free will has no part in it. And yet...

Geralt doesn't respond immediately. The journey of expressions crosses his face as he stares into the fire, brows furrowed something serious. "It means..." His hands splay out, still leaned on his knees, to try and fill the gap in for him. He has nothing. Fuck.

"It means a long time ago I helped your father and your mother," the witcher's voice moves slow. Careful, more careful than he normally is. In the case of this child. "Our fates became tied. And in that anything would happen, I would help you too."

[morethandestiny]

Ciri sits up with her back straight, attention fully snared now, her pale eyes wide and luminous in the firelight. "You knew my parents?"

It does at least go a long way toward explaining why Grandmother never told her anything. Any mention of Mother only made Grandmother hurt and angry, and no one else seemed inclined to dredge up even the smallest memory of her lest it turn the Queen's mood. Far too young when they were lost to have even the slightest recollection, all Ciri even knows about them is their names, and that she bore some resemblance to her mother.

Still, even answering one question raises a dozen more to follow, and Ciri is almost tripping over herself to get them out.

"Did you know them very well? How did you meet them? What did you help them with? Why did you never come to see me in Cintra?"

[chaffed]

Geralt shouldn't be surprised she'd ask more questions, but he does continue to look slightly taken aback. The intricacies of how and why Geralt got tangled up in Cintran affairs is a complicated one. Far less profound in his opinion than what a small princess might imagine it to be.

"We weren't close," the witcher dispels outright. "I was there when your father and your mother wed. I saved his life, fighting on his behalf."

He dared not to tarnish Queen Calanthe's name. It embittered him to have known her, and no doubt part of his curiosity troubled to wonder how much of her resilience to bending to fate had resulted in Cintra's downfall. For Pavetta, for Ciri.

"Your grandmother wanted you to have your birthright, and I agreed and kept my distance. A witcher's life is no life for a princess."

And yet, here they are.