I Found Someone Who Looked Like The Perfect Eskel. So Much So I Had To Draw It

I found someone who looked like the perfect Eskel. So much so I had to draw it

Me bursting through a door: IS IT ESKEL LOVING HOURS YET.

Me breaking through a window: is IT EsKEL LoVIng HouRs YEt

Me rolling on the ground: Is it eskel loving hours yet

Me whispering into the void: is it eskel loving hours yet.

Do you think the boys believe in Krampus?? Like it’s really silly to think of Geralt and Eskel retelling stories told to them by older(teen) Witcher’s about Krampus and scaring the rest of the boys. Truth be told they were also scared of Krampus too but they had reputations to uphold with the other small children there so they pretended they weren’t.

That is until one of the nights during the first snow storm of winter season, the boys help pull out home made candles to chat some more with older Witcher’s home for the rest, instreated by the stories they told, and are startled by the rattling of the keep doors. There was a snowstorm, so it wasn’t so scary. Then the doors really began to rattle, something maybe a snowstorm really couldn’t do, thought the two as Geralt and Eskel glanced at each other.

The older Witcher’s attention isn’t so disrupted but more of the younger boys give each other all looks in concern, Eskel scooting over and sitting closer to each other. After that, it was quiet and stayed that way until one of the instructors told the boys to let the wolves rest, they’ll be there in the morning, and they’re all sent to bed.

Cut to the room the boys are staying in, a large room with small beds inside of it all out of order and some crocked with day clothes scattered around. They had a few busy days before the older Witcher’s got home, and they prepared the keep and food for them, along with supplies for the next year on the path, so Geralt and Eskel and the other boys were out like a light.

Suddenly the sturdy wooden door is thrown against the wall with a loud thud that rumbles the room and shakes the beds, causing most of— if not all boys to jump up in surprise and only scream at what they saw at the door.

Krampus hismelf.

If anyone else was still asleep after the door, they were woken up by the startled screams of the children. Krampus reaches up quickly and pulled off what looks like a gigantic goats head and put it aside, revealing it’s dirty secret. When they saw it was Vesemir, they broke into tears after being scared and Eskel was the first to run to him for comfort, soon followed by more kids.

How it happened, was Vesemir was told by a younger kid(totally Lambert) about the stories of Krampus. This youngling was going off about how if he even tried coming to Kaer Morhen, it’d be over for that guy. Vesemir had some of the returning Witcher’s bring back supplies and by the end of the night after calming all the kids down and getting a good chuckle, it was very much all worth it.

Angry Noble: Do you know who I am?!

Lambert: Someone help this guy——he doesn’t know who he is!

I know it’s different in the books & games but I live and die for the idea that Vesemir is like Mr Shadwell in Good Omens, so when Jaskier first meets him it’s like:

vesemir: ah, so you’re the laddie geralt couldn’t shut up about.

geralt: *blushing furiously* vesemir, please.

jaskier: *proudly* yes, sir witcher, that would be me, julian alfred pankratz at your servi—

vesemir: are you a witch?

jaskier: excuse me?

vesemir: *suspiciously eyeing jaskier* did you ensorcell our geralt?

jaskier: *confused & scandalized* n-no, of course not-

vesemir: how many nipples do you have?

jaskier: WHAT??!

geralt: *buries his face in his hands in the background*

vesemir: *strictly* nipples, laddie, how many?

jaskier: …two?

Thinking about largely nonverbal Geralt, who expresses himself through gestures and facial expressions and non-speech sounds, and who tries so very hard to make himself understood.

Not that anybody listens, because they see the white hair and yellow eyes and they think monster, and they certainly don’t hang around long enough to make the effort to hear what he’s saying.

At least Roach understands him, and she doesn’t mind whether he’s using words or making sounds or just petting her mane. She doesn’t demand that he speaks, and that’s one reason he prefers her company to humans. He figures he’ll never really be able to communicate with them.

Until he meets Jaskier. For all that Jaskier never stops talking, he actually listens remarkably well too. When Geralt hmms unhappily, Jaskier will rethink and backtrack what he’s just said, and when he hmms teasingly, Jaskier will grin. It makes Geralt feel that perhaps he isn’t impossible to understand after all.

When Geralt uses signs, Jaskier watches attentively and talks back to him. When he writes or doodles on scraps of paper, Jaskier sits by him and writes in his own notebook. When he grunts or growls, Jaskier will pause his monologues long enough to say Well of course you’d say that or Don’t start with me or I know, Geralt, but the truth is so much more poetic when it’s embellished.

It’s remarkable, this feeling of being understood. Of not feeling compelled to form words, not having to force himself to grind out vocalizations that feel like sand in his mouth. No obligations, no pressure, no tying himself in knots trying to spit out awkward, stilted speech. For the first time, he’s being heard without words.

And anyway, Jaskier talks enough for both of them.