@ferrific you inspired me!
Geralt’s first impression of Jaskier’s youngest sister–Jolana, who goes by “Jola” and enforces the preference with a low whine uncannily like her older brother’s when he doesn’t comply–is that she’s like a miniature of the bard: same blue eyes, same color hair, same nose, same cheekbones. The only difference is their height, but he’s already heard from Jaskier at some point in their long years of knowing each other that his family tends to shoot up in height later, so it’s possible she’ll one day be similar to her brother in that respect as well.
For now, it’s simply mildly disconcerting to see a face so similar to Jaskier’s so far below where he’s used to seeing it.
“Does Julek know how to make fire?”
He looks up at Jola’s voice and finds the girl keenly observing him, curled into a crouch, chin on her knees, while she watches him work. She’s been mildly chatty since he collected her from Lettenhove to escort her to Oxenfurt–a favor Jaskier called in after being pulled away for a performance he “would simply die, Geralt” if he couldn’t attend–and most of her questions have centered around her brother, whom she seems to look up to in a horrible display of judgment.
“Badly,” he tells her, and she giggles.
She watches him with such intensity that he fumbles the rabbits as he spits them, and he’s so wound up that he jumps when he hears rustling in the trees around the camp. Jola, eyes widening, stutters to silence when she sees him sit up, alert, and begin looking around.
“What is-” She starts, before he silences her with a firm swipe of his hand.
“Stay here,” he tells her, standing in one fluid motion and collecting his sword, propped against a log.
The direction is more formality than anything else, given that he knows already how well Pankratzes listen to instructions, but perhaps she’ll at least hesitate long enough before disobeying to keep her safely back from danger. A shift in the wind tells him it’s a wolf stalking their campsite, and if it’s bold enough to get this close, it’s not a threat he can leave unaddressed.
He keeps a third of his attention behind him as he progresses, frowning when he doesn’t hear footsteps at his heels, the clumsy noises of someone unused to the woods trying to be quiet in them. He growls under his breath when he continues to hear nothing. Jola must be trying to go around at another angle in an attempt at getting a look at what’s going on, the same way Ciri does when he tells her to stay back.
He speeds up, jaw tense, now on a time crunch to take care of the threat before he has to explain to Jaskier why he’s down a sibling.
In the end, the wolf is a relatively easy kill. It’s a scrappy young male, likely newly driven from his pack and hungry as a result. He thinks about letting it go free, but when it sees him, it bares its teeth and approaches, afraid but willing to attack. It gets in one lunge before he takes it down with a single swipe of his blade, and he says a quiet apology before he leaves it behind. He considers skinning it to make a present of its pelt for Jaskier, but the fur is too patchy to be worth the bother.
Besides, he has a teenager to find.
He walks a wide circle around the camp, unease increasing with each step that doesn’t bring him the scent of citrus soap and Jola’s perfume. When he’s completed his rotation with no trace of the girl, he curses and sets a light jog back. Maybe she twisted her ankle on a root trying to track him down. Jaskier used to do the same thing all the time in their early days, before Geralt made him start practicing walking in the woods by hiding his lute in random trees.
When he arrives back at camp, he stops in his tracks.
Jola looks up at him with a sharp inhale of surprise when he appears.
She’s right where he left her.
“Did you…” He trails off, and she quirks her head like a puppy.
“Did you…stay here?” He looks down to her boots, expecting to see mud or grass blades, but no. She’s still in the soft little embroidered slippers she’d changed into when they made camp.
“You told me to,” she says like a question, fidgeting with her fingers nervously. “Was I…Was I not supposed to?”
“You stayed,” he says flatly. He inhales, trying to scent any evidence of magic or replacement by a doppler, but no. There’s only the same Jola-scent, similar enough to Jaskier’s to link them as relatives. “I told you to stay, and you listened.”
“Yes? You said to…stay?” She says, with a little squeak on the last word like she’s afraid she’s misunderstood.
“I told you to stay,” Geralt says, one hand moving to brace on one hip and the other resting on his sword, point-down by his feet, “and you stayed.”
“Yes?” She offers, like she’s been asked a question by a tutor. “Are you…are you mad about it?”
No, he’s just damned confused about it.
To say nothing of her brother, Ciri, Yen, the younger Wolves he took on training trips, fucking Lambert…no one listens to him. He’s developed a talent for detecting shadows after giving orders to stay behind. The orders themselves are nearly superstition at this point given that they’re never heeded.
The girl is looking increasingly nervous, and he sees the first glimmer of tears in her eyes, jolting him out of his own head.
“Good job,” he manages in an attempt at heading off the crying.
She perks up a bit at the praise.
“Good…listening,” he finishes awkwardly, and she snorts at that.
“I could not listen if it would make you feel better. Does Julek-”
“Your brother always listens,” he lies immediately. Better to capitalize on this unexpected opportunity while he can. “I didn’t know if you would take after him or not.”
And if she doesn’t, well.
He just needs her to believe him long enough to get to Oxenfurt.
