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Shit, they have been here before, haven't they? This looks awfully familiar, the tall, gnarly ash tree by the overgrown cut-off meander, the old sheep shed, and there it is, the place where they sat around the camp fire. Fuck, have they gone in circles all day?
"Is it just me, or does this place look kind of familiar?" Jaskier asks, voicing what everybody is thinking. "Are we lost, Geralt?"
"Hmm." Geralt gazes at the grey, cloud-covered evening sky. No star can be seen. "Fuck this goddamn weather," he grumbles.
"Told you to stick to the river, but no, only 'cause Cahir agreed with me, you had to take the other route. See where we ended up because of your stubbornness, Witcher!" Milva chides. "And, of course, it's the weather's fault."
"It was a shortcut! Could I foresee a mud slide and fallen trees would bar it?" Geralt mutters morosely. The archer has a point though, the fact that the Nilfgaardian supported her idea perhaps did influence his choice of direction. "Next time, you decide. Then we'll see how lost you two'll get us."
"Hardly more lost than this," Cahir huffs.
"I've never been lost in my life!" Milva protests.
"Ah, what about the 'I've been lost before, Eithné says I still am' thingy?" Jaskier says, doing a pretty good imitation of the archer's tone of voice. "Didn't you say exactly this after Geralt killed all those assbutt Nilfgaardians?"
"I didn't mean lost in the woods, and you know it, bard!" the archer hisses angrily. "But you, you couldn't even find your arse with both hands, not if the world depended on it!"
"What? I couldn't what?" Jaskier splutters. "That's the most infamous—"
"Wait, friends, wait, let's not blow this out of proportion," Regis placates. "We got lost and lost a day, yes, it is a pity. Yet, it will hardly matter in the end. Why not have a nice cup of tea together before the inevitable downpour starts? There's plenty of wood here, and the shed will provide shelter from the rain. We can warm yesterday's meat over the fire, too, and, I believe, we still have some bread and butter. Things could be worse, couldn't they?"
Right, things could be worse. They could be dead, for example, or buried in that mud slide. But they aren't. And tomorrow they will get un-lost again and continue their search for Ciri, Geralt's lost daughter. Together, the bard, the Witcher, the archer, the higher-vampire-barber-surgeon and the alleged non-Nilfgaardian. Even if, sometimes, they growl at each other and get into a fight.
As long as they have each other's backs, they will never get truly lost.