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Renfri wakes up.
Needless to say, she doesn’t expect this. Dying is a one-time event, no do-overs. Unless you’re into necromancy, but it’s not like that would even work on her anyway, not with her natural resistance to magic.
So she wakes up, lying on the dusty ground, feeling decidedly not-stabbed, which, surprisingly, is the second most startling revelation of the day.
The first most startling revelation of the day is the fact that she’s found herself in the body of a bird, complete with grey feathers, banded with black, and a wickedly sharp beak. A butcherbird, a shrike, which is so ironically, cruelly fitting, Renfri wants to collapse into hysterics.
She doesn’t, because she has much more important things to worry about. There’s to be no afterlife for her, for better or for worse. No peace, either, since she’s clearly been brought back by some greater power—the Black Sun, maybe, or maybe something else, but whatever it is that’s caused her to walk this earth once more, it must have plans.
And she has plans of her own—she still has to find Stregobor and make him pay for what he did.
Renfri gathers herself up, ruffling her feathers to dispel the dust on them, disturbed by the ease with which the motion comes to her. She’s not entirely bird, because she can think, and she still has all her memories from her previous life, but she’s not entirely human, either, because there are undeniably bird-like instincts calling to her every second.
She wills them down with the same determination that carried her through life before. First things first, she needs to get out of this strange place she’s found herself in. It’s a… temple? Must be, judging by the mosaic-tiled floor beneath her, studded with a pattern of a crescent moon, the ancient mark of the goddess Lilvani. The walls have long since crumbled, leaving it exposed to the elements and with a breathtaking ocean view just past the cliffside the temple lies atop of.
She gathers her strength and takes flight, uneasy with how natural it seems, but some small part buried deep inside her rejoices at the freedom that comes with flying. She takes to it like a duck to water, zipping through air currents and dodging the trees that crop up in her way.
She aims for the smoke she can see rising in the distance, signs of a village. From there she can figure out where exactly on the Continent she’s found herself, and where she needs to go next.
Except, as she flies, she feels a tugging in her breastbone, increasing in strength as she gets farther from the temple. She pushes through, even as it turns to pain, until it becomes too much to bear, and she drops like a stone to the ground.
The village is just a few hundred feet away, but as she lies there waiting for the ache to lessen, it might as well be miles away, for all it seems that she can’t reach it. She can just barely hear the sound of daily life—a blacksmith’s hammer striking an anvil, the murmur of voices at market, the huffs and grunts of paddocked animals.
The pain slowly ebbs, but the pull under her breastbone doesn’t. Perhaps it was the ache of muscles unused to exertion? With her shit luck, she doubts it, but she tries again anyway, launching herself into the sky.
The pain returns, doubled. Driven by instinct, she wheels about in the air, heading back towards the temple, and finds that the ache immediately stops.
Testing her theory, she tries to fly away again, only to be stricken again with pain. So it seems as if her new life is tied to the temple—now a prison.
She almost considers trying to flee anyway, but she knows that whatever instincts rule her now, they’ll likely not let her leave either.
She makes it back to the temple just as evening arrives, alighting on a long-forgotten altar. It’s probably sacrilege to perch on, but she’s never been a follower of Lilvani anyway.
As the sun sets, she thinks of the predicament she’s found herself in. Unable to stray too far from the temple, bound to the body of a butcherbird, Destiny’s plaything once more.
The only not-shitty thing about her new life so far is that she hasn’t felt hunger or thirst since waking up several hours ago. Is she still mortal?
She has no idea. She’s not human, but neither is she bird; she’s something in between.
The sun sinks below the horizon, and as it does, she feels something strange happening with her body. The pain in her chest is back, throbbing with every beat of her heart, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.
In the space between one moment and the next, she shifts, a flip-flop of the soul that has her gasping air into her lungs. Her human lungs, her chest rising and falling, revealing a body unmarred by wounds or scars. There’s no sign of where Geralt’s sword pierced her, no sign of death at all.
She still isn’t human. She can tell, can feel the shrike-instincts simmering in her mind, dormant but not forgotten.
She’s heard of curses like this before. Lycanthropy, men who are cursed to become wolves with the rising moon. Her curse—for it must be a curse, what else would be so cruel as to deny her a restful death and bind her to this temple—seems the opposite, only human with the moon and forced into a shrike’s form during the day.
And she can’t even fully take advantage of the freedom of a human form, because sleep is pulling irresistibly at her heavy eyelids. Her flight took a lot of energy, the pain even more, and now, she curls up atop the altar and falls straight into a dreamless sleep.
Months pass. Every day, Renfri tries to snap her tether and reach the village, and every day she fails. She spends her nights sleeping off the pain of her tether drawing tight, but even that only lasts for so many hours before she’s recovered. She spends the few hours before dawn pacing around the temple and surrounding forest like an animal in a cage. Or an animal leashed.
And then one day, after she’s left her bird body behind with the setting sun, a mage strolls into the temple.
Renfri’s first instinct is to go on the offensive, attack with weapons first and questions second, but she has no weapons. This mage is no backwater hedgewitch, either, by the looks of her; she stand proud and elegant as she takes in the temple, hands upon her hips.
So Renfri follows her second instinct, and hides, lest the mage lay eyes on her and want to investigate and experiment (like Stregobor, always so intrusive, always prying, never giving her a moment’s peace.)
Renfri hides, and watches from behind a crumbling wall as the mage strides in like she owns the place and begins setting up. First she summons furniture—Lilit knows from where—tables and shelves and chairs and a bed, all covered underneath a canvas canopy that the mage drapes over the temple, shelter from the elements.
After furniture comes a wide array of magical objects—herbs and ingredients to stock the shelves, an alchemical cauldron, jars and bottles and vials of strange substances. The mage is making the temple into a workshop, it seems.
Renfri abruptly goes cold with anger. How dare she? How dare she march in here and take over? This temple is currently occupied (albeit unwillingly), and whoever she is, the mage has no right.
It’s probably a bad idea, but Renfri, incensed with the audacity, screeches and flies towards the mage, talons extended.
The mage doesn’t see her coming, and Renfri scores two lines across her cheek before the mage freezes her in place with a spell. “What the fuck,” she curses, violet eyes alight with pain and fury, morphing into bewilderment when she sees a shrike suspended in the air, talons dripping with blood.
Renfri wishes she had teeth to bare. As it is, she settles for staring daggers, straining against the mage’s hold with every ounce of her strength. “Little bird,” the mage coos, though it sounds anything but affectionate—every syllable is laced with danger and intrigue. “What’s a predator like you doing in this dusty old place?”
The mage’s hold on her lifts, and though Renfri wants to attack again, the way the mage is inspecting her makes her heart beat hard, makes panic flood her veins. If this mage finds out what she is…
So Renfri flees, darting away into the treetops, where she stays huddled while the mage makes herself at home in the temple. She stays away until nightfall, despite the tether tugging at her throughout the day, and only sneaks back into the temple under cover of nightfall, when the mage is asleep.
She doesn’t look quite so scary lying in her doublewide bed amidst plush pillows. Her dark hair spills across the pillow like a blot of ink, thick and soft. The bird inside of Renfri wants to make a nest in there, and she annoyedly shakes the thought off. No, she needs to find out all she can about the mage while she’s asleep.
And she definitely, definitely can’t get caught.
Light on her feet, Renfri snoops around the workshop, taking note of the most interesting things, and avoiding the most dangerous-looking. On top of a desk, she finds an unsent letter, addressed to someone named Tissaia, and signed by Yennefer of Vengerberg.
Yennefer. Renfri mouths the name and moves on, but there’s nothing to indicate her purpose here in the temple, why she chose to set up a workshop here, what she’s doing with the myriad magical accessories littered around.
With no further leads, Renfri creeps closer to the bed, and just watches for a minute. Yennefer really is beautiful—the kind of beauty that comes synthetically out of Aretuza, save for the scars that Renfri can spy on her wrists, silvery in the moonlight.
Renfri suddenly, deeply understands. Yennefer is like her—there’s a darkness in her past that drove her to such ends, ends that Renfri herself considered more than once. The only reason she hadn’t followed through is because she had wanted Stregobor’s head on a pike more.
She has to know more. She has to know about Yennefer, a sorceress of Aretuza, with scars on her wrists, who has the determination to move an entire workshop to the middle of nowhere in a decaying temple. But she’ll get no more chance tonight, because Yennefer shifts just the slightest bit, and Renfri is gone with nary a whisper of wind before Yennefer can even open her eyes.
It takes her days of deliberation and talking herself up and down and in and out of it, but Renfri finally shows herself to Yennefer.
Not her human form—she’s feeling too vulnerable for that. But her shrike form should be safe, as long as she doesn’t get too close. She perches on the altar, the one place that Yennefer hasn’t commandeered, and watches with beady eyes as the mage flits about the workshop, alternating between flipping pages of massive tomes and stirring something bubbling over a fire.
It’s less boring than trying to escape the temple, actually, and Renfri finds herself absorbed in watching Yennefer work, trying to decipher what she’s doing. Although, she has no doubt that Yennefer is watching her right back, albeit discreetly.
Yennefer talks to herself as she works, occasionally scrubbing a hand through her hair, though it only serves to make it more artfully curled. A few days into their mutual observation of each other, Yennefer mutters something about needing rowan berries.
There’s a bush not far from here—though it’s rather high up a cliffside, and Renfri only knows because she passes it regularly during her flights.
Whatever it is Yennefer needs the rowan berries for, it must be crucial, because all alchemical work stops for the day as Yennefer sorts through her ingredients.
It takes forever, and Renfri grows bored enough that she considers just going to get some herself. But an all-mighty mage doesn’t need her to run errands. If she needs them so bad, she can get them her damn self.
Renfri lasts ten minutes before she sighs and takes wing, returning a short while later with a beak full of berries that she drops on the table in front of Yennefer.
“Oh,” Yennefer says, eyebrows lifting. But she makes no further comment besides, “Thank you.”
Renfri doesn’t linger, returning to her perch, though she sits a bit closer, this time.
After that, Yennefer makes an effort to include Renfri in her research. She explains what she’s doing as she goes—apparently she came to the Temple of Lilvani because there was a truly staggering amount of Chaos lingering in the air, waiting to be harnessed. Renfri doesn’t claim to know anything about that, but she supposes it makes sense; whether it’s because of her resurrection and presence or not, she can’t say.
But Renfri finds herself learning a lot, instructed by Yennefer’s dry voice; she also learns that Yennefer has a quick wit and a cutting tongue, though she’s not sparing with praise, even if it is laconic.
Slowly, Renfri lowers her guard, until she feels safe enough to draw closer, secure in the knowledge that Yennefer won’t try and trap her, won’t poke and prod. She asks questions, though she doesn’t expect Renfri to answer, clearly.
They fall into a comfortable rhythm, though Renfri still spends her nights away, unwilling now to be seen not out of fear of capture, but fear of rejection, fear of Yennefer finding out that she’s been lied to for weeks.
She has no desire to cross with an angry mage, no matter how soft her hair looks, how gentle her hands must feel.
One day, Yennefer is in the process of brewing a draught that’s supposed to help the consumer attune to ley lines, which have more Chaos attracted to them. Or something like that. Renfri fetches the ingredients before Yennefer even has to think, proud in the knowledge that she’s picked up enough to be able to seamlessly integrate herself into the process.
“You’re like a little familiar,” Yennefer murmurs, as Renfri drops a yew branch beside her. “Aren’t you?”
Renfri bristles. She’s no one’s slave, no dumb beast bound in service to a cruel mage, and if that’s what Yennefer thinks of her, well, she can just fuck off.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” Yennefer assures Renfri, when she gathers herself to take off. “Familiars aren’t servants anymore—that notion was spread by the Church of the Eternal Fire decades ago, and we mages haven’t been able to shake the concept since. No, a proper familiar is a partner in every way, sharing in power and trust equally. It’s a relationship built on mutual respect.”
Despite her suspicions, Renfri finds herself soothed by Yennefer’s words. Of course Yennefer doesn’t see her as a servant—Renfri has no doubts that Yennefer knows well the way expectations can weigh on a person. Her ruffled feathers smooth over, helped by the cautious but unhesitant finger that Yennefer strokes once down her back.
Renfri misses her touch like she misses air when it’s gone, so deprived is she of human contact.
That night, Renfri makes a decision. She’ll show Yennefer what she truly is, neither bird nor woman, neither dead nor alive. She waits for the moon to rise high in the sky before she returns to the temple, making loud her footsteps against the tiled floor.
Yennefer, who isn’t quite in bed yet, stands as soon as she hears. “Who’s there?” she demands.
Renfri steps into the workshop, every inch of her body rigid with tension. “Yennefer,” she greets, voice rough from months of disuse.
“How did you get here?” Yennefer asks, violet magic beginning to spark at her fingertips.
“I’ve always been here,” Renfri answers, nervous energy thrumming under her skin. “It’s me.”
“You’re the shrike,” Yennefer surmises, magic dimming with realization. “Little familiar.”
“Renfri,” Renfri corrects her, though little familiar doesn’t feel like the chains it once did. “I’ve been cursed. I’m human only at night, and the rest of the time I’m forced into the shape of a bird.”
“Cursed,” Yennefer murmurs. “Well, little bird, I can break your curse.”
Renfri’s eyes narrow. “So easily? How?” She doesn’t dare to hope, but something still flutters bright in her chest at Yennefer’s words.
“You won’t like it,” Yennefer warns. “The easiest way is for me to perform a binding ceremony. I’d need to bind you to someone or something to stabilize the Chaos surrounding you.”
Yennefer is right; Renfri doesn’t like the sound of that.
“I can, of course, look into alternatives, but this method is the most straightforward and the most guaranteed to work,” Yennefer continues.
“A binding,” Renfri curses, shaking her head. “Sounds like a fancy way of saying imprisonment to me.”
“Not necessarily.” Yennefer tilts her head. “Remember what I said about familiars?”
A partner in every way, sharing in power and trust equally. A relationship built on mutual respect.
“You want to make me your familiar,” Renfri guesses. “How do I know that you weren’t lying? That I won’t become a mindless, bound beast?” Even as she says it, she knows she doesn’t believe it. But she can’t let herself hope, her soul too gnarled and twisted by cynicism.
“I had no idea what you were before now,” Yennefer explains coolly. “I had my suspicions, but I was wrong.”
Yennefer, admitting wrongness? Renfri has to make sure she’s still the same mage that marched into the temple all those weeks ago. But that sliver of hope is still beating against her breast, fighting for freedom. “And what if I change my mind?” she asks.
“The familiar-mage relationship can be dissolved at any time, with no ill bearing on either of the partners,” Yennefer recites. “But, should you choose to stay, you would reap significant benefits. Access to my Chaos, the ability to choose your form. A partnership…” Yennefer moves closer, closer to where Renfri is frozen with hope. “A relationship.”
It surprises her, how badly she wants it. Wants Yennefer, her determination and hidden kindness, her knowledge and the expertise with which she wields her magic.
“Yes,” she blurts out, the word strangling her on the way out. “Yes, do it.”
Yennefer smiles, the moonlight glinting off her perfect teeth, and takes Renfri by the hand, her touch burning everywhere their skin touches. Renfri grips her hand back, a lifeline to pull her out of this half-there hell.
Yennefer gathers up spare rowan branches before dragging her out of the temple and into the forest. The familiar pull behind her breast is still there, but focused as she is on Yennefer setting up the ritual, she hardly even notices.
Yennefer casts out her hands and gestures with a sharp twist, and entire branches come crashing down from the trees, arranging themselves into a pile. She sets it alight with a flick of her wrist, and the bonfire bursts into flame, throwing sharp shadows out around them.
Renfri stands in awe of the display of power, seeing passion in Yennefer’s every movement. Meanwhile, Yennefer takes the rowan branches and deftly twists them into garlands with skillful hands practiced at it. A skill learned at Aretuza, or something from a childhood spent making flower crowns, Renfri wonders? And, she realizes, she’ll have many the opportunity to find out, once the binding is complete.
“I, Yennefer of Vengerberg, take you, Renfri, to be my familiar, to hold in respect from this day forward, to trust in you as you trust in me, to share in our fortunes and misfortunes as we will equally,” Yennefer intones. “I share myself with you.” She places the garland atop Renfri’s head, and a surge of warmth fills her.
Yennefer holds the other garland out to Renfri, and somehow, she knows what to do. “I, Renfri of Creyden, take you, Yennefer, to be my sorceress, to hold in respect from this day forward, to trust in you as you trust in me, to share our fortunes and misfortunes as we will equally. I share myself with you,” she recites, and places the garland atop Yennefer’s head, and, feeling a bit giddy, leans forward afterward to place a soft kiss on Yennefer’s cheek.
Yennefer looks stunned, her lips parted slightly, her eyes wide. She overcomes her shock quickly, however, and, cupping Renfri’s chin gently with one hand, kisses her back, soft, and yet with fire that Renfri has come to expect from her. Her body warms even further, fizzing with energy, and as the kiss ends, she steps back to see that Yennefer is glowing.
Renfri looks down and sees that she too is glowing, and her legs are suddenly weak, her heart beating fast-fast-fast for one moment and then calming. The pain in her chest, her tether to the Temple of Lilvani, breaks, snapping like a whip, and then suddenly she can feel Yennefer everywhere, can feel her thoughts and her emotions and YenneferYenneferYennefer is filling her up so completely—
Renfri, overwhelmed with it all, collapses, but Yennefer is there to catch her and lower her gently to rest in her lap. Renfri closes her eyes and breathes through it, feeling out their new bond, while Yennefer combs her fingers through her hair. It’s the best thing she’s ever felt, and she suddenly needs a break from it all.
She doesn’t even think before shifting, a transition so natural it’s easier than breathing. Her shrike form huddles in Yennefer’s lap, feathers ruffling and unruffling as she calms.
Yennefer has been murmuring things to her the whole time, Renfri realizes, but it’s not platitudes or small comforts—it’s the same way she would talk before Renfri revealed herself, mostly to herself but with room for Renfri, wit and wonder at the world in every sentence.
Renfri shifts back to human—again, easier than breathing, and just looks up at Yennefer in awe for a moment. “How was I so lucky?” she asks, more rhetorical than anything.
Yennefer smiles, and Renfri smiles back, and she knows, with utter certainty, that she’ll be staying with Yennefer for the rest of their lives.