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Margaret – Mollie – Elisabeth Pankratz and Julian – Jaskier – Alfred Pankratz are born five minutes apart one sunny summer day in a rich county in upper Redania called Lettenhove. The Count and the Countess of Lettenhove are exhausted by the prolonged birth of their twin children, rocking the soon to be menaces on their arms to cease them from crying.
They smile to themselves when sleep finally embraces the newborns and vow to one another to always love and care for their children.
Now, this is all fine and dandy; twin babies born in summer, in a good family that cares for them and loves them unconditionally. But the Count and Countess of Lettenhove for all their good qualities are only human and when Mollie first and Jaskier next transform into a pair of puppies at the tender age of two, they are rightfully unnerved.
“Oh, no,” says the countess to her beloved husband, “The children seem to have inherited your mother’s abilities, love.”
“It seems so,” the Count agrees. “Well, we’ll manage won’t we dear? We’ll just have to follow the journal containing instructions, for this situation, mother left us.”
And that’s what they do.
With the late grandmother Pankratz’s help the children grow up to be relatively fine. Relatively because both of them have the ability to find themselves into precarious and quite life-threatening situations; once the Countess catches four-year-old Jaskier turning into a wee hummingbird trying to jump off the balustrade of the balcony of his room because “ birdy is so pretty when it flies I wanted to be pretty too. ”
In any case, time flies, and the little menaces are about ten year old now and their parents trust them not to leave the grounds of the estate by themselves transformed in whatever animal catches their fancy that day.
In retrospect, Count and Countess Pankratz should have kept an eye to the troublemakers. Really, they should have known better than to trust Mollie and Jaskier Pankratz who once turned into itty-bitty flies and flew around the whole manor for a whole day, annoying the hell out of the servants, who luckily did not immediately get out the fly swats.
Of course, the children promised then – after they saw their parents crying, mourning – to only transform into bigger animals like dogs or cats or horses. Certainly not to any of the flying sort; that was explicitly forbidden after the incident.
It’s snowing outside, the whole world painted in fluffy white snow and Mollie is reading a thick book that’s said to contain all animals known to man in the whole wide world.
“What are you reading there sis?” Jaskier leans onto the desk, almost crushing the wind pipe his mum got him (in an attempt to keep him preoccupied with something that isn’t shape shifting) and which he has been practising the past two hours or so.
“Just research, you know,” she dramatically flips her hair with a hand.
“Got anything good?”
“Mmmm… I think so,” she says, flipping through the thick pages, “Look!,” she points at a well-drawn picture of a snow leopard.
“It seems to be within the rules,” Jaskier hums, “Wanna go out in the snow and play?”
“Is it though? Within the rules?”
“Well, these snow leopards are technically big cats, aren’t they? Certainly look the part,” he grins.
And with this they race outside, giggling excited about their new potential fun transformations.
It’s difficult, sometimes, to guess the form of a real world animal from drawn pictures but both Mollie and Jaskier think they did pretty well this time, proud of their skills, as they mew and yowl and scratch each other in the thick snow.
It’s a terribly fun activity, chasing one another in the vast grounds of their home, rolling in the snow and destroying the (accidentally, always) frozen plants of their garden. It’s so fun that they don’t notice the wind picking up, the snowstorm looming above them.
When the snow falls plenty and fast – fast enough so the two snow leopard cubs can’t recognise their surroundings – they get scared.
They are ten years old, they aren’t babies but they aren’t grown either and thus they do what children do and they wander aimlessly, in a state of full panic, trying to find the road to their family house.
Which of course, only serves on making them more lost – if that’s even possible. Somehow, they find themselves in the small forest outside the town of Lettenhove, or at least they think they are there. Two miles away from their home, away from the warmth a hearth provides, they shiver and cry hoping for their parents to hear them and find them.
“Maybe we should turn back to being human,” Jaskier suggests between cries – yowls, really.
“Don’t be stupid, we’ll freeze to death,” Mollie admonishes.
“I’m scared, Mollie.”
“Me too, Jasky.”
Unbeknownst to the children, another is lost in that very same little forest. Technically, Aiden, the witcher of the school of the Cat, would say that he is not lost, as so much as the caravan that was supposed to pick him up in northern Redania is the one that’s lost.
Aiden is in a foul mood, and rightly so. He should have guessed that the caravan would avoid this particular area at this time of the year, as it is prone to heavy snowfalls and blizzards.
In any case, the witcher knows that if he’s to survive this winter he’ll have to find shelter soon. If his mental map is not completely off, there’s a moderately big town up ahead.
He hears them before he sees them; kittens crying. No, not kittens but something close.
The Cat stalks forward, as silent as the raging snowstorm allows him too (very silent) as to avoid spooking the poor animals. And there they are! Between tall trees and snowy ground two young snow leopards are walking close together, skittish and scared the poor things.
Before Aiden can think how exactly two very rare and definitely not native to the area animals are in cattle-does-and-rabbits northern Redania, one of the cubs locks eyes with him and says in an unmistakable Redanian accent: “Thank Melitele, we’re saved, Mollie,” before it – he – turns into a boy close at ten years old.
“Wh-what?” Aiden stutters, shocked beyond comprehension at the sight before him.
“You’re a witcher sir, correct?” the second snow leopard cub says, transforming into a young girl.
“That I am,” the Cat witcher says to the shapeshifter children.
“Can you help us go back to our family sir witcher?” the boy asks, chattering his teeth, “I’m afraid my sister and I got lost.”
“We can assure you, sir witcher,” the girl intervenes, “that our parents will reward you well upon our safe return.”
The witcher hums amused. He has no illusions that the children’s parents will agree to let him spend the winter at their estate – it’s abundantly clear the little shapeshifters come from a wealthy family – but at the very least their coin will help him hide at an inn or barn for rent, safe from the harsh elements of the season.
“Of course,” Aiden says, mirroring the smiles of the kids. “Follow me, I’m ninety-percent sure that’s the way out of the woods.”
The Count and Countess of Lettenhove, to the witcher and the children’s surprise offer to let Aiden stay at the servants’ lodgings for the entirety of the winter, asking from him – with monetary compensation of course – to teach to their little trouble makers a bit of self defense among other vital survival skills.
See, they would rather their lovely children know how to survive in the wild than finding them – Well, that is an awfully depressing thought isn’t it?
The matter at hand is, that it all ended up better than anyone had anticipated, and that counts as a win, no?
-
“Remember when Aiden found us wandering in the woods, Jaskier?”
“Shut up Mollie, horses aren’t supposed to talk. What if Geralt comes back and hears his beloved Roach talk the human tongue? What then, huh?”
Mollie – Roach – whinnies, “Stop being a worrywart, he hasn’t found out our little secret ten years now. Anyway, what do you think Aiden does now? Haven’t seen him in a while.”
“I’ll ask Geralt.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Why, dearest sister? Afraid your little gig will go up in flames if and when we inevitably stumble upon our dearest instructor?”
“Shut up, Jaskier.”