Chapter Text
Jaskier was raised to be a noble. A Visicount in Lettenhove who had high expectations for him since he was young. His father a hunter and politician had wanted his son to be just like him, but ever since a young age he had learned to disappoint the man. His mother, a woman of taste and who held herself to a certain standard and had raised Jaskier the same way. A love for finer things was one thing he did gain from her, but it seems thats where it ends with his parents.
Despite all that, he never felt particularly close with his parents. He enjoyed the out doors, often sneaking out with the stable boys and getting into mischief. Climbing trees and mountains, stealing horses, and most memorably practicing the games the boys had seen men in the tavern play. He found hunting boring and would often pick up sticks and smacking them against hollow logs and making sounds. He loved music and did not care for hunting and what that entailed.
His mother tried to understand him more than he tried to get along with his father. He cared more for a fighter and not the obvious lover Jaskier grew up to be. Often yelling and ruling over his life with an iron fist. But his poor sweet mother would purse her lips but still she begged to his father to give him the music. And he did. Jaskier began to thrive and music started to unlock parts of him he'd long for in only his dreams.
He started with a simple piccolo. A wood wind instrument that was tiny and light. When he first started playing something tugged in his mind. Light and warm. A sky vast above and two warm bodies cuddled in close beside him. The melodies twisted memories in his mind of things he can't quite remember. He began to perfect the piccolo and learned many songs he would play for his friends before he craved for more. He needed to get that fill he got when he first played the piccolo.
His mother suggested the harp, and since she convinced his father into letting him practice the art of music he agreed. He began to play but that high and blissful almost memories never arised. He felt dread as he played. Jaskier could only think of when his mother gave him the locket with her in it as he plucked the chords. He just played for her and when she would have guests over they wanted to hear him play for them. And he would play and play for them. He never liked the harp.
He quickly moved on to several different instruments. He ran out of patience with the clavichord, he danced with friends as he played the lyre, annoyed his father with the citole, laughed at the psaltery for its awful name, and enjoyed playing the flute and finally when he was out at the market one day a woman was selling ocarinas. He had never seen instruments like that but she showed him quite an assortment. His eye kept catching on one that looked like a tooth from a giant beast and his young teenage heart yearned for adventure. The lady sold him a gemshorn. He did not know how to play it but vowed to learn. He was supposed to buy something for his father so he quickly hid his treat and set back on his way.
On a night where his father was screaming enough to rival that of a banshee, Jaskier found himself in the branches in one of the tallest trees near his home. As he looked at the leaves that spread out across the land like grass in the night light, he felt a familiar sense of incongruous. He always felt like the odd one out within his family. He could play the politics, charm the old ladies and mothers, gloat about himself to fathers and still be the same old Jaskier. But he didn't look like his father, nor did he unconditionally love his mother as his friends had told him about. He wanted to, he wanted to love his mother as she was nothing but kind to him. And yet, something keeps him from doing so.
Left alone in the woods and hurt, he pulled out the gemshorn and blew for the first time. A pull in his heart, his soul, dragged tears to his eyes as a melody left his lips. Words filling his head of a voice he's only heard in a dream.
A sweet voice singing to him, but he can't make out the words. He tries so hard to hold onto the melody. To hold onto the memory but its gone. And he is left staring at the moon as grief takes him and he resigns himself with going home.
He was just about to leave to Oxenfurt when one of the servant girls he had been flirting with came up to him with bright green eyes. She smiled at him with adoration and mischief and asked if he wanted to learn how to play a bassoon. He felt bad for laughing in her face but in all honesty, he thought it was a joke. She took his arm and showed him the instrument her father would play and it would remind him of the one men in skirts often played. She demonstrated keys and showed him where to place his hands. He boastfully assured her he could learn any instrument in minutes. And so just like the piccolo, and just like the gemshorn he blew into the mouth piece and a part of him awakened.
The same familiar feeling of the sky and winds overtook him but instead of the childlike wonder the previous melodies awoke in him this one was grief. A song of woe and sadness filled his heart. His own head confused by the words he heard, but it was clearer than the previous songs. And finally, a dream that could have been a memory gave him words.
'Twas hard the woeful words to frame to break the ties that bound us
But harder still to bear the shame of foreign chains around us
And so I said, "The mountain glen I'll seek at morning early
And join the bold united men, while soft winds shake the barley"
-The Wind that Shakes the Barley by Tommy Maken