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The night is warm and pleasant in this part of the Pangaea. Three dinosaurs of different species —a Parasaurolophus donning quite the impressive crest if he’s to say so himself, a Quetzalcoatlus with brilliant lilac plumage and a heavily scared Triceratops— are laying side by side, listening to the gentle rustling of the trees swaying in the low breeze.
An unusual sight they make, the three of them. They’re quite aware that this… interspecies relationship they have with one another isn’t well received in their respective communities, but they don’t care.
Jaskier, Yennefer and Geralt love each other so much, not the entire Earth rupturing in two will be able to split them. Certainly, a few bigoted dinosaurs won’t even come close to such a phenomenon and as such, they pose absolutely no danger to the trio.
Jaskier nuzzles closer, chirping content, at the prehistoric beauty of his Geralt, his Triceratops, who in turn grunts and huffs softly. Yennefer, at the Parasaurolophus’ other side, scratches his blue-green back, her soft feathers tickling his scaly skin.
Honestly, Jaskier could stay locked at this moment forever. With his two grand loves at each of his sides, feeling the breeze on his skin and watching the starry sky.
He absently wonders, what those stars are, except for exceptionally pretty lights that appear at night. Are they gods that shine upon them? Are they fireflies buzzing so high above that it’s impossible to reach them?
-
“Jaskier,” Ciri huffs, rubbing her cold hands together in a futile attempt to win against the ever-present cold draft of Kaer Morhen.
“What is it, princess?”
“Your story… You said it was going to be something that really happened, and yet you’re talking about sentient dinosaurs with your, papa and mama’s names!”
“And who’s to say it isn’t true?” Jaskier gasps offended.
Geralt, without looking up from cutting a head of cabbage into thin slices, snorts a laugh and shakes his head in amusement.
“Betrayal!”
Yennefer stirs the stew in the cauldron lazily, looks up, and says, “Let him continue duckling. There’s no doubt it’s utter horseshit he came up with but at least it’s more interesting than his last attempt at a novel.”
“You just like that he made you a purple-winged mega-bird, Yen,” Geralt comments before Jaskier has the chance to release a string of yelps and offended shrieks.
She shrugs and returns to stirring the soup.
“Well, if that’s all I shall continue with my very true and actually happened story!”
-
Where was he? Ah, yes, the wonder of the starry sky! They’re exceptionally mesmerising this night, bright and pulsating, even larger than the countless nights before this one. What a marvel, that is life and living!
The Quetzalcoatlus cranes her long neck in a quizzical manner, which draws the attention of the two large herbivore dinosaurs.
“What is it, Yen?” asks the Triceratops in his low rough voice-
-
“Oh come the fuck on, bard! Dinosaurs can’t talk!” Yennefer throws her hands in the air annoyed. Now, why this particular little tidbit messed with her so much Jaskier can’t even begin to guess.
That’s why in a true bardic fashion he shrieks in indignation. “And how do you know, witch? Are your memories, perhaps, intact and you can refute mine just. Like. This?”
“What do you mean by memories, Jaskier?” Ciri asks, her brow furrowed in confusion. Gods, that’s why he didn’t want to share this story but… well, he supposes it was well overdue.
“ It’ll all be clear at the end of the story,” he responds calmly. Please, for the love of Melitele and the vast strange universe, let me talk for five minutes uninterrupted, he doesn’t say.
“Alright, fine, fine!” Yennefer grunts out and Jaskier catches Geralt snickering at the edge of his vision.
Good Gods, those two will be the end of him.
-
“What is it, Yen?” asks the Triceratops in his low rough voice, shifting his weight to get up from where he was lying at the side of the Parasaurolophus.
“Can’t you feel it?” she meets his lizardy gaze.
Jaskier joins his two loves and sits up himself, bipedal, neck tilted up to look at whatever has Yennefer so agitated.
He feels it too. The bubbling boiling instinctual dread churning his stomach that something is very very wrong. “The stars,” he remarks, “is it just me or are they getting larger and larger by the second?”
“It’s not just you,” Yennefer replies, stretching her wing over the other two dinosaurs.
“Ah, fuck,” Geralt squints at the sky and scuttles closer to Jaskier.
“Ah, fuck indeed.”
The stars are moving rapidly now, large and fiery, with long tails extending to the sky, in all directions. The night sky is no longer dark and blue and deep and mysterious. Instead, it has lighted up, brighter than the most brilliant summer day as the flaming orbs come closer to the surface of Pangaea.
“This is the end, isn't it?" Yennefer chirps mirthlessly.
"At least if we go—" Jaskier starts saying but Geralt interrupts him.
" When. When we go."
"Yes, fine, yes, when we go we go together, loves."
Wow, the stars are humongous.
"Let's find each other after this," Yennefer says, her voice barely a whisper, the fires closing in, hot huge flaming rocks a breath away from them.
"Promise—"
They don't get to feel the impact.
-
"Jaskier— and I cannot stress this enough— what the everloving fuck was that?" Yennefer drops the ladle in the stew and crosses the room to loom over Jaskier’s head.
“I already told you, Yenny! It’s memories! My memories!”
“The fuck they are! I haven’t heard a more blatant lie coming from your stinky mouth in quite some time.”
Geralt clears his throat and speaks up: “I don’t think he’s lying Yen. Doesn’t sound like it. His heartbeat and breathing are as steady as ever.”
“Bullshit.”
“Ugh fine!” Jaskier shoots up, almost headbutting his darling, unbelieving, witch in the process. “I can explain properly, I promise!”
Ciri blinks at him. “How?”
“It’s fairly easy,” he says matter-of-factly, “I’m immortal. Possibly a side effect of the meteorite,”-- he gestures abstractly— “Yennefer and Geralt have been reincarnated many times since our first life together in Pangaea and we’ve always found each other again and- Voila! That’s it really.”
“You can’t be seriously expecting us to believe this nonsense,” Yennefer rolls her eyes and click her tongue. In every life, she’s the same, good Gods.
“Still not lying, Yen,” Geralt remarks, “Though I’m starting to believe he’s feverish.”
“ Immortal, yeah right, ” Yennefer snorts derisively.
“Immortal dinosaur, yep! And definitely not feverish! But I see neither of you believes me —yet again— and I’ll have to shapeshift in my original form inside the kitchen. Here’s to hoping Vesemir won’t skin me alive for ruining his keep.”
He mentally prepares himself for the shift. It’s been several hundred years since the last time he had to shift and as far as he remembers it’s a rather unpleasant experience.
“Let’s take this to the courtyard,” Geralt suggests. Well, yeah, he’s got to admit shifting out there makes a lot more sense. Though it is rather cold this far in the winter and he’s not fond of freezing his scales off. He nods curtly and leads the way mentally sighing every time Yennefer and Ciri murmur “Unbelievable,” and exchange looks of disbelief with one another.
Once they are outside in the freezing cold snowed courtyard — next winter he’s definitely going to try and rope them into spending it in the jungles of Zerrikania— he removes his nice doublet (he rather likes this one and he’d hate to ruin it in the change) and imagines himself in his original form.
It does hurt a smidge when he transforms to his five-metre long and two-metre tall lizardy self but honestly, the gasps of surprise of his family are worth every ounce of pain.
“Ssseee?” he attempts to say but by Melitele’s gracious buttocks speaking human with this anatomy is neither easy nor pleasant. He changes back, as quickly as possible and grabs his discarded doublet to hide his, ahem, intimate area. “See? I didn’t lie!” he repeats.
It’s Ciri who speaks first, Yennefer and Geralt having seemingly turned into stone, “You still have scales on your face.”
“Aw shite!” He smoothes them out, replacing them with pale soft skin. He turns to Geralt and Yennefer next, who are still frozen in place, “Honestly… Every single time you both are the same,”-- he shakes his head and starts marching towards the warmth of the keep— “Find me when you’re ready, alright loves? Good.”
He feels his lips curling up in a small smile when he hears his two lovers’ footfalls running after him in the soft snow.