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“Geralt, what are these?” Jaskier asks, pouring several little polished-bone squares out into his hand and squinting at the letters that have been carved into them.
“Tiles,” Geralt says, not looking up from mending his trousers with careful, tidy stitches. “Don’t lose any.”
“I would never!” Jaskier says, pretending deep offense. “And I can see they’re tiles, darling, but what are they for?”
“Słowa,” Geralt says, shrugging.
“...Words?” Jaskier says after a moment. That’s an old term, one he’s only encountered in crumbling books in the Oxenfurt library, but he’s pretty sure he’s remembered it correctly.
Geralt nods.
“Dear heart, you know perfectly well I’ll keep pestering you until you actually explain,” Jaskier says cheerfully.
Geralt sighs heavily. “Wait until I’m done,” he says, and Jaskier pours the tiles back into the bag and sits as quietly as he can - which admittedly isn’t very - until Geralt’s pants have been patched and folded back into the saddlebag, and Geralt has very carefully stowed his sewing kit. Jaskier had never quite understood how valuable a thing a really good needle is until he started traveling with Geralt, and learned how often witcher clothing gets torn to shreds, usually when they are quite some distance from a town. Geralt is a surprisingly talented sempster - oh, he doesn’t do any fancy stitches, but he can keep his own clothing in good repair, and Jaskier’s too, if Jaskier asks nicely, or looks plaintive enough.
Finally Geralt finishes putting the sewing kit away, and comes over to sit crosslegged on the ground in front of Jaskier’s log-bench. He draws a dagger from his belt and carefully sketches a square in the dirt between them, then draws lines through it until it’s -
“Oh, it’s a game board!” Jaskier says, delighted. Fifteen by fifteen squares - quite a large game board; he doesn’t know any games that require so much space. Even Ofieri shatranj only needs an eight-by-eight board.
“Yes,” Geralt says, and takes the bag of tiles, spilling them out carefully and arranging them all face-down, their polished backs gleaming in the firelight. “Pick seven.”
Jaskier obeys, delighted beyond all measure. He had no idea Geralt knew how to play any games except Gwent.
“Now what?”
“Make a word,” Geralt says, shrugging. “Start in the middle of the board.”
Jaskier eyes his tiles and frowns, thinking hard. After a moment he sets five of them down in a row: clear.
Geralt hums, nods, and lays down five more beneath Jaskier’s c, to make -
“Geralt, cyrche isn’t a word,” Jaskier protests.
Geralt raises an eyebrow. “Means ‘attacking’ in Nilfgaardian.”
Jaskier blinks at his companion. “Geralt,” he says at last, “how many languages do you usually use while playing this game?”
Geralt shrugs. “Common, Elder, Nilfgaardian, Dwarvish, Skelliger. Lambert knows some Ofieri and Zerrikanian. Eskel’s got some dryad. Vesemir likes to use scholar’s tongue phrases when he can.”
“...Geralt,” Jaskier says, appalled and delighted. “Geralt, are you telling me that you all gather in your secret witcher fortress and play a game of word-building in nine languages?”
Geralt shrugs and hums.
“How do you even know if someone else is telling the truth about what the word means, if you don’t know it?” Jaskier demands.
Geralt hums again, one corner of his mouth tilting up. “Sometimes we bluff.”
“Sometimes you -” Jaskier breaks off, groping for words. “So, what, sometimes you just make up words and see if anyone calls you out on it?”
Geralt shrugs. “Yep.” He wrinkles his nose. “Lambert’s best at it. Played b’lm last winter, said it was a Zerrikanian dessert. Might be. Could be him lying through his teeth, too.”
“I refuse to believe that’s a word, it hasn’t any vowels,” Jaskier says. “How did you let him get away with that?”
Geralt hums. “We were very drunk.”
Jaskier puts his remaining tiles down and scrubs a hand over his face. “All this time -” it’s only been three years, but still - “all this time I have been assuming that you spend your winters in your secret witcher fortress doing - witchery things. Sparring, and going out and hunting boar through snowy forests, and mending armor, and all that sort of warrior business. And now it turns out you actually spend your time getting drunk and lying about Zerrikanian vocabulary!”
Geralt hums. He looks, Jaskier sees when he peers through his fingers, distinctly amused. Both corners of his mouth are turned up. “To be fair,” he says, “we also spar, and hunt boar, and mend armor.”
“I swear, every time I think I’ve figured you out, you let me see something like this, and I realize there are even more endless depths to you,” Jaskier says, shaking his head in wonder. “Alright, fine; trounce me at słowa then.” He picks his tiles up again and draws five more. “I bet I know more musical terms than you do, anyhow.”
Geralt smirks a little and gestures for Jaskier to make his play.
A rather embarrassingly short time later, Geralt raises an eyebrow at Jaskier’s final word - fret, by which he means the lute-part and not the action, thank you very much - and then plays his last few tiles in turn. Jaskier snorts. “I am absolutely sure thi isn’t a word, that’s just an attempt to rub in how badly you’ve beaten me.”
Geralt is actually smiling; it’s a shockingly beautiful expression. “Means ‘you,’” he says, and his smile gets toothier. “In the Higher Vampire tongue.”
“Bullshit,” Jaskier grumbles, unable to really pretend he’s angry when Geralt looks so very pleased with himself. “How can you be so good at this game and so bad at actually talking to people?”
Geralt shrugs. “Tiles don’t talk back,” he points out, beginning to gather them up and pour them back into the little bag. They make a very pleasant clicking noise. “Don’t argue. Don’t lie.”
“Apparently your game partners do, though,” Jaskier says, picking up a handful of tiles to help tidy them away. “Maybe I should have claimed nploj was a form of musical notation. You’d hardly know otherwise!”
Geralt actually chuckles, which is wonderful. “Next time,” he says, and Jaskier’s eyes go wide.
“Yes,” he says, the word falling out of his mouth without any conscious thought. “Yes! Next time I’ll be ready for your dreadful stealth polyglot ways.”
“Stealth polyglot?” Geralt says, giving Jaskier a very dubious look indeed.
“Well, I didn’t know about it.”
Geralt raises an eyebrow and smirks. Jaskier rolls his eyes.
“Yes, yes, there’s a lot I apparently don’t know about you. But I’m going to stick around long enough to figure you out, just you wait and see!”
(Ten years later, Jaskier lays down lutenist on the t from Geralt’s blathan and sticks out his tongue in triumph at finally, finally winning a game of słowa. Geralt gives him a crooked, cheerful smile.
“Now we learn to play pinfingers,” he says, and Jaskier goes off into loud squawking, unable to actually suppress his grin.)