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The forest in the beginning is only a forest – a tad dark and spooky, perhaps, but nothing Yennefer hasn’t entered before. It is a forest’s destiny, to be dark and spooky. Time rots its roots and kills the animals, people take until there is nothing but decay left. Thus, the forest becomes dark and spooky.
It doesn’t scare Yennefer.
“Come on,” she barks at Geralt’s silly little bard, “or we leave you behind.” Geralt grunts, and she glares at him. They don’t have the time for sensitivities, and even if they did, Yennefer would never allow the bard to indulge in them.
“Yes, yes, I am coming, Yennefer, thank you!” the Bard exclaims. Yennefer wants to wring his neck. “Someone could have told me not to wear my nice boots, but it’s fine, and I’m coming.”
Nice boots, she scoffs. They look like they’ve seen the bad side of one too many mud puddles and mice, if you ask her, but perhaps she is being ungenerous. It’s likely he can’t afford to buy any better – she’s heard his singing, after all. Mood lifted a little, Yennefer allows him a single moment of respite before biting at him again. At her comment he stumbles, again, and she smirks. Really, is it any wonder she pokes him, when he reacts like that? If this is what he’s like with Geralt, she might be able to understand the appeal of keeping him around.
Rather quickly the appeal of watching the bard flounder wears off, and Yennefer storms forward impatiently as Geralt makes no mood to hurry his companion up. She should be leading them, anyway, as the only one who’s been in this stupid forest before. There’s always the risk of straying too far ahead, but Geralt is unlikely to lose her trail, and, in any case, she won’t be the one in trouble if the other two get lost.
With a smirk, Yennefer takes her eyes off the path for a moment and fails to notice the tree root growing out of the ground in front of her. She trips but catches the nearest tree before her companions can do something as stupid as notice.
Fuck, she curses, with what is definitely not embarrassment, and takes a moment to reorient herself. Now is hardly the time to be distracted. This forest doesn’t scare her, but Yennefer still has her whits about her, and not being scared doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be cautious. Taking a deep breath in, Yennefer focuses on the feeling of the Earth under her boots, on the grey sky stretching out above her head, and the sound of the life around her. It’s quiet, for a forest. There are no birds calling out from beneath the trees, no sound of animals skittering in the underbrush. She focuses on what she feels - the oak is firm under her fingers, warmer than she was expecting. She rests there for a moment, scratching idly at the bark with a nail.
The bard’s clumsy footsteps break her from her trance. Geralt is silent, ever the hunter, but his companion breaks through the plants and bushes like a rock through a window. He curses ever so often, and the sounds of flailing will intensify for a moment before returning to their usual level. Any would-be followers wouldn’t even have to think to track them.
She waits a moment, for the pair of them to catch up. Geralt eyes her as he passes, but only for a moment, and with muted curiosity. Soon enough his gaze is elsewhere again, and Yennefer resists the urge to trip him. The bard, at least, looks suitably nervous as he passes, though he plays like he isn’t, puffing up his chest and eyeing her with what she’s sure he thinks looks like disdain. At least, he doesn’t do anything so foolish as try to speak to her. With a smirk, Yennefer rejoins them.
When she steps past the tree, Jaskier is behind her again. Geralt is beside her. She blinks – they must have slowed down to meet her. How quaint. With a smirk, she goes to make fun of them, but the bard is still lagging.
Oh, how she loathes to repeat herself.
“Come on!” she barks anyway, looking over her shoulder to glare at him. He’s hopping around again and really, there’s no way his boots are that bad. She’ll curse them off his feet if he complains one more time -
Geralt grunts. Yennefer pauses.
“Yes, yes, I am coming, Yennefer, thank you!” Jaskier exclaims. “Someone could have told me not to wear my nice boots, but it’s fine, and I’m coming.”
Rather than snap back Yennefer falls silent, and the bard throws her a startled look she returns with a snarl. Even Geralt looks off-put, and his eyebrow twitches a little at her silence. They both know better than to pay her too much attention for long, though, and they all fall into a line through the forest. Jaskier mumbles something, maybe a story, maybe a song, but Yennefer is too busy watching the passing trees to listen to him.
Is this familiar? She asks herself. Do I remember this?
There – those roots. She recognizes those.
Rather than tripping on the roots she steps over them carefully, stopping next to the oak tree they emerge from. When she lifts a hand to it, the bark is still warm. Slowly, she turns back to Geralt and Jaskier, who stand just beyond the tree with inquisitive looks on their faces. Or Jaskier does, anyway. Geralt just looks rather annoyed.
A vision? She thinks, taking her hand off the tree to join them. It’s not unheard of, though I have never -
Yennefer steps past the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again.
Perhaps, if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t notice. The forest is near identical no matter how many steps she takes, after all, and she might have just though it a continuation of the dreary forest behind them. Geralt certainly never changes. But instead, there is Jaskier to greet her, and for the first time Yennefer is glad he came along.
“Yes, yes, I am coming, Yennefer, thank you!” Jaskier exclaims, marking the start of a new loop every time without fail. “Someone could have told me not to wear my nice boots, but it’s fine, and I’m coming.”
Rather than waste her time fighting with Jaskier, however, who never seems to remember the loops, she focuses on searching for anything that might help her, because again, it seems that saving their asses falls to her. The trees hold no clues – she hadn’t paid enough attention to them what might have been the first time around. The air smells like every forest does, like pine and damp and the absence of humans. There is no sign to what started all this, or why Yennefer is at the center of it.
“What are you doing?” Jaskier calls out behind her, disgusted as she kneels on the ground and runs her fingers through the damp soil. Geralt has yet to call out to her once.
The sky is still oppressively grey, pressing down further on Yennefer with every step. She ignores Jaskier instead focusing on the feeling in the dirt. Though her strength has never been with plants, she can feel that it is fertile, and strong. The lush green of the plants around them are enough of an indicator of that. Yet, there are no worms in it, or bugs that she can only find. There are only roots, and dirt. She wishes she knew what that meant.
As she gets to her feet, she trips on a familiar root, and reaches out to catch herself on a nearby oak. She scratches her nail on it. The forest is silent. Yennefer steps past the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again.
This time, she turns around the moment she is aware of Jaskier’s presence behind her and sprints in the direction they’ve arrived from. Jaskier squeaks as she streaks past, but she doesn’t spare even a thought to the noise. Instead, she focuses on putting her head down and pumping her legs, ignoring everything else, even the feeling of her own dress tearing as the motion pulls on the seems. She’s not sure how far she makes it, only that it isn’t far enough.
Yennefer passes the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again. Her dress is whole.
This time, she freezes in place, refusing to move a muscle. She stays there as the sun sets, even as Geralt and Jaskier leave, even as their voices fade into nothing and anxiety tumbles in her chest. When she deems it safe enough, and the pain in her head reminds her of a need for water, she ventures out into the forest.
For a minute, it seems like everything is alright. Then, Jaskier is behind her again.
The time after that, she throws her chaos about the space and as far as she possibly can into the forest. She cannot find anything, other than an energy so old and unfathomable that she can’t even make out of the edges of it, but it tells her nothing. Eventually Jaskier trips and pushes her past the tree, and he’s behind her again.
Time after time after time she tries. She thinks, she plots, she works, until eventually she stops behind able to count them at all. There is only the forest, and the forest is the same, and the same, and the same.
Yennefer steps past the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again.
Around, around, around, time goes. Or maybe it stops, or slows down, or freezes. Maybe it’s the same set of seconds, maybe it is always a different set and she’s been here for years, Yennefer doesn’t know. The forest blurs together until she can barely tell which part of the loop was the start. Slowly but surely she looses her sense of direction until Geralt starts telling her she’s going the wrong way, and it feels like she can’t find the right way no matter how hard she tries. All she can find is the oak with the jutting roots, the only waypoint in this confounding hell.
Yennefer steps past the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again.
What is a forest, really? A smattering of trees? A gathering of plants? How many trees until it is a jungle, how many trees until it is something else entirely?
As one question starts in Yennefer’s mind, so does the next, and the next. She applies her magic to what can only be an illusion, must be an illusion. But whatever box or cylinder or cube they are kept in does not budge. She destroys the trees, she destroys the plants, she destroys her companions and everything that exists besides herself, the oak, and time. It does not help. Yennefer passes the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again.
Blood pours from her ears and lips, on one rotation. It is warm and new in a sea of otherwise monotonous reality. The red stands out like she had ceased to see colour, like the forest had turned to a colourless world. She runs her fingers through the stuff and paints it on every surface she can find. The trees, the plants, the soft skin of Jaskier’s cheek and the cold metal of Geralt’s sword.
The novelty wears off quick, because when the world next rotates, it is gone again. Yennefer steps past the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again. She touches the oak, and it is dry.
When does a forest cease to be a forest?
Yennefer feels as if she is eroding with every step, crumbling like cliffs the ocean has been beating upon for a millennia. How are these trees still here? Have they been here every time? Are they awake, like her? Yennefer steps past the tree, and Jaskier is behind her again.
Eventually, answers begin to come to her. She begins to understand that sometimes, a forest is this – that oak tree there, that Yennefer has trailed her fingers across a hundred and one times, the twig that snaps under her foot, here, like it shouldn’t already be in so many pieces it cannot make a sound. There are no birds, because nothing lives here. This forest only dies.
“I have lived this day before,” Yennefer says, or maybe simply thinks with power enough to send it into the others’ minds. Today (yesterday?) her chaos is strong and present, sitting right at the tips of her fingers. Her throat hurts, though, as if she is speaking. Perhaps she has been screaming, some time between the last forest and now.
She doesn’t hear their responses. What does it matter when she has heard them a thousand times before? Jaskier is more prone to variation, responding to the emotion in her voice and the imperceptible difference in the way she draws out her syllables in the way only a singer can. He cares enough to notice, for some reason she might have drawn out before but cannot be brought to care about now. Geralt never changes. He is a stone, in this unending forest, and does not bend under the weight of her river. Give it a view thousand years and perhaps he will erode, but Yennefer will not give him that. He has taken too much from her already.
Her fingers brush the oak – oh, they have started again.
A forest is a forest, and this forest is the end.
“I know,” she whispers, fingers on the oak. The oak. She touches it again. “You think you have bested me, but I know. The river does not fall to the forest nor the rock nor the tree, and you have not bested me.”
There is one thing Yennefer has yet to destroy.