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Serrit wakes up to someone running their fingers through his hair.
This is not a great way to wake up, because he fell asleep in the middle of fucking nowhere, and there shouldn’t be anyone close enough to touch him. Also, he should have woken up well before anyone even got that close.
He lies perfectly still, trying to figure out what’s going on without letting his assailant know that he’s awake.
There’s only one finger running through his hair, on second assessment. A very…oddly hard finger. And something is…chirring? And there’s the sound of something very, very large breathing softly, much too close by.
Serrit opens his eyes to stare up in abject horror at the fucking griffin preening his hair.
The griffin sees him open his eyes and chirps happily, peering down at him with bright orange eyes. Serrit holds very, very still, wondering if he can grab a knife before the damn thing disembowels him.
The griffin puts its head down on his chest - it is very heavy - and starts chirring again.
“What the fuck,” Serrit says softly. “What the actual fuck is going on right now.”
The griffin doesn’t answer, aside from the continued chirring.
Eventually, Serrit needs to get up. If nothing else, he needs to piss. Very warily, he lifts a hand and pushes gently at the griffin’s head. “Up,” he says, like he’s coaxing a stubborn mule.
The griffin obligingly sits up on its haunches, curling its tail around its talons, and watches him as he stands and goes behind a tree. When he comes out again, it’s still there.
He should probably go for his sword right now, but, unfortunately, now he’s curious. Because griffins, in his not inconsiderable experience, don’t lie around preening random witchers’ hair, and they don’t respond to verbal commands, and they most certainly do not cuddle.
“Are you cursed?” he asks it. The griffin cocks its head and regards him silently and apparently uncomprehendingly. “Guess that’s a no. Or at least an ‘I don’t actually retain most of my human mind while cursed into this form.’” His medallion isn’t vibrating, but some types of curses don’t set it off.
“Right,” he says. He’s got no contract for the monster, and it hasn’t attacked him, so… “I’ll just take my gear and be on my way,” he tells it as he edges towards his packs. “And you be on your way, and we’ll both just forget this whole incident ever happened, got it?”
The griffin watches as he rolls up his bedroll and slings it and his packs over his shoulder, straps on his swords, and stomps his feet into his boots. It watches as he backs warily out of the little clearing. It’s still watching until he’s far enough away that the trees conceal him, and Serrit heaves a little sigh of relief and turns to find the road.
The griffin lands next to him about an hour later, chirping a cheerful little greeting. Serrit leaps backwards, drawing his silver sword, then hesitates when the monster just sits down, curling its tail around its talons again, and cocks its head, regarding him curiously.
“Are you following me?” Serrit demands.
Chirp, says the griffin, sounding very happy.
“Fucking murderbird,” Serrit grumbles, but he puts his sword away, too. Which is fucking stupid, but…there’s few enough creatures outside of his own brothers that are happy to see him. He can’t quite bring himself to kill even a monster that seems to…to be mostly harmless.
Which probably means it’s gonna try to eat him soon, but eh, Serrit has killed griffins before, he can kill this one as soon as it becomes a problem.
The griffin apparently takes his putting his sword away as a sign that he’s friendly, because it stands up, stretches like a housecat - yawning its beak open so wide that Serrit can see all the way down its gullet - and then prowls over to bump its head against his shoulder and preen its beak through his hair a couple of times.
“I’m going that way,” Serrit informs it, and sets off down the road. The griffin falls into step beside him, tail waving gently back and forth, head held high and proud.
Serrit is growing steadily more convinced it’s actually someone under a curse. Which doesn’t mean its instincts won’t get the better of it sooner or later, upon which he’ll have to kill it, but in the meantime, well, guess he has a griffin for company.
Weirder things have happened.
Not many. But still.
*
“You have a pet griffin,” Auckes says incredulously.
“She’s more like a companion animal,” Serrit says, grinning viciously at Auckes’ expression. “She chirrs, and she’s very warm at night.”
“You cuddle the fucking griffin,” Auckes says.
“Yep,” Serrit confirms, and opens the pouch at his waist, displaying a handful of beautifully pristine griffin feathers. “And she lets me groom her wings, so I’ve got alchemical ingredients for days.”
“...Alright,” Auckes says. “Is…she…going to try to kill me?”
“Dunno,” Serrit admits. If she does, he’ll have to kill her, of course. “C’mere, Murderbird.”
“You named her Murderbird,” Auckes says, sounding rather strangled, and then Murderbird comes trotting over and chirps happily at both of them before bonking her head against Serrit’s shoulder and then slinking over to Auckes and doing the same to him.
“Uh,” Auckes says, blinking at her. “...Hi?”
Chirp, says Murderbird happily.
“Scratch around the base of her beak, she likes that,” Serrit suggests. Auckes gives him a look which suggests that if this is a prank, Auckes will be supremely Not Amused, and very cautiously reaches up to rub his fingers along the edge of the griffin’s beak. Murderbird leans into his hand and chirrs contentedly.
“...Huh,” Auckes says.
Serrit hooks his thumbs in his belt and grins. Murderbird’s feathers, he has reason to know, are startlingly soft. She’s a very handsome animal, really, all tawny fur and tidy golden-brown feathers, with those big orange eyes and a viciously hooked beak, and talons which Serrit has discovered by careful experimentation can, in fact, crack bone if she tries hard enough. She’s also extremely polite, responds well to training, and likes to cuddle.
He’s pretty sure she’s actually under some sort of curse, but whether she’s a griffin cursed to be friendly or a human cursed to be a griffin, he has no fucking idea, and his medallion is stubbornly silent around her. In any case, she seems happy to accompany him, and he has to admit that several hunts have gone more smoothly with the assistance of a very pointy partner. She’s got more pointy bits than even most Vipers do, and she does know how to use them.
“Are you bringing her to Gorthur Gvaed?” Auckes asks as Murderbird props her beak on his shoulder and drapes herself against him so he can get a better angle for scratching her neck. “Because Evil-Eye is going to lose his shit, you know that, right.”
“You’re gonna help me talk him into it,” Serrit says, grinning broadly.
“I…” Auckes sighs and rests his head against Murderbird’s feathers. “Oh, fuck me. I am, aren’t I.”
Serrit smirks. “Yes. Yes, you are.”
*
“Why do I need to be out in the courtyard?” Ivar asks warily, as his Problem Children lead the way out of the keep.
“Because,” Serrit says cheerfully.
“Right, nobody attack,” Auckes adds, projecting his voice up to the walls. “Got it?”
“What are we not attacking?” someone calls down, and instead of answering, Serrit whistles, high and shrill.
There are a series of startled yelps, and Ivar himself can’t quite help taking a step backwards as a fucking griffin arrows down out of the clouds and lands with a soft thump between Serrit and Auckes. It sits down, curls its tail around its talons, and chirps.
There’s a brief pause, and then Ivar puts a hand to his forehead, rubbing at the incipient headache. “What the hell.”
“Her name is Murderbird!” Serrit replies.
“She’s actually remarkably well-behaved,” Auckes puts in.
“We’re ninety-eight percent sure she’s cursed,” Serrit agrees.
“She likes being scratched around her nares.”
“She eats kikimoras.”
“She -”
Ivar’s raised hand cuts their babble off. “You brought. A griffin. To Gorthur Gvaed.”
There’s a soft chuckle behind him, and Keldar says, sounding immensely amused, “Well, to be perfectly fair, my Viper, so did you.”
Ivar wonders if it would be too undignified to go and drown himself in a horse trough, because he has clearly lost control of…well, this entire afternoon.
“You expect me to let you keep a man-eating monster in my keep,” he says, fixing Serrit with what he certainly hopes is his usual intimidating glare. The way today’s been going, though, he’s not really surprised when Serrit just grins and nods.
“She sheds feathers a lot,” Auckes says. “And if we’re careful, she lets us draw blood, too.”
Ivar hesitates. A reliable source for alchemical ingredients - rare alchemical ingredients at that - is very, very tempting.
But still. A griffin. And not the symbolic kind.
He is about to shake his head and order Serrit to dispose of the creature when a high child’s voice screeches, “Kitty!” and one of the youngest trainees - a lad no more than four or five - comes skittering across the cobbles and launches himself at the griffin. Ivar draws his sword, as do all the other witchers in the courtyard -
And the damned griffin flops over on its side and lets the trainee burrow against it, opening one wing to pull the child closer and chirring happily deep in its throat.
Ivar hesitates, sword ready in his hand.
“Kitty,” the trainee insists.
Chirr, says the griffin, and curls around to run its beak through the trainee’s hair, preening it like a bird would its chick.
“See?” Serrit says. “She’s really quite well-behaved. And she likes people.”
“Fuck,” Ivar sighs, and sheaths his sword again, waving for everyone else to stand down, then turns and glowers at Keldar.
“You never tell Erland about this,” he warns the Griffin.
Keldar chuckles. “He wouldn’t believe me if I did,” he points out. “But no, I won’t tell Erland. He’d think I’d gone quite mad. Well. Madder, given that he thinks wintering here is a truly insane idea.”
“Fine,” Ivar says, and glares at Serrit one more time for good measure. “The damn thing is your responsibility.”
Serrit grins and nods. Auckes is petting the damn griffin, showing the trainee how to scratch it under the chin, to the loud chirring encouragement of the creature in question.
“What the hell,” Ivar concludes, and goes stomping back into the keep, Keldar laughing as he follows.
*
Ivar is genuinely not sure how he ended up sitting on the battlements with the damn griffin curled around him, its huge head in his lap. He came up to walk the walls when he couldn’t sleep, as is a habit of his, and the griffin was there, and somehow it just kept easing closer and closer until, well, here he is, being cuddled by a griffin. And not the one he left in his bed, either.
Its feathers are, in fact, very soft, and it chirrs very soothingly, and it is extremely warm and surprisingly comfortable to lean against.
It’s been in Gorthur Gvaed for a month now, and has offered no threat to any of the witchers or the trainees. It’s already provided a great many feathers and a fair bit of hair and several vials of blood and saliva. It’s endeared itself to the trainers by being willing to romp with the trainees at any opportunity, and then to nap with them afterwards, all of them piled up against it with one of its enormous wings spread out over them. It’s endeared itself to the cook by bringing back several deer and a boar, as well as keeping itself fed without imposing on the keep’s stores. It’s even endeared itself to Keldar, who claims he has fellow feeling for the damn thing, as another griffin in this pit of vipers, and has taken to napping on the creature as though it were a particularly large pillow.
And now it is clearly attempting to endear itself to him, too.
“Cunning,” he says, unwillingly amused. “You are a very cunning creature, aren’t you?”
Chirr, says the griffin contentedly.
“Well,” Ivar sighs, leaning back a little more heavily, “I suppose if you are going to be the pet of the Vipers, you had better be cunning.”
Chirr, the griffin agrees happily.
“Fine,” Ivar says, and tilts his head back to watch the stars, running his fingers through the soft feathers of the griffin’s nape.
Gorthur Gvaed now has a griffin, apparently.