#i wrote this in a notebook while camping so apologies for any remaining errors

[wren-of-the-woods]

Hi! I see you've reblogged a writing prompt list...now, how about #29 for Yennskier (because I adore them) or Geraskefer as that's probably more your thing? (Or if both leave you rather uninspired, I know you're a big Geraskier shipper)

But listen, the immortals putting flowers on Jaskier's grave is heartbreaking and a good idea

Thank you for the prompt, my friend!! This became 1k of oddly soft Yennskier -- I hope you like it!

CW: major character death. Prompt from this list!

Edit: Also on AO3!

~~~

Jaskier’s grave is beautiful in the spring.

“Put me somewhere nice, when the time comes,” he had said with a soft smile. “Cover me with growing things. That way I can live on, in a way. I can provide for new life.” 

Yennefer has done her very best to heed his wishes. 

She worked together with Geralt to choose the location. It was one of several places that Jaskier himself had suggested in his later years. It’s a little glade beside a small brook, far enough above the water not to be disturbed by a flood but close enough to always be green and shaded. It’s in the woods, about an hour’s journey from Oxenfurt. Jaskier had loved the place. He and Yennefer spent many afternoons there, talking or working or simply enjoying themselves.

The funeral was beautiful. Geralt and Ciri were there, of course. So were most of the remaining witchers and a large number of people from Oxenfurt, Jaskier’s friends and colleagues and students alike. There had even been a fair number of elves who remembered Jaskier from his work as the Sandpiper. 

When Jaskier was alive, his favorite tree in the glade had been a majestic old oak that spread its arms over most of the glade. That day, the funeral-goers planted one of its acorns over Jaskier’s final resting place. 

“What if it dies?” Geralt had asked. There were tears on his cheeks. It was the first and only time Yennefer has seen him cry. “What if it fails to sprout?”

“It won’t,” said Yennefer. She’s always been stubborn. 

Jaskier has given her so much: laughter and love and music and grief. The least she can do is give him a garden in return. 

She visited the spot every week, those first few months. She tended the oak as it sprouted and watered the buttercups and forget-me-nots that had been seeded throughout the glade. She talked to Jaskier as she worked. She thought he would enjoy the company.

She could have used magic for this. She did not. She found herself liking the feeling of the earth — Jaskier’s earth — in her hands. 

After a while, when the plants were more established and her duties could no longer be ignored, she let herself slow to only visiting once a season. Every solstice and equinox without fail, whether alone or accompanied by Geralt or Ciri, she comes to tend Jaskier’s garden. 

Time passes. Seasons turn. Jaskier’s sapling is a fine young tree now, many heads taller than Yennefer. Though Geralt and Ciri are not with her this time, she isn’t alone. “Jaskier’s Glade” has become a popular retreat among Oxenfurt’s bardic students. Yennefer likes to think that it’s because the place itself seems to be made of music; when the wind blows and the creek babbles and there are songbirds in the trees, she sometimes fancies she can hear Jaskier’s voice in the chorus. 

Jaskier’s absence hurts, of course, but over the years it has dulled from a soul-crushing chasm in her heart to an old ache. It’s familiar now, more of a reminder of love than of loss. It’s something she never thought she’d get to have, this oddly comforting wound in her heart. A part of her will always remain with that ugly little girl who thought she would never love or be loved. Jaskier, more than anyone else, had shown her she was wrong about that. If this pain is the cost of all the joy and comfort and healing they had given each other, it is a badge she will wear with honor. 

One thing that helps when the grief does become hard to bear: Yennefer knows she’ll see Jaskier again. 

Yennefer doesn’t believe in the afterlife. Yennefer believes in magic. She also believes that she and Jaskier are possibly the two most stubborn people on the Continent. 

Long ago, before Jaskier’s bones started to creak and his hair became more gray than brown, Yennefer conducted a ritual. It was something she discovered in a time-worn old tome, written in a near-forgotten language. It’s an ancient rite, created as a way of binding the souls of two sorcerers. It is, technically, a marriage ritual. Yennefer did not tell Jaskier this. He would have been insufferable. 

He’ll find out when it works. 

They did it here, in this very glade. With an incantation from Yennefer and a song from Jaskier, their spirits were entwined as they bound their hands together. 

The spell was thorough. Their determination is strong. There is no possible way that their souls will be separated now; Yennefer knows this deep in her being.

All she has to do is wait. 

~~~

All the bards of Oxenfurt know the sorceress who tends to Jaskier’s Glade. She weeds it and prunes it and waters it and cares for it in every way, as faithful as a lover. She has done so for untold decades — but, as it turns out, even mages don’t live forever. One day, peacefully and in her sleep, her life comes to an end. 

She is buried in the glade: hers and Jaskier’s, now. A second oak is planted over her, a twin to the bard’s. The care of the glade, in which lilacs are now planted as well as buttercups, falls to Melitele and the students of Oxenfurt. 

The place passes into legend, after a time. Most agree that there’s nothing to the tales but the overactive imaginations of bardlings, but the stories persist all the same. They tell of love beyond reason and hope beyond death, of tender touches held in the twining of leaves. 

It’s not a legacy Yennefer ever expected, but those who loved her and Jaskier think it is a fitting one. She deserved to have such softness after everything she endured, and Jaskier deserved to be remembered for his love. 

There are songs about the place, to no one’s surprise; no bard can resist a tale of romance. These songs, though, are rarely performed in taverns. They aren’t for laughing or clapping along, but they survive for far longer than the bawdier tales. These songs are for quiet evenings when the world is dark and the stars are bright. They are stories of quiet, unspoken hope and caresses held between the petals of a flower. 

They are the best remembrance either Jaskier or Yennefer could have hoped for.

~~~

The secret glade of song, they say, Is full of life and love; The lilacs and the buttercups Seem blesséd from above. 

The biggest branching oaks, they say, Can speak, though rarely heard; They laugh and banter, talk and joke With love in every word.

Sometimes at dusk, you see, they say, Two figures dance along; They fade and flicker, shine and whirl, To their sweet starlight song.

The place is full, they sing, they say, Of love on songbirds’ wings; The glade of bard and sorceress wife Is beautiful in the spring.