#so do the bad ones but only guxart can have some peace

[blackberrywars]

Story - Dyn Marv

SFW prompt for day 6 of the @witchersummercamp event!!! Shout out to @hellinglasses and her own kitty companions for beta’ing

Rating: G

Words: 4350

Pairing: Gen with references to Arnaghad/Erland and Guxart/Vesemir

Tags: Cat School, Dyn Marv Caravan, Cutagens, Papa Guxart, Bedtime Stories, All Of The Younger Cats Are Kittens, Non-Graphic Violence, Swearing But Not In Front Of Kittens, Must Be A Good Example, Witcher Lore References But Disguised As Fables

Summary: Every night, Guxart reads a fable to a tangled pile of kittens, and though the pages are stained and the illustrations are faded, his newest clowder is just as enraptured as his first. He hopes they learn its lessons well.

Read on AO3

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If he didn’t know what little bastards they are, Guxart could almost call his smallest kittens, piled up and on top of each other in the trainee wagon, cute. At this age, they’re all still devastatingly little in a way that makes him ache. Gaetan barely reaches his mid-thigh on tiptoe. Dragonfly head-butted him in the balls earlier today during training. Kari lost his four front teeth this year, and won’t regrow stronger, dwarven ones until he loses the rest. At eight years old, Aiden still has cheeks like bread rolls —entirely too squishy for her own good. Daniet just hit a growth spurt, making her knees spasm constantly with the pressure. Even Cedric and Axel, both nearly eleven, can each hang off one of his arms with little difficulty on his part. And every last one of them is staring up at him with their expectant little eyes in every shade that won’t last. Like a chorus, the nightly question goes up into the night air.

“Story? Stoey? Storytime? Story? Storytime? Stoeytime? Stories! Story! Story! Storytime! Papi, it’s Storytime!”

According to whatever rotation they’ve cooked up, Dragonfly guards the book tonight. It’s a heavy tome, one of the few that Dyn Marv can afford to carry around. Brown, weathered pages slip between her fingers as she finds the right page. The Bear and the Bird. He recognizes the tale immediately, though the illustrations have faded from the vibrant colors they once displayed, the ones he painstakingly inked onto the parchment so many years ago. Time hadn’t been kind to the book, but his newest kits love it just as the elder ones did. With an imperious stare, carrying all the self-assured authority of the princess she almost was, Dragonfly drops the open book into his lap with a painful thud against his still-sore groin. 

“Storytime.”

She nods her little chin once and sits back down with her littermates, pushing Gaetan onto Aiden’s lap so she can take the pillow for her own head, lounging across it carelessly. Guxart sighs, settling his back further against the wall. His usual reading cushion has disappeared, likely under the mass of watchful kittens in front of him, so he makes do with the wooden floor, crossing his legs and resting the book on his knee. He doesn’t need to actually look at the words to tell them the story, but the kits always insist that he should get to read it too. With a cough to clear his throat, he begins the prologue:

“Very well, kits. Storytime. But this is the only story you’re getting, because after this, you are all going to sleep. If I hear a single sound out of any of you once I close this book, you will have to make your own breakfast for a week.”

Guileless, with seven little grins and fourteen shining eyes, they promise to all fall right asleep. They won’t bother him or Gezras for anything unless someone dies or “frows up” in the middle of the night. It’s bullshit, of course. Bullshit of the highest order. But he nods and tells them they’re good little kits anyway because they look so cute when they’re proud of themselves for successfully lying to him. 

“Now, where was I? Right, yes —the begining. A long, long time ago, beyond seven mountains, beyond seven forests, a little bear cub wandered through the woods all alone. His mother had left the den a week ago in search of food, but never returned. When his hunger became too great, despite how small his size and how blunt his teeth and how thin his fur, he decided to risk the dangers of the world, for his other option was death. He ventured out. For two days and two nights, he wandered through the forest, his belly rumbling, empty and cramped. Still, no matter how he tried, food remained out of his reach.

Bees stung him when he reached for their hive. Fish slipped from his little paws, too slippery for the soft pads. Squirrels leapt into trees he couldn’t climb. Deer vanished before he could even chase them. Even the berry bushes were all picked clean by earlier hunters, who’d left nothing but rotten fruit on the ground. Desperate, he ate them. They were slimy, mushy, and foul but he’d never been hungrier, so he devoured every last one he could find. With each bite, he felt sicker. His head felt fuzzy, his tummy ached, and soon he was so disoriented that he could barely keep his feet, stumbling until he found the edge of a cliff…… and fell right off it!”

Gaetan gasps, “No!” from his perch on Aiden’s lap, chubby leg kicking out in alarm. Guxart fixes his face into a mournful expression, nodding solemnly.

“Yes! He fell for what must have been miles, spinning through the air. All he could see was the blue sky, the gray cliffs, and the green grass, one after the other until they blurred into one, and he shut his eyes against it, bracing himself for the end. When he stopped, the air left his lungs in a rush, which didn’t shock him much more —he had died. Dead little bears don’t need breath. But then he inhaled, and a strange, soft thing brushed his long snout, gently enough to make him sneeze himself upright. He opened his eyes, and there in front of him, on a bed of brown twigs and leaves, hopped a little bird. It peered up at him before speaking, eyes wider than dinner plates:

‘You don’t look like a bird.’

Confused, the bear replied, ‘That’s because I’m not one.’

‘Then how did you fly here?’

‘I fell. I think.’

‘But you landed safely!’

The little bear, whose back hurt quite a bit, disagreed. On the last word, at least. Furiously so. But the little bird refused to believe anything else —he had fallen from the sky, so a bird he must be. They sat in the nest, arguing and quarreling until they exhausted themselves and fell asleep, with the little bird curled against the little bear’s warm, soft belly and the little bear balanced so as not to squash him. They woke the next morning, and though the little bear remained hungry, he could not help but be dragged into the argument once more.

‘I am not a bird!’

Immediately, the little bird protested, ‘You are! You fell from the sky and landed here, just like a bird! Your wings are strange, and you landed heavily, but a bird you must be.’

‘I am not!’ said the little bear, waving his arms around as if to prove their lack of feathers. ‘I have no beak, no wings, and no tail!’

‘But you flew!’

They went on, back and forth, until finally the little bird, frustrated and indignant, cried out to his father: ‘You say you’re not a bird? Fine, then, I’ll prove it to you!’

Saying this, he used all his might to push the bear off the side of the nest. Had the bear been less hungry, less tired, and less weak, the little bird would have failed, but the bear, startled, toppled over the edge for the second time, crashing upon the rocky earth with a horrible crunch.”

“NO!!” cry all his kits in unison, and Daniet lunges for the book in his lap, quick but not quick enough as Guxart hides it behind his back with one arm, and holds the misbehaving kitten by the forehead with the other fully extended. A gentle flick of the wrist, sends her back to the pile so she can grumble.

“A horrible crunch from his right arm, and as the little bear lay on the ground, howling in pain, the bird descended from its nest, shouting in alarm, hovering over the bear’s prone body:

‘Have I killed you?! Did your parents never teach you to fly?’

Through gritted teeth, the bear replied, ‘I’m alive, no thanks to you. And like I already told you, I’m not a bird.”

Apologetic, the little bird fussed over the bear’s broken arm and cared for him over the course of a month until it healed. And while the bear was angry at the bird for pushing him off the nest, he was so well-cared for —with clean water, herbs for pain, and all the food he could stand— that the little bear felt his grudge subside quickly. In fact, by the time he could walk again, he could no longer be called a little bear at all. Everyday, the bird brought him a feast. Honey stolen from the bees, fish small enough to fit in his beak, nuts and fresh berries instead of rotten ones, all of it went into his belly until he was healthy and fatter than a caravan!” 

“Fatter than a caravan!” Aiden shouts, curving her arms around her body in an approximate comparison, “Papi, that’s impossible.”

“Ah, but it isn’t! Not for this bear, at least.”

“Impossible,” accompanied by exasperated bug eyes.

“Everything’s possible, kit, except maybe you shutting your trap. Oh, wait. Shut your mouth, kitten, or I’ll close this book.”

Before he even finishes his sentence, three pillows —one from Dragonfly, one from Axel, and one from Cedric— club her across the face, knocking her right onto her back. Gaetan keeps his seat, miraculously, and turns around, beating her stomach with his little fists. The things a good union can do truly amaze him. If his kits all make it past the Grasses and manage to stop arguing at every occasion that isn’t their hallowed Storytime, they’ll topple anything in their path. Before he becomes that very thing, he continues reading.

“Thank you. After the month had passed, the bear could walk easily again, and learned to hunt for himself. Still, his arm ached. As the seasons turned ever closer to winter, the cold seeped into his fragile bones, and he became sleepier and sleepier, preparing for a long winter’s nap. Such was his nature, but still the bird —who had grown large and strong in his own right— fretted. When the bear grew fatter, the bird worried over the waddle in his step. When he began digging his den, the bird fussed over his dirty claws. Worst of all, when the time came that the bear retreated into his yearly sleep, the bird insisted on waking him every day.

‘Wake up!’ the bird cried, flapping his wings as loudly as he could at the den entrance, ‘You will freeze in here if you sleep any longer —move, please, to keep yourself alive!’

The bear, half-dazed, grumbled back, ‘Leave me be, birdie. I’m a bear, we’re meant to sleep the winters away.’

‘You’re wrong! If you stop moving, your blood will go cold and you’ll die! I would miss you so, now please wake up!’

‘You will see me in the spring. No need to miss me at all.’

Again, despite all the bear’s insistence that yes, he was fine and could certainly survive being buried under the snow, the bird returned to rouse him each morning at dawn. Each time the bird came to wake him, the bear sent him away, pleading with him to not return until spring. They would meet again soon. Even asleep, even in the ground, he was safe and sound. Still, the bird persisted, and each day, the bear grew more tired. Without prolonged sleep, he lost weight faster and faster until by just midwinter, he was as skinny and hungry as he had been on that fateful day he wandered into the forest. Just as before, he gathered all his strength and wandered out alone.

This time, though he was more than large, strong, and clever enough to hunt, the winter had turned the lush wild into a barren wasteland. Bees hid away in their haves. Fish swam trapped under frozen ponds. Squirrels burrowed, sleeping in their own dens, just as he should have been. Deer had long since left for warmer climates. Not a berry remained on the dead branches of the shrubs he’d once feasted on. By chance, or by luck, or by some strange wrinkle of fate, he chanced upon a lone, injured wolf, and despite not wanting to fight another predator, he was hungry enough to hunt it. 

Across the woods and fields, he chased it, though his arm throbbed with pain from the movement and the cold. Eventually, just as the sun appeared on the horizon, he was able to clamp his jaws around its tail, biting down hard and dragging it towards him to tear at its soft underbelly with powerful claws. But his hunger made him clumsy. Instead of reaching the heart, the bear only tore open his abdomen —a fatal blow, but not at once. And although the wolf had his guts hanging out of his body, tell me kits, when is a creature most dangerous?”

From the pile, in various tones of enraptured squeaks comes the answer, “When it knows it’s about to die!” Kari’s missing teeth make the words come out round, Gaetan still has trouble with pronouncing consonants at the ends of words, and Axel's voice decides to slide down an octave halfway through, but they all have it correct. Just so.

“Well done! So the wolf, one paw in his grave, gave a final lunge, whipping his body around to bite at the bear’s sore arm, right over where the old break had settled. It gave a horribly familiar creak, but the bear growled, tearing his arm out of the wolf’s jaw before the crunch and releasing his hold on the wolf’s tail. Allowing the creature to escape into the underbrush, leaving nothing behind but a trail of thick, dark red blood. Not too far away, he could hear the wolf whimpering and howling, but the pain in his arm immobilized him. Before, it had ached. Now, it burned with the ghosts of sharp teeth and hard earth. Just as he steeled himself once more, to chase it again despite his exhaustion, the bird appeared through the trees.

‘What happened?’ he shouted, flying closer to land by the bloody snow, ‘I returned to wake you this morning, and I found you gone! Are you hurt?’

‘Yes,’ the bear hissed, tucking his wounded arm closer to his body, ‘Because of your waking me, I grew hungry, and all I found to eat was a wolf almost as skinny and desperate as I am. But even a wolf like that still has teeth.’

The bird ducked his head, chastised.

‘How can I help you? This is the second time I’ve hurt you, my dear, and I want to make up for it.”

‘Hmm,” the bear grumbled, ‘Fine. That wolf got away, and I’m still hungry.”

Eager to help, the bird took flight, tracking the blood trail from above and leading the bear, slow on his injured paw, to the wolf, who had curled up at the base of a tree to die. The bear killed it quickly. He ate even faster as a heavy fatigue set in over his body and mind. After, they walked back to his den together, the bird perched delicately on the bear’s back as the bear settled in below the earth, full and tired. He made the bird promise not to wake him. The bird, feeling how warm the den was and seeing firsthand how much his friend needed this rest, agreed, on the condition that he would stay in the den too, to watch over the bear. If the bear had any objections, he voiced them with a snore. They passed the winter like that —the bird watching over his sleeping bear— but in spring, his arm still ached.

At first, the bear tried to ignore it. He avoided hunting anything that could run, kept his lame arm as still as he could whenever possible. It wasn’t enough. Eventually, he had slowed so much that by midsummer, when he should have been fat again, he remained lean without a steady supply of fresh meat or fish. Again, the bird fretted. With minimal grumbling, the bear accepted his dear friend’s care, but every step brought pain that not even the strongest herbs could relieve, and he grew thinner by the hour. After a near fall off the very cliff he’d stumbled from as a cub, the bird confronted him.

‘Dear one, you can’t go on like this. I can’t hunt enough for both of us, and I don’t think you’ll be able to stand in the river for the salmon run. You won’t live through the winter.’

‘I’ll survive, birdie. I have so far.’

‘But you might not this time,’ the bird said, flapping his wings nervously, ‘You need help, and I… yesterday, I flew over a human  town not far from here. They have a hedgewitch who can fix your arm.’

‘Humans?’ cried the bear, ‘A human, hedgewitch or not, would poison me before she healed me. And that’s if the rest of the town doesn’t chase me out with pitchforks on sight!’

‘What other option do you have? You’re injured, why would they be frightened by you?’

‘I’m a bear! That’s enough, for most creatures. You’re the exception, little bird.’

For a day, the bird left him be. But as soon as yet another fish slipped through the bear’s paws, he returned, pestering him to go to the healer. Worn down, tired, and in constant pain, the bear finally agreed to go if his friend would watch over him, and so, the next day, he trudged after him until he could smell the town —smoke and sweat and waste. He walked to the edge of the forest as each pebble sent shockwaves of pain through his arm. He hesitated at the fields before loud squawking overhead pushed him forwards. He took a step on the supposed hedgewitch’s road. And so the screaming started.

It started and didn’t stop, tearing from the mouths of humans and the dogs they’d tamed. Women shrieked and babes cried, the hedgewitch herself stepped out to bellow curses at him. The bear turned back around, and already  he could see the men of the town running from their homes and fields, the sun reflecting off their weapons with the hard glitter of iron and bronze. They screamed for more men, more dogs, and most of all for his head as they drew closer. As quick as he could on his injured leg, the bear turned and ran. A stray torch burned a brand into his side, a fencepost cracked across his spine, and a sharp axe swung just an inch too wide to hit its mark, but he kept going deeper into the woods, all the while his bird followed overhead, yelling furiously.

He ran and ran and ran until he couldn’t feel anything anymore, and then one step further before collapsing to the forest floor, motionless.”

Still on Aiden’s lap,  Gaetan sniffles loudly, bringing one fist up to his pale, round cheek to brush out the tears. Quickly, Aiden tries for damage control, gently shushing her little brother and squeezing him tighter, but Guxart sees the panic in her eyes and reaches forward to take him onto his own hip. Gaetan hugs his side like a limpet, burying his face in Guxart’s soft sleep-tunic. His littlest kit. The rest of his clowder is mercifully patient as he runs a hand through his kitten’s fine brown hair, smoothing down the spikes before lifting his little chin up.

“What’s wrong, kit?”

Gaetan only sniffles again, shaking his head.

“Come on, now. Sit up. We’ll finish it together.”

That tiny frown only deepens, and the wobble in his chin stops before he grumbles, “I ‘on’t get it. Why the people hurt the bear? Why don’t the bird listen?”

“Ah, that is the question, kit.” Guxart sighs, hefting his child further up on his hip and adjusting the book on his knee. “Bears can be dangerous, and people often lash out. As for the bird, well. There’s a few more pages left to read.”

“It’s stupid! If I had a big friend, I won’t hurt him!”

“Good kitten. Now, we’ve got plenty more kits who want to hear the ending too, so sit tight.”

 He acquiesces, nodding into Guxart’s armpit and reaching out one little finger to trace the edge of a yellowed page, where a slightly crooked drawing of tree branch falls off into the margin. 

“For many long minutes, the bear laid there, growling with pain as the bird sobbed, screaming out into the empty woods.

‘Dear, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, my bear, please get up! They could still be chasing you, we can’t stay here!’

The bear sighed, but said nothing.

‘Please!’ the bird cried, ‘I’ve hurt you a third time, and I won’t forgive myself if you die because of my mistakes.’

‘Be quiet, birdie. They’ve given up —I can’t hear or smell them. Just go.’

‘No! I… I won’t leave you here.’

‘And why not?’ he said, anger slipping into his voice, no matter how it tired him, ‘Your attempts to help left me with a broken arm, an infected wound, and now this. All because you don’t believe me when I tell you I am not like you —you call me your bear yet don’t listen until I roar. So go. You can’t help anyone here.’

This made the bird cry harder, tucking his head into the bear’s warm, soft fur.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, bear. I…… it’s not an excuse, but I want to do better by you. You aren’t like me, you aren’t a bird, you’re a bear, and the dearest one I know. I want to care for you the way you need.’

It was then, as his tears fell onto the bear’s skin, through the dense fur, that the bear felt the pain leave his body, and with it, much of his anger. Somewhere in his heart, he believed his little bird. And somewhere in the world, something else believed it too, as the wounds all along his body began to glow. Brighter and brighter —he looked something like the sun before it faded. Slowly, the bear stood, taking stock of himself as the bird gasped with shock.

His wounds were gone. Only the scars remained.

A strange magic, one he might have been frightened by, but the bear didn’t protest as he sat back on the ground, scooped his bird up into his paws, and nuzzled his feathered stomach with his nose. The bird wrapped his large wings around the bear’s head, hugging him tightly. He whispered promises to listen to his bear, and the bear simply held him tighter, and did his best to believe in him the same way the magic did, that he could be wholly himself with his little bird. And so they lived all that long, long time ago, beyond the seven mountains, beyond the seven forests: happily ever after.”

A cheer goes up from the kittens as Guxart closes the book, and he thinks about Arnaghad and Erland.

It’s the ending he’d wanted to give them, all those years ago when he wrote their story. The bear and the bird. Two legends, even to him. Gezras had told him the story as a witcher already on the Path, rather than a kit, but even then, he’d wished for something different. An ending where Erland listened to Arnaghad and got his head out of the clouds so his feet could stand on solid ground. An ending where Arnaghad had patience, where he tried harder to reason with Erland instead of lashing out in rage and violence. An ending where they lived happily ever after. Together. He tells it this way, for himself and for his kits as they grin at him, so that they might learn from the mistakes of their elders. They chant, as they do many nights:

“Another one?”

“More story?” 

“ I’m not tired yet!”

“Another stoey?”

“Story?”

As the eldest, Cedric leads the charge, turning his eyes to liquid, bigger than dinner plates and deeper than the sea. He’s old enough to have heard each one of these stories, several times over, but still he begs to hear them again like the littlest kits. Axel hovers just over his shoulder, the very tips of his pointed ears drooping with the force of his pout, and the rest quickly follow suit, facing him with a clump of shining eyes and downturned lips and dimpled chins. The little ringleader pleads with him again.

“But what about the one where the jaguar fell in love with the wolf? What about that story?”

“No, kit.”

He turns his stern gaze down when Aiden takes up the mantle. She shuffles forward from the pile, furrowing her dark brows, widening her eyes just that little bit more.

“Please?”

A gasp rises from the crowd, echoed by Guxart’s own. Aiden wouldn’t ask for water in a desert, and certainly not politely, with an earnest please no less. And Guxart knows by the steel in her eyes that it’s not manners she’s learned, but the art of tactical, unconquerable manipulation. Immediately, the other kittens copy her, and just as cries for a story rang in the evening, so too do the cries of please ring out in the night. Pride wells in his chest. He’ll make good on his threats tomorrow. Tonight, he opens the book, finds the page by the torn bottom corner, and shows them the faded illustration he’d painted so long ago —a black jaguar presenting a deer corpse to a hesitant gray wolf. To Court a Wolf had been one of the first stories he’d thought of, and the last he’d written down. By then, Vesemir hadn’t been around to tease him with it.

All the same, his kittens have all loved it best. Kiyan and Jöel still ask him to read it every now and again. These kits are no different, it seems, so he pushes the old memories away and begins to read.

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