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The city of Vizima was filled with the stinking rot of bodies and the moans of those dying from smallpox. Smoke seemed to permanently stain the sky a slate grey as the number of bodies grew each day, as there were constant pyre’s burning under the sun. The heat from the flames and the rays of the sun pressed down upon Dandelion’s skin, sending a rivulet of sweat to trail it’s way down his purple bonnet, landing on the collar of a jacket borrowed from Geralt. He would apologize to him later, but Dandelion had a mission; one not even Geralt was willing to take up.
Dandelion made it his destiny to retrieve Essi Davon’s body from being burned on a funeral pyre surrounded by unfamiliar strangers who had no idea of the beautiful soul she was in life. He wound his way through the throng of people with red rashes, and bumps filled with pus spread all across their skin, skirting around those who tried to grab him in hopes of begging to be saved somehow. But this was the Temple Quarter, where the poorest victims were placed, with no medicine to save them from their fate. Not even God himself would have mercy on these poor souls.
But Dandelion would save Essi. From the moment they were small, he had taken it upon himself to take her under his wing, guiding her towards her future. She was one of his closest friends, no, friend was too small of a word for what she was to him. Essi was his sister and he’d be damned if she didn’t get to rest under the open sky.
There were carts stacked with bodies that stretched as tall as the castle, teetering dangerously as the wind threatened to bring them crashing down. He searched as carefully as he could, looking for a woman with long, golden hair that covered half her face.
“Poet!” A blister filled hand snaked around an alleyway, grasping onto his ankle. The figure was shrouded in the darkness, so he could not see the rest of them, only hearing a wheeze exhaling itself. “Your melodious voice will cure my sickness, I’m sure of it! Sing me a ballad of your choosing!”
Dandelion tried in vain to free himself from their hold, glancing around anxiously for someone to save him, but everyone in the square was either dead or dying. So, looking into the patch of darkness, he cleared his throat. “My apologies, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. Perhaps next time you’re dying from smallpox, I’ll stop by and play a few chords.”
A hiss erupted, followed by the sound of a body dragging itself across cobblestone. They were a hideous sight to behold. Gushing, blood-red blisters had formed near their left eye, causing a blindness, while the other was a pale, milky blue, accentuated by red spiderwebs flaring out from the pupil. Their greying hair fell to the middle of their back, crusted with flakes from the blisters. Their only protection from the world was a worn out cloak that covered nothing, exposing everything to the passerby. From the neck down their entire body was a mess of raised bumps and rashes that had burst, leaving brutal scars in their wake. “Please,” she moaned, her good eye rolling back into her head.
Dandelion fell backwards from shock, his boot leaving the claw of the woman who had grabbed him. “My-my apologies, madam, but I-I really must be going. Good day.” And with that Dandelion sprinted away as fast as could, trying to forget the wails of the woman in the alleyway.
He was so lost to his terror that he almost missed a girl lying comatose on the ground with a long spill of golden hair, and the blue pearl that lay against her collarbone. He slowed his pace, cautiously approaching her as her chest heaved, a rattle sounding in the depths of her throat. It was the death rattle, a sound he’d heard too many times to count while on the road with Geralt.
“Poppet? Is that you?” He asked tentatively.
With her gaze roving him for a few moments, she weakly grinned, splitting open the pulsating blisters by her mouth. White pus leaked out onto her pale skin.
“How many times have I told you not to call me that, Dandelion.”
“Too many to count.”
Dandelion opened his mouth to say something witty, but he was overshadowed when Essi heaved up the contents of her stomach all over the cobblestone road. With a shaky hand, she swiped at her mouth, barely seeming to notice as more blisters popped open.
Her eyes looked too exhausted for how young she was. Her gaze penetrated him, as if seeing straight to his soul. “I know what you’re thinking, you can’t save me. Leave me to my fate to die amongst all of these heathens.”
“My dearest poppet, I can’t do that. I refuse to let you perish alone.”
Her brow crinkled in exasperation. “And I refuse to be the reason you die. Get out of here while you still can.”
“No,” his answer came, barely above a whisper.
Finding nothing but determination in his stance, Essi’s shoulders slumped forward in defeat as another round of bodies was brought into the square, sending a new wave of rot wafting over to them. Soon that would be her, as she was close to death. “If you’re going to bury me outside of these walls, I request that my necklace and lute come with me. I shall write many ballads when I’m no longer on this Earth. You’ll be annoyed with how much I sing.”
“Your wish is my command. I shall not deny you your last request, though you could never annoy me.”
Nodding faintly, Essi closed her eyes with a peaceful smile on her face. “Take me far from this place, Dandelion.”
Though it pained him to do so, Dandelion carefully scooped up Essi’s body, cradling her close to his, pretending as if she didn’t smell of stink and rot. But underneath it all, she still smelled of verbana, as if the scent was forever etched into her skin. He placed her lute on her stomach and she immediately grasped onto it as if it were a lifeline.
“He’s never forgotten you,” Dandelion said, not knowing if Essi was already gone and he was talking to a ghost.
But she cracked open her eye, still bright with all the stars in the sky, and smiled, creating a crease at the corner. “I’ve never forgotten him either. All my ballads have been dedicated to him, the White Wolf, Geralt of Rivia. Make sure to tell him.”
Then Essi took her final breath in Dandelion’s arms, at peace to know that she had not been forgotten after all these years. As her chest exhaled once more, hot air escaped from her mouth, lingering on Dandelion’s skin, creating a feeling that was entirely unpleasant, though he tried not to dwell on it and focus solely on his task.
“May you compose many ballads in death, Poppet,” Dandelion whispered over Essi’s corpse as hot tears pricked his eyes. “Compose so many I’ll be the one using your songs for a change.”
Here in the Temple Quarter was not the place to cry or mourn. So, gathering his bravado, he put a smile, adding a spring to his steps. Those he met along the way waved cheerily at him, pointedly ignoring the corpse in his arms.
Through the screams of the damned, and the fires of hell, he walked with Essi in his arms, her limbs dangling at an awkward angle, still clutching the lute, with her head tilted back and her hair draped over his arm. Each step he took rocked her, sending a jolt through her, making it look as though she were sleeping, though he knew no one would be fooled by that as she was clearly infected by smallpox. Most perished once they were infected by the disease.
He would burn these clothes the second he got the chance. He did not want to be reminded of the way Essi’s corpse clung to the leather fabric each time he put it on. Nor did he want Geralt to drown in his memories.
Some of the townsfolk looked as though they wanted to stop him, and ask just what he was doing with a body, and a smallpox victim no less. But no one did, though their mouths puckered at the corner in disgust at Essi. He might be spreading the disease further, but at the moment Dandelion couldn’t find in himself to care.
Through every alleyway and road, people jumped out of his way and rushed to the opposite end, some even making a sign to keep demons away.
Dandelion couldn’t be bothered to give them a charming grin, not as he held his dead sister in his arms.
When he had gotten out of the slums, the air began to clear, and the smoke did not tinge the sky so darkly. Through the haze of the fires, Dandelion could make out the pale blue sky, the exact color of Essi’s eyes. His eyes began to water again, though he rapidly blinked them away, wanting to mourn when the scent of corpses did not permeate the air.
When he reached the gate of the city, the guards didn’t even try to stop him or ask for his reason for leaving the city. They merely stepped away and let him pass without comment, as if they knew the bard was in mourning.
As soon as he had gotten out of the city limits, he headed for the forest surrounding Vizima, a place he knew Essi would have liked. The ground was soft under his gait, perfect for a burial. The scent of fresh flowers tickled his nose, taking away some of the aroma of decay. Even the animals had gone silent, not even a bug buzzed around his ear, nor did any creature slither across his boot.
He made his way peacefully towards where Geralt waited, the witcher having already dug the grave with a shovel he had acquired from somewhere in the city.
When Geralt came into view, his forearms were resting across the top of the shovel and his legs were in a crouch as he gazed deep into the dirt filled hole. “I found her,” Dandelion said, making his presence known, though he knew Geralt heard him approach.
Geralt didn’t move, only taking a shuddering breath, preparing himself for the sight he was about to behold. It seemed to take every muscle in the Witcher’s body to rise up, letting the shovel fall into the grass beside him. When he turned to face Dandelion, his eyes were closed. The moment the golden eyes took in Essi, he lurched forward and snatched her from Dandelion’s arms.
He gently brushed back her hair from her face and closed her eyes that were still open toward the heavens. “She deserved a better ending than what she was given. If only she had stayed with us on our journey.”
Dandelion didn’t move any closer, wanting to give Geralt his time to cope with the loss. “You can’t blame yourself for her death, Geralt. We all made our own choices, and what’s done is done. I’ve made my peace with it, now it is time for you to do the same.”
“She still smells of verbana,” Geralt muttered under his breath, as if talking to himself.
“Eh?”
“Essi always carried a fragrance of verbana on her skin and even in death the scent clings to her.” Geralt sounded amazed at this revelation, absolutely in awe.
“Ah, that. Yes, I made that observation myself when I first found her in Vizima.”
They were silent for a few moments, letting the wind howl its agony through the trees, demanding justice for a girl barely grown into her womanhood. Then, without prompting, Geralt gingerly placed Essi’s body in the grave that seemed all too small for who she had been. Her personality had been bigger than the sun, yet all she was given was a tiny grave in the middle of a forest. Perhaps Essi didn’t mind where she was buried, but Dandelion did.
As Geralt stooped over to add Essi’s lute to her grave, his eye caught the pearl resting on Essi’s motionless chest. He fingered the blue pearl for a moment, waves of memories crashing over him as he remembered everything that she was.
“Let her go, Geralt.”
“It is… difficult. I do not feel things as others do, but when I look at her, I see all that she could have been. Her life was stolen from her when it had barely begun. I would happily trade places with her if it meant she got to live to see another day. I have lived this life for so long I forget, sometimes, the fragility of humans.”
“It is but an occurrence every one of us knows looms in the future. Our death could be tomorrow, the next day, the same month, or within a year, but that’s the beauty of being human. You don’t know when the end will come, so you live and breathe in every scrap of goodness as though you will never experience it again.”
Geralt was silent. He began shoveling dirt into the grave with methodical care, each thump hitting the ground with a loud thwack.
Dandelion took off his purple bonnet and took a seat under a willow tree, resting his head against its bark while Geralt finished his work. The forest was alive with life, yet so still, as if it were holding its breath as the pair of them grieved. He twisted his bonnet in his hands, listening to the sounds of the forest.
Birds hummed overhead, leaves dropped onto the ground, and squirrels scampered across the grass before being snatched up by a predator. The world was continuing on without Essi, as if she had never existed. Dandelion would never forget her. He would make sure of it.
Surrounding Dandelion was a patch of daisies, a brilliant, dewy white, glowing under the sun. An idea struck him. He got to his feet, abandoned his bonnet, and began gathering flowers to decorate Essi’s grave.
Under his breath he softly began to sing a song he had composed for Essi. A song spun from the sea, of wildflowers, of Vizmia, of rainbows, of stones, of monsters and everything in between, for Essi was everything in this world that was good. Even Geralt stopped what he was doing to listen to Dandelion’s song. It was a song that would never be heard by anyone outside this forest. A song that would only exist in his mind, though it was one of his better rhymes.
Dandelion inhaled the scent of daisies as thoughts of Essi overwhelmed his brain. Fat tears formed in his eyes, blurring his vision from seeing farther than five feet ahead of him. Nonetheless he continued to gather, and gather and gather until he could carry no more.
He scooted over to her final resting place and began to strategically decorate the dirt so that it would be presentable for years to come. He started at the head of the grave and worked his way down, creating a crown for the girl who wore her melodies like a queen. That’s what she was. A queen of music and laughter. A queen who bowed before no man.
Geralt wandered away for a moment before coming back with four large, smooth stones, clutching two in each hand. “Four stones for each year we were parted from one another. Four stones for each year I could have written to her, asking her to join me. Four years of mistakes.”
“Oh, Geralt.”
Kneeling down in the dirt, Geralt lay one stone at her feet, one on her left side, one on her right side, and one at her head. The grave would forever be marked for anyone who ventured into the forest.
Essi would not be forgotten.
The only two people who cared she had perished, mourned over the girl struck by disease, going into an early grave, but forever buried under the endless sky. Here she would forever be free, her spirit no longer tormented by the other lost souls trapped within the city. Here she could dance and sing and do whatever she wished.
Essi was home, as long as she had her lute and pearl, she would be happy anywhere.
Dandelion began to sing his song as he sat beside her newly decorated grave, watching the sun set below the horizon, setting the world on fire in a mixture of reds, oranges, and yellows underneath the smoke of the pyres. Geralt sat beside him, saying nothing, but merely remembering his time spent with her.
“How do you do it?” Geralt softly asked, breaking the silence that stretched out between them.
“Do what?” Dandelion turned to face the Witcher, though his companion still gazed towards the city with a pained expression on his face.
“Live without the fear of death.”
Ah. Dandelion understood what Geralt meant. The bard placed a hand on Geralt’s shoulder, ignoring the way he tensed for a moment before relaxing. “Death is a fact of life many of us have accustomed ourselves to so that we are not afraid. We see beyond the end, and live in the moment. We feel everything, do everything, because we might not get to see the sun rise again. We burn brightly before we are snuffed out like a candle. Only cowards fear death because they do not know how to live. They do not know what it is like to be free.”
Geralt contemplated this. “What is it like to feel everything?”
Dandelion knew he should pity Geralt for his circumstances, but he did not. He admired the Witcher for voicing his deepest thoughts. “It is both a blessing and a curse. Everything we feel drives our life. We find our passions through our heart, leaning on our emotions to guide us towards the light. We know the world will continue on without us, but it doesn’t stop us from breathing in every bit of goodness life has to offer, enjoying the bliss of being human.”
Geralt nodded, his eyes gently moving across the horizon, searching for something, or someone to walk across the fields.
The wind wrapped around their hearts, a warm breeze that felt like a hug. An embrace from Essi beyond the grave.
I miss you, Poppet. Dandelion thought. So much that I fear my heart will burst. You’d laugh at that wouldn’t you? You’d giggle until I joined in because you couldn’t bear my sadness. I miss you so very much.
The Witcher and the Bard stayed side by side for some time, not speaking, eventually falling asleep under the stars, wondering how their life would ever be the same again. Just before Dandelion drifted off, he heard Geralt whisper, “I love you too, Essi.”