Yennefer watched, unimpressed, when Geralt arrived early in the morning dragging a cartful of plant pots behind him. Geralt, to his credit, paid no notice to her aura of questioning his sanity and merely halted the handcart to the side of their small front yard.
"Yennefer," he greeted.
Yennefer rose an eyebrow. "Geralt. Are you planning on becoming an avid gardener in the next few days?"
"Not that I'm aware of," Geralt responded, moving to enter the house.
"May I ask, then," Yennefer said, blocking his entrance and waving at the cart, "what all those are for?"
Geralt looked back at the cart stacked high with plant pots. "Oh yeah, those." He shrugged. "They're payment."
"Payment," Yennefer repeated. "Payment for what?"
"I helped some elf who was fighting a pack of drowners and he insisted I take a whole bunch of pots as thanks."
"And you didn't refuse? You refuse often enough when people offer you money."
Geralt shrugged again. "He wouldn't take no for an answer."
There was a loud thump from above them and the window slightly to the left of the front door opened to reveal a sleep-deprived Jaskier—clearly the thump had been her rolling out of bed. "Are you two quite done nattering on the doorstep? Some of us would like to sleep, you know. I didn't get out of the tavern until dawn because for some stupid reason there's a festival on and that means the taverns stay open all night meaning the entertainment has to be there all night."
"You adore the festival season, Jaskier," Yennefer reminded her, and Jaskier stuck out her tongue in response to the truth. "And your Witcher has decided to come home with a bunch of flowerpots."
"Oh he's my Witcher now, is he? I see you, Yennefer, you only claim him when he's not doing stupid things. Good luck with that."
"Can I go inside now?" Geralt interrupted, not wanting to stand outside his own house while his two lovers traded blows in a well-rehearsed dance. "I'd like to get the drowner guts off me."
"Hang on a minute," Jaskier said, having now seen the cart of pots in question. "I heard the word elf before, did he repeatedly state he wasn't an elf despite having the ears on full display?"
Geralt nodded. "Yeah, you know him?"
"I'm coming down!" Jaskier disappeared from the window and they could hear her progress down the stairs as she clattered around before reappearing at Yennefer's shoulder. She pecked Yennefer on the cheek and grinned at Geralt. "You two are about to experience one of the greatest things ever," she declared.
She sprinted over to the cart, nightclothes flapping in the breeze created, and grabbed a pot to examine it. "Oh yes, I recognise these pots. This is going to be great. And he gave you so many! He only had a few on hand when I encountered him."
"Jaskier, what are you going on about?" Yennefer asked, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed.
Jaskier winked at her and grinned. "Watch," she said, and then proceeded to throw the pot she was cradling onto the cobbles where it smashed into tiny shards.
"Jaskier!" Geralt shouted out of astonishment, shocked that Jaskier would destroy something so seemingly precious to her.
Yennefer started moving towards Jaskier but stopped when Jaskier just knelt down to pick something out of the pile of shards and presented it to them. It was a ruby, apparently flawless from the distance and gleaming in the early morning sunshine.
"Tada!" Jaskier said, beaming smugly.
"You couldn't have just tipped the pot upside down?" Yennefer asked, now continuing her movement to Jaskier's side so she could check her over in case any stray shards had hurt her and investigate the ruby. "And why hide rubies in plant pots anyway?"
"They're magic pots, Yen," Jaskier explained. "You have to smash them and they'll give you some kind of treasure in return. These things helped me a bunch when I first left Lettenhove."
'You're saying all of these pots have something valuable hidden inside them and we have to smash them in order to get it?" Geralt asked and Jaskier nodded in confirmation.
"Somehow I am not surprised that you managed to meet a person who gave you magic pots to smash, Jaskier," Yennefer commented.
Jaskier held a hand to her heart and gasped. "Rude, Yennefer! Just for that, you don't get to smash any."
Yennefer smirked. "Oh yeah?"
With a flick of her wrist, Yennefer sent chaos hurtling towards the cart in a controlled manner and neatly broke five pots. They shattered and left sparkling rubies in their rubble.
What followed was a mad scramble to see who could smash the most pots until the cart that had proudly carried a load of beautiful pots held only dust and broken shards. Geralt, with the help of the drowner guts he had yet to wash off, was also covered in dust and looked like something he would get a contract for. Yennefer was pristine apart from a few flyaway strands of hair, and Jaskier looked like she'd been in a bar brawl (which she had, but that had been last night).
A lone pot had rolled out of the scramble and was still in one piece. Jaskier walked over to it and picked it up. "Let's keep this one, yeah? It's pretty."
That afternoon, after they'd all washed up and Geralt and Jaskier had slept, there was a reasonable pile of rubies filling a set of goblets and a new plant pot sitting on a windowsill holding a lavender plant and a hidden secret.