Mystery Kid is still sitting at the far table when Jaskier finishes performing. That's good, not just for her sake but his given she's wearing his spare clothes and his cloak. She also looks like she's hoping to melt into the wall if only she flattens herself against the wood with enough determination, which is less so. She shivers, just once, when he slides in across from her, then goes stiff. Like a mouse cornered by a cat, holding still knowing it's caught but that moving will only provoke claws and teeth sooner.
Also like a mouse she's entirely willing to use her own claws and teeth, but she doesn't try to hit Jaskier again once he gets in range. He'll put that down as a win. "Still hungry?" he asks. It's meant to be a bit rhetorical since the bowl's been scraped clean of every grain of barley, but Mystery Kid shakes her head jerkily once. "Right, then."
They're nothing alike, of course, the poor girl is terrified, but there's something in her stiffness that reminds him of Geralt sitting in a corner all those years ago.
"Not a fan of the songs?" They had been loud ones, the ones where you get people to sing the chorus with you. That'd certainly been the right move for the crowd as a whole, but when he brought her here, Mystery Kid seemed like she was giving serious thought to gracing him with actual eye contact and now she's decided she'll only be sharing such intimacy with her new best friend, the splintering corner of the table. All the shouting seems a likely culprit. She may not have been impressed with the content either. Young girls often liked the more complex narratives, in his experience, but drunken singalongs favored repetition and simplicity. He's guessing, of course. They're not even on a fake-name basis, he's certainly not going to try asking a lady her age. "I don't mind," he adds. "Really. What did you think?"
Her mouth moves a little, then she says, "Wasn't an army."
Well. That's a puzzler. "Wasn't an army?" he repeats. There very much was an army, or at least had been, but she did seem to have been clear of its actual path. Maybe she only saw whatever terrifying business the mages had been up to. Or maybe. Well. She'd been one child lost in the woods. It wouldn't take a whole army for whatever had ended with her naked and covered in mud. Oh, he is absolutely not qualified for this.
"In your song. The, the elves. There wasn't." The girl gulps. "An army."
"Oh!" he says. "You're a smart one, aren't you? You're completely right, I made it up. I wrote that song when I was first starting out. I didn't give a fig what was true back then, and what really happened with Geralt and the elves was not the sort of thing people look for in a song. I wanted something catchy and popular." He gives an embarassed laugh. "And it was, and it made him popular too, so now I'm still singing it twenty years later." He plunks a few strings and she finally looks up just enough take in the lute at his side.
"Lovely, isn't she?" He watches her hands lift a little, like she might reach out, and says, "You can touch if you want." But then he adds, "Got her from one of the elves then, actually," and she yanks her hands back into her lap.
So Mystery Kid is scared of elves too. Can't really blame her for that one. For all he knows elves killed her family before her eyes or something, and even if they didn't, everyone knows there's elves working with the Nilfgaard soldiers...the world's a messy place. There's a reason he never says anything as specific as Filavandrel's name when it comes to his lute.
"I promise, it's not cursed or anything like that," he tells her. "Won't bite," and gets back silence and her hands balling up even more tightly in her lap.
Right, yeah. Well, he thinks, looking to the emptied bowl again, at least feeding her had been the right move. That's most of dealing with kids, right?
"So," he says, because that's a nice filler word. "So. Still can't say where your family is?" Shockingly, the question she wouldn't answer before gets no answer. "And I don't suppose you're up for explaining if that's don't know or don't remember?" It's not even an evocative silence. Sort of sullen, even. "Right. So." And no one here has recognized her so far when she is, to put it diplomatically, distinctive. So she's not from here, or anywhere nearby either given he certainly hopes the locals would say something if they saw the girl from the village over suddenly alone in the company of a stranger and decidedly worse for wear. He's quite accostable. In fact, he regularly gets accosted even when he's doing nothing wrong. So it's shaping up to be his original guess, which, how lovely, is also the worst-case for them both. "Were you refugees?"
"No!" she shrieks, her head snapping up at last to show eyes bulging like a kicked dog's.
The tavern goes quiet for a moment and he can feel absolutely everyone staring at him. "Right," he says. "Right, yeah. Don't know what I was thinking. Of course not. Silly of me."
So that leaves...merchants of some kind?
His understanding of children more or less tops out at food and giving them back to their parents. There's also providing clothing and removing the dirt, but he thinks her heart might actually burst like a rabbit's if he makes any acknowledgement she has a physical form.
"I'm going to go talk to, er, her," he says, gesturing at the older barmaid, Adga, as if Mystery Kid's going to actually look up to see who he's pointing at. "I'll get you something to drink? Stay here and have something to drink." Food and water, he decides. He just has to think of this like dealing with a horse. A thing he is also not good at, but at least he's been around horses. Like with horses, he just has to manage the basics necessary to avoid death or laming until someone more qualified takes over again.
Adga, for her part, is looking significantly less pleased to see him approach than she was earlier. He gives her his most apologetically pathetic look. "I was wondering if you could help me," he starts. "I found the girl in the woods this morning. She needs proper clothing and a bath, and perhaps for someone significantly more female than myself to handle that."
That gets Adga looking more invested in the whole business. She eyes Mystery Kid with a thoughtful frown. "Does she have a name?"
"Presumably," Jaskier says. "I'm also operating under the assumption she has a numerical age, some sort of origin, and other identifying traits."
Mystery Kid does not, to Jaskier's dismay, seem to appreciate Adga's interest much more than his, but the woman at least manages to exchange words without provoking another scream. It also turns out Mystery Kid was indeed in need of a drink, ultimately draining three mugs of watery ale before the bath is actually ready.
When Adga returns to invite her to the bath, it occurs to Jaskier that perhaps he should've asked for the watery ale to be watered down substantially more. The girl, already not the most coordinated, wobbles badly very badly when she stands up, and when Adga reaches out to steady her she jerks away with a squeak. Luckily Mystery Kid goes backward so instead of tumbling to the ground she only ends up sitting back heavily on the bench.
So she's scared of men, elvish lutes, and also women. With horses, you plop a blinder on them so they stop shying at literally everything. What's that for kids? A large doll? He's seen kids with their faces buried in a doll. Are dolls a thing you buy already made or do you have to commission them?
"Easy there," the woman says. She keeps her hand outstretched and eventually Mystery Kid reaches forward and takes it. "There we go. There we go."
Jaskier watches them leave and contemplates if you can sort of...reverse sell children. That's basically what schooling is, right? Could he pay someone to take the kid? Perhaps more relevantly, does he have enough money on him?
Not really an option right now regardless, he decides. The town's flooded with refugees and no one's going to want another kid around. And Nilfgaard may have been stopped but winning one battle doesn't mean the war's over. He certainly wishes things are turning around but if wishes were horses, he wouldn't have had to walk across the continent. Better to get Mystery Kid significantly north of here before doing anything else.
At least she's presentable once Adga's done. Mystery Kid's delivered to the door of his room in a rough dress and some disquietingly good boots. Mystery Kid herself looks about as dead on her feet as the corpse those shoes were probably taken off of and is easily herded over to the bed. She collapses without any further drama.
Adga jerks her head doorwise and he follows her out for a quick bit of whispering.
"She didn't even know she's in Sodden," Adga says.
"So she's from Cintra -" he starts, because things can get confusing when you're running.
"She's from Aedirn, she says. And had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned Nilfgaard. I think..." Adga bites her lip, glances at the closed door. "You can see what she looks like, and I don't think her mind is any better. She stares at things like she's never seen them before, the way babes do. I hate to say it but...perhaps there's more to this than bad luck."
Jaskier considers this. "If they didn't want her, surely they could've gotten rid of her before now," he argues. "I mean, I understand, but she's, what...twelve? Surely if they've taken care of her that long they wouldn't suddenly abandon her."
Adga shrugs, not looking at all convinced. "They wouldn't be the first to change their minds about that sort of thing when trouble arrived." At his expression, she adds, "Well. Could also have been a matter of not having the time to look for her when she got lost, or her slowing them down when they couldn't afford it, and they'll be glad enough to find she's survived and returned to them now that things have quieted, I suppose."
Mystery Kid, admittedly, was nearly as bad at walking as she was talking during the trip into town. If her family traveled she'd have to stay in the wagon. Jaskier supposes, with so much going wrong, a wheel could've broken, and they'd needed to run, and the girl just couldn't keep up... But wagons generally have horses hitched to them, or something ridable, and she's at least coordinated enough to stay put while something else does the walking.
If the girl hasn't put any of that together, Jaskier isn't going to bring it up. "Maybe they'll feel bad for leaving her," he says, starting to workshop possible arguments regarding familial obligation and general decency. "Welcome her back with open arms."
Adga nods at that. "People do things without thinking," she agrees. "There's a lot we do and regret afterward."
He flashes her a smile. "I am downright talented when it comes to making people regret things," Jaskier says, feeling on more solid ground for the first time all day. "That, I can handle."