Facts about Yenna the Better Yennefer:
1) Yup, she did indeed stare at absolutely everything and everyone in the market. Yup, that's probably not a good sign of her mental ability, but it's not causing any problems for Jaskier so he can probably just ignore it.
2) You'd think someone staring at absolutely everything would have an opinion on those things, but you would be wrong! She has an opinion on none of them. Possibly also a bad sign, but it certainly speeds up buying things.
3) This includes food. How can it include food? Jaskier doesn't know, but his attempts to call Yenna's bluff by giving her a bite of the various questionable biscuits and even more questionable dried meat being sold only resulted in her stuffing it in her face without hesitation.
She doesn't even think about it. He hands her something and it goes in her mouth despite the scrap of supposed meat being visually indistinguishable from boot leather. He's not sure what would happen if it actually was. She does have the sense to not eat non-food, right? Kids put all sorts of stuff in their mouth but if it's not food they spit it out. That's...he's pretty sure that's how it works. Reasonably. Maybe he shouldn't hand her anything that he doesn't want swallowed.
Jaskier, because he is a normal person, cares what he's eating, but there really isn't much. The market is pretty much what you'd expect: tons and tons of clothing and trinkets that, if they weren't stolen off the back of a dead person, were more or less stolen off the back of some desperate refugee, but when it comes to things everyone needs like food, everything's marked up like they're for a royal table and it's whatever could be yanked from the ground yesterday or dug from the very bottom of a forgotten barrel.
Heavy or mildewed, truly an intractable choice. It's enough to make someone decide they're best off accepting an empty stomach until the next inn.
He looks over Yenna, still gamely chewing at the meat. Children are basically like packmules that can complain in your own language, aren't they? Pack-goats? So maybe a tenth of her own weight? Though all the animals he's seen had straight spines and he would guess that is probably is a factor in how much weight you can pile on a back.
The one thing he's willing to credit Worse Yennefer for is that, probably by sheer accident of spite, she did turn the invading army into ashes and now people won't be quite so desperate. Things should clear up as time passes and they put distance between themselves and the current mess.
Until then, boot leather, hard pears, and radishes it is.
That turns out to be a good decision because Yenna does not make for a speedy travel companion and there's no way they're reaching the next inn before sundown. Not that Jaskier is particularly complaining. A slow pace has some benefits, like letting one compose without running out of breath, and Yenna makes for an attentive audience, if one that offers little feedback.
She doesn't recognize anything he sings. He assumes there must be some songs she knows, you can't not know songs, but she just gets a hunted look when he asks if she has any requests so he tells her to never mind and hands her a radish, which she eats from roottip to the very top of the greens like a hungry calf. His songs are better, anyway.
It all seems to be going fine except the next morning there's no sign of the girl.
It takes maybe an hour of traveling further on the road before he finds signs of something blundering off the path and there she is curled up in the new cloak he got her behind a rock.
"What was the plan here?" he asks and she flails awake. She looks significantly more terrified than he intended and he sighs. "It's not safe to be walking at night."
"I'm slow," she says.
"You'll be significantly slower once you break a leg stumbling about in the dark," Jaskier points out. "Or if some monster kills you. Few things make as poor travelers as corpses."
"I'm slowing you down."
"Luckily, I'm not in a rush. Come on, now."
It really is lucky because if he thought Yenna was slow before, Yenna with significantly less sleep could be outpaced by the average turtle. He's suspicious she's wrenched her ankle as well but it's hard to tell when her normal gait is already more of a broken-legged stagger.
The morning's songs are a collection he calls Ways Children Die Because They Didn't Do What They Were Told. Very popular with parents. Also very popular with children, because they are horrid little ghouls who delight in gore and have no concept of sympathy. He's not sure if she gets the point so after a bunch he brings up how commonly forests and night featured as prime dead children settings. Really makes you think, hm?
It doesn't appear to be making her think. She just stares at him. So he sings the one about elves snatching up runaway children and butchering them over a cookfire. It's a lengthy affair, terrifically detailed about each and every cut of meat getting carved off disobedient stupid kids and then eaten in front of their other captives. But Yenna, because she is as much a horrid little ghoul as all children, actually smiles, evidently so delighted to hear about gruesome horrors happening to people that she doesn't even remember she's scared of elves herself. Kids! They're awful.
"Oh, that song's a hit, huh? You spurn my lovely compositions and prefer that hack Eugen? Maybe I'll sing nothing but Eugen's songs now," he threatens.
"Are those ones true?"
Oh no. Parenting.
Does he lie and say that yes, absolutely if she runs off again the elves will take her so she better not cause any trouble?
Does he tell the truth and undermine the whole don't run off thing he's been -
"Wait. My songs are true!" Jaskier objects. "Way more true than anything Eugen wrote."
"That's not what you said."
"I said that about one song. One song! I was eighteen. Everyone does something stupid at eighteen. You'll do something stupid thing when you're eighteen too, you know, it's a fact, but if you're lucky it won't turn out to still be haunting you when you're forty. My songs are by and large accurate and well-researched accounts of real events, pried with great effort from the mouth of a real live witcher. The only time Eugen felt concerned about accuracy was when he was talking about the cuts of meat." Jaskier's used it as a mnemonic when going to the butcher's. Say what you will about Eugen's talent or subject matter or complete willingness to fan already raging flames, the man knew food.
Yenna looks disappointed to hear this because children are the real monsters.
"But it is true elves kidnap and kill people," Jaskier tells her, deciding that her not running off again is the side he should come down on. Yenna is clearly harmless, a little more elf-hatred isn't going to lead to anything actionable on her part. "I personally got kidnapped and almost killed by elves." Yeah, that perks her up, the little ghoul. "And there's all sorts of monsters around," Jaskier continues. "Forests are packed with child-killing monsters like towns are packed with people. And that's why it's bad to run off on your own, alright?"
Yenna nods.
They are in the next village for maybe an entire hour, Jaskier chatting people up and telling them about what happened at Sodden Hill - the official version, not what he told Yenna, because when terrifying witches tell you that they have decided who is getting credit for what you don't argue that there is no way Yennefer is a hero and if the woman hasn't shown up yet it's because she's still entertaining herself torturing stragglers to death or whatever she does to unwind - when someone interrupts him to tell him the deformed kid he brought has run off on her own.
Jaskier curses, thanks the man, curses again for good measure, and informs everyone within earshot that children are the worst and you can't even put a hobble on them because they've got the same thumbs you do. He's advised that it's best to beat the stupid out of them early and often before it gets them killed and he says if he tried beating the stupid out of Yenna he doesn't think there would be anything left.
One of the women laughs and says, "Yeah, she looked simple, the poor lamb. See about a hobble with a complicated knot, then."
Of course given Yenna's unhobbled speed it's unlikely adding a hobble would so much as give her pause. He catches up with her in ten minutes. "And what exactly were you thinking this time?" he demands.
Yenna stares at the dirt of the road.
"You don't even know where you're going!"
"I do," the girl says.
"Really."
"I do," she whines. "North past the mountains and east along the river."
"Do you have any idea how far that actually is," he says. When she just keeps staring at the ground he continues, "You'll be going through all of Temeria and into Redania first. And then the Dyfne river doesn't even take you all the way to Gulet."
"Okay."
"No!" he tells her. "Not okay! You didn't even have the sense to grab the food I have first! Have you even traveled before? Ever? Or did you spend your whole life in Gulet?"
Silence.
"Well?"
"No. I was born in Gulet," Yenna says eventually.
"Then if you ever want to get back there, stop running off," he says.
"Okay."
Oh, like Jaskier's that stupid. "You know, you're right. You clearly know what you're doing and I will not question your completely impeccable judgement. Setting out at noon with no food? A masterful plan, Yenna, I see it now. By all means, continue."