Freaky Friday

Geralt's stomach growled. He had not eaten his fill in days – after another dry spell with hardly any work they were low on coin. They had found no success in the country side where apparently all monsters had chosen to take a break from bothering the villagers with their aptitude for death and destruction. For lack of better things to do, Novigrad had been chosen as their destination. Someone there was bound to have work for them. Not necessarily the kind of work that Geralt was looking for but it was either that or starvation.

Longingly the witcher looked at the dumplings in front of him, their interesting shape, the neatly folded dough. Never, he was certain, had food been this enticing. He imagined biting into the soft lump of dough, his teeth parting the surface to find the juicy meat beneath. The smell wafted past his nose and he imagined how the taste of the tender, steamed meat would spill all over his tongue once he had opened the pliant cocoon.

He caught the gaze of the old woman that had been lingering on him for a while. She smiled, presiding over her dumplings with pride. Her dark almond-shaped eyes shone warmly, the black and grey-streaked hair in the tight bun on top of her head was neat, every hair perfectly immobile. The woman nodded at the delicious wares displayed on her small cart. It was a subtle nod, hardly a movement, but it was all the encouragement that the starving witcher needed.

"Jaskier? Hand me the coin," he demanded without averting his gaze. He was as focused on the dumplings as he would have been in battle; a chort or a fiend would have gotten the same level of attention as the little dough-wrapped gifts in front of him.

"Hm?" the bard hummed, so busy tuning the strings of his lute, that he had not heard the witcher's demand. It was merely the familiar, rough base of Geralt's voice that had gotten his attention at all. "Come again?" Jaskier plucked on a string and then smiled. It appeared that the lute had been tuned successfully.

"The coin. In your shoe. Give it to me," Geralt growled, finally looking at his companion. The hunger made him impatient. He began to feel his mood turning foul.

Jaskier finally looked up to him, eyebrows raised in confusion.

"Coin? What coin?"

"The one in the heel of your god damn boot!" It had happened. It was gone. His patience was gone.

Jaskier shook his head.

"Nothing left. I had to spent our last gold on new strings." He lifted his lute slightly as if there had been any doubt as to for whom the new strings had been needed.

Geralt ground his teeth. Did he just hear himself snarling or was it his stomach still?

"What were you thinking?" he grumbled, quietly, deadly, balling up his fists. "I need to eat! How am I supposed to work if there is no food?"

Jaskier seemed oblivious to the witcher's pain.

"Oh Geralt, you haven't had any work in weeks. It's time one of us sets out to make some actual coin. I'm sick of camping in the cold and eating roots. We," he raised his lute again to indicate that it was him and the instrument and not him and the witcher that he was referring to, "are doing it my way now since your way is shit and I will not die of starvation."

Before Geralt could stop himself, he had stretched out his arm, faster than any human around them could have done, and grabbed the bard by the collar of his cerulean shirt. He yanked the slender man until he bumped against the witcher's broad chest.

"I need to eat," he pressed between his teeth.

"Stop it, Geralt!" Jaskier started flailing his free hand. "There is always a willing audience at the Kingfisher Inn. I'm sure I can gather some coin in no time."

"If you do not, I swear I will strangle you with those strings." To undermine his point, he put the gloved fingertip of his free hand onto the lute's fingerboard and pulled a few strings. The resulting dissonance was about as pleasant as the witcher's current mood.

"Now, now. No fighting. Is beautiful day. No fighting," the old woman suddenly interrupted, her accent, like the shape of her eyes, exotic and unfamiliar to Geralt. Her gaze was stern and commanding, her tone did not tolerate any objection. The only other woman Geralt had ever known to be this assertive without having to lift even a finger was Calanthe, Queen of Cintra.

For a brief moment he imagined the old lady on the throne, ending fights between armies. No fighting. Is beautiful day.

"Geralt," a choking Jaskier reminded him that he still held the bard by the scruff.

"You take dumpling each. No fighting!" The woman held out two dumplings, each skewered on a thin wooden stick.

"We cannot pay," Geralt answered, finally letting go of Jaskier who huffed as soon as he could breathe again.

"Is fine. Pay later. Take now," she nodded, gesturing for him to take the dumplings. As Geralt did so, he handed one to his friend – begrudgingly so.

"Thank you," he said earnestly as he turned back to the old woman. "I will not forget your kindness."

"No, will not," she said, smiling again.

Later, when Geralt thought back to the encounter, he did wonder if he had imagined the threatening tone in her voice. But now he was ruled by hunger. He turned on his heel and savored every bite of his dumpling on the way to the Kingfisher Inn. He heard Jaskier's footsteps behind him as the bard tried to keep up with his pace.

By the time they reached the inn it was obvious that, as so often, Jaskier's plan was a failure. The usually so lively place was empty.

"The church," the man behind the bar explained, "mandated today be a quiet day. Folks need to practice piousness."

"But… why?" Dandelion asked.

The barman shrugged. "Because they will it so. Every few weeks they randomly declare a day when nobody gets to have fun. Today is such a day." He cleared his throat. "Tell you what. Tomorrow people will be swamp us, they'll need to recover from being so quiet and pious. Board and room for tonight and tomorrow. In exchange you'll play tomorrow night. Sound fair?"

Without hesitating, Jaskier shook hands with the innkeeper.

"Will you admit it now?" Jaskier asked, ruffled chest puffed and fluffed like a bird's trying to mate. "My plan was perfect!"

Geralt only grunted as he wolfed down his stew. As his hunger slowly dissipated so did his foul mood. Most of it anyway.

"Do not ever again spend our last coin without telling me," he warned his companion. The bard, however, just rolled his eyes before he smiled all sweetly.

"We both know you don't have it in you to stay mad at me for long."

Geralt felt a muscle in his eyelid twitch.

Better a muscle in his eyelid than a muscle in his fist, he thought.

The innkeeper provided them with a room the size of a generously dimensioned broom closet. They squeezed into the lonely bed as they had done many times in the past. With his stomach finally full, Geralt fell asleep in an instant.

He felt better when he woke up. Jaskier had curled himself up into a ball as he did often at night, pushing his feet into Geralt's back and therefore the witcher closer and closer to the edge of the bed.

When Geralt opened his eyes, he blinked. Something was odd. Why was everything slightly fuzzy around the edges? He aggressively rubbed his eyes with his fists but still, somehow his surroundings were less sharp than they used to be. It was not terrible, just annoying.

He sat up, stretched and yawned. When he ran a hand through his hair, he froze. Something was not right but his brain was still too foggy for him to put his finger on it.

Jaskier, agitated by the movement next to him, made a little sound of discontent. Geralt turned around to look at his friend – only to find himself looking at… himself. There, in the bed, he lay, slowly waking up. Geralt nearly jumped as he looked into a pair of yellow eyes – his eyes.

It must be a doppler, he concluded.

"Where is Jaskier?" he grunted, all while sprinting to the chair that his swords were leaning against. He grabbed the silver one and assumed a balanced stance. But why was his sword so heavy? And why did it feel like he was moving with the pace of a disabled snail?

"I'm here, obviously. Have you hit your head?" The alleged doppler, who had assumed Jaskier's shape, sat up in bed. He coughed and touched his throat. "What's wrong with my voice?" He hummed a very annoying tune that he had been working on constantly for the past few days.

"I hope I'm not coming down with a cold. Not sure what the innkeeper will do to us if I cannot make good on our part of the bargain. Dear lord," he tried to clear his throat again. "I sound like a rusted rake."

"You sound like me," Geralt said and lowered his sword. He had not looked at himself but he had finally understood what had happened. He mentally prepared himself and then looked at his arms – not as pale as they ought to be, no scars and no strength. Those were the arms of someone who played musical instruments for a living, not of someone who knew how to fight with a sword. He ran a hand through his comparatively short hair and across his now very fuzzy chest and sighed.

For whatever reason, they had switched bodies. No wonder his vision felt blurred and his sword too heavy.

He was stuck in an entirely human body and did not like it one bit.

A few moments later, the realization finally dawned on Jaskier as well. He let out a high-pitched shriek – something that under different circumstances would have sounded rather comical coming out of Geralt's throat.

"Shit," Geralt murmured as he looked into his own eyes.

The bard jumped out of bed – underestimating his new strength – and crashed right into the table a few feet behind him.

Great, another bruise, Geralt thought.

"Be careful with my body!" he shouted in a voice that was uncharacteristically musical.

"What is going on? What kind of dark magic is this?" The bard had only now started to examine his own body – as far as that was possible without a mirror - and the gravity of the situation dawned on him rather quickly.

Geralt examined the panicked expression on the face that had once been his. It was a good thing that they had been trained not to show emotions, he decided. His face looked really damn stupid like this.

"Sit down and stop hurting my body," Geralt commanded and Jaskier plopped down on the bed again, for once at loss for words.

"What happened?" he finally wondered.

"We switched bodies."

"Oh, thank you for pointing that out, Master Witcher. I would have never noticed," the bard sneered. "I obviously meant why has this happened? What is the cause of this unfathomable, terrible, terrible thing? What am I going to do now? I had my mind set on visiting the baroness Feduci tonight. I can't possibly go there looking like… like this!" Jaskier opened his arms in a gesture of helpless frustration. "No offence," he added.

"Offence taken," Geralt answered as coldly as Jaskier's stupidly musical voice would allow it.

"Your armor is very uncomfortable," Jaskier remarked as they ate their breakfast.

"Being skewered by a sword due to lack of protection is even more uncomfortable, I can assure you. Do not dare to take it off, I need my body back whole and unharmed once we find a way to undo this."

The bard adjusted the hardened leather pieces over his chest and tucked on a few belts for good measure.

I look so stupid when I pout, Geralt realized with a scowl as he scrutinized his bard-operated body. Watching his own face had lost nothing of its weirdness. He felt deeply uncomfortable and wondered whatever it was that had attracted Yen. What on earth did she see in his crooked, pale visage?

"What will we do now?" Jaskier asked in a whisper, watching the innkeeper who cleaned a few tables nearby. "I can't possibly… We can't… stay like this? Forever?" His pale face paled even more – if that was even possible.

"We need to find a mage. It must be magic, a curse."

Is this what it looks like when I'm thinking, Geralt wondered as he watched his face that was twisted into an expression somewhere between concentration and weltschmerz. He wanted his face back – if only to not have to look at it the entire time.

"Two hours before sundown," the innkeeper called after them as they left. The information had obviously been intended for Jaskier who was expected to entertain tonight. Geralt, having decided it was best to not let anybody know that things were vastly askew, wanted to acknowledge the innkeepers demand but Jaskier, empty-headed Jaskier, who had forgotten that he was the witcher now, replied instead. He realized his mistake when his singsong answer came out of his mouth in Geralt's gravelly voice, making for a very odd mixture. Like a rusty old saw that was experiencing a puberty vocal change.

Finding a mage turned out to be more difficult than they had anticipated. Geralt had known a few people here and there but it had seemed like they all had left the city. Every lead they got led to another empty house – or sometimes a less empty house with a bunch of very un-magical squatters in it.

Geralt began to lose all hope – he feared he was going to be stuck in the bard's body for the rest of his life. How could his friend even live like this? His eyesight was annoyingly bad. His legs and arms were so weak, his movements so slow.

He watched Jaskier walk in front of him, the bard's lute slung over his massive leather clad back because he was of the opinion that the witcher could not be trusted with his precious instrument. This was quite alright with Geralt who felt the exact same way about his swords that he had slung over the bard's colorful doublet. But he also came to realize that the swords were somewhat too heavy for this borrowed and entirely too human body. The lute, in comparison, looked ridiculously tiny on Jaskier's broad back.

As they kept walking Geralt's human legs had trouble keeping pace with Jaskier. Jaskier did not seem to notice – and neither had Geralt when roles had been reversed. It struck him as odd that Jaskier had complained about so many things but never once about this.

Came noon, the two of them were sitting on a low wall by the side of the central market place.

Jaskier took his lute to strum a few chords. Geralt watched him struggle to position his fingers properly. The result was… Well, it was not good but it was not terrible either. And mostly, it was odd seeing himself handle a musical instrument. Jaskier hummed again, carefully, quietly adding lyrics, bits and pieces of which Geralt had been forced to listen to for the past few weeks.

"Not hitting those high notes any time soon," Geralt remarked as he examined his swords. If nothing else was to be done, at least he would clean and polish them.

"Haha, never thought I'd see that. The great Jaskier training a witcher to become a bard, and the bard training to become a witcher!" A small crowd had gathered around them. They chattered excitedly about the pair.

"How's your mutant student doing, Master Jaskier?" an old woman with more rings on her fingers than teeth in her mouth asked.

This was a considerably lower level of hostility than what he was used to for a city. Jaskier, in any case, did not seem to be bothered. Maybe because he was already used to having everybody's attention. Maybe because he actually enjoyed it.

Surely, he thought, their role reversal must have looked absolutely hilarious to the bystanders. And seeing his big body cowering over the tiny lute did indeed something to make him look less menacing. Even if his voice was not suited to singing and some things came out wrong, what Jaskier did was not entirely terrible.

"His swords sing better than him," Geralt replied to the old woman and found himself smirking. Their audience laughed.

"What about your singing?" Jaskier teased him without taking his eyes off his fingers that still tried to find their way on the little fingerboard. Maybe Geralt was imagining it but it seemed they were moving much more deftly now. He started wondering if he had been able to pick up a musical instrument, if his training and discipline would have helped him to pick it up faster than a normal person. Or was this maybe all Jaskier who found his way in his new body much quicker than Geralt ever could? Had he maybe grandiosely underestimated his friend?

After a while the crowd became too big for Geralt's comfort and they left.

"How do you deal with it?" Jaskier wondered when they walked through a smaller, quieter street.

"What exactly?" Geralt walked fast to keep up.

"All the noise, all the smells. It's too loud, I can hardly hear myself think."

"You think?" Geralt asked with a raised eyebrow. Jaskier ignored his thrust.

"The smell of piss is overwhelming, I've been feeling like vomiting ever since we left the inn this morning. And every good damn trampled pigeon on the street – I get to see every gory detail now. I don't need that." He turned his head to Geralt. "How do you do it? I don't think I've ever realized how people are talking about you but even from many paces away I could hear them whisper and insult you… or me I suppose. I thought they only did that to your face but they do it all the time – always."

The witcher in a bard's body was temporarily stunned by the bard in a witcher's body's observations and compassion.

He shrugged. Before he could answer, someone shouted after them.

"Master Witcher, it is you, the White Wolf, isn't it?" A small, well-dressed man, probably in his forties, had called for him, his wispy moustache shaking when we spoke. He was holding a leash – with a piglet on it.

Geralt grunted the affirmative which did not have the desired effect in Jaskier's voice. Jaskier, on the other hand, was apparently completely oblivious to the fact that the man had addressed him. It seemed that he was getting used to the body – but not the person.

Geralt inconspicuously punched his elbow into Jaskier's side. Only then did the bard remember that currently he was not just part of the entourage anymore.

"Ah, uh, yes. What seems to be the matter, good sir?"

"Lose the smile," Geralt offered, very underwhelmed by how Jaskier's typical wide smile seemed to stretch his face in ways it was not prepared to handle. He looked like he was in pain.

That's why I don't smile, he thought.

Jaskier obeyed and put on a more serious face. Then he noticed the piglet and raised an eyebrow.

Yes, Geralt decided, the skeptical look suited his face much better.

"I request your help. There is a forest with a lake – outside the Oxenfurt Gate, near Yantra. Me and her," he nodded at the pig to his feet, "we collect truffles in the area. But there is a thing there, one of the big ones with the… the.. the teeth and the…" The man flapped his arms, completely disregarding the fact that his little pig was still attached to the leash. It squealed helplessly when its owner's movements lifted it off the ground for a second.

"Wings?" Geralt suggested.

"Big wings, dragon wings! Did I mention the teeth? It has already eaten Pumpkin, now it's just Zucchini and me."

"Excuse me, did you say the creature ate a pumpkin? Draconids weren't vegetarian last time I checked," Geralt asked.

"No, Pumpkin was my other pig! Thing ate my poor Pumpkin."

"Aha! And now you want me to vanquish the beast," Jaskier said as he puffed out his chest.

"Aye. Can you do it? I can't lose Zucchini as well. Those pigs are my livelihood."

Geralt was about to open his mouth but Jaskier was faster.

"Well, yes, of course. I will personally rid the world of this pork-loving beast!" Jaskier promised loudly, all of a sudden flourishing in his new role.

"Wonderful, wonderful!" the man shouted and strangulated his little pig again as he jumped excitedly. "Will 30 Crowns do? I cannot offer more at the moment. With just one pig and no access to the truffles, business has been going… well, I'd like to say bad but actually it has not been going at all."

"Jask- I mean, Geralt, that…" Geralt tried to intervene.

"Sure, sure," Jaskier waved a hand to shush his friend. Had his hands always been this big, Geralt wondered.

"Terrific. Find me at the Kingfisher Inn, I take my lunch there every day." And with that, he was gone.

"Well, that went splendid, don't you think?" Jaskier grinned Geralt's face to pieces. The skin was going to tear any minute now, he was certain of it.

"Splendid? What exactly did your peanut brain think was going splendid here?" Geralt fumed.

"Well, we have a contract and therefore money. Finally. Fantastic, don't you think?" A hint of doubt had stolen itself into Jaskier's voice.

"First of all, 30 Crowns is not enough, it's nowhere near enough!" Geralt bristled with anger. "But more importantly, who exactly do you think is going to hunt that monster down?"

Jaskier cocked his head and looked at Geralt as if he was an idiot. Now that was an expression that suited his face.

"You, maybe?"

"And what makes you think that I, in my current form, would be able to take on what sounds very much like a draconide?"

"Whatever do you mean? You're a witcher, that's your literal job."

"Has it occurred to you that currently I'm not in possession of the necessary tools to do my job?"

"You have your swords," Jaskier pointed out.

"But I don't have my body!"

"Oh."

"Oh!"

"Oh no. Can't… I mean you still do know how to fight, don't you?" Jaskier stammered as the realization dawned on him.

"Sure. But at the moment I am infuriatingly weak and slow and can't cast any signs. Do you see how that might be a problem?"

Jaskier swallowed.

"Shit. I guess I kinda just forgot…"

"I noticed that."

"What do we do? Make a run for it?"

"And ruin my reputation? I don't think so. And in case you forgot, you have a bargain to honor to tonight as well. Make a run for it?"

Jaskier pulled a face. Just like Geralt, he too had a reputation to uphold and his pride forbid him to not deliver on his part of the deal.