For my lovely inspiration, @softnerdypeter, who is an absolute dear and made me think of this.
So, not all dragons are bards, but all dragons sing.
As dragons, it sounds a bit strange. More like humming, voices woven together like a thick rug. The youngest one get to sing the melody, because their voice hasn’t deepened yet.
It is a sight to behold, and so rare most thinks it’s a myth.
Especially because dragons are so rare now, and it is dangerous to meet up in your true form. (I’m sticking to the idea that their dragon name is something they saw or something that happened as they hatched.)
Jaskier is a dragon, isn’t he? One of the younger ones, one of the best kept secrets on the continent.
It will take him a few hundred years to get his voice as deep as his mothers, but he practices every day. But he has to practice as a human.
The thing that makes him such a wildly popular bard, is that he has history on his side. His memory runs deep, and human words come to him easily. He enjoys all kinds of singing. He listens to birds, converse with sirens, enjoys the crickets small accompaniment to the nights symphony of noise.
He takes inspiration from all that he sees. His best love song may star humans, but it is not always the inspiration behind the song.
The most moving love story he ever saw, he saw in a riverbank, and he translated their fight to an epic, spread the tale of longing, heartache and lust.
There are dragons that despise him for it, but when he meets Jackdaw upon that wretched mountain top, he is nothing but kindness.
Essi was not a bard. She was but a human, but Jaskier loved her as deeply as any sister he ever had. For her, he tried to sing in the old way, let her sing the melody.
Geralt almost found out then.
But the day he actually finds out, the day Jaskier reveals his long held secret, is when he brings Geralt to his hatching place along the coast.
He brings Geralt to meet his mother.
Geralt listens, as Jaskier and his mother sings together. And at night, laying in rented beds at the inn, one entire room apart, Geralt asks him about it.
Geralt never asks to see his dragon form, he knows of the dangers.
But when they have found the cub of cintra, when they are in the deep mountains of Kaer Morhen, Jaskier spreads his wings for them, scales glistening in the sun.
Wyverns don’t sing, but when Jaskier sings in his dragon voice from atop the mountain, all of nature is still. They listen.
