Hooks, pups and pillows
"Look at you," Lambert says, kicking the sole of Ciri's boot as she looks up at him, her body jerking in surprise as he makes himself known after hours of silence. Her fingers still, warm from the fire next to her and the rapid movement of the yarn tangled around her fingers, and she blinks in the dim firelight, looking up at the youngest wolf.
"Wha'?" She murmurs, blinking.
He nods at her fingers with a grin. "You're not even thirteen springs old, yet you look like an old maid there with the yarn."
"Rude." She rolls her eyes.
"But genuinely, you're like a jack rabbit there. How do you not miss any of them?"
Ciri looks down at the rapidly growing cream blanket in her hands. Kaer Morhen had been brought to a standstill for the better part of a week with a bastard of a snowstorm. The livestock and the horses and the hunting dogs had to come into the keep, and all witchers had spent days patching up as many holes in the walls as they could find. Ciri obviously couldn't help with it, nor could she train with the blizzard outside, and Vesemir was too busy with the walls to give her any reading assignments. So, she spun all the spare wool she could, cleaned and spun it all into yarn skeins. And now, in the tradition of Mouseack, she had made herself busy stitching a large quilt with a wooden hook she'd manage to carve in the armory.
"A couple'a nurse maids taught me when there was nothing to do when Court was closed down because of sicknesses." She starts it up again. "Couldn't leave my room, we found an old chamber that had a spinning wheel and some hooks. Passed the time like this." She shrugged, her fingers barely slowing down as she pushed wood through yarn over and over again, twisting it through so the stitches began to form on another row.
"And here i thought you could only stitch together shitty tapestries and stick your finger out when you drink water." Lambert cocks his head. "Could make a good hunting trap out of that." He considers, touching the stitches. He's surprised that it's so secure and tight, not fragile or delicate.
"Could do one if you want." She shrugs.
"Make me a blanket then, lass. It's fucking freezing here with the snow, no sign of it letting up." He throws himself onto the chair near her, watching silently as she speeds up again, the wooden hook going in and out of the white square, wool twisting from right to left as her hands continue to work.
"You're a proper old maid, you know." He speaks again, a sly grin pinching his mouth. "You can cook up a feast, can darn with wool and drink tea by the fireplace. What's next? Gonna take up baking and drinking hot tea, darn socks and peg clothes out to dry?"
"Oi." She kicks his foot. "I'll leave holes in your blanket if you're a dick to me."
He smirks. "Just like Geralt, you are. Two peas in a pod."
"What about me?"
Both she and Lambert jump as he appears in the doorway like a spectre, Eskel and Coën following behind. They're all paler than usual, hair windswept and cheeks red.
Eskel throws himself on top of Lambert, snickering as he huffs and growls underneath him.
Geralt raises an eyebrow, touching the top of Ciri's head as he takes a seat next to the fire. They watch with Coën as the two wolves snip and snarl at each other, Lambert barely holding on from falling off the couch.
"Think they'll be done before Ves's finished making the stew?" He mutters to Geralt, who grins at him.
"Esk'll have him pinned before the potatoes are peeled."
"Oi!" Geralt ducks as a pillow is launched at his head, snickering. Ciri giggles, putting away her yarn. It could wait.
There was a show to watch, after all.
