Geralt didn’t move. On his back, he felt the familiar weight of his two swords, a weight he had been missing for a month. Which usually gave him peace and certainty. That day, at that moment, the weight was just a burden.

“I have come…” said the aguara, flashing her fangs. “I don’t know why I came myself. In order to say goodbye, perhaps. Perhaps to let her say goodbye to you.”

A slender girl in a tight dress emerged from behind the vixen. Her pale and unnaturally unmoving face was still half human. But probably now more vulpine than human. The changes were occurring quickly.

The Witcher shook his head.

“You cured her… You brought her back to life? No, that’s impossible. So, she was alive on the ship. Alive. But pretending to be dead.”

The aguara barked loudly. He needed a moment before realising it was laughter. That the vixen was laughing.

“Once we had great powers! Illusions of magical islands, dragons dancing in the sky, visions of a mighty army approaching city walls… Once, long ago. Now the world has changed and our abilities have dwindled… And we have grown smaller. There is more vixen in us than aguara. But still, even the smallest, even the youngest she-fox, is capable of deceiving your primitive human senses with an illusion.”

“For the first time in my life,” he said a moment later, “I’m glad to have been tricked.”

“It’s not true that you did everything wrong. And as a reward you may touch my face.”

He cleared his throat, looking at her great pointed teeth.

“Hmm…”

“Illusions are what you think about. What you fear. And what you dream of.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The vixen barked softly. And metamorphosed.

Dark, violet eyes, blazing in a pale, triangular face. A tornado of jet-black locks falling onto her shoulders, gleaming, reflecting light like peacock’s feathers, curling and rippling with every movement. The mouth, marvellously thin and pale under her lipstick. A black velvet ribbon on her neck, on the ribbon an obsidian star, sparkling and sending thousands of reflections around…

Yennefer smiled. And the Witcher touched her cheek.

And then the dead dogwood bloomed.

And afterwards the wind blew and shook the bush. The world vanished behind a veil of tiny white whirling petals.

“Illusion.” He heard the aguara’s voice. “Everything is illusion.”

* * *

Dandelion stopped singing. But he didn’t put down his lute. He was sitting on a chunk of overturned column. Looking up at the sky.

Geralt sat beside him. Weighing up various things. Arranging various things in his head. Or rather trying to. Making plans. In the main, wholly unfeasible. He promised himself various things. Seriously doubting if he was capable of keeping any of the promises.