“I dreamed of becoming important to someone. Someday.”
“Before we met, the days were calm and the nights were restless. But now…you’re important to me.”
The Witcher “Rare Species”
Hey Siri, play “Everytime You Leave” by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli. The Witcher’s “Rare Species” is what everyone and their mothers would call every shipper’s dream. Because at its core, it’s about the vulnerability. It’s the episode that sets the stage, and the scene that exemplifies adoration so beautifully, it damn near hurts to think about.
There are a lot of things both Geralt and Yennefer didn’t choose, but they chose each other, and that’s inarguable. There are ways to go and time is a strange construct on this show, but what they have is powerfully unmatched—it’s heartbreaking, it’s riveting, and it’s the story of two people who could be vulnerable with each other, who are supposedly not meant to love as fiercely as they do, and yet, there could never be anyone else who’s as important.
“They say witchers can’t feel human emotions.” And he doesn’t, at least not until her, not until the actual scent of her disappears from him, and he finds himself restless again. Whatever he should be, whatever he is, with Yennefer, it’s deeper, it’s more vulnerable—it’s indescribable. But isn’t that the point of love? The magnetic pull of desiring someone, the longing when they’re gone that’s met with sorrow, as human as these emotions are, there’s something otherworldly about them too. Something indescribable, and The Witcher’s “Rare Species” captures these feelings gorgeously through Geralt and Yennefer’s moment.
We talk of souls and soulmates and it’s not something any of us comprehend fully, is it? That’s the part of humanity that is so complicated and so vastly indescribable that our emotions can do a number on us, thus it’s often easy to appreciate emotions like this interwoven into fantasy because it almost adds on to the speechlessness that humans are resorted to when they find themselves in love.
So, you feel it—however much you’re capable of, you choose and you allow yourself to collapse with the emotions that engulf you and that’s what Geralt and Yennefer do. In this moment, however fleeting it may be, however uncertain tomorrow or the next day’s calamities are—they allow themselves a moment of vulnerability.
They apologize for leaving in the mornings. They ask each other questions no one has before, and they marvel at their responses. They smile and they unwind. And for Geralt, for the first time in a long time, his night isn’t restless, with Yennefer by his side, it’s calm. “You’re important to me” coming out as softly as it does with his eyes closed as he gives in to sleep is the very showcase of his ease around her, not because she bores him, but because she calms him. The source of release Geralt has always needed has been Yennefer.
Lights dimmed, fire for warmth and the two of them stripped of all their armor in a moment of tender vulnerability reveals everything that’s necessary to showcase that whatever is to come. It’s a moment that promises the kind of forever that is unmatched. They will make it through all this.
To have this much power over each other tells us many things, but it especially tells us that where there is stillness where there once was calamity, it’s bound to be special in myriad of ways.