" I've always thought that it's a beautiful and sublime state of the soul, noble and worthy, even if it's the cause of unhappiness. I've written so many ballads about it. But it is organic, Geralt, cruelly and sharply organic. This way one can only feel when sick, somebody who drank poison. For like someone who drank poison, one is prepared for anything in exchange for the antidote. Anything. Even humiliation." - Essi Daven


[...]Dandelion, staring at the smoldering campfire, still sat there for a long time, alone, silently poking the strings of his lute. It began with a few bars, from which a shapely melody eventually culminated. The verse, matching the melody, was created along with her, the words melting into the music, remaining there like an insect in golden-transparent lumps of amber.
The ballad told of a certain witcher and a certain poet. Of how the witcher and the poet met on the seashore, among the cries of gulls, how they fell in love at first sight. Of how strong and beautiful their love was. Of that nothng, not even death, was capable of destroying that love and separate them.
Dandelion knew that few would believe the story which the ballad narrated, but he didn't care. He knew that ballads were not written to be believed, but to move hearts.
A few years later Dandelion could change the content of the ballad, write what really happened. He didnt do it. The real tale wouldnt move anyone. For who would like to hear that the witcher and Eyelet parted ways, and never saw eachother again, not once? That four years later Eyelet died in a plague outbreak in Visima? That he, Dandelion, carried her in his arms from the piles of corpses waiting to be burned and buried her far from the city, in the forest, lonely and peaceful, and with her, just as she requested, two things- her lute and her blue pearl. The pearl, with which she never parted.
No, Dandelion stuck to the first version of the ballad. But he never sang it to anyone. Ever. To anyone.
As morning drew near, still in darkness, a crazed and hungry werewolf snuck up to the camp, but saw that it was Dandelion, so he listened for a while and left.


Both fragments from the Witcher short story "A Bit of Dedication", one of the best love-shit i've read in quite some time, and the only (albeit dark) fantasy i've ever read. And one of the few witcher stories still left untranslated (in english).