From the earliest days of his life, the child who would grow into Geralt displayed signs that marked him as exceptional even by the standards of those touched by magic. While other infants his age lay helpless and unseeing, he tracked movement with eyes that seemed to catalog and remember. His cries, when they came, carried meaning that Visenna learned to interpret with an accuracy that unsettled her.
By three months, he was attempting to speak—not the babbling sounds of normal children, but deliberate efforts to form words. His first clear word was not "mama" as might be expected, but "light," spoken while reaching toward a candle flame with the careful coordination of someone far older. When Visenna moved to pull his hand away from potential harm, he looked at her with an expression of such patient understanding that she found herself explaining why fire was dangerous rather than simply preventing his exploration.
"You understand me, don't you?" she asked him one evening as they sat by the fire, he in her lap as she read from an old tome of herbalism. In response, he placed his small hand on the page and made a questioning sound, as if asking about the symbols he saw there.
The winter of his first year brought challenges that tested both mother and child. Food became scarce as the Buina froze solid and hunting grew difficult. Visenna used her magic to conjure sustenance, but the effort drained her, and she worried about maintaining her strength while nursing. It was during one particularly harsh stretch that she first noticed her son's remarkable resilience.
While she struggled with exhaustion and the constant demand of feeding, the infant seemed to thrive despite the difficult conditions. He rarely fell ill, recovered quickly from minor injuries, and displayed an alertness that suggested his body processed nutrients more efficiently than normal children. When she mentioned this to the village midwife during a brief visit, the older woman crossed herself and muttered about "touched children" and "signs from the gods."
As Geralt entered his second year of life, his development accelerated at a pace that both thrilled and terrified his mother. By the time snow melted from the Buina's banks and spring returned to the northern mountains, he was not only walking with confident strides but speaking in complete sentences that displayed a vocabulary no child his age should have possessed.
"Mama, the water makes different sounds when it's angry," he said one morning, pointing to the swollen river rushing past their cottage with spring runoff. "In the big rapids, it sounds like it's singing, but here by our house, it sounds like it's telling stories."
Visenna paused in her morning tasks, struck not just by the observation's accuracy but by the poetic nature of his expression. "What kind of stories?" she asked, settling beside him on the stone steps that led down to the water's edge.
Geralt tilted his head, listening intently to the water's murmur. "Stories about places it's been. The high mountains where it starts, the forests it runs through, the other rivers it meets. And..." he paused, his blue eyes growing distant, "stories about things that aren't here yet. Things that might happen."
It was during this period that Visenna first began to suspect her son carried memories from elsewhere. He would make references to concepts he should not have known—speaking of "kingdoms across the sea" when he had never been told of distant lands, or asking about "metal horses that run on stone paths" that existed nowhere in their world. When she pressed him about these strange ideas, he would look confused, as if unsure where the thoughts had come from.
Most remarkably, he began to display an instinctive understanding of magic that defied explanation. While helping her gather herbs in the forest, he would point to plants she needed before she mentioned them. When she was brewing healing potions, he would hand her ingredients in the proper sequence without being asked. His presence seemed to enhance her own magical abilities, making spells flow more smoothly and healing work more effectively.