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Tjalf doesn’t remember much of his time before Kaer Morhen. He was only a boy of five when he was brought to the keep and remembers very little of that save for fear and confusion. He is not unique in this; few of his witcher brethren are able to recount much of their younger years, especially after the trials. If they do, the memories are often muddled or dim in the light of their new senses. It is simply the way things are - another thing lost on the path to becoming a witcher. Something to mourn, accept, and move on from. Perhaps that's why Tjalf has never told anyone of his memory - the one memory he has held on to for all of his now 18 years of life, it feels like. At first, he kept it a secret because it would add fuel to the constant, if well-intentioned ribbing that exists between all trainees, and he'd rather not be made fun of for that one precious thing. Now he keeps it to himself so it will not chafe against old wounds that are best left to scar over.
Because this memory, against all odds, has remained vivid and strong throughout the entirety of his life; through the initial years of training, the writhing pain of the grasses, the recovery and re-training, and the trial of the mountain. It has remained crystal-clear, as though it happened a day, rather than a decade ago.
His memory is of a field of flowers; a sea of gently waving leaves and petals, Tjalf himself in the middle of it all, bathing in golden sunlight. The world around him is bursting with colour and buzzing with life, stretching as far as his eyes can see. More than the colours, though, Tjalf recalls the smell - the sweet and heady scent of all those flowers rolling across the field in the late summer, like a slow, odorous wave about to crest over him.
People often assume the scent of flowers is light and delicate, which... yes, a flower by itself or even a simple bouquet might very well smell just so. Those fields in his memory, however, were laden with the heavy stink of nature calling out to its fauna: come and taste us, drink us, drown in us. Nature, in Tjalf’s experience, is rarely delicate.
Perhaps that memory is the cause of his strange ability, or perhaps it’s because of where he’s from, if it could produce and sustain such floral splendor. It might even be due to an ancestry he will never know anything of. Guxart believes it is simply a strange trick of the cat mutagens. Either way, since waking from the grasses, Tjalf has been able to smell the world in incredible detail.
At first he thought - he assumed - that the overwhelming assault on his nose when he woke was what the trainers had been talking about; the heightened senses of all witchers. It had taken him a few weeks to figure out his experience was a bit different from that of the other boys; that he was able to sniff out even the subtlest of odours and, with practice, would become able to dissect the most delicate layers of any given scent. The fact that his yearmates had no need to sleep with their shirts bunched up over their mouths and noses really should have given it away sooner, but - in his own defense - everything really was quite disorienting at the beginning. And when Tjalf alone remained discombobulated by the scents around him, he did eventually figure out something was the matter.
Tjalf’s time was before the trainers’ reform at the insistence of Aubry the wolf, but even the strictest instructors didn’t see the sense in having a witcher be overwhelmed by his own senses, so they taught him both to manage and use his ability. Once it became evident what he was capable of beyond the initial confusion, the trainers even arranged for him to apprentice with some of the other schools’ best scouts. No sense in not making use of other schools’ talents, after all. The guidance of the manticores was especially helpful and one of the cranes even fashioned him a rather useful bit of cloth to put over his face, so he wouldn't have to use his own shirts anymore. Between the instruction and the improved control over his own damn nose, he grew to be a rather competent scout and tracker, if he does say so himself.
It is quite useful, as it turns out, to have a witcher who is able to identify smells even through attempts to obfuscate them or scrub them away; who can pick up on trails that are too old even for his fellow witchers to follow; and knows whether the cockatrice they’re sneaking up on is young or old or nesting. Tjalf takes care not to be an ass who boasts too much of his own accomplishments, but he is proud to be useful to his clan and the White Wolf’s army.
It was still quite a surprise, though, when he was recommended to Eskel Amber-eyed himself when the wolf’s right hand had need of a good tracker. The whole ordeal with the missing alderman hadn’t been pleasant, but it had impressed the wolf’s second in command and that's nothing to sneeze at. Tjalf is now sometimes called upon to assist in dire or important situations that occur out on the path or in the wolf's territories. They’re rarely fun situations, but he is happy to help when they inevitably get reported.
So yes, he’s proud of his skill. It is useful and it is impressive and Tjalf sees no reason to pretend it isn’t, and takes care to hone it like a witcher should with any skill. If he's entirely honest, though, his ability to track is not Tjalf’s favourite part of his keen nose.
No, his favourite part - and the part that only Eskel and Treyse know about, because Tjalf figured it would probably be useful for them to know - is that his enhanced sense of smell also also allows him to smell more subtle differences in emotional scents. Sure, any witcher can tell you there are different smells to love and lust, between anger and hate, sadness and mourning, but unless every single witcher in existence unanimously decided to be vague about it, Tjalf’s fairly certain his nose allows him to understand the people around him a bit better than most. Nuance, Treyse calls it.
It’s useful, of course, as much as his ability to scent things is. It’s nice to be able to tell when someone is angry because they are frustrated with you, specifically, or when they are angry because they got hurt or they are angry because a situation is out of their control. It certainly makes it easier to figure out how to respond to the emotion, though Tjalf makes a valiant attempt not to let on just how much he knows about the people around him. Privacy is difficult to come by as it is and he’s not keen to invade on anyone unnecessarily.
As much as it is useful, being able to scent emotions is - on rare occasions - absolutely and undeniably wonderful. More so in recent years, given the steep increase of people in the keep that feel love.
Any witcher will tell you that love - romantic love, being in love - smells like honey on warm bread. And it does, mostly. Much like that hill in his memory that bore thousands of different flowers, there are equally many different kinds of honey and so many different kinds of bread and so many different ways to love.
The way that Zofia and Auckes love each other, for example, has a distinctly aged smell to it. Not like it’s gone off or anything - no, like they’ve turned their honey into mead and kept it for some twenty years. It’s full of subtleties and smells… healthy, in the way that a sturdy, deep brown, whole wheat bread is healthy.
Gweld and Serrit, on the other hand, smell slightly different every time Tjalf catches a whiff of them. Like wildflower honey. Like they’re always changing, always evolving, always finding new things to love about each other; like bees finding new flowers or like Julita trying new recipes.
He might be somewhat biased in the case of Cedric and Axel, with them being his clan-mates and all, but the two cats are some of his favourite people to be around. Partially because he admires them (though he would deny it to his grave), but mostly because their love-smell is a dark, almost gamey kind of honey on bread. Like buckwheat honey, maybe, or poison oak honey. It’s earthy and grounding. If they’ve noticed he chooses to sit closer to them after a particularly busy or harrowing day, they haven’t said anything.
Milena and Lambert are a close contender, though, when it comes to his favourite scents 'round the keep. Not because their love-scent is necessarily calming or cohesive, but because it isn’t, which makes it rather… fascinating. Milena’s honey carries, somewhat to the chagrin of his own conviction, a very delicate floral scent. It is light and subtle, yet still carries a sweet warmth that betrays the depth of her affection for her wolf. Lambert’s scent, on the other hand, is thick and cloying. So much so that Tjalf has been able to perceive it from quite a distance away and he suspects it might penetrate walls under the right circumstances. He is, frankly, stunned that others don’t seem to be able to distinguish Lambert’s scent from any other. It is really quite pungent. Even more interestingly, Lambert and Milena’s scents shouldn’t work together, shouldn’t mix pleasantly the way they do, but… well he’s not an alchemist, or particularly experienced in romance, so who knows what makes them work. He just knows that they do and it is strangely delightful to smell every time.
And then there’s the bard and the warlord. Jaskier’s scent, predictably, has a lot of what Tjalf can only describe as flourishes. His honey-scent is sweet, but also smells somewhat of citrus; like fruits from warmer lands and sweet blossoms. It’s many things at once, just like the bard. The Wolf’s scent would be the one to surprise people, Tjalf figures; they’d probably guess it was dark, earthy or particularly intense, but would be far off, indeed. Instead, the underlying tones in the white wolf’s scent are herbal. It is a soothing kind of sweet, but a little medicinal - like it’s supposed to be healing and comforting. Tjalf thinks perhaps the wolf might be pleased to know he smells like the kind of honey you give to someone you love when they’re feeling under the weather.
Eskel Amber-Eyed’s love smells so similar to the white wolf’s that even Tjalf’s nose can’t always tell them apart.
It isn’t just romantic love what smells wonderful, either. It makes perfect sense, of course - it isn’t just lovers who love each other; friends do, families do, and there’s plenty of those ‘round the keep these days. And they’re less and less obstructed by scents of pain and sadness. Tjalf can hardly imagine what it might have been like before the wolf united the clans; when the grasses still took boys’ lives and humans spat on witchers. He doesn’t like to think of it, of the scents that never would have been. Like the bright, berry-and-cream-scent of fondness that always hangs about Jan Kelner, whom Tjalf sometimes goes out of his way to assist, just so he can be around the soothing perfume of the steward. The good man has been here for as long as Tjalf can remember, but he wouldn’t have been, without the white wolf, and the keep truly wouldn’t be the same without him, in scent nor presence.
And there’s the smell of friendship and camaraderie that hangs around many of the witchers and humans alike; the almost imperceptible, but constant trail of apples and cinnamon that follows the inhabitants of Kaer Morhen. It goes well with the smell of firewood he often picks up on around the Bears, though he’s not sure if their love is for each other or their hobbies. Either way, he supposes it keeps them warm.
Equally lovely to honey-on-bread is the smell of ripe strawberries and something else that's sweet and nutty that hangs around the wolf and his cub, as well as Eskel, Jaskier and Yennefer when they’re with Ciri. It’s so similar to steward Kelner’s that he supposes fruit and sweetness have something to do with parents and children, though he’s not sure why, in that case, Jan would smell of it all the time.
He has never spoken of this side of his keen sense, not to anyone but Eskel and Treyse - who seem to understand that Tjalf must figure things out for himself - but he has come close, and always for the same reason; the smell of fallen leaves. He doesn’t think he would have noticed it, or would have been able to distinguish it from the true smell of nature if it wasn’t for the edge of sweetness. Love is always sweet, but lost love smells of fallen leaves and the fine scent of wilting flowers; like a forest in autumn on the brink of decay after the glory of summer. He hasn’t been able to figure out how to tell those who mourn that their loss still smells of love. That it smells of experiences and the remembrance of joy. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to put it into words. When he smells it, those who exude it, however, will unexpectedly be found by a friend, or find themselves inexplicably left alone when they’re letting loose on a dummy on the training field, or will suddenly have a quiet cat-witcher companion for a while. If they’ve put together how or why, they don’t speak of it, and neither does Tjalf.
Tjalf, as it happens, was born when the wolf sieged Ard Carraigh (or around that time, to the best of his knowledge), so he has not known a world without the wolflands and grew up on the ways of Kaer Morhen. It’s hard not to notice change, though, with a keen sense like his, epecially now that the way the boys are trained has changed and the gaggle of nobles that have descended upon the keep have put their collective shoulders under running it smoothly. The putrid smells of loss, of fear and sadness, and the particular smell of anger that seemed embedded in the very stone of the mountain when he first woke from his grasses have eroded almost entirely over the past decade.
With every passing year, more people and more beautiful smells find their way to the keep - new people fall in love, fresh friendships are forged, families are found. It thrills him every time, to smell the subtle beginnings of honey on bread, too new to be distinguished even by him, and privately delights when the scent grows stronger and more distinct. Perhaps one day he’ll speak of this sense- perhaps he’ll have to, or perhaps it’ll be easier when he’s had some more years to live and learn. For now, though - for now, it remains a private, compersive kernel of joy, much like his oldest memory, as he makes his own space and life in the white wolf’s keep and wonders what, one day, someone who loves him might smell like.