WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

003. the ale and the reflections..

"Talk." Geralt flatly demanded.

The drowsy atmosphere of the tavern's ground floor was a noisy evisceration of any form of privacy; the variation from the rule that proved hiding in plain sight, even in the case of words, was an adequate route to take. Between him and Azaras was a small table, with two ale filled mugs, bubbling in a chill that will numben their feverish bodies of adrenaline and perhaps even the woman's new bruised bottom lip.

A crack of red into her otherwise pale petals was a stark drop left on a blank canvas, proof that Geralt's hostility from the mines was reciprocated and she earned her current position by frivolously attempting to run away from him and his judgemental threats.

Now, across the table, his right hand held a chain wrapped around her left wrist, an extra measure, absolutely useless in the end, to create a certainty to the uncertain.

Azaras took her sweet time, a taunting despise bringing narrowed curiosity in the green glare she gaze Geralt. The mug's curved margin touched her lips and the ale rolled down her tongue. He was forced to watch and wait, but none of those things related to patience were counted on a short list of things he enjoyed.

His angered humph matched the click of the mug's bottom being seated on the wooden table once more. Azaras wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand, gingerly, as perhaps a very last feature of a life she couldn't even dream of ever returning to. "Right," she sighed. Her eyes finally gave Geralt a break from the teasing, instead staring out the only window, far across the room.

A candle flickered before it, and everything beyond the tavern, shaking with the laughter, chatter and the dancing of lively boots celebrating a monster defeat, was void. The window did not have a world to show, just a world to reflect.

Azaras head first bowed, a flinch away from seeing herself. "I suppose you'd like to know who did this to me," her gaze lifted with the daringly rise of her tone.

"That would be a wise start."

"Then I will make it short, Geralt. I don't remember their face." Instinct made Azaras try to sit back in her chair, attempt to cross her arms at her chest, but her pull was met with the unmovable grip of the Witcher on the chain.

"You'll have to do better than that." Another agonizing somber demand. It was the first time Geralt's voice managed to bring out annoyance in Azaras and she leant again forwards.

"I was drunk, alright?" She did not seem to proud fo the tale, nor too kin to share it, but a tiresome feeling was creeping in her bones. After weeks, she felt her muscles ache, after days, she felt the scents around her of food be pure torture.

Azaras pulled the mug to her again but just as it was under her nose, one glance into the liquid made her let it back down, disgusted. Her eyes avoided since then to stare down again, finding some anchoring at least in facing her cold interrogator.

"It wasn't too long after I left Arcapan," she gave in slowly, but the story started flowing and Geralt watched only as attentive as one would be to discern lies he expected. He has been proved by many instences that the woman before him was not the same Azaras he once knew and kept in his memory as a breath of life.

"Couldn't have been more than a couple of days and I encountered the first monsters. Killed my horse, the good old stallion I knew no one at home would miss." A hint of melancholy was trapped into the glimmer of her lost gaze. With the speed of a blink, the emotion got blurred and she returned to the true roots of the tale she tried to tell, "Almost lost my life there. I got lucky with a strike and left the monster half dead, next to the horse, while I pitifully dragged my feet away like a coward."