WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

005. a pack of guilty wolves..

Her nose had not felt the oozing steam of a stew under it for too long to not just be inhaling it through her drunken senses and imprint it over the hunger's sharp teeth, already dug deep into her thinned out body. Azaras saw only three more Witchers and she was weary of all of them, but the kindness of receiving food, be it old or not so tasty, connected her to the bench ar the end of the long table behind the tree and further from the place where the men have gathered to listen to Geralt's explanation.

He whispered their names before he left her at the table. Lambert, the younger looking fellow, wore his furred collar high, and from the group, he was the one who glared the most obviously at the sight of a woman in their hall, a total outsider dining with them. Eskel, if bothered by her presence, surely was less obvious about it. Azaras thought that, were it not for his brown hair and scarred right side of the face, Eskel would have looked rather close to a brother to Geralt; though she doubted that was the case, their posture, their build were very similar and that only left her wondering if they also shared the talent and skills for battle.

The third of them, in fact the first she met upon their entry in the castle's hall, was Vesemir. His aspects betrayed his elder status, too old even for a Witcher's longevity to sustain a fresher look, but it was also a matter of fame sneaked in there, a motive to his age.

Azaras had no interest of following guidelines that no longer served her and though in another life etiquette teachers would have seen her this way and died of ill heart in an instant, now, it seemed perhaps a freedom. A handful of old and hard bread, spoon after spoon shoveled into her mouth.

Her eyes have avoided staring at the Witchers. A long road prepared her to trust Geralt with speaking the truth. Instead, she stared right ahead at the back of the tree decorated in medallions. Some of them were torn, others were painted red in dried blood. Fallen Witchers, Azaras thought.

A burn on her right cheek cemented her spoon into the bowl before her, drop the stone bread on the table. Lambert was no longer facing Geralt, but rather glaring at the intruder, so Azaras too, stared back and listened in on a conversation she initially did not want to hear.

"It's possible," Vesemir gave Geralt the verdict. A bad feeling has bowed his head, brought his chin to rest on the collar of his sturdy armour, which have seen, much like him, better times. That experience whispered about a darkness which came with the cycle of history; it smelled like something he had seen before unfold, perhaps even somethint as destructive as what and who had destroyed their home.

A draft blew through the fortress, reminding the men of the cold, long winter, surrounding their halls.

"You said women never survived the Trial of the Grasses," Eskel frowned, a disbelief builing in a tension, spread over his crossed arms. They folded over his chest, puffed him up as he stood, attentive. Perhaps returning from a hunt would have had him expecting silence, the quietness and lack of trouble otherwise the world deceived them greetings in, not the turmoil and the pressure of agitation from troubling news.

"Because it wasn't designed for them to begin with," Vesemir replied. Each and every one of the younger Witchers around him have been his students once. To this day, he looked up at them with the pride of a teacher, something in his own youth, he would have cursed the realization of as useless.

Old age caught up to him.

"But," Vesemir continued, feeling Lambert restlessness beside him, "that doesn't mean enough research into this dead field wouldn't reveal ways to improve the herbs or even make them compatible with women. We never did that back in the day because there was never a demand. We didn't try it later, because we started lacking the resources and the acceptance of the people."