WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

008. lesser evils..

The freshly laid snow burned the back of her neck and bruised the bridges of her palms, as they collapsed on the ground with her. There was nothing out to reddening the skin harder than the utmost cold of young winters. It embraced Azaras' let out breath with a touch of steam, evolving it in faded smoke, which blurred Geralt's figure, standing somewhat over her.

"Get up," he ordered. Azaras immediately groaned.

Whatever dreams the night threaded, their mornings wiped the slate clean, similar to how the snows have covered lands of dirt and faked away their cleanness to the eyes of crying birds roaming the highest skies. They had to remain in the town from which Azaras was told Jaskier departed in the very first hours of the morning; they were waiting for some acquaintance of the Witcher, to have a say over the intricate birth of the heads they bought.

It was behind the stables, where a couple of coins bought their horses roofs over their heads and hay, that Geralt decided it was high time to polish Azaras' skills of planking, of fighting, maybe even figure out how come her abilities were as uncertain as the winds.

Fall after fall taken, this time around, when her back hit the ground again, Azaras sighed into it and refused to grab hold of her sword. It laid beside her right hand as tired as herself, "I don't know which part of me telling you I am not feeling a fight right now is beyond your understanding."

Even when she gripped the hilt of her sword, the heaviness of the blade pinned her on the ground with more than she could ever lift. When Geralt stroke down, expecting to trigger a self defense, Azaras rolled to the side to avert her head of a pretty heavy blow, then let her back laid down again.

"Yes," she cut off the beginning of another long low talk from him, before it even rolled off his tongue. "I know what you are going to say... that monsters don't wait for my instincts to trigger. But I made it this far without your little training. Like Vesemir said-"

Geralt grabbed hold of Azaras's collar and pulled her off the ground and back on her feet beside him. Though his hand remained put, right there, holding onto the hem which had her thin armour meet a breezy shirt. "Vesemir doesn't know you."

"That implies just how," stating the obvious of him knowing some part of her few got to meet was a waste of breath, so Azaras tilted her head and changed her perspective with a smile, "desperate you are, for me to be like you."

Geralt let go of her in an instant. Truth startled him, but something else unsettled the peaceful horses. The beam of noise and the creak of the door into this yard, has Azaras lift her sword with ease to turn around.

Fear, Geralt made a mental note.

"Oh," their visitor stopped. The threatening aspects hidden in the little yellows of Azaras' eyes, shining brighter in a reflection of the white snow's light, stopped this odd creature at the verge of turning around and running. He was odd looking, but not in the sense of the rugged cloak he wore, yet instead due to his bigger forehead, goulish eyes and grey-dotted skin.

Though behind the hood, everything was shadowed, Azaras took a sniff of the hallowed ice of the air and she knew it was an elf who Geralt conversed with and was waiting for.

Azaras did not know the big picture of many things that happened on the continent, but she knew this much. When Nilfgaard attacked the North, it was elves who almost destroyed Arcapan completely. Had it not been for her father's grandfather and his intelligence in battle to evacuate the keep through tunnels, into the mountains, she would have never been born to this world.

Little picture by little picture get put together, blurred and blended, before the truth comes out. Right then, a smaller sequence captured her not breaking her guard, not even as Geralt's hand pressed on top her sword to lay it down. The blade cut his palm from rigidly she was holding on.