WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

003. dead girl walking..

Geralt's did not dare raise his hand, he tried not even to breate too hard as for his presence to disturb the beauty beside him. A single perturbation might have caused her discomfort, it could have bothered her from her deeper sleep. She lived in his dreams, short nights of love where the forest was theirs and it was a warm. There, her back would be facing him, she'd be still or breathing, a quiet little whimper who he could guard the scarless skin of.

Deep down, in a sick awareness, he knew it was only a dream and that seeing Azaras every night, in his sleep, was only going to make him exhausted in the morning. Days have been dark and Geralt reckoned his life would get darker still from just how many vows he broke. His hands were not what they used to be since she died in his arms.

Vivid surroundings tickled his senses in each of these dreams, a tease of heaven never to forget, even if it always felt like barely even a few minutes. The gentle moss underneath them, a natural blanket of the earth, had played them sheets only once before and he was glad it was there, instead of snow.

Azaras left shoulder rolled back. Geralt froze; she had never moved before in this dream.

The shifts of her positions came as blurred and echoed sounds for cruelly, he could not hear her breath, just the thundering beats of his own heart. Azaras turned all the way around, until she was facing him and then, with wide open eyes and freezing cold emanating from her paled skin, she looked at him as gentle as her touches.

It had always been such a stark contrast to Geralt how Azaras' violent delights mirrored into a need for softness between hungry kisses.

He held his breath for her, yet when her lips parted, she watched them move soundlessly, a secret mockery that he did not deserve to hear her voice anymore. Though he understood just fine what words were rolling off her tongue: 'I love you'.

Thrice she said it before she died and not even once had he been sincere or brave enough to say it back. Geralt felt like a coward becauss even there, in a perfect dream, his voice was hidden under shame and fear.

Waking up was just one brief blink that reminded him of where he really was: in chains, in a prison. Generally, he thought he deserved the irony of being locked up in humid darkness, were it not for the actual context being utterly disturbing.

Ever since he left the side of Azaras beautiful corpse, on the shore of the Great Sea, he would not dare forsaken her last request. He started hunting her monster after what descriptions she had given him and in those irregular travels, plenty more creatures of the night sprung out of the shadow. If he didn't know better, which he still did, blood magic was surely beginning to overwhelm the land of the continent, boil it in monster flesh, so much that soon, there will be so many of them that if they ate just one person each, they'd all be gone.

And no one ever seemed to notice. Town after town, everyone was oblivious that the end of days was near. In fact, foolishly, they all mocked it.

A mockery such as what had imprisoned him with faith that a Witcher did not possess the strength to break some chains.

Geralt had saved a man from a river creature, only to find out the villagers have used that creature he just killed for the past months as an execution ground. They willingly fed their prisoners to it, regularly, instead of being men and swining the blade down themselves on those they condemned.

Frankly, were it not for a certainty he had, Geralt would have stayed a while, let the humans think they got him, let them find another monster to try and tame and pay the price for their own stupidy while he watches from behind bars. But that wouldn't happen beyond this nap he took with a roof above his head, for these forests were lurking grounds for the dark.