WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

010. dresses, towers and sails..

Novigrad was a capital city. It mean that as far as you could see the moment you bribed your way inside its walls, the coast and docks and every little hill surrounding the single most important port of the continent, was bustling with life, with action and with filth. Its disgusting reach cast on the shores of an otherwise beautiful and Great Sea, staining the surface water underneath the floating streets and inside the sewers, a drainage system as old as time, with a generously thick blanket of floating oils, trash, shit.

Disease may have lurked there, at the very root of the city, but above, on the clustered surface, the true rotten meat was the division of the people. From the slums filled with naked running children unaware of the danger they were bathing into happily, with parents missing or too hopeless to interfere with their only years of joy, to the high brothels, the castle overlooking it all and the docks of diversity and games and party. Novigrad had it all.

Pickpocketing was on the rise. Thieves and begger waited at each corner that you ought not take, especially at night; because when the sun was up, the torment of the city got fainter, but now that the cold have swept inside their walls and winds bit the necks of all people, even in their molded homes, coming from the east, even more than ever, night brought with itself terrors. Otherwise, common.

Much like the presence of a Witcher.

Two would have drawn attention and since Geralt had already been hired once before by the Lords of the citadel in the center to clear the sewers of Zeugls, monsters known for thriving in the filth Novigrad had plenty of, as soon as he presented his name and stature, mentioning returning for work, they let him and the company inside, without prying questions added. It was the least he could do, to participate to the plan Azaras woke up to.

From entering the city, it was also Geraly who remembered vaguely some streets and that ultimately, all roads led, either nicely or unpleasantly, to the harbor. Oh, the Novigrad harbor...

"This place stinks," Jaskier voiced out everything they were all feeling and considering just how more acute a Witcher's senses were, he imagined it would be reasonable to think he'd be seeing either of the two lovers fainting as decaying flowers in the dead garden. Because Novigrad was a bountiful harbor, which at sunset, when they arrived, would have been a most wonderful view, were it not for the smell of fish, too long seated into the sun, or drunk people barfing their intestines in the sea or behind boxes. Perhaps it were the ships, dozens of sailboats returned from journeys of trade or preparing to depart with tired crews waking up from parties unending, that oozed their sweat and imprinted it on the wood.

Azaras was just a little paler from the smell that had concluded all three of them would look upon anyone and anything in the harbor with a glare. Beyond that, her heart and mind were thrilled to leave aside all worries of what they had to do and how exactly destiny would be playing their roles for them. Uncertainty left her when the auburn sunset shone into her amber eyes and salt peppered her eyelashes with the presence of a calm sea ahead. It was the surreal background of heaven, making the outline of the ships, the people and the docks, get darker until the whole place faded away to march for the piece of beauty beyond the horizon.

And she realized: she has never been this far from the place where she had been born.

It felt like yesterday she could lay in meadows, hair tangled in the grass, dreaming of leaving the lands that bound her to a destiny of someone who did not matter. The fair maiden of Arcapan became a Witcher and now, her destiny was spoken by wolves, threades with her lover's, promising a death worthy of a song, not a life belonging to the brothels.

So perhaps, past her grimace was hidden a smile.

"We can't afford a ship that will be sturdy enough for the travel yet," Geralt was less prone on just admiring the scenery. He didn't see the beauty beyond the fluttering veils in a gentle marine breeze, because he knew with certainty even those waters shining the last rays of the sun, hid underneath them, if not dirt, then surely much bigger monsters. "But we can earn coin enough from offering to clean the sewers. It's been about a year since the last sweep..."