If life could give me one blessing...

The Collector - part 4

Yennefer walked through the cold halls of Kaer Morhen, her skirt flowing behind her, as she rushed to Vesemir's rooms. How come nobody called her? She didn't have the best relationship with the bard per se, but that didn't mean she wouldn't heal him! Had it not been for Ciri who was weirdly distracted at today's lesson, she wouldn't even know the bard was here!

So it was perfectly reasonable when she opened the door to the old wolf's room without knocking, tearing him out of meditation, and walked to the bed with her patient resolutely.

"What are you doing here?" asked Vesemir, voice even colder than usual when talking to her. Oh, she understood that she wasn't welcome, but wasn't this a bit too much?

"I am obviously here to help. Why did no one tell me he was here?" she stated as she walked right next to him and put her hand on the bard's forehead. Her eyebrows slid up when she felt it was room temperature.

"You are not needed here, witch. I don't believe you know anything I don't about unicorns," the old wolf folded his hands over his chest and Yennefer's eyebrows slid up.

"Unicorns? What do unicorns have to do with this?" she asked and her answer was silence, in which she looked from Jaskier to Vesemir and back a few times.

"He's a unicorn?" she asked again just to make sure and Vesemir nodded gravely.

"No wonder he didn't like me then. I am no pure maiden," she threw her hair around before looking at the bard again.

"It's about purity of the heart, not about your other free-time activities," the witcher grumbled watching her with sharp yellow eyes. She chuckled at that, a bitter sound.

"Interesting. Anyway at least let me try. He didn't like me very much, but it would be a pity to lose his singing. What happened anyway?" she focused her chaos a little bit more as she looked at the bard and raised her hands trying to search for... something.

"Geralt broke his heart," said the old witcher and his jaw tensed. Yennefer blinked.

"Of course he did," she sighed after that and continued with her work. After a moment she straightened up again.

"If only I could feel his mind, he would feel exactly like any other human I've ever met. But when I try to reach out, it is too cold. He is far away and I cannot get to him," she shook her head. "This is a strange spell," she pointed at the body after that.

"It is. He traded his body for that of a human long ago. Even if some magic was to be detected back then, now he would seem perfectly regular," agreed the witcher and Yennefer was a bit surprised.

"You know a lot about him."

"Oh, I don't. At least not really. He was always honest but one big secret nevertheless. I could never really understand him. But he was special. He is special," said the old wolf with a somber look in his eyes and suddenly Yennefer felt like she was intruding on something private. On some special part of the old witcher master, that wasn't hers to look at.

She turned her lilac gaze at the unconscious bard once more, before nodding her goodbyes and stepping out of the room. As she walked through the cold stone halls again, she couldn't help but wonder how Geralt felt about this.