WOLVES WITHOUT TEETH ( geralt of rivia.. )

003. the ale and the reflections..

Her last word stopped as a dagger would stop for a second time in an open wound.

"And as all cowards do when they have guilt and realization that their life has just gone to total shit," Azaras hand held the mug once more, raising it for a toast, "I crashed into the nearest bar and drank away the sorrow." To examplify, she made Geralt watch as she finished the last gulps of ale with her eyes closed.

The mug was pounded back on the table and with a open-mouthed sigh, opening her eyes lost, Azaras continued, "I've realized I lost everything then, Geralt. I was a nobody, I wasn't even as strong as I believed myself to be for so long. And let me tell you this... this world? It does not care for women, especially those that aren't powerful. We are carpets, for which the embroidery's design weighs only a bit less than the material."

"You are not nobody," Geralt hoped to argue. "If your brother truly is a cripple, then you are, by law, the heir of Arcapan."

She laughed a tired music to his foolishly neutral words. "Yes," Azaras mocked her agreement, "the heir to a throne that has been built by men, for men. Had I stayed, I would have sooner reached the grave. Gods know what would have become of my name and what my father himself would have deceived the city to believe me for. No. When Sylvain lost his legs, I lost my home. Forever."

There was nothing Geralt thought was worth saying to those strong words. While Azaras may have found solidarity as the teacher of masking her emotions, her voice, a posh reminder of her roots, reminded him of the forestry feeling, the call of nature and its sensitivity to the world. As deceiving as her whole body was, her lips did not speak lies for her voice was built upon waves of truth.

"More importantly though, I was profoundly drunk when I was approached by...," Azaras hesitated, to think what was the least ominous way of presenting someone she did not fully recall, "this fellow..."

Remembering played before her eyes, in the space of her thoughts, the blur which had been the night where liters of ale have found their way into her bellows, pressing her numb body to melt on a hard seat, suddenly a luxurious pillow. The dirty, molded bar was swayed around her, it seemed more inviting, while the lights hurt her eyes; they begged to be closed and narrowed they remained as a middle ground between a need and a wish. She desired to drink some more and forget it all, find the finality in the bottom of a cheap bottle, right there, on the ground, for either way, her coins were not enough to pay all that has turned her in a pale ghost in danger.

Azaras' head had long been confused, in the most pleasant way of unbeknown statement, when she realized the dark cloaked person sitting beside her. Their hands were old, wrinkled, veined. In a distorted vision, she believed to have seen their blood itself, move slower due to age.

"How would you like to be more than this?" Whoever they wore, their voice stung her ears, echoed from side to side and made her shake her head, in order to even comprehend what was something tossed in the little reality between whisper and shout, that was neither normal, nor fictitious.

"What is it you want to become?"

"I want to powerful," words left her lips and rolled out sloppily. Her head was heavy and her eyes itched from some tears that understood the pain in her tone far more than her fogged brain could. "Than the door," she choked, "and... and monsters."

"I can make you more powerful than you could ever dream."

"And?" Geralt's question shook Azaras from the memory which played along the words of her tale. With her attention shivered back into place, the woman sighed.

"And what? I didn't ask anything, we didn't share another word and before I knew it, some lucidity shed light on my thoughts. I was tied to a bed, beginning to think that I have been fooled and would instead die by the deranged cock of a stranger, rather than claws or drinks. The bindings were not for that sort of thing though."