"Enough of these pirouettes," Triss heard Eskel complain as he slowly approached her at the frozen surface of the lake. The sorceress fruitlessly tried not to giggle. The view was hilarious and didn't fit well to the nibble as a tiger witcher.
"It's called a Single Axel," she offered and reached her hand in his direction. Before long they were both sitting on the lonely wooden bench nearby. "Thought you know how to ice skate," she gasped, untying the white laces of her skates. Eskel passed her one of her regular footwear.
"Never said I knew how to. You implied so and I didn't disabuse you."
"Point taken," she replied, pressing herself to the witcher's arm and capturing his lips with hers. She liked those delicate lips of his very much. Although stolid and diffident at times, they provided something she couldn't fight against. Something she always longed for and which until now could not name.
His adorable insecurity and inexperience, and every other feeling he had for her were for her use only. For the first time in many years, she didn't have to think about the raven-haired sorceress and it made her the happiest person alive.
"Chiffchaff," he breathed out dreamingly with his lips pressed to the line of her hair.
The sorceress chuckled. "What is it about- this chiffchaff business," she snorted with a fake note of rancour. Eskel dished her up a packing of Pearls. A caloric snack made of roasted corn and molasses and an inseparable plank of their meetings. "Does my shape remind you of it?"
Eskel did not answer for a long moment, only shifted a little so he could look her in the eyes. "Its name. E ris an aitheamh in Elder speech. You know what that means?"
"It's thawing or the thaw is here."
"Exactly. You are my thawing."
"And you're mine."
They both went silent. The sorceress watched the pair of swans dance around each other in the only not frozen part of the lake. The birds' white wings stepped out of the greyish background and resembled a feathery sails. Swans mate for life, she reflected. Why people could not be like swans?
"I have something for you," Eskel awoke her from her contemplation. He reached for the pocket of his trousers and retrieved from it a small wooden box.
Triss opened it without hesitation. Inside it, on a piece of black paper sat a wooden ladybug. Its wire limbs moved gently along with the blowing wind. "Found it at the fair in Kovir. Thought about you almost instantly. It's a silly thing. Back when Geralt and I were kids. Wanted you to have one."
"Did you have one like this too?"
"Yes, but a green beetle. Geralt had a potato bug. Pretty spot-on choice. He was one heck of a sorehead back then," he chuckled.
Triss laughed too, because everything was different. Because she could talk about him without feeling like she was about to suffocate. Because the memory of him could again bring happiness. Because Geralt was now only a long gone past.
The sweet scent of resin filled up the hall and masked almost entirely the odour of mildew and dust. All thanks to one modest sapling. Well, maybe not exactly. Due to a simple spell, the tree now proudly reached the vault, making Yennefer strangely rapt.
The task took the sorceress much longer than she originally desired but it didn't bother her at all. Just as the absence of the person responsible for dealing with the tree didn't irritate her. Minutes passed in obliviousness and somehow, not certain why and how either, dressing the tree seemed to almost gladden her.
''The star is crooked," mumbled Geralt and passed another ornament.
It was his third comment in the last few minutes, but Yennefer yet didn't grant him with anything other than a silent acknowledgement. She continued to work at her own pace, minding that while perhaps not dangerous, a fall from not-so-tall ladder would be surely painful. "Want to swap?" she purred after a moment, turning around carefully and fixing the witcher with a mischievous stare. A trace of thinking emerged on his face in response.
"You're right." He lurched, now clearly touched with her accusations.
Yennefer chuckled and came down but didn't let him take her place. She gave him another of her meaningful glares and declaimed a short, rhythmic formulary. Dozens of baubles, ribbons and bells in all colours of the rainbow, but with the clear prevalence of white and gold, flew up and away from the box, halted for a moment in the air and glided towards the tree, decorating it without any rhyme or reason.
The witcher panted loudly. Not out of astonishment as Yennefer noticed. His disappointment however didn't interest her much. She passed him without a word, approached the table and begun to arrange the jute coasters Geralt dashed rather than placed there earlier. "Thought Lambert was to do it," she heard him offer.
"He's pissed as a newt," she replied and started to work on the other side of the table.
"So what? He promised to do that. We're responsible only for the food, remember?"
Yennefer was silent. Nonetheless, she had to bypass Geralt at last two times as he interrupted her movements surprisingly often. Not without his reasons as she soon learnt. His hands on her waist suggested his motives more than plainly.
"You were in a quite different mood yesterday," he muttered when she had set herself free from him embrace.
"Today is today," she slurred, dispatching the box with uranium glass. She took the beakers out very slowly and placed one next to every seat, raving in the same time about the quality with which they were made. They didn't manufacture such toys anymore and how could they, she concluded. The ore required in their production was wasted almost completely on weapon production.
"Have you been in the kitchen already?" she asked Geralt after a moment. Her words brushed off his crossed arms which annoyed the sorceress of a good while.
"Have you?"
"Wanted to grab something to eat but lost my appetite entirely."
"Appetite only?" he asked, unsticking himself from the table and reaching for the boxes in the corner of the room. Something in his voice suggested interest. Plenty of unhealthy interest.
"Were you counting on the mud wrestle?" noted Yennefer and showed him where to put the table piece made of wild ivy, anemones and few twigs of juniper- a gift recompensing the absence of Keira Metz.
"Don't know," sighed Geralt, wiping his hands on his trousers. Yennefer scourged him for that with a stare. The witcher only grinned. In a breakneck speed however his face turned a completely different expression. "You two haven't got along well lately. Sorry to be the cause."
"Sorry to disappoint you. It looks like you're not her type anymore," she interrupted and handed him five silver candleholders. All of them expensive. All of them retrieved by Geralt from the castle attic where they were left forever ago, most likely to moulder. No wonder they starved, thought the sorceress ironically.
"So, you've seen."
"Yes, I did witness this and that. All of them. In equal intervals," she muttered, seeing his poor attempt to find the right spot to place the troves. "She's one hell of an instigator, I must admit."
"How so?" asked Geralt, untying the cloth wrapped around the silver cutlery. Again salvaged from the attic.
"If it was only about sleeping with him, she would have kept it to herself… just like she did with you. But she came here with him. Looks like someone seeks our attention. Fork on the left, spoon and knife on the right. Did you forget again?"
"Going to do anything?"
"Should I?" replied Yennefer and handed him a pile of porcelain plates. Geralt almost instantly begun to set them up. This time around, without need of further assistance. "I'm sorry for Eskel, but he's old enough to know how this world works," she blurted, giving another wipe one of the soup plates. Before long, Geralt asked for those too.
"What if he doesn't?"
"What do you mean?"
"A little bird told me he will propose to her."
"It's almost like you want me to get mad."
Geralt approached her and took from her the box of candles. He turned around then and begun to plug them into the holes in the candle holders. "Coconut? Do they make scented ones?" he bubbled with his nose pressed to one of them.
"Of course they do."
"Why don't we have ones smelling of lilac and gooseberry?" he asked, pointing the only remaining vax stick in her direction. Yennefer giggled lightly and let him wrap his arms around her frame, pretending she didn't wait for that exact moment an entire morning.
They sat on the bench in the company of the garmented table and remained silent. None of them spoke, yet Geralt's cat-like eyes seemed narrower than usual and didn't leave hers for even a second. "I'd rather know if you plan to burn this place down," he added then, very seriously.
Yennefer shifted but didn't respond with her casual nervousness and fervent offensive. She sensed the blooming seriousness but was also aware it wasn't a seriousness that could jeopardise or order. It was the kind originating from care and protectiveness, concern for the well-being of another person. That kind was benign and minor, begged to overcome it with a touch or a kiss. And so she did.