Once the lute landed between Jaskier's two hands, it took him only about an hour to properly get used to it, bend its notes to his like and by the time he returned to the hall of Kaer Morhen, he had already begun a constant concert, because there were many things he'd rather let out through songs than argue with the brutes which Witchers ultimately were. To sing of Geoffrey, the Knight of Arcapan's Last Gentle Summer, scribble those lyrics down a little piece of parchment with a quill which had seen better days, then wash away the guilt with hymns of sorrow, he had plenty of times voiced before, though less knowledgeable of the feelings.

Righteously, the fact that he started humming almost day and night still caused great annoyance to the majority of Witcher, with accent on Geralt, whom Jaskier had expected more heart from on the subject of belief. None of them agreed to help Arcapan at once, so they would have to deal with the presence of a bard reminding them of that cruelty.

All the sleepless headache came for the better, because Geralt and Azaras finally remembered so to place what they have found in Vesemir's collection, the mark of gratitude from Hengfors League, on the center of their discussion.

"Can we know for certain what this medal of honor has been granted for?" Eskel thoughtfully pondered. He recognized the pin, though he did not think much of it the first he checked his mentor's chambers for clues as to why Kaer Morhen would ever be left prey to attacks of an unknown force. Leaving when his experience was needed most against the odd Blood Sorcerers Order, left the remaining Witchers with no other choice but look for their own before even thinking of checking out the monster rumors associated with Arcapan.

Lambert frowned at the choice of words Eskel used, "Do not make it sound like that old man would ever give his life for just a pin."

Eskel was willing to take in consideration many things, but certainly not looking after a ghost. What definied the remaining Witchers was the fact that they haven't been added to that tree of remembrance, for they have become harder to kill. Between Lambert's skill to fighting styles unmatched, Eskel's intelligence in tactics and signs, to Geralt's brute force and now even Azaras' agility, Vesemir too had made it through twice as more with twice as many perks learnt.

Geralt was a passive observer to this debate over a pin. A pending headache tried him, for Jaskier was once again smelling too strongly of perfume, such that even Azaras' comforting scent right next to him was dulled. The noise was botherint him and all of a sudden, he'd rather they still had monsters on their forteess' land to kill.

But they did not. So he sat quietly, with his arms crossed over his wide chest, looking every once in a while at Azaras, who he would have expected to be more vocal on the topic she preached into existence herself. Now that the glow of his eyes returned to studying her, Geralt enjoyed one moment of contemplation. He felt it has been too long since last he had the luxury of just admiring the gentleness of her stark features.

Relaxed curls have caught freedom out of the braid she requested for him to tangle tighter and tie more certain but a night ago. Those waves fell over her ears, whispered down the curve of her jaw. Azaras' cheekbones carried a faint blush, from the heat and cold her body kept carrying her through; the pink fell over her paleness as a faint rose would be left frozen in fresh snow. For indeed, her skin looked soft, ecen with the ridges of her expression, and the kisses of sunnier days.

A mole, here and there, marked the places Geralt knew his lips have touched before, either roughly or as tender as not to wake her up from a light sleep of softer sighs. Her eyes have changed in time, from green to gold, but the beauty of them flickered as an infinte freedom, contained between dark lines she drew around her eyes.

Azaras has been staring blankly ahead during Geralt's observations, carrying his thoughts from her face, down her neck which had its scar, towards the medallion's prideful shine, down until he watched her hands that have built a line of roughness from all the cold, swords and falls. When his eyes raised again, she was watching him too.

But though she stared at the one face which would at any point pinch a smile at the corner of her thinned lips, Azaras heard for a while just the ghost of waves. Until she met Geralt's eyes, she didn't remember clearly why she heard the sea, but their connection triggered a memory hidden amongst a dream she had last night, before it was completely forgotten.

She dreamt of the same wolf, which she was running from this time. Running through sand was a messed up process, slow and heavy, with her clothes dripping salted water that scratched her very skin under the many materials and weapons which cackled laughter about her.

It was a deafening noise, between foams of waves, her numbed steps digging into a cold, grey sand and the growls of the wolf behind her, following like a fog. Above all else, from the sea to her left came a hum, a calling, a song so beautiful that even in a dream, Azaras couldn't help but seek it with her gaze.

The sight of a red sea stopped her dream and she blinked the concentration of her presence there to stare at Geralt's hand, then at the table and finally grow aware of the feeling she had, what it might mean.

Geralt watched her absent state and knew there were very few things that could make Azaras this faint.

Then the state was gone, more sudden than it came and the woman's voice became louder even than the barks exchanged between Lambert and Eskel, across from her. "Jaskier!"

The bard at the end of the long table, until then just humming for himself, striking chords on new tunes he attempted to create as masterfully as they came into his mind, now raised his head curiously at the pathos with which his name was called. At first, he looked to the Witchers expecting to be the centerpiece of shunning for his music, yet instead, he was greeted by Azaras' confident smile, uncertain only on her careful words.

"Would you sing a song for me?" She tilted her head to the side. Geralt stiffened a laughter into a shiver of his chest, seeing the charm in her unfiltered, that same charm that swayed him to dance many times before, just to hold her hand. This time, Jaskier was the poor victim, bowing his head in panic.

He flaunted himself courageous, straightening up, "I don't sing for free."

Fool, Geralt almost answeted, firmly convinced his so-called friends should have known better than not considering himself lucky to be the subject of Azaras compelling manners.

"Now is not exactly the time for music," Lambert interrupted the exchange between Azaras and Jaskier by lowering his left fist from supporting his head to hitting the table. "We are trying to decide whether or not the road to Hengfors will be worth it, considering we'll meddle with Lords and possible war plans..."

"Shut up and listen," Geralt ordered through gritted teeth.

Much quieter, after the great white's growl, Jaskier raised one knee up with him on the bench. "I was just kidding, Azaras. What song would you like?" he gestured towards his lute.

"I don't really know the name of the song," she admitted, dreamily still following the course of an action from her sleep.

"Then hum it," Jaskier adjusted himself. "I'm sure if it's a popular one, I will know it and if it is not..."

Uncertainty still, remained only on her words, because otherwise, desperation to follow her hunch carried Azaras effortlessly into humming faintly what little she could grasp from her dream. The tune she sang was distant and sad, "...meet the sea, the first ships all came be..."

That was all she heard.

And it was enough to have Jaskier's eyes grow wider.

"I do know that song," even he was impressed with how quickly he was reminded of the times when he was invited to sing in harbors, to drunk fishermen with bountiful daughters of fair, red hair more netted than the threds they sewed at night for the morning. "I haven't sang that one in a while and you didn't quite sing it from the start either."

While Jaskier adjusted himself, Azaras drew closer towards Geralt, to explain why she had chosen to hear a song. Instead, he murmured before her, "Your wolf."

Something in her peering, a pinch of surprise sprung fire amongts the lines of aglow mutation trapped in her eyes. Though it should not have, her mind danced over the tingle of realization: the Great Witcher she fell in love with foolishly at a festival was promised to her at last. Geralt had discovered one thing he desired more than coin, outside his forced nature.

Jaskier cleared his throat and regained everyone's attention once more. "Lovely voice, my dear Azaras, but I know the version of this song that is meant to gain cheers of fishermen, not their salty tears..." With that cheeky little laugh of his, he stroke his lute once and set the tone for a fast pace ballad of a shore legend as old as the arrival of men to the continent, filled with unearthly, odd in words and meanings trapped in the jolly shiver of the singer's voice.

"There have been stones of fairer golds,
Rock of Toina's helm.
And all those stones have shattered colds,
Oh, Rock of Toina's helm.

From high strands, meet the sea,
The first ships all came be,
They have met savage bows.
Row on shore, the captains' hold,
Rowed their lives away so bold,
A thousand eyes, a thousand rows,
Oh, Rock of Toina's helm.

The raging sea's see behind,
A world ahead, look so unkind,
For they've been warned away sometime,
Before their steps built home.

The cursed stone, left mark behind,
It delved the grounds of plains
Though weather used to be spring time,
Now the long wars came.

Oh, Rock of Toina's helm,
Why did you not warn twice?
Rock of Toina's helm,
What say you again, thrice?

To souls of sea, that will dance back,
Behind mountains grow cold,
The halls of kings and homes of please,
They'll fill up with the warm.

So empty have remained the few
Which cannot read this stone.
Oracle, why you so kind,
Have blessed us all, alone."

Regardless of restlessness or annoyance, for as long as Jaskier sang this particular song, none have remembered the storm raging once more outside their walls, nor the coldness of their own life. The words and accents carried in a scent of seaweed from across the continent, brought it rusty to the medallions who may have never even tasted the thought of sands or waves that rivers fall shamefully underneath.

How well would meed and fish fit on their table, a salad of greens and corn salted and made sour, in the warmer breezes that for the in-land, were mere dreams. Azaras felt the dream fulfilled and the message understood at last, because when the song came to an end, after Eskel clapped and Lambert laughed surprised at just how much they needed the break from the usual and the presence of an entertaining lad, she turned towards them filled with hope.

"The stone talks about a great calamity in the north," she said, so cheerfully that frankly, none but Jaskier could feel a shiver down his back.

"Everyone knows the legend, but some legends are just fairytales made up by old, superstitious people," Eskel sighed.

"I'm not one to believe every bed time story a midwife whispers to babes either, but Northeners don't repeat tales unless they have a meaning and the stones which have been posted on the continent as a memory of the men's arrival are very much real, so are the symbols on them."

The thing about ballads was that they were transmitted orally, from generation to generation, from traditionalist who valued strictly what they were told, to minds open to change, trying to make the story brighter, more alert and bump the blood of the common folk faster through the tough days by songs. And it didn't even stop there, because ballads were based off legends, that were once stories and long ago were rumors of true events happening far away. So the truth was in neither one of those sources, but in all of them at once.

"The wars are the winters," Azaras started, the way she had heard other children be explained in Arcapan, or the way she had read herself. "The stone was believed to be cursed that when the first men reached shore, the green plains quickly turned white and cold. So they left the stone where a valley would be formed."

"Only the stone did not carry just a curse," Lambert continued, nodding along as he too knew the story as told by old people who sang a sadder song. "It carried a warning that the longest winter will come upon us with the mountains growing so cold the souls will leave their bodies. The song is nice, sure, but the story behind it is quite macbre the way I heard it."

"Well, go on," Eskel urged Lambert to leave the slow talk of pride and continue.

Azaras carried on instead, agreeing with him for once, "It warns of a winter that will take humanity away so much that the only peaceful places will be those closest to the sea."

"Death and rivers of blood," Lambert mused with pursed lips

"Blood," Azaras repeated.

"You think the stone predicted the return of this Order of the Blood Sorcerers?" Geralt reacted at once to her accentuated idea.

"Oracle, you have blessed us," Eskel paraphrased the last part of the song. "If it means not a fated fortune, but the Oracle, said to have returned back across the sea as soon as it saw the land..."

"That one was associated to the first rumors of heretic forms of magic, amongst which blood rituals," Geralt finally nodded along.

"Hengfors is a city if true Northeners. If they read the signs that a Blood Sorcerer meddled with S-," Azaras gulped away the name and did not lose another breath or time before she corrected it, "Arcapan, then they could have approached Vesemir with a task which is indeed worthy of a medal of honor."

"Which is?" Jaskier quietly inquired, hardly following what the Witchers were sharing somewhat certain with themselves. He never knew as much as the locals and to him, the song was just another song, highly demanded in certain parts of the world.

Geralt was displeased. These were not good news what they have discovered. And if it proved to be true, than Vesemir was... "Sailing across the sea."

After a ghost, after a hunch, following the best solution he had to a new threat he too has been introduced to. Which pondered out the thought: perhaps the monsters have not been conjured to attack Witchers, in general, but just the one on the right path to play an impediment to a bigger plan.

"It could be a thousand against one, before he even reaches the sea," Azaras mumbled, saddened, not because she knew Vesemir more than just how much she was aware he mattered to Geralt's life, but instead because of the unfairness his odds posed just then.

What Witchers defied their entire lives became truer with the dawns of age: the lone wolf dies first.

"He needs reinforcements," Geralt noted.

"Someone needs to look into the Arcapan deal as well, just in case the center of this madness is there," Lambert sighed. "No offense, love," he threw a half-apologetic spite towards Azaras.

The underline of her eyes flinched upwards lightly at the mention of her home, but even quicker, she offered, "Then I'll go after Vesemir."

"Geralt goes with you." Everyone expected some sort of resistence, not Eskel, the first to disapprove of their bond, send them away together. Factually, he was out of options too, because he knew if he were to separate them, not only would it jeopardize their goals, but it would also just set two tiresome foes on his head.

"Lambert," Eskel continued, "I cannot go to Arcapan, since mages are more likely to sense me, than you. You go." His hand clasped his friend's shoulder, "I'll stay here, look for the fortress, in case another attack comes and we've been wrong."

"What about me?" Jaskier asked. He was already biased into completely denying going back to Arcapan, even if behind the protection of a Witcher. By what he had seen, they weren't a liked kind there especially.

"Oh," Eskel stiffened one humorously cruel smile, "you will go with your good friends, Geralt and Azaras, of course."

Nothing was sweeter than seeing Geralt's visible headache already returning with the news of this burden added to a good journey west. Not everything could be perfect after all.

"Poor tiny bard," Lambert's intoxicatingly loud laughter filled the table with a pitiful tone.

To that, Azaras added the final grain of irony with her proud half grin and the raise of her chin, "Don't you worry about Jaskier. He's the perfect size to pass as our child."

author's note:   two nuances of mom-friend types adopt one loud band child so he doesn't third wheel on their dates.