DANSE MACABRE [Jaskier]

[03] Unsavoury Company

also known as;
'Balance Equals Control'

I

        IN THE SPACE OF A YEAR, Narys had gotten to know the world in more ways than one given that she was now running with a mercenary company. Stranger things had happened, she was sure.

        They called themselves the Steely Dawn Company and they called her 'Red'. She didn't seem to mind the nickname, it suited her just as well to parade around without the weight of her name hanging over her. In the line of mercenary work and collecting bounties, pursuing operations under a pseudonym was perhaps the smarter idea. Not to mention that she was currently living off the grid as a 'runaway mage', if you will.

        Through basic training, she had developed the skills in swordplay and general hand-to-hand with the help of Quentin and several of the other members. Of course, these skills were not a touch close to her magical talent but useful to some degree. Narys had not let it slip about her abilities to any of them, that much she kept to herself and she often worried what would happen if she continued to keep her magic repressed. In twelves months, she had hardly cast so much as a fire spell or a shield around herself. All in all, the company didn't need to know about them - the whole discovery would just bring forth a plethora of questions which she did not want to revisit any time soon.

        It was somewhere in the middle of Oxenfurt that Narys stirred slowly from her slumber, a trickle of drool pooling upon the pillow that her face was currently pressed against. She snaked an arm out from between the sheets, expectant of the space beside her being empty. Though it was still warm and the occupant had only strayed to the far side of the room.

        She spied Quentin standing naked, with his back to her in front of a wall-mounted mirror beside the window, the lower half of his face and neck smeared in white foam as he drew a straight razor gently down his throat. Narys shifted around to prop herself up, yawning widely and rubbing at her eyes. Through the beams of cool sunlight, she observed the rippling muscles of his back wordlessly, pondering to herself.

        This newfound 'arrangement', as they had refered to it, had occured two months prior following a considerable consumption of hard liquor.

        It's just sex, Narys had thought about this a number of times already. It's just sex and nothing else. Her mind wandered to her younger self, picturing the way a sixteen year old Narys would've clutched her pearls at the thought of sleeping with someone she was not madly in love with.

        But the truth of the matter was this: after her first time, she did not feel any different than she had before. The first experience was...ordinary, to put it in one word. To Quentin's credit, enjoyable. Yet there was no eclipse of the moon, the birds didn't stop singing, the wind didn't change. Nothing was different and she realised that building up so much anticipation to this moment was somehow fruitless. She felt no more or less a woman after it had happened and her romanticised idea of what exactly it was supposed to be like was a definite far cry from what it actually was.