Daughter of the Witcher Ch. 01

After that, Annikki became Louhi's student. Somewhere in there as well, Annikki became 'Nikki' to Louhi as a pet name (and to cut down on syllables during intimate play between them).

They had a thought to go to Iceland, but found themselves in England after a time a year later as they tried to learn the language while working their way generally northward.

The travelers found themselves staying in an inn one night and having already been there for a few days and liking it, they held a whispered discussion and Annikki approached the barman with a quiet request.

Their English was admittedly rough and it was no help to them to find that the language seemed to shift and change under their feet the farther that they went.

The barman said that he knew of someone and he pointed the man out as he walked in. Louhi nodded when Annikki looked back at her and laid down her coins, taking two mugs of ale back to their room.

There was a knock at the door a little while later and when she answered it; Louhi was looking into a pair of soft gray eyes in a handsome face topped by reddish brown hair and a fortnight's growth of beard.

He was tall, muscled and handsome.

Slightly confused-looking by his expression, but very definitely handsome.

When she heard him speak, Louhi didn't know whether to curse her luck or kill him where he stood.

She was finally starting to get the drift of the speech in this place and could even begin to relate how the different sounds could fit words which she already knew from before in her travels in this damned land.

And here she was, hopeful to have a handsome man in their bed at last --

And she could barely understand a word that he said in another language entirely by the sound of it.

Annikki was already sitting cross-legged on the bed, but now she crawled closer to the end in amazement at the man this close up.

He stammered looking at their beauty, while he wondered why they'd have the need to want to ask about hiring him. As far as he could tell, there ought to be a long line of hopefuls trailing behind this pair everywhere that they went. Then again, maybe he might just have his instructions wrong again; the ones where someone wanted him for his size and strength to get some work done because it was obvious that he was just a dumb brute. That was what usually happened, but there had been times where he could have sworn that he was there to ...

Louhi stuttered in her halting way - with many periods of silence as she worked through what he said and what it might mean. She saw in an instant that he had a wife and children and had been about to push him out, but in that instant where they'd looked into each other's eyes; she saw his profound sadness and grief. In that instant she knew that it was a part of his life which had been taken from him as she saw his young family dead.

In the next moment, she saw what had brought him here, a man with some of the same ability that she had and far from his ancestral home.

He tried to back away, but she pulled him in.

He tried to apologize for his mistake, from what he could tell, but she pulled him inside of the room and closed the door.

He tried to ...

He tried ...

He saw in her eyes that she knew of his sorrow and he saw just a little of her own.

She pulled him onto the bed.