In reality it was about twenty minutes before the worst of the pain receded enough to let him breathe. After the jagged tenseness of his body until that moment, the contrast that was made as his chest actually rose and fell with something other than a shallow breath seemed pronounced and almost wrong. But Geralt's lungs kept working like bellows being tended by an overzealous forge apprentice and breath by breath the color was seeping back into his skin-- at least, to the eyes of someone who had seen how much whiter the normally pale witcher could become through blood loss and pain. The deep blue of his veins didn't go, nor did the color of his scars, but they didn't seem to be growing worse.
His eyes refocused slowly. Geralt lay on his side, breathing, staring at one particularly feather quill poking up through the mattress and sheet near his face. It seemed enough to be able just to do that. There was nothing in his head, probably by virtue of the fact that pain was still very much an agonizing constant even though having gotten past the worst of it a part of him reasoned that he was certainly better off in comparison. Reason would not pull a thought together, however.
Eventually he noticed the silk that backgrounded that rogue feather, a color and print that only an idiot would wear, though it was dirtied with too muddied a stain to distinguish the source or sources. There was a small hole and two threads of exposed silk crossed the skin showing beneath and Geralt stared at them as pain chased pain and he shivered and sweat. The hand that was his-- the one between his face and that dirty, ripped trouser knee-- slowly, slowly opened. The dirt and hells-knew-what else caked under his fingernails matched the color of the stained silk next to it. Geralt relaxed his hand palm downward onto the bed.
Only an idiot would wear that color silk, anyway.
The bellows of his lungs slowed with that thought, just enough to let his eyes close and sleep to come.
no subject
In reality it was about twenty minutes before the worst of the pain receded enough to let him breathe. After the jagged tenseness of his body until that moment, the contrast that was made as his chest actually rose and fell with something other than a shallow breath seemed pronounced and almost wrong. But Geralt's lungs kept working like bellows being tended by an overzealous forge apprentice and breath by breath the color was seeping back into his skin-- at least, to the eyes of someone who had seen how much whiter the normally pale witcher could become through blood loss and pain. The deep blue of his veins didn't go, nor did the color of his scars, but they didn't seem to be growing worse.
His eyes refocused slowly. Geralt lay on his side, breathing, staring at one particularly feather quill poking up through the mattress and sheet near his face. It seemed enough to be able just to do that. There was nothing in his head, probably by virtue of the fact that pain was still very much an agonizing constant even though having gotten past the worst of it a part of him reasoned that he was certainly better off in comparison. Reason would not pull a thought together, however.
Eventually he noticed the silk that backgrounded that rogue feather, a color and print that only an idiot would wear, though it was dirtied with too muddied a stain to distinguish the source or sources. There was a small hole and two threads of exposed silk crossed the skin showing beneath and Geralt stared at them as pain chased pain and he shivered and sweat. The hand that was his-- the one between his face and that dirty, ripped trouser knee-- slowly, slowly opened. The dirt and hells-knew-what else caked under his fingernails matched the color of the stained silk next to it. Geralt relaxed his hand palm downward onto the bed.
Only an idiot would wear that color silk, anyway.
The bellows of his lungs slowed with that thought, just enough to let his eyes close and sleep to come.