[ When he finishes with Claude, Geralt means to tell the man to get some damn rest. In part so he can get some fucking rest, and in part because, as always, he hasn't much else to say.

But the mention of his friend makes Geralt pause. He sits back against a tree. It is not a topic he discusses in detail. The majority of the Continent has vague notions of how Witchers are created. Or they tell stories of it. He pays it little mind; it hasn't got anything to do with his work, and so long as they cough up the coin in the end, what they believe of his origins makes no difference. ]

Most boys go through the Trials once. If you survive, you become a Witcher. But I was... [ What was it they said? ] Resilient. A good candidate for further study. I don't know what they'd have called the colour of my hair. They were killed before it made itself known.

[ A trifle, probably. But he's the only one with hair this white and eyes that golden. Even amongst his kind, he's marked. It's been that way from the start. As the decades passed he's simply accepted it. The colour of his hair, his eyes—that's what they see first. In a sense, he's learned to use it to keep most of the world at bay. They can know him as the White Wolf and little more. Preferable, over anyone's desire to dig deeper into what or who he is. ]