Crash into me (Lilith and Exu's Tale)

[Lilith]

((This roleplay takes part after Raven and Exu have met, Raven has killed Exu's uncle, and there is a budding friendship between Exu and Raven.  However Lilith does not know this has happened, except that she may have heard rumors that the stable hand has gone missing.. Exu does not know Lilith is Raven's daughter, and Raven won't know until later that Lilith and Exu have met))


It seemed extra dark that night, Lilith thought, as she wandered through the woods.  If she looked up she could see moonlight sprinkling it's faint light through the trees, and if she squinted she knew the shadowy mountain beyond that was the castle, so she tried not to look up or squint, it hurt too much to remember.  She knew she could go home anytime that she wanted.  Everytime that she snuck back with little gifts for her parents or siblings, there were always little notes left for her as well.  There was no doubt in her mind that regardless of how angry she had become that her family would welcome her back with open arms at any time she chose to return, and to her, that was precisely the problem.  The anger had started to scare her, she felt as if a monster was growing inside of her and it only felt stronger and more savage with each passing day.  She stared down at the ground instead of up, her footsteps falling softly upon the ground, soft thuds that could barely be detected among the other sounds of the forest cloaking her in a disguise of almost invisibility, just the way she liked it.

The old gates near the castle creaked in the breeze and the noise startled her, she hadn't realized that she had wandered so close to home.  She felt a pang hit the pit of her stomach almost as if she felt hungry for something that no amount of food could fill.  She stopped to dig around in her pockets and the pack slung across her shoulder looking for something.  If she had thought she had any gifts to leave she might have considered stopping, but finding nothing she continued along the path towards the stables.  

That was when she saw him.  

He was nothing to stop and take notice of, scraggly hair, a ripped grey tunic, and when she got closer, the strong scent of horse manure hit her so strongly she made a face.  But it was what he had in his hands that made her stop.  She knew that bookbinding anywhere because unlike most of the gifts she had brought to her family, this one she had actually paid for.  She could recall paging through it and knowing just how much her little sisters would love the fairy tale stories inside.  She knew this book itself was one of a kind, and this boy was walking from the castle, somehow he had stolen that book from the library.  

And so she marched right up to him, snatched the book from his grasp, and slapped him.  She expected him to at least fight back, but he didn't, he cowered in absolute fear, his eyes were wide and she bit her lip thinking he might have some kind of mental fit right there on the path.  She wasn't sure what to say at first, and after she listened to the silence in between his stuttered attempts at an explanation she took hold of his arm and led him deeper into the woods.  When she had reached a spot she felt offered enough privacy, she pushed against his shoulders so he would sit down on the tree stump behind him.  Then she stood back, with hands on her hips, coldly staring at him.

"Alright, you've got 5 minutes to get my attention and explain what you were doing with this book before I make sure you can never speak again, so make it a good one."

[Exu]

It was late, but he had been working extra hard in the stables ever since his uncle had disappeared, he knew the reality was Raven had killed him, but he had been going along with the story of the disappearance for so long, that he almost believed it himself by now.  He hardly had any time to sneak away, but his hunger for knowledge and books was so much that he would still take any spare moment he had to feed his mind, sometimes even neglecting to eat if it meant another minute of reading time.  

He hadn't expected anyone to stop him, in the days before he had met Lady Raven he was almost hiding the books he snuck out under his tunic, but now that most everyone in the stables and grounds knew that she had taken a liking to him, he would walk back to his room in the stables a little more confidently.  

That is until she crashed right into his world.

At first, he didn't know this was Raven's daughter, he was still rubbing the red-hot handprint shaped welt across his cheek and stumbling through words to notice anything else.  After she had led him into the woods he became terrified that she was planning to kill him there, he had heard rumors of some crazy wild woman living out there, some villagers even said it was possibly a ghost.  But once she had pushed him down to a sitting pose on the tree stump and he was able to stare up at her face illuminated in the moonlight, that was when he realized who this woman looked exactly like.  

"Are you.....?  You're Raven's daughter!  The one she doesn't really talk about.....I mean to say well I knew who you were all along it's just you see.....ok look please just hear me out.  Your mom, she helped me out of a ...well a problem is all, she said I could borrow these books whenever I wanted to..."

He could feel the anger in this woman rising, she may have looked just like her mother, but her personality seemed the total opposite to him.  He took a deep breath from all of his fumblings and reached for the book again, the movement must have caught her off guard, and he flipped it open to a place well marked over the years, but also it's location well known to him because of what he knew.

"See this story here?  Do you know it?  Of course you do, she told me it was your favorite as a child...."

Exu took a bold move in standing up then, he softly quoted the poem that had been written to go along with the tale of the fisherman and mermaid and their unrequited love.  He knew that this might not be enough though, most everyone in the village knew that story and how much the Lord and Lady had likened it to their own love story.  But he had to hope that it would be.  

And then he remembered the other book he had borrowed before, the golden letters etched onto the dark blue leather.  "And do you remember the one about the blackbirds, flying on top of the tower?  She said that's her favorite....please you've got to believe me, I wasn't stealing this book at all....in fact."  Exu handed the book back to her.  "I've memorized most of those stories by now, I could recite them by heart, I only like to look at the pictures inside now."

And just to show that he truly meant no harm, he sat bak down on the stumo, so she wouldn't feel threatened by him.

[Lilith]

Lilith scowled the whole way through this boy's explanation. She felt in no mood for being lied to, and hearing about her mother only made that hungry ache in her heart all the more painful. She felt the heat rising into her face and she balled her hands into fists, ready to beat the life out of him for having the audacity to claim he had any kind of friendship with her mother, him? Some kind of peasant, there was no way she was believing that.

And yet she did believe it. And the more he talked, the more she felt that he had to at least have spoken to her, the words he used were too much like things her mom would have told him, and it was as if he really had known her. But how, she wondered, how could that have happened.

"You work in the stable, yes? How would my mother have come to meet you? Did she catch you stealing books first? And what is this 'problem' you say she helped you with?" If she had been a bit younger she would have demanded to know how he knew who her mother was, but these days she had learned that she resembled her so much that people often mistook her for her, which was, even more, reason that she tried to stay out of sight, though sometimes she found it her advantage.

"You had better hurry it up boy, I don't have as much patience as my mother and it's been a while since I let my rage out on someone, it's well overdue and you don't want to end up my next victim."

[Exu]

"I....I do work there yes..." He trembled at this admittance, because he was worried she would want to know more about his uncle's sudden disappearance. "It was kind of a...personal issue, it's umm, taken care of though." He felt his face getting flushed with frustration, Raven had given him nothing to be able to prove that she knew him, or that he was allowed to borrow the books that he had been, and he didn't know what else to say to her.

So he simply threw his hands up in the air, in what he knew was a look of blatant disrespect when he dared to stare Lilith right in the eye and ask.

"If you don't believe me, just go ask her yourself!"

[Lilith]

"Personal? No you fucking asshole, personal is me finding you with a present I bought my little sisters just traipsing through the forest back to your little stable pigsty to get it all dirty with your filthy hands! Why would you want to borrow a child's storybook anyway? And where does a simple stablehand learn to read......"

Each word was getting louder, more forceful and she was loosing the cool that she had managed to hold onto for so long. But when he mentioned going to ask her mother herself, he had gone too far, who the hell did this boy think he was, telling her what to do, oh she would go ask for sure, but tonight was far from over for this poor soul, he'd crossed a line he was going to regret stepping over.

"Oh? Is that some kind of dare? You fool! You think I won't go ask her? You're in way over your head boy, in the morning, yeah I'll go pay my mom a visit, and then we'll see what she has to say about this book borrowing idea of yours, but just to make sure you don't disappear like I heard that stable master did, you're coming with me for the night, for insurance"

And with having said that, she pulled several leads of rope from her pack. She wound them tightly around the boy's ankles so that he would have to take short hobbling steps and wouldn't be able to run far. With the other rope, she wound it around his wrists and held the ends of it tightly in her balled up fist. She yanked hard on the rope, forcing him to stand.

"Let's go before someone sees us, unlike you I know how to keep my personal matters out of sight"

[Exu]

He merely stared in wide-eyed shock.  At first, he had thought he was getting through to her, had perhaps even detected a softened look on her face when he mentioned her mother, but he was clearly mistaken now.  He started to resist her, wanted to fight back, but something inside of him almost instinctively knew it was pointless to do so, she may not have had her mother's magical powers as a witch, but there was a level of charming underneath her tough exterior, and it made him curious to know more.

He stood up and felt himself being yanked across the forest.  Where were they going?  What was she planning on doing with him?  Suddenly stories from the villagers of men coming out of the woods after a night of hunting, terrified, bloody, bruised and yet unwilling to talk about what had found them in there made him tremble in terror.  It wasn't a wild animal or a ghost though, he mused to himself, it was just a hurt, angry girl.  

Exu couldn't admit it to himself right now, but however scared he was, he was also feeling something else that confused his heart that was currently beating with the sounds of a thousand butterflies stampeding it's way through him at the speed of light.

((Alright boys and girls, it's about to get really dark from here on out.  If you'd rather skip the graphic violence you can continue reading, if you also want in on the juicy bits, please click here))

[Lilith]

((If you are skipping ahead and not reading the xxx violence portion, Lilith has taken Exu to the tavern for the night, whipped him within an inch of his life, realized that he was probably abused by his uncle his whole life, realized her mother saved him, but does not yet know that her mother murdered him, and only thinks she made him go away, 'forever'. And so this continues the next morning.))

Lilith awoke from a deep slumber, it was far later than she intended to have slept, but last night had been an insane, emotional rollercoaster ride that had exhausted all of the energy she had left to spare. Exu was still passed out on the floor of the tavern room, she left him there, pulling the blanket around him and feeling like she owed him the extra sleep, she slipped downstairs.

Once down there she ordered an ale from the tavern wench and whatever they might serve for breakfast, which turned out to be a massive plate of bacon, eggs, and bread. She ate all of this like a starved animal before finding another wench who was scrubbing the floor. She crooked her finger to call her over and whispered that she would pay her more than her entire day's wages if she would go to the seamstress and get something for Exu to wear, something she could take him to see her mother in, that wouldn't give any clues of what she had done to him the night before. The girl skipped happily off and Lilith went back up to her room to check on Exu, bringing him a tankard of ale and some bacon so that maybe he would be a little more forgiving of her for the night before.

"Wake up sleepy head, I even got you breakfast, and some wench is bringing you brand new clothes as well, we got things to do if you really expect me to go see my mom..." She nudged the blanketed form with the toe of her boot and waved the plate at him. "Come on, who can resist bacon!" She said with a smirk and she snuck another piece of it into her mouth as she sat down on the bed.

[Exu]

He opened his eyes, at first confused as if he could not remember where he was. Then the memory of the last night hit him. He stared up at Lilith with bleary eyes and yawned, reaching to take the plate of bacon. He munched on it quietly while watching her. He rubbed his sore muscles and went to stretch when he realized he was still naked and gripped the blanket back around himself in embarrassment.

When he was about halfway through the bacon and had drunk most of the ale she had brought up, there was a knock on the door. Exu watched as Lilith went to open it. A short but cheerful looking redhead girl was standing there with a pile of clothes in her hand. Once she had gone Lilith tossed him the garments and he started to put them on. Everything was a little big but luckily the pants had a belt that he was able to tug as tight as possible.

As he was getting his shirt adjusted he walked over to the window and glanced out into the street. Crowd's of people were gathering outside and he tilted his head a bit. He walked back over to sit down and pull his boots on. "Some kind of celebration today....at least if you do go see your mother there is possibly enough mayhem out there to not notice you" He added, meaning it to be a comforting thought.

[Lilith]

She watched him eating, and even that made her remember the night before more clearly because when he ate, it was timid and as if he thought Lilith might take it away, guarding his hand over it between bites. It made her wonder what kind of horrible life he must have led. As angry as she had been about her own troubles, she had always had her fill to eat, maybe more so, and no one had ever dared lay a hand on her, much less cause the kind of scars she had seen on his back last night.

"The clothes fit ok? I mean yeah a little big, but if we fatten you up you'll fill 'em out" She walked over, meaning to place a hand on his shoulder as he looked out the window, but stopping when she noticed the commotion. This was not just any old silly holiday, this was the day her mom would pick out her new ladies in waiting. It only happened once every 9 years and she had been 9 the last time and thought nothing of it, just some new giggling girls that followed her mom around. But now that she knew what it meant she realized today was not the day she was going to go talk to her mom, not at all.

"Exu....I know I said that we'd go talk to her but it's the Lady's choice ceremony today! We can't be disturbing that it might even be bad luck to upset my mom on a day like today....she's picking out those girls to serve her and the whole village is watching.....I'm sorry but we're just not gonna bother her today"

Her words trailed off as she looked out the window a bit more. But the only thing she could think was that the massive crowds who came not just from the village center, but the surrounding areas as well, would make it easier than ever to escape undetected and get away from this whole mess completely. She started to carefully calculate how she could do this.

When she spoke again it was slowly, taking deep breaths as if she was still not certain her plan would work. "Right, we're gonna just lay low today, rest up, I'll go out and get some stuff later, so I can look like I've got my life together so mom doesn't have a heart attack, and your back can have a chance to heal up. Then tomorrow we'll go see her" She didn't look him in the eye as she said this, it felt horrible lying to him, but she just wasn't ready for what he expected her to do.

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