What happens in the tavern, stays in the tavern

[Lilith]

Lilith through her cloak over her form as she yanked Exu closer to her. Entering the town at night could be tricky business, but she had already learned with guards you could bribe with the right price, which didn't always happen to be money. She pulled out a hood from her pack and yanked it down over the boy's head as well, hissing into his ear. "It's better if nobody thinks twice about who either of us is tonight since you're such an idiot."

Thankfully they passed by the right guards and it was as easy as slicing butter to glide unnoticed through the village. Lilith headed straight towards the tavern without even a second thought. The tavern Owner always had a thing for Lilith, every time she came him or his wife would make continuous flirting attempts at her, always separately of course, which meant Lilith had a bit of blackmail on them to get a free room pretty much whenever she requested it, which was not often, or often enough as they would always coo in her ear, normally she was rolling her eyes at this point while holding out her hand for the room key.

Tonight the tavern-goers seemed in a particularly jolly mood, it didn't suit Lilith so she didn't even want to stay for a drink, she wanted this boy tied up so she could lay down and think about what she needed to do in the morning. After a few pathetic attempts made to keep her downstairs, they forfeited a key and Lilith simply grunted a thank you before heading upstairs with Exu in tow. She didn't wait for him and made no mention of him, anyone who knew her, or knew of her was generally smart enough not to ask.

The room was small and smelled musty, of unwashed people and the animals they tended or the fish they had caught, but it would have to do. She locked the door firmly behind her and stuffed the key safely in her pack before thrusting Exu against a wall and giving her a sharp kick behind his knees to cause them to buckle underneath him. When he was shocked enough by that she found more rope in the room which she used to secure him to a pole, she was still so angry that she barely noticed how easy he was, barely even a struggle or a fight. The apathy he seemed to display as if he had already given up just pissed her off even more. She reached a hand down to lift his chin up to look at her, smoothing a finger over his cheek as if she was having a rare moment of tenderness, but which was followed by a sharp smack.

"You can't fear me already, I haven't even begun to give you even an inch of what I'm capable of, so I may as well give you something to be afraid of."

She had no idea what she was doing, this had gone far beyond any kind of meticulous planning. Normally she would have thought about this days in advance, just so that she could ensure she was in complete control, never to let anyone get one over on her, but this boy had somehow dug his nails into some hidden pit of rage that she had never encountered before and it was scaring her a bit. She looked around the room and nodded with approval when she saw the rack on the wall. Slowly she walked over to it and selected a whip, she ran her fingers softly across the leather.

"So you want me to go talk to my mother do you? You and all the rest of the village! Everyone thinks about how sad I make my family, how if I went home it would just make everything right again! Well fuck that, and fuck you for thinking you can tell me what to do!" She was almost screaming at this point as she walked closet to Exu and began to bring the whip down on his back over and over. "I give you permission to be scared now.....even though we've only just begun."

[Exu]

If he had not been tied up and almost blinded by the hood she had shoved over his head, he might have almost enjoyed himself. This woman clearly had a way with people and how to manipulate them to get her way. He knew, like most villagers, about the curse that had been placed when her parents married, how she should have been blessed with the witch magic and did not get it. But he still could not deny that she held some sort of spell upon people, even if it was by sheer charm.

He almost tripped on the stairs up to the room, she seemed to care that little for his welfare, and yet he still felt as if he would let her do whatever, maybe out of fear, maybe out of curiosity for how far she would take things and maybe because he knew what it felt like to keep anger pent up inside him, and if he couldn't let his out, maybe allowing her to take her rage out on him would feel healing in a twisted way he could never put words to.

The cracks of the whip against his skin ached, and his thin clothing did little to protect him from the blows. In fact, she was hitting him so hard that threads were tearing and by the time she had hit him perhaps 15 or even 20 times, they were merely hanging off of him. He didn't cry, he wasn't scared either, his uncle had beaten him worse than this, it was not the physical pain that brought tears to his eyes, but the thought that this woman was hurting so bad on the inside, that this was the only way she could get it out.

He could take the pain, he'd already taken it a thousand times over, and what this girl did not know was that her own mother had ended one kind of pain for him, but started a process of emotional healing that was just as painful. As the lashes bit into him he grunted, in a merely instinctive survival kind of way, the body's way of saying this should stop, but his mind knowing he partly deserved it for angering her so.

As she whipped the last shreds of his clothes away, she would clearly see his back, scarred for more in his 18 years of life, than one girl, no matter how strong, no matter how angry, could ever achieve on her own in one night. And so in a breathless voice, he looked over his shoulder at her. "Is that all you've got?"

[Lilith]

"Stop playing it like you're some tough boy, cry already, show me some fuckin' fear!" This boy was really grating her nerves, most of the time they would at least be begging her to stop by now. No man, not even the really big burly ones that drank enough to intoxicate a whale, could last this long, they'd have at least passed out by now, and she could have looted their pockets and been on her way. But this boy was hanging on like it was some kind of contest to stand up against her wrath, THE WRATH. What was he trying to pull here?

Her arms ached, but she kept pushing through, her experience with this angry monster feeling inside of her was that she had to keep going until she herself couldn't handle anymore, that was the only way that it went away. But this time, it was like she pushed too hard. Two things seemed to happen at once. The first was that the boy's clothes fell to the ground and she saw the whip marks on his back. The second was that she had a flashback of her mother, back when Lilith had first started to feel so angry over realizing that the curse had in fact been real, and the words, "remember, you control your anger, never let it control you, even darkness has a purpose"

"That man...." She spoke softly, dropping the whip with a thud onto the ground. "The one who disappeared. . . " She reached a hand up to caress a scar, not one of the fresh welts she had just caused, but something old and weathered, the marks that made her anger stop, someone else had gotten to him first, and it wasn't a fair fight from the looks of it. "My mother helped you didn't she? He was your problem. . . "

She slowly reached for the rope and undid the ties that held him to the post, she led him over to the bed and tied him to its post, she flopped a cushion onto the floor and gestured for him to sit on it.

"I'm listening now.....tell me exactly what my mother did for you, and maybe I'll believe you, but only if you promise not to tell her what I did to you."

[Exu]

Exu felt something sharp sting the pit of his stomach, what had happened in the stable that night was private and even though it had only been a week or so, he had sworn never to tell another soul, and so had she. Raven was the first real friend he felt he'd ever had, and even though Lilith was her daughter, he still wasn't sure if he was ready to share with her, what she had done for him. He sucked in a deep breath of air as he settled onto the cushion, trying to find some dignified way to sit, but having no clothes on made that nearly impossible so he had to make do with the least painful instead.

"Your mother made him go away, forever, he won't be coming back I mean, and yes he was a bad person, he beat me every day of my life since I came to live with him. he cheated people out of money, he was cruel to the horses and he did whatever it took to get himself ahead in life, even if it made other people suffer because of it. But if you want more detail than that, you will actually have to go ask your mother...." He cringed at the last words, knowing the reaction they had caused earlier, and so quickly adding on. "I just think she might want to tell you herself, rather than hear it from a stranger like me.....and because I know she'd want to see you again, no matter what circumstance you met under."

He stared at the ground for a bit, before daring to let his eyes gaze upon her once more. "I may be but a lowly stable hand, but I do not tell secrets, I give you my word on my honor that I will not tell her anything you do not give me permission to. Though I may have to tell her that her daughter just might be even more beautiful than she is....even if it earns me a smack on the other cheek to match" He felt a shy smile leave his lips as he stared back down again, he didn't have any idea why she had this effect on him, especially not after the humiliating and vulnerable state she still had him in.

[Lilith]

"Forever huh?  Sounds pretty serious, but I mean when mom get's that look....I guess it's good for more than just scaring your kids into not being little shits...."  Lilith did not even really consider her mother was capable of murder, it just did not fit.  She was such a loving woman, and to a lot of people more humble than she should have been, always friendly with villagers, and even more forgiving of her own children's mistakes than other's might have judged she should have been.  She was definitely the parent to go to when you wanted to ask for permission, dad was a whole other strict set of rules that she wasn't even thinking about right now.  But sending someone away forever seemed pretty harsh still, it meant sentencing someone to death if they didn't have a village to work on and learn their keep, but no, outright murder, Lilith simply shook the thought out of her head.

"You really want me to go talk to her....dude it's just not that easy it's been....."  She counted on her fingers and sighed.  "2 years, I mean letters and gifts were left, but I ain't so much as spoken to 'em, I was too angry.....still am, and I won't hurt them like that, if anything I have to protect them from me before I turn into something really bad....."

Lilith mused over all of this, and sighed, she'd think about talking to her mom later, but this boy was still crawling his way under her skin and she wanted to shake him off like a spider so she could get some sleep, but he was persistent in his efforts, she could give him that much.  "Now if you think you're gonna charm your way into my bed tonight you got another thing coming, so get some rest....here's a blanket....and I'll get your clothes fixed up tomorrow."  She chucked a blanket at him and then laid down on the bed, pulling the covers over herself she lay still for a long time before falling asleep.

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