𝓑𝓵𝓾𝓮 𝓿𝓮𝓵𝓿𝓮𝓽 ~ {𝓑𝓵𝓪𝓬𝓴 𝓑𝓾𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓻 / 𝓚𝓾𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓼𝓾𝓳𝓲}

The maid, Bitter sweet

"Do better..."

"Be strong..."

"Work harder..."

"Train harder..."

Those were the very words I grew up with and continued to hear in my nightmares later on in life,

In someways I hoped it would all wash away and become forgotten like a bad dream,

But the past- and all its demons- have a funny way of catching up to you, especially when you least expect it.

My story begins when I was five and half.

My mother dead and gone from an outbreak of cholera leaving me in the care of my ex-military father who shared no sympathy's of any kind. Even as he watched his beloved wife and mother to his only child die in their bed he spared no kind word to me.

Even when I sought his comfort as they put her in the ground he barley grasped my hand as I clung onto his with all my might, my tears poured heavily like the rain until his deep voice shook me clear of my grief.

"Stop crying."

I never cried in his presence ever again after that.

Things became only worse after my mother's funeral, as father subjected me to numerous hours of training in hand to hand combat and sword fighting. Truly he ran our small home like a garrison with everything done in a timely and orderly fashion.

Day in and day out he trained me to hold my own no matter who or what it was that I went up against.

Whether it be someone my own age or that of my father's it didn't matter I was instructed to fight as though my life depended on it.

Should I fail the consequences were nothing short of brutal.

To this day I can still feel every single lash that damn ruler gave me, the feeling of cold isolation that would make you think you were dead.

And who could forget the countless days and nights without so much as a morsel. The feeling of your stomach eating itself-howling and screaming in the middle of the night for anything to make it stop.

In the back of my mind I always wondered why he pushed me so hard, why he became the way he did when my mother had died.

He was still cold and closed off even before her demise but unlike me she wasn't afraid of him.

"What do we say when death comes knocking?"

"Laugh and say; not today!"

She would laugh in his face whenever he tried to tell her to do something she was against, wander around town all afternoon only to come back hours later with a grin on her face that would stretch for miles and arms filled with food and goods of all kinds. But even after all that it was never in his heart to raise a hand to her, or give her a look that would leave me reduced to tears.

He would simply give a soft smile and dismiss her.

I wanted to know what it was about my mother that made my father act so different towards her.