Warnings for
“Aia is given a truth to tell”

Aia wakes before Llen because the baby is beginning to cry. She is afraid of what Llen will do if she can’t keep the baby quiet. Llen wakes and realizes he’s still at Aia’s, but before he becomes fully conscious, he runs outside to vomit on the snow.

At this, Llen believes that Aia meant to poison him with the drink, and blames her for putting him at risk, since he fears he won’t make it home alive. As he gets dressed, he throws Aia around every time he passes her. Aia does everything she can think of to distract Llen from the baby’s mounting cries, including deliberately putting herself in his way.

Before he goes – perhaps horrified at himself for having shown her so much affection – Llen warns Aia not to tell anyone what happened that night. He tells her to tell anyone who asks that he beat her – which he did – and that he threw her up against the wall and raped her – which he is about to do. Llen then unbuckles his pants and does as he promised.

Aia tries to distract her own mind from what’s happening to her – tries to console herself with the thought that this is how babies are made – but she can’t stop crying. She had wanted her baby to be conceived in love, not violence – even knowing that the “love” of the night before was probably an illusion of the wine.

Llen holds her against him for a while after he has finished, with a look of blank despair on his face that Aia cannot see, but he suddenly sets her down, throws on his cloak, and runs out without a word.

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