One-Shot Wednesdays -Kren's dilemma (Patreon)

  Thank you to Patron Lauren for the prompt!  She asked:

Can you do a one shot drawing from that scene? [One I mentioned in this video] Just like.. an impossible situation where youre damned if you do damned if you don't kinda thing?

“How could you!?” Thresa screamed at her nephew angrily. “That steak was for my guest this Friday! You took it and fried it up and now I’ve got no money left to get another! This is the final straw! It’s a beating for you and then to your room without supper!”

Kren watched the scene with a growing horror. It had been him who had made the steak two nights ago not Fala. The young boy, Fala, had already had already displeased Thresa enough times in the past that now he was in for it with this newest accusation. Except that the boy was innocent of the crime, for once. Kren felt his stomach constrict. If he spoke up, sure Fala’s name would be cleared but then what would Kren have to endure for the mistake of eating one of Thresa’s steaks? It was not as though he had the means to buy her another one and resolve this issue she faced of being short for the meal.

Poor Fala was dragged from the room and Kren took a breath. All he had to do was stay silent.

“Please Aunt please! I didn’t do it!” Fala cried.

“If not you then who?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know! But it was not me I swear it!”

“You will be punished twice then for your lies!”

“Please Aunt no! I am telling the truth!”

“Stay silent, stay silent,” Kren muttered under his breath to himself as he felt his stomach twisting up in knots. “Be quiet, be quiet,” he muttered anxiously as he heard his Aunt grabbing the strap with the buckle on the end off the wall of the room. The resounding ‘clank’ of the metal ringing seemed magnified.

“PLEASE!” Fala screeched in terror.

Kren felt himself about to be sick and he stumbled forward falling down and calling out hoarsely, “Please! No, wait!” He managed to scramble into the other room just as Thresa raised the strap. “St-STOP!” Kren cried, “STOP NO WAIT!”

She turned towards him with a look in her eye that threatened violence from being interrupted, “No Fala knows what he did and this is the consequence Kren.”

“Stop it wasn’t him! It was...it was I!” he corrected her.

“What?”

“Yes. It was me; I ate the steak not Fala. Please mercy on him he’s telling the truth! He didn’t do it!”

The strap lowered as she processed her disbelief.

Fala was still cowering in an almost fetal position on the floor –so scared that he wasn’t quite processing what was happening around him.

“You shouldn’t lie to spare him the strap.”

“I’m not. I... Please I’ll tell you what happened.” And Kren did; he told the truth and didn’t spare a detail. If he got the strap for this, then he had to accept the consequences. It would be odd; a grown woman beating a grown man, but it was better than the alternative of Kren’s silence allowing young Fala’s cries of agony to be heard even louder.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t...