❀| Town of Salem

Tea is still Tea in a Little Cup

took a break from writing the other thing to make this short drabble. sorry if it's half-arsed-

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Alice Walter used to like a simple brew of tea, no extra ingredients added in. She found appreciation in a steaming cup of such tea, enjoying its monotone, expected flavour. That was at a time before the town's daily meetings started.

When they did finally begin, she no longer drank a cup of only plain tea. She would add extra components to spice up its taste, a different combination each time she'd brew some for herself. She grew to favour such fruity or herbal teas rather than the regular, unsophisticated cup she would normally drink. After some time, she completely abandoned drinking only regular tea and replaced it with far more complex ones.

On one particularly quiet afternoon, Alice was sitting on a wooden chair by a window, a small, porcelain cup of tea in her hands. The day's concoction was the soft, delicate petals of a lavender flower, a few, black leaves of a mint plant and a teaspoon of honey all mixed into a once boring serving of ordinary tea. Its fragrant flowery aroma accompanied the comfortable silence that had settled in the room, creating an aura of peace that helped soothe Alice's once apprehensive nerves.

Looking down at her cup, she could see the light purple and mint petals float about the colorful liquid. She could still taste the honey that she had added to her tea, a tea that was no longer plain. She wasn't drinking regular tea, she had told herself. She was drinking lavender mint tea.

"Lexie," she murmured softly. Her tone was uncertain, as if she only spoke those very words in hopes that it would help trigger a memory of the sort.

She remembered Lexie now. She was the escort who had just died that day, the redheaded woman that had been burned to nothing but ashes.

Escorts, she thought. Escorts, they were the people of the night whose job was to distract. It was rumored that no one could resist their beauty and that if one visited you while you weren't away, you certainly wouldn't be getting much done that night.

Was it really true that absolutely nobody could resist them? Surely there were at least a few people in the community who wouldn't accept, she pondered. What would they do then? Force a distraction anyway? She drank the thought away, letting her mind wander elsewhere.

Arlo. The serial killer who had been lynched only a week ago. All serial killers would wash the blood stains on their clothes, she knew, to dispose of the evidence of them committing the murder. But Alice decided that it never did work. Arlo's dark green garments had always felt off for the young blonde, like his clothes were missing something, incomplete even. On the day that he had died, she realized that blood was the very thing that his clothes were missing. The blood of his past, unfortunate victims.

All she could think of then was death, more particularly of the lynching method. Jesters, they were desperate to die. Nobody quite knew why they preferred to do so by asphyxiation in front of a crowd or why they'd haunt one of their guilty voters afterward. All they knew was that jesters should never be lynched.

What pain does a jester undergo in their life, to wish death upon themselves? She could only imagine the hell life had served for them. Loss? Heartbreak? Regret? Longing? Self-loathing? Maybe life was just too much for them to handle, or so they believed. 

Death. Every morning, the entire town would meet at the town circle and decide on a person to lynch that day. In hopes of finding and killing the evildoers of the town, they had said. Sometimes, an innocent would be lynched among all the angry shouts and pushy accusations. Weren't the townies stooping down to their level whenever it did happen? After all, an innocent is innocent. They never deserved to have been killed in the first place. It was a mistake, they would argue. A mistake was a mistake, anyone could agree, but it was still death nonetheless. 

Alice looked down at her cup. The lavender petals and mint leaves were still floating about the tea. The taste of honey had long gone from the tip of her tongue, but she knew that there was still some left mixed in the beverage. It didn't look like regular tea, like it had before. Yet, through all the different flavours and varying colours, she could make out the brown-reddish color of plain old tea. The base that she used to make the "new" tea.

The lavender mint tea was still only ordinary tea in a little teacup.