Excerpt: Unwanted Chance

"I . . . I don't hate you. I can't hate you. I just . . . I just want to save you while there's still something left to save."

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ARE THERE SQUIRRELS IN ELIBE?

I was glad to see than Nils was feeling much better now that he had had a good night’s rest. And yet, something about him made me wonder.

First of all, I had the feeling once again that I knew Nils from somewhere, but I simply could not remember if my life depended on it.

Also, sometimes Nils would say or do something that would make me question his sanity. Quite often really.

Like now, for example.

We were heading towards Nabata as per Marquess Ostia’s instructions when Nils, who was acting as if he had raided the food with high amounts of sugar in them yet again, piped up with another of his seemingly endless questions.

“Are there squirrels in Elibe?” he asked innocently.

His sister, Ninian, Lord Eliwood, and I looked at him, our facing showing a mixture of disbelief and confusion.

Ninian was the first to recover.

“I . . . I am not sure, Nils,” she said slowly, pondering the question much more than was absolutely necessary.

Lord Eliwood laughed, causing my heart to do a strange sort of jumpy thing. I looked down to hide my sudden blush while Lord Eliwood responded to Nils’s rather odd question.

“Yes, Nils, there are indeed squirrels in Elibe,” he said gently, with the tone of a parent explaining something obvious to a child. “Have you not seen one?”

“No,” Nils said, pouting. I’ve only heard about them. I’d like to see one though. Aren’t they small creatures? They are, aren’t they?”

“Yes, Nils,” Lady Lyn said, trying her hardest not to laugh, but failing. Lord Hector was already on his knees, dying of laughter as he was stared at by several people, including Matthew, who was laughing at Lord Hector, and Sir Oswin, who was holding a hand to his forehead and shaking his head from side to side at Lord Hector's antics. (A/N: I believe the term to be used to describe what Oswin is doing is called FACEPALM.) “They are— in— indeed— small— ani— animals— AHAHAHAHAHA!!!” Lady Lyn proceeded to copy Lord Hector in falling to the ground because of her laughter.

Lord Eliwood watched as Lady Lyn collapsed before he, too, began to laugh. I smiled at the three lords, not entirely certain whether I should be laughing at them, with them, or, like Sir Oswin, shaking my head at them.

“I want to see a squirrel,” Nils said seriously and with a straight face, despite the raucous laughter of the three lords. He suddenly smiled brightly. “I think that when I do, I’ll name it Daniel Tuck!”

Ninian looked questioningly at her younger brother. “Daniel . . . Tuck?” she asked. “Do you . . . do you even know anyone by that named, Nils?”

“Nope,” the young bard said cheerily. “But his name is going to be Daniel Tuck anyway. And he’ll be a normal squirrel, not a weird one like from home that have gotten a little too close to the mages, you know? Like that one funny looking squirrel that got in the way of a Dark magic spell—” At this, Canas launched into a rant about how it was not Dark magic, it was just an elder form of magic that everyone thought was bad, but it really was not, it was just misunderstood by almost everyone, especially those who were not at all familiar with magic in the first place “—and instead of being white, it has a green head and a purple body? No, Daniel Tuck’s going to be a normal squirrel of a normal color and he will not have gotten in the way of a spell so he’ll have a normal color, like, um, brown! Yeah, that’s it. Daniel Tuck is a normal Elibean Squirrel who has never met a magic user and who is definitely brown.”

Lord Eliwood and Ninian were laughing out loud, and even Rath was smiling at the bard. It was staring to look like Lord Hector and Lady Lyn would not be getting up for some time. As Nils smiled with the single most serious look on his face, I could not help but laugh at the strange things that this young boy came up with at times.

Even if it did make me seriously question his sanity.