For her fifth birthday, all Kjelle had wanted was to get to ride a horse like her mother's. She had grown up hearing stories of how much fun being horseback was, and how easy it was to learn how to ride one of the creatures, and that translated to a deep desire within the girl to be able to experience that. Her mom, while more than thrilled that her daughter wanted to follow in her footsteps, was also wary that by granting her this one desire, she was going to send little Kjelle down the same path she had been down as a child, and Sully didn't exactly want to be forcing her to be the same as she had been. But this was a world on the brink of absolutely hell and terror, and who knew how long they'd be together as a family unit, how many more birthdays and gifts they'd get to experience together.

So it was decided that, as her birthday gift, Kjelle would get to ride a miniature horse for a couple of hours. At first she complained about how that wasn't what her mom rode, so she didn't want to do that, but after having it explained to her that the big horse was not only too much for her to handle, but it would also have to have a second rider to keep her safe, she begrudgingly accepted that a miniature horse was best. For being a young girl, she already had developed her mom's stubborn attitude in terms of wanting to do things her way and on her own, but she had also inherited shades of her dad's willingness to just let things go if they weren't important enough. Sure, her getting what she wanted was important, but was it important enough to not get something similar to it?

The days to her birthday ticked down quickly for her parents, but slowly for her, since she was so excited for what was going to happen. Ignoring her toy replicas of every possible weapon she could ever want (her parents knew that, with trouble looming on the horizon, having her always learning about different weapons was useful), Kjelle instead spent all her time playing with her toy animals, most especially her little cloth horse that she'd carry around with her all the time. "I just gotta be ready for the real horse," she explained, shoving her toy in the face of whoever was asking her why she had the ragged cloth toy with her. "Gotta not be scared for it."

And if there had been a real horse, she most definitely would have been prepared. But in those days that were just flying by, somewhere a crucial conversation was never had or maybe even forgotten, and when it came time to go down to the stables and have Kjelle ride one of the miniature horses, there simply wasn't one for her to ride. "Like hell there isn't a horse here for my little girl to ride!" Sully snapped at the stable-hand who was assigned to help them out. "There should have been something said to you weeks ago about this!"

"This is the first I've heard about us needing to have a miniature present for the afternoon," the stable-hand replied, not flinching in the wake of the angered woman's words. "In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, the only time I heard talk of such a thing was the last time you were here to ride your horse, ma'am. Back when you mentioned how bad of an idea letting your daughter ride a horse was."

"I never mentioned a damn thing about that, you liar." Narrowing her eyes, Sully gave a huffy breath. "Just like you're lying about there not being any horse here for her! I've been relying on you guys to take care of my horse so the army doesn't ruin him for years, can't you just let me have what's rightfully mine?"

"Momma, there's gonna be a horse, right?" Kjelle asked, realizing that the argument that was happening was certainly spelling trouble for her wishes. "Like, one I can ride…?"

Sully reached down and picked Kjelle up with one arm, using the other hand to tousle her hair a bit, which made the little girl squeal in laughter. "Of course there will be, sweetie. I told you there'd be a horse, and there will be a horse, gods damn it! As soon as this guy decides he's going to stop playing dumb, we'll get you what you've wanted."

"I'm not playing dumb, ma'am. We can go through all the paperwork in the stable, there's simply nothing here about you needing to rent a miniature horse for the afternoon. If you want, we can allow you to take your own horse out into the training arena for a few minutes, but that's all I can offer you." The stable-hand, seeing how his insistence on not having what she wanted was making Sully visibly angry, turned his attention to the little girl she was holding instead. "On second thought, I don't think your horse will be suitable for her to ride. We've had so many problems with him nipping people's hands. War does things to an animal, things we can't erase with love and care."

"Gods, don't you listen? I know for a fact that we set it up so that you would have a horse for Kjelle to ride today, so don't tell me that you don't. Seriously, it's not funny, and it's actually starting to piss me off." Setting Kjelle back down, the girl only beginning to realize that the chance of her getting to ride the horse she wanted was getting smaller and smaller with every word her mom said, Sully took a step closer to the stable-hand, who was still watching the little girl and ignoring the angered mother. "Well, aren't you going to stop this stupid act and give us what we came here for?"

An awkward cough from outside the conflict broke the tension, as everyone's focus went from the argument at hand to the person who was standing nearby, just watching everything as it went down. "Uh, maybe the guy's right, and maybe there ain't any horse for the girl to ride. Not sayin' that I mighta forgotten to tell anyone 'bout needin' a horse, 'cause the Vaike never forgets, but he, heh, don't always remember to…" There certainly would have been more to that, but Vaike's voice trailed off as Sully, now even angrier than before, came almost marching up to him, getting right in his face with a fist. "Whoa, hey now, don't be threatenin' violence, not in front of the kiddo."

"I've been chewing out someone who's been telling me the truth this entire time, because of your boneheaded ass forgetting to get things arranged for today?" She shook that fist a bit, her rage clearly exhibited as she did. "I can't believe this. We've been talking like this was going to happen and it's not."

"Hey, don't be puttin' all the blame on me, okay? You're over here all the time, you coulda made sure things were gonna happen as they were supposed to!" Trying to step back to get away from that fist, Vaike should have expected to not be allowed to get away so easily, and when Sully grabbed him and pulled him back to his original position, he simply accepted it. "Okay, okay, maybe it is my fault just a bit that we don't have a horse for Kjelle to ride. But you don't haveta be so mean about it."

"Trust me, I'll be a lot meaner when we're not around other people," Sully spat, the look of pure anger and disgust on her face something that any living being should have feared. "You ruined our little girl's special request, and you're going to pay for that."

While her parents attempted to settle their issues in some manner, Kjelle was left to her own devices, and that meant badgering the stable-hand about the one thing she cared about that day: her getting to ride a horse. "S'cuse me," she kindly said, tugging at the cloth of the man's pants, "but my momma said I was getting a horse ride today."

"Your mother was also under the assumption that your father did his part in getting a horse here. He didn't say a word to me, so there's no horse here for you." The man bent down to be more at Kjelle's level, as she scrunched her face up in displeasure, hints of anger coming through in how she narrowed her eyes much like her mother had before. "No, no, don't start throwing a fit, okay? You're so much better than that."

"I want a horse ride! I got good at not being scared of horses so I can be like my momma!" Seeing that the stable-hand wasn't going to budge his position on there being a horse, she poked her lower lip out and started making whimpering noises, but when she didn't get the reaction she had been expecting (normally, when she would do that around her parents, they would figure out what it would take to please her, but this guy was just staring back at her with sympathy in his expression), she dropped the act. "'kay, so no horse for my birthday."

"That's right. Sorry there, kid. If your mother didn't have such an unruly horse, I'd offer that one to you for the day, but that spells trouble. We've all heard the horror stories of what that 'demon' horse can do." Smiling, the stable-hand watched as Kjelle tilted her head in curiosity, trying to make sense of what she had just heard. "Your mother has told you about her horse, yes?"

The little girl, after taking a moment to think, nodded. "She has! A pretty and strong horse, for my pretty and strong momma!"

"Sounds like she hasn't told you about how that thing will hunt you down if you're doing something wrong while it's around." After looking over to her parents to see them still in the middle of an argument that was fairly involved with words and the occasional fist being thrown, the man offered his hand to Kjelle. "Come on, while your parents solve their problems, I'll go show you your mother's horse. Can't let you ride him, but there's no harm in showing him to you."

She hesitated for a second, before taking his hand and following him to the main part of the stable, where horse after horse, all owned by various knights, were standing in their stalls. Their destination was at the end of the building, in a stall twice the size of any of the others. Within it stood a steed that towered over little Kjelle—and as she looked up at it with awe in her gaze, it glared down at her like she was an enemy of sorts. When her parents found where she had gone off to, after what seemed like an hour of their fighting and bickering, they happened to approach right as the horse had deemed the girl as a threat to his existence and he snapped at her as she tried to pet him.

For as long as she could after that, Sully fully maintained that there was no need for Kjelle to ever be around horses, because she definitely did not need to follow in her footsteps. And the girl never once argued against it, although somewhere deep within her she longed to get the chance to be like her mother.

Even after having gone back to the past to save her parents (and the rest of the world) from their terrible fates, there was a lot that Kjelle wanted to do with her time. Training was such a big part of who she was, one of those things that she had gotten from growing up in a hellish world, but so was spending time just thinking about things and trying to figure out what she was going to do next. Eventually, she knew, she would hit the pinnacle of her strength in what she did, and she would have to find something new to excel at. Much like she had as a young girl, she'd play around with different weapons when out training by herself, but nothing felt as right in her hands as a lance did.

"Hey, Kjelle!" a chipper voice called out to her, and when she looked to see who was coming out to her training spot behind the army's stables, she saw that it was Cynthia, approaching with Yarne at her side. "What are you doing out here? Why don't you go train where everyone else does?"

"I felt like being alone today," she replied, sticking her lance's unpointed end into the ground. In all honesty, it wasn't that she wanted to be alone at all, but rather that she wanted to be training in the shadow and sound of where the horses and pegasi were kept, as the neighs and whinnies were almost a calming sound to her. She may not have been taught to ride a horse in the time she came from, but it didn't stop her from having an appreciation of them. "What are you doing out here, and with him?"

"D-don't mind me, really!" Yarne kicked the ground a bit, hanging his head so that his long ears cascaded down. "I just didn't want to deal with the rest of everyone making fun of me not wanting to train, so when Cynthia said she was going to go grab her pegasus and go out exploring, I offered to join her."

Kjelle rolled her eyes. "Of course you're escaping from training. It's what you do."

"I rather like that he offered to join me, actually!" Cynthia clasped her hands together in excitement as an idea overtook her. "Ooh, maybe you can come exploring with us! There's not enough room on my pegasus for more than just me, but I bet you could totally keep up with me on foot if you weren't wearing your armor! Yarne says he's gonna try to hold my pace while he's in beast form, and I'm excited to see it!"

"Eh, I think I'll pass on the exploring. My father let me borrow one of his axes today and I'm going to spend some time out here trying it out." Hearing the bummed responses from her friends, Kjelle looked to the weapon she had spoken of, its aged metal speckled from the sunbeam being broken from the foliage providing shade. Then she looked down at the training armor she was wearing, something that she had only put on with the intent of spending the afternoon simultaneously practicing with weapons and listening to the horses. Finally she sighed, accepting that maybe, just maybe, there was more to do that train that day. "Okay, you guys win. Let me take care of all this and we can go out exploring."

"That's the spirit, Kjelle!" Squealing, Cynthia ran over to Kjelle's side, but she stopped abruptly when it dawned on her that she couldn't exactly give her friend a hug. "You take your time and we'll go when you're ready!"

Cracking a smile, Kjelle picked up her weapons and started heading towards the entryway to the stable, the other two following her. As they walked, she heard them talking about the differences in their lives from the future and the ones they were leading now, and while she certainly would have had a lot to say on that topic, being around horses could only make her think of how, when her parents had died, she had to not only deal with finding their dead bodies, but the slaughtered body of the horse her mother loved so much—the elder version of the horse kept in the very stable they were in now. It was a fuzzy memory, but she could have sworn that at some point that horse tried to nip at her, and when she saw the creature she was filled with wariness, but also with awe and respect. Her mother loved this beast as much as she loved her family, and that meant something to Kjelle, even if she didn't know how to express that with the horse.

She was midway through getting her armor off, still listening to the excited conversation that Cynthia and Yarne were having, when a new voice entered the fray. "Oh, if it isn't two of the army's lamest units," the sour voice belonging to Severa could be heard saying. "What are you nerds doing out here? Getting ready to do us all a favor and abandon post?"

"Go away, Severa," Cynthia replied, and although Kjelle couldn't see her friend, she knew that she was most definitely looking a bit upset. "We're out here because we're going to go exploring. What's your excuse for being here? Hiding from your mom?"

"Puh-lease, as if I need to do that." Something hit one of the stable's walls, presumably Severa's hand, and the horse in the stall that Kjelle was changing in gave a low whine in response. As Kjelle quickly got the rest of her armor off, she got to hear Severa continue picking on the other two, her method of conversation including nothing but insults and mean comments that were definitely hurting them.

And then, just like that, Severa was poking her head into the stall, smiling almost sweetly at Kjelle as she did. "Hm, I wasn't expecting to see you here. Guess someone has to keep the weak ones in check. See you around, Kjelle!" That was all she said before disappearing, and it happened so quickly that Kjelle didn't have time to respond. When she left the stall herself, she saw her friends sitting against the wall, showing no signs of the excitement that they had been possessing before.

"I can't believe how much of a bully Severa is," Yarne mumbled, playing with one of his ears. "Sure, I don't like battling, but did she really need to bring up the fact that she could take me out in one fell swoop, and just like that it's the end of the Taguel!"

"You're telling me. She's so snobby and mean and gross and I don't like it!" Almost in tears, Cynthia looked to see that Kjelle had joined them. "Oh, you're done. Did Severa go bully you a bit before she left?"

Shaking her head, Kjelle watched as her friends seemed to get a bit more distraught at that answer. "I didn't realize she got to you both so badly. Maybe I should go find her and ask her what's up with that, since it's really not okay to pick on anyone, let alone my friends."

"Don't bother, it's not going to teach her anything. Bullies like her don't learn." Cynthia sniffled, leaning onto Yarne's shoulder a bit. "I'm so sorry that I even suggested going on an adventure to you today. I didn't know we were going to get teased even while trying to escape the teasing."

Whatever it was that Yarne said in response to that, Kjelle didn't hear it. She was headed back into the stall, staring down her mother's horse and thinking about what she wanted to do to handle the situation. Sure, her friends didn't want her to do anything, but she was a stubborn warrior at heart, and she was going to fight for their honor no matter what. The only problem with what she was thinking of doing was that she didn't know how to ride a horse, but in the heat of the moment she completely ignored her lack of skill and climbed onto the back of the steed as best as she could, hoping that he would recognize her as her mother's daughter and play at least a little nicely.

When her friends saw what she was doing, they snapped out of their sadness and told her not to do it. They reminded her that she hadn't ever learned how to ride, and that everyone had heard the stories of how uncontrollable that horse could be, but she ignored them, simply saying, "I have to do this. It's not just for you guys, but for me too. It's about time I ride this horse and make up for lost time. And it'll get me to where Severa is so that I can ask her about why she bullied you but not me a lot faster than me going on foot will."

Just like that, she did the only thing she could think of and kicked her heels into the horse's sides, causing him to rear up and begin to charge out of the stable at full speed, her barely hanging on. As quickly as they could, Cynthia and Yarne began to chase her, one of them on the back of a pegasus and the other transformed into a rabbit monster, but neither was quite as fast as the enraged horse that Kjelle had willingly climbed onto.

She was able to get her answer from Severa eventually, after having to do quite a bit of explaining to so many people as to why she had done the reckless thing she had chosen to do. Sully wasn't mad that she had ridden the horse, but she was a bit disappointed that it had been done without letting her know beforehand—and also that the horse had been given the ability to run wherever it wanted for close to an hour. Vaike didn't care about the horse, he was just worried about his trusty axe that he'd given to Kjelle for the day, because he didn't want her to have misplaced it like he had done several times before. And everyone's wonderful and fearless leader Chrom wouldn't have cared at all about any of the situation if it hadn't involved the horse charging through the training grounds as several people were out in a mock battle, causing a handful of injuries that would have the healers of the group working overtime that night.

"You rode a horse to chase me down? I'm impressed. Doing something you're not good at has so got to be out of your comfort zone," Severa said once she had finally been approached by a somewhat shamed and mostly tired Kjelle. "Sorry for choosing to bully your nerdy friends and not you, though. Didn't know it would hurt you so much."

"I just want to know why you didn't pick on me for…something or other. That's all." Expecting a verbal answer, Kjelle was taken completely by surprise when Severa leaned forward into her and gently kissed her on the lips, lingering for a split second before pulling away and scowling. This left Kjelle stunned where she stood, as Severa smirked at her before running off.

That kiss might just have been more invigorating than riding a demon horse from her childhood ever could have been.

A/N: Happy birthday, Kjelle! c: