He coulden't have said what she thought she'd heard him say.
If he did, maybe he was messing with her to make the news she was expecting feel even better?
No.
She'd expect something like that from the likes of Pingu, but wouldn't do something so impish, especially not regarding this subject.
She must have heard wrong.
Yes, that was it.
With how deep his voice was it would be easy for the word "not" to get lost in the sentence.
Miss Nalini stretched her smile and righted her posture.
"You said it will not continue, right?
There won't be another battle."
"No.
There will be another battle.
This time Miss Nalini could not maintain her smile.
It disappared from her face as her jaw went slack and her brow creased in sudden bewilderment.
Her joined wings slowly dropped to herlap and she studied .
Nothing about his demeanor signaled any nuance.
No matter how she thought about it. he had said "The battle will continue".
Yet to Miss Nalini there had to be more.
It just simply could no be that would invite her to a private meeting to so coldly throw news of this magnitude at her.
It haden't been a minute since he had said he was determined to change thngs.
"Uh.
Um.
You...
I thought, all this time, that you've been working hard to find aay to stop the battle," she prodded.
He wouldn't fail her.
The she knew wouldn't abandon his promise and expect her to flatly accept it as if it were nothing.
"Abolishing the battle proved impossible," he said, tone even.
"There is nothing we can do about it's occurrence."
Miss Nalini stared at him skeptically.
'Impossible'?
'Nothing we can do'?
Miss Nalini's thought process was jammed by the shock of the contrafiction.
For him to speak like this, the one in front of her was the antithesis of .
That was the launguage of someone who was giving up.
He was giving up..."
"This can't be." she whispered.
There had to be something else going on here, something he wasn't telling her about.
This had to be someone else's doing.
They both knew from the start the he would be ment with opposition in his efforts to stop the fighting, but never in a lifetime did she think he wo succumb to any kind of pushback.
She would not let him give up.
She was his friend, and this was thier promise.
"The ministers," Miss Nalini started, leaning forward pointedly.
"Did they oppose you?
Did evil-hearted ministers force you to continue the battle?"
"Nobody opposed me," corrected sharply, steel to his voice.
"I am allowing the battle to continue.
It was my decision."
Miss Nalini felt her heart drop to her stomach.
Her mind spun and she fell back against the chair, her head bouncing once against to backrest.