"Oh my gosh!" Corrin said, placing her hands over her mouth as she continued to stare wide-eyed at the red-headed retainer, having been completely entranced and lost by Ananias' current tale, a tale that she had practically begged for him to tell after much prodding and begging. "And what did you do next?"

Ananias sighed as he sluggishly laid the lower part of his cheek against the back of one of his knuckles before flatly answering, "I acted as if I spotted some friends of mine and while they were distracted I took the chance to escape and run for my life."

"Oh, wow!" Corrin gasped. "That's so simple, yet clever!"

"Yeah, well, an actually 'clever' person wouldn't have been caught in the middle of all that in the first place," Ananias muttered.

"And where would be the fun in that?!" Corrin excitedly exclaimed. "Escaping from angry natives sounds WAY more exciting than taking the safer and longer way to the nearest town!"

Ananias sighed and said, "May I remind you that, being a messenger, angering natives SHOULDN'T be a part of my to-do list?"

"Yeah, yeah," Corrin said, waving his remark off both physically and verbally, much to the chagrin of her little sister's retainer. She then clasped her hands together and impatiently asked, "And then what? Surely they must have started chasing after you! How did you evade recapture? Did you use various wilderness tactics to throw them off your trail? Did you hide in the trees as they happened to run past you? Did you separate them into groups before fighting each of them one after the other? What?! What?!"

She was literally holding onto his shoulders and shaking him at this point. Luckily for Ananias, he was used to dealing with this kind of behavior and simply rolled his eyes at this, allowing her to shake some of her excitement out before monotonously replying, "You know darn well that I'm not capable of doing any of those things."

"Then tell me what you did then! Come on, the suspense is killing me!"

Ananias sighed before averting his eyes to the side in embarrassment before admitting, "I didn't do anything. I ran away until I slipped into an ditch filled with animals."

Corrin let out a shocked and horrified gasp. "No!" She shook her head. "You didn't!"

"Yeah, that's what happened," Ananias murmured.

"But then, how are you still alive?!" Corrin asked, poking at him a bit as if to see if the man in front of her had not been, in fact, a ghost all along.

Ananias calmly stopped her poking and answered, "I was running so fast that I ended up just running past them. When the natives finally caught up with me on the other side, they took one look at all of the animals down there and just decided to back off, that's all."

"Ha ha ha!" Corrin cried, clapping her hands together in delight. "Ananias, that is just too amazing! And you honestly still believe that your life is nothing to write home about? After telling me all of that?"

"Yes," Ananias flatly and firmly said. "Nothing I did in that story was actually impressive."

"Which made it even better!" Corrin insisted. "It gave it a sense of... of... unpredictability!"

"Well, I mean, that's one way to put it," Ananias muttered.

"Oh, stop!" Corrin said, good-naturedly reprimanded, giving him a playful slap on the shoulder for good measure. "If you'd just stop selling yourself short for a moment then maybe you can see just how amazing your life actually is!"

"Yeah? Because I can honestly say the same thing about you."

Corrin frowned and blinked in confusion for a moment before asking, "Huh?"

Ananias let out an exasperated sigh upon realizing that he was going to have to elaborate his point even further in order to further illustrate it... and on a level far more personal than he was probably willing to admit or usually allow. "You're a princess whose siblings all adore you. The ones who have lived their entire lives with you can't get enough of you, and the ones you never thought you had are fighting tooth and nail to get you back. Do you know how absolutely lucky you are to have that?"

Corrin nodded. "I do," she answered softly. "Sure, things could have gone a little smoother, all things considered, but I make a point to remind myself everyday about how lucky I am. But Ananias, don't you have a family that loves you too?"

"Of course I do," Ananias answered. "But your family sees so much potential in you. My family could only take so much before they finally realized that I had inherited none of the family gifts." He took a deep breath. "Lady Corrin, the only reason I became a messenger was because I knew I wouldn't be that much help to anyone staying in one place."

"Ananias..."

"By being a messenger, no one would have to deal with me for very long and I wouldn't have to worry about having nothing to do. I mean, there's always going to be something out there, right? I'd just have to keep walking until I stumbled onto it, you know?"

"..."

"But then again, I do realize that being a princess is no walk in the park, and your relationship with your siblings is probably pretty complicated right now, so I guess I'M the one romanticizing YOUR life now, huh?"

Corrin let out a sad and sympathetic chuckle. "Hey, I'm not exactly in the position to point fingers."

Ananias nodded. "Yeah, I guess." The two of them were silent for a moment before Ananias asked, "So, um... can I leave now, or...?"

"Oh, yes! Of course. Go right on ahead. And thanks again for telling me that story!"

"Anytime," Ananias said, before giving her a respectful bow and heading off, leaving the princess alone with her thoughts.