A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1391 - 1391: Brilliance - Part 10

"What were you like as a child?" She said. "Were you always like… well… what you are now?"

"Haha, what I am now? You were going to say something biting, weren't you?" Oliver grinned.

"No. I just can't find a way to properly describe you, apart from strange," Nila said.

"Strange, is it… I suppose I'll take strange," Oliver said.

"Did you have a lot of friends growing up?" Nila said.

"Hm… There were a few of them. Just the village kids, really. We always seemed to be up to something. Most of the time, we were bothering the livestock, though. I don't know why I ever thought it was a good idea to ride a cow. There was a boy, Marcus, who tried to copy me, and he had his arm broken," Oliver said, shaking his head at the memory. "Marcus… There's a name I haven't said in a long time."

"Haha, really?" Nila said. "How did you manage to trick him into copying you?"

"I didn't trick anyone into copying me," Oliver said indignantly. "I was just having fun trying it, and they wanted to try it too… And by then, the cows had already had enough, and the one Marcus jumped on tossed him off. He was lucky to not be trampled really. We felt unreasonably comfortable around those cows, but they were such big animals. They could easily have turned on us, with more than just a toss."

"But I suppose you knew them by that point, well enough to know that they wouldn't," Nila said. "It would be one thing if they were wild, but if you're spending every day around them, then you know them."

"Hm… I still wouldn't want to risk it these days," Oliver said. "It's a wonder more of us didn't get hurt, doing the stupid things that we did."

"We did?" Nila teased. "Are you sure it wasn't just you?"

To her surprise, Oliver inclined his head in begrudging agreement. "It might have been."

"Wait? Really? You were that sort of child?" Nila said. "I was only playing around. I'd always thought you'd have been diligent, or something… maybe having spent most of the day practising with the sword."

Oliver laughed at that. "Well, I did practise with the sword. I wanted to be a knight, you see. But it was more play fighting than practising. It wasn't as much fun practising by myself, pretending to be something. My parents were fine when that was what I was up to. It was the rest of the time that they didn't like. I was a pain. A bit of a little monster, now that I look back on it."

"Reaallllyy?" Nila said. "I couldn't have guessed that… You never seem too far away from seriousness these days. I'd thought for sure…"

"Indeed," Oliver said. "I suppose you learn seriousness, after a while."

"I suppose so… After what happened to you… You couldn't do anything else, could you?" Nila said, biting her lip, realizing that they were quickly straying into territory that Oliver would be finding uncomfortable. "Oh! Do you have any more stories of you doing silly things?"

"Hm…" Oliver tossed one of the larger sticks on the fire. "I used to collect insects. I suppose that always ended up in me annoying my parents in one way or another. The fields next to us were always overgrown, and grasshoppers were plentiful. I don't think any other house in the village ended up having as many grasshoppers in as our house did. And snails as well, when it rained, they would find their way under my roof."

"Oh, no, snails? Inside?" Nila said. "Your mother must have been furious. I'd hate to have snails all over our bedding and the like." She shuddered at the thought.

"She was moderately upset," Oliver said, remembering it with the smallest of grins. "I had to find them all, and put them back outside. But there must have been fifty or more of them. We were finding snails for weeks."

"You really were a pain…" Nila said.

"Oh, and there was always something happening when I helped my father out with his work," Oliver said, remembering something else. "He was a goat herder, you see, but, he was afraid of goats. Haha, he was such a strange man. I don't know how he managed that – getting penned into a profession that he was afraid to start every day. But he'd been doing it for over ten years, all while being absolutely terrified of his goats."

"Whaaattt? Really? How does that even work?" Nila said.

"He would have all sorts of strange ways of working with them, so he didn't have to get close," Oliver said. "Often he'd prefer to use a long stick, rather than his hands. Ours must have been the wildest goats in the village. My father, somehow, taught them the instincts of a predator, when the other goats in the village knew to shy away from people, if they were ever too aggressive with them."

"That's soooo strange," Nila said, imagining the many. "He sounds like an interesting person."

"Oh, he was interesting," Oliver said. "But ditzy. Few people held any degree of respect for him."

"But your mother, she loved him all the same, didn't she?" Nila said.

"I suppose she found it endearing," Oliver said. "She could have done far better, in hindsight. But she must have seen something in father that no one else did. I mean, who else would have done something they hated, every single day, and managed to smile as much as that man did? When I was younger, I thought he was stupid, so I had a lot of fun playing jokes on him with the goats, but now I'm not sure if he was as stupid as he wanted everyone to believe. I think, in the end, he just found a way of living that suited him, and he was content to stick to it, no matter what the people around him said."