Min: Another story in the making! This one was my friend Stephen's suggestion. It's a fictional compilation of Erk and Serra's respective journals and accounts. They'll be switching a couple times as the story goes on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Serra in service to St. Elimine?

About the weird capitalization and punctuation: I tried to write as if the journalist was penning the whole thing, yet keep it grammatically correct and all. I probably botched the last part.

Disclaimer: The rights to the video game Fire Emblem are not owned by me.

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"GAH!" and Other Articulations

Erk

Day 24

Location: Northern Bern

Weather: Wet and still pouring

Dear Journal,

These last couple of weeks have been the month from HELL. I've waded through swamps, slept in the rain, gotten lost countless times, been chased by brigands, ATTACKED by VICIOUS, BLOOD-SUCKING INSECTS, ATTACKED by VICIOUS, BLOOD-SUCKING LEECHES, and ATTACKED by VICIOUS, BLOOD-SUCKING MERCHANTS. Editor's note: Here the pages were stabbed repeatedly by a pen, possibly for emphasis. I don't know which one is worse, but it doesn't compare to the ultimate hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing terror I've been forced to confront on this fool's errand of a journey.

Her name is Serra, and I swear to Elimine that if we don't get to Ostia soon there's going to be one less Priestess of Light in Lycia.

She acts like a three-year-old: loud, annoying, and obnoxious. She's got the comprehension skills of a two-year-old, and is denser than the tree I'm sitting under right now. Yes, sitting under. It's raining buckets and Serra's claimed our only tent as her own, leaving me to sit out the storm. Dammit, I'm probably going to get hit by a lightning bolt. Then Serra can find some fried-mage cobbler outside tomorrow morning because someone was too stupid to bring her own tent. I tried explaining why sleeping under trees during a lightning storm is suicidal, but she shrugged me off with a "Don't worry so much or your brain will implode. I'm your mistress, so stop talking gibberish and go to sleep, Erk!"

Arrgh! She drives me nuts! I've never met a more dimwitted person in my life!

It's not that she's ugly or anything; don't get me wrong. Her voice, though, her voice-! Ugh! It's like listening to nails screech on a blackboard with a troupe of drowning cats singing harmony. How can such a large voice come from such a small girl? It shouldn't be humanly possible.

Oh, but it is. It most definitely is. If I stay in her company much longer, I'm sure to go deaf.

And her hair is so… so pink. Too pink. I've never seen hair that pink before. It can't be real. For some reason, just looking at it irritates me to no end. I'll bet her hair's really brown or something boring like that.

Come to think of it, everything about her irritates me. Her hair, her manner, and her personality in general, especially the way she's so full of herself…. Bah. I've met pigs more intelligent. I could rant on and on, but I don't want to waste all of the pages in my journal on stupid things like pink hair and Serra. I can look back a couple dozen pages if I wanted to read an account of the trials and tortures I've been forced to suffer, though why I'd want that is beyond me. Lord Pent told me to keep a record of all of my travels- he said I would be thankful later when I'm old and gray and can't remember anything except my name, and the latter only sometimes. So even though I'd much rather forget all of this, I'll be obedient to my teacher.

We had BETTER reach Ostia soon.

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Min: Special thanks to Link015 and the people who reviewed my other stories. Please review this one too and tell me what you think!

Oh yeah, and pigs are intelligent, so Erk was wrong on that one.