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nebroadweTitle: Light the Traveler Home
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Winry, Ed, Al, Pinako and Den
Pairing(s): Ed/Winry. Sort of. If you look veeery closely ...
Rating: G
Word Count: ~6100
Warnings: None. This piece presupposes the events of chapter 44 without explicitly quoting them. Timeline? What timeline?
A/N: This piece was begun (but, alas, not finished in time) for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ed_winry community's Christmas Challenge, ostensibly to the prompt "research at the library". Unfortunately, one small piece of information Ed found while doing said research quickly pushed the story off in an utterly different direction. I could weep (I work in a library!), except that I rather like this window into Amestrian solstice celebrations and Winry's relationship with the Elric brothers. Maybe I'll have them visit the library another day. UPDATE: Please note this is the unrevised version of this story. The revised version is here. Crossposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, ed_winry, winrylovers, fma_writers and fma_fiction).
Dedication: Forlight_rises, who codified the Third Commandment of FMA Romance: "Thou shalt not write long and involved Ed/Win fics which give the impression that Al (a) is unimportant or (b) never existed."
"All out of darkness we have light."
-- The Sussex Carol
Winry scraped the last of the icing from the bowl and daubed it onto the cake, spreading the white meringue gently to cover the golden-brown crust without tearing it. Meeting resistance, she paused to dip her knife into the mug of warm water at her elbow, then continued smoothing and swirling until the cake's top was as evenly frosted as she could make it. Laying the knife aside, Winry rotated the plate on which her creation rested to check it from all sides. Mm-hm, she thought, well-pleased. That'll do.
She lowered the glass cover onto the plate and pushed the whole thing to the back of the counter. A golden cake was as much a Stilly Night tradition as the cornmeal dumplings her grandmother was mixing up by the stove, but they seldom bothered to make one for just the two of them. This year, however, the Elric brothers had blown in to share the holiday, and one unexpected treat surely deserved another.
Dropping her knife into the icing bowl, Winry carried it and the mug to the sink. A chill from the window met her there, sharp contrast to the warmth radiating from stove and oven behind her. She turned the faucet and the hot water quickly breathed a thin film of condensation onto the glass. Winry squinted through it at the sunset burning orange and gold between the long grey lines of cloud on the horizon; the trees in the windbreak between the house and the fields nodded courteously to one another as the evening breeze caught them. Winry washed and dried her utensils while the sun slipped from sight, limning the sky in shades of lavender and rose. "It's getting dark, Granny," she said. "Can we light the windows now?"
"No candles upstairs," her grandmother said as she placed another dumpling atop the simmering sausage-and-bean stew.
Winry brushed a stray lock of blond hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. "Not even in my room?"
"Not even in your room." Pinako checked the flame beneath the pot, took another lump of dough between her floury palms and began rolling it into a ball. "House rules."
And when it's my house, Winry finished silently, I can make the rules. "All right," she conceded. "I'll set the table afterward."
Pinako shook her head. "No, the boys can do that. Share the meal, share the work."
"House rules!" Winry chanted, and Pinako looked over her shoulder to share a grin with her granddaughter. Winry hung her towel on its hook, untied her apron and tossed it onto the coat tree by the back door. "I'll see if they want to help with the lights, too."
She danced into the dining room, where Ed and Al had taken over the table. They were writing some kind of complicated report, or series of reports, to be posted to Central after the holiday -- third class, Ed had insisted, after Al had dissuaded him from mailing whatever-it-was postage due. The younger brother looked up politely as Winry entered, his large gauntlets shielding his work from view. "Is it time to clean up?" he asked, his voice ringing incongruously sweet from within the plate armor that housed his soul.
"Soon," Winry answered. "Granny's just started the Stilly dumplings, but everything else is keeping warm. D'you want to help me light the windows?"
"Sure." Al shuffled his share of the papers together and picked them up. "Brother?"
Ed grunted and bent lower over the table, his nose almost touching his notebook. "Finish this first," he muttered, adding under his breath an uncomplimentary assessment of his military superiors that Winry chose not to acknowledge but couldn't honestly disagree with.
The phone had rung late that morning -- right at the beginning of Central's workday -- and Ed had argued with it for an hour, never quite loudly enough for Winry, in the kitchen separating eggs and measuring out orange extract, to hear what the Fullmetal Alchemist was being ordered to do, or where, or when. It was only after he'd stomped into the dining room to consult with Al about train schedules that she'd realized they would be leaving tomorrow. Her spirits had collapsed like a cooling cheesecake; she'd barely managed not to wail But it's Yoletide! and prove herself both spoiled brat and country bumpkin. No one in Amestris really believed anymore that an enterprise begun during the week between Stilly Night and New Year's was doomed to failure, but no one in Riesenbuhl ever started one then, either. Ed's assignments were dangerous enough (as yesterday's automail repairs bore witness) without courting ill luck. Unless they want him to fail, she thought uneasily.
But Al had added his papers to his brother's and was waiting for her, so Winry shrugged off her momentary disquiet. "Okay," she said. "Do your best!"
Ed groaned and let his forehead hit the table with a thump, his left hand waving them feebly away. Winry chuckled, patted his shoulder encouragingly, and trotted off with Al following in her wake.
After a stop at the hall closet to retrieve the house's supply of battery-powered emergency lanterns, the two mounted the stairs to the second floor before dividing their forces. Al clanked toward the back of the house to do the guest quarters while Winry dealt with the bath and her own bedroom. The unnatural neatness that made it, too, feel like guest quarters had disappeared by now: Winry dodged a gaping suitcase and a derangement of tools to set a lamp on the north windowsill, then hopped across her unmade bed to the east wall's casement. Parting the curtains, she peered for a moment into the deepening dusk.
Away downhill and up again, where the sloe-dark fields met the navy-blue sky, the Andersens' windows twinkled like quartz flakes in a fieldstone wall. They must be having quite a party, she thought. Granny had said Mrs. Andersen had said her son would be home on leave from the army for the Yole Days. Winry hadn't seen Ben since he'd enlisted two years ago; she wondered if she'd recognize him at the New Year's bonfire. I will if he comes in uniform -- and if he doesn't, I bet even basic training couldn't make his ears lay flat.
She flicked the switch to turn on the lantern and pulled the muslin panels together behind it. Everyone who could visited family at Yoletide -- Winry hadn't thought twice about raiding her own savings for trainfare when Garfiel offered her the holidays off. The railroad companies might charge the earth for tickets, but the carriages were still jammed full. The final stragglers would arrive tonight, met by the candles (or incandescent bulbs) burning in every window, a tradition older than memory: beacons for travelers on the longest night of the year, guiding the sons and daughters of Amestris safely home.
Or maybe just another country custom the rest of Amestris was forgetting. "Do people in Central light their houses for Stilly Night?" Winry asked Al as they dragged a side table in front of the glass doors to the upstairs porch.
"Oh, yes," he answered. "Not just the windows, either -- they have strings of bulbs in all different colors and they hang them along the eaves and in the trees and criss-crossing back and forth across the streets." He carried a brass lamp to the table and Winry plugged it in. "It's really pretty."
"I'd like to see it someday," said Winry, trying to imagine the scene.
"Maybe next year, if we're in Central, you can come visit us," Al offered.
It was like him to invite her, Winry thought as she straightened, to act as if they could make plans for the future which nothing more than life's usual uncertainties could hamper. "Mmm," she said. "I don't know if I'd want to leave Granny alone for Yoletide and you can't shift her from Riesenbuhl with a block and tackle these days."
Al shrugged, switching on the light, and Winry hoped he hadn't heard more than a polite excuse in her demurral. "I like it better here myself," he said. "Everybody wishes you a glad Yole in Central, but I'd rather hear 'Have a good Turning!' from you and Granny Pinako." He bowed creakily to her, like a knight out of a medieval romance, and Winry's heart lightened.
"A good Turning, then!" she said, bobbing a curtsey back. "C'mon, let's do the candles in the dining room. I think -- " she cocked her head at the muffled noise of her grandmother and Ed sniping amiably at one another -- "Granny's persuading your brother to set the table."
Al giggled, always a surprising sound emerging from so fearsome a figure, and they ran downstairs to join the others and lend a hand with the final preparations.
Pinako had already sent Ed and his magnum opus packing and was bundling up the everyday checked tablecloth in order to lay the fancy damask one. Winry brought her mother's wedding candelabrum with its dangling prisms out of the china cabinet and went to the sideboard to find three candles for it. Someone had raided the drawer -- Ed, she guessed, foregoing the dubious pleasure of setting the table in favor of lighting the downstairs windows. Winry glanced at Al, dutifully fetching out the company china and silverware under her grandmother's direction, and sighed. Then she fitted the tapers into the candelabrum and set it in the center of the table. Ed bustled in with hurricane lamps, but as soon as they were kindled in the casements Pinako corralled him to help Al with the place settings and ordered Winry to feed the dog ("We can't have Den underfoot begging all evening"). Al and Winry exchanged a look and their tasks as soon as her grandmother's back was turned; Ed winked at Winry and handed her the dessert forks.
Had Al ears to bend, they would have stuck out as far as Ben Andersen's when Pinako finished scolding him for filling the dog dish with Yoletide sausage-and-bean stew. He endured her tirade with imperturbable equanimity, meekly chirping yes, Granny and no, Granny in intermittent counterpoint to Den's eager gollops. Winry bit her lips to keep from laughing while Ed clutched his middle and wheezed with the effort of remaining sober. Pinako finally shooed Al out of the kitchen so that she could ladle the stew -- "what's left of it!" -- into the big tureen, but called him back to bear it to the table.
Winry, meanwhile, shut off the oven and drew out the side dishes: maple-glazed parsnips, carrots in horseradish sauce, and a garlic-studded mashed-potato-and-cabbage pie. One by one she carried them into the dining room to sit on the trivets Ed had distributed haphazardly across the tablecloth. He hovered over each delicacy as it arrived, sniffing appreciatively and trying to stick a flesh finger into the pie. Winry slapped his hand away. "Can't you wait?" she asked quellingly. "You'll burn yourself."
"Not if I'm quick," Ed replied, grinning and unquelled.
Winry snorted. Pinako, entering behind her, turned off the overhead light, making both teenagers blink; then she struck a match and lit the candelabrum. Subdued glimmers pooled like water on the china, while brighter sparks danced along the silver. Al brought the ottoman from the parlor so that his knees wouldn't scrape the underside of the table when he sat, and placed himself on Ed's right; Winry settled opposite him on her grandmother's left beside the kitchen door. Pinako poured everyone a glass of cider and cleared her throat.
"Well, here we all are," she said. "Now that you three are out making your ways in the world, that's a rare thing. Enjoy it." She raised her glass. "Here's to a good Turning!"
"A good Turning!" they chorused and clinked their glasses together. Al set his gently down as Pinako, Ed and Winry drained theirs, then poured his cider into Ed's cup while Pinako refilled Winry's and her own. Ed, meanwhile, reached immediately for the ladle and began dishing himself a generous helping of stew, snagging four of the Stilly dumplings as well.
"Help yourself, Ed," Pinako said dryly as she set the pitcher of cider aside.
Ed looked at her, brows up in well-faked astonishment, and held the bowl out to her as if he'd intended to do so from the first. "Pass me yours, please, Granny?" he asked, his voice dripping with courtesy, as if deliberately overlooking a faux pas. Al and Winry caught each other's gaze again and stifled chuckles. Pinako raised her own eyebrows right back at Ed and silently traded bowls with him.
Despite the holiday specialties and the candlelight, the meal was not all that different from any they had shared over the past two days. Ed filled and refilled his plate, consuming second and third helpings while Pinako and Winry were still finishing their first. It was no use warning him to pace himself or to leave room for dessert. More than ever, Winry reflected, it seemed plausible that the accident that had deprived him of his left leg had somehow hollowed out his right.
His younger brother's needs were less easily satisfied. With Ed's attention otherwise engaged, Winry and her grandmother conspired as best they could to ensure the meal involved sufficient conversation to content Al. They had long since run out of news: Pinako wasn't much for gossip and the Elrics were as closemouthed as ever about their research. (What kind of "research" stripped the gearing of an automail knee Winry wasn't sure she wanted to hear about, anyway.) She kicked herself for not rationing her stories from Rush Valley more carefully, but she encouraged Al to describe Central's Yoletide light displays again and that inspired a discussion of holiday customs new and old. Pinako had anecdotes from her childhood to contribute, explaining traditions lost or changed across the turn of the century, and they quickly fell to debating the origin and meaning of first footing at New Year's or splashing people with water on Dyngus Day. Al leaned forward, speaking quickly, not even noticing how the table shook when he brought his palm down to make a point, and Winry rubbed her hands smugly together in her lap.
They had not yet exhausted the topic when it came time to clear the table for dessert. Al and Pinako, still arguing whether the Feast of Fools had any connection to the old lunar calendar, gathered up dishes and utensils. Ed leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded as if the meal had drained rather than filled him. Winry tweaked his braid when she passed by with the dessert plates; he tilted his head to give her a look deeming that provocation too feeble to merit reply. "Did you make a golden cake?" he asked.
"What do you think?" Winry parried, and whisked away before he could respond.
She loitered in the kitchen until the rest of the party had resumed their seats, then carried the cake into the dining room and presented it with a flourish. Al applauded and Pinako, pouring tea, paused to nod approval, while Ed sat up abruptly, as if finding his second wind in answer to this new challenge. Winry loaded a generous slice onto his plate. Scooping up a dollop of frosting, he licked it cautiously off his fork.
"Hey, Winry, this is good!" he exclaimed, sounding surprised (as usual. Winry had given up being insulted by this, since Ed never seemed to realize that it might seem insulting) "What is it?"
"It's a Creatan meringue," she explained. "I needed something to use up all the egg whites left over from making the cake and I was tired of macaroons. I found this in my mother's recipe box." She got it from your mother, I thought. The recipes were annotated as precisely as the medical books in the bookcase upstairs -- "Dr. Stevens adv. 3 g. sufficit" in the same copperplate hand as "Trisha says don't overbeat eggs!" But if Ed didn't remember the meringue, maybe his mother had simply offered hers some advice. "I'm glad you find it edible," Winry said dryly, watching him scrape all the frosting from the top of his slice and shovel it into his mouth.
Ed swallowed. "Your cooking's always edible," he said. "But this -- this is good." He pushed the cake over and separated the layers so that he could extract more of the meringue.
Winry beamed, looking down at the cake plate to hide the extent of her pleasure. Ed's bluntness, however irritating, did ensure that his compliments always meant something. She cut another slice and handed it to Al. "I baked the charms in this year," she said. "You can take your chance with everybody else, Al."
"Thank you, Winry," Al said, "but my brother can have mine."
"Only after you've poked a fork through it and made sure there's nothing in there for me to break a tooth on," Ed put in swiftly. He stabbed his own piece for emphasis.
"When did you ever break a tooth on a Yole-charm, Ed?" Pinako inquired as she accepted her portion of cake from Winry.
"I haven't ... yet," he answered darkly. "Ha!" He dug out a small waxed-paper envelope, opened it, and triumphantly held up a silver key. "The key to knowledge! We'll have this stupid assignment finished in no time, Al!"
"And you'll probably learn a lot from it, too," Al returned, deadpan, and Ed reached out to whack him on the arm, automail meeting armor with a loud clang. Winry laughed and took a careful bite of her own slice.
She had tried to distribute the charms evenly in the top layer and it seemed to have worked for the most part. In her own piece she found the six-cen coin, for riches -- "I know that's true; I wrote your bill up this morning, Ed!" -- but Pinako pulled out both the wedding ring and the bachelor's button -- "Does that mean you're going to get married again, Granny? Or not?" "It means that all this fortune-telling is superstitious silliness, child" -- which left Al, investigating his slice with the care of a mountain-climber testing the stability of a snow-field, to open the paper containing the crown. "I get to be Yole King!" he exclaimed.
Winry's hands flew to her mouth. "I knew I'd forgotten something!" she said. "I'm sorry, Al. I didn't make a crown for you to wear ... "
"That's easily mended." Pinako pushed her chair back and walked quickly to the secretary in the corner. Opening the bottom drawer, she withdrew several sheets of yellow paper, which she cut and pasted together into a crenelated circlet. Struck by an inspiration of her own, Winry dashed into the kitchen and pawed through the junk drawer until she found several small magnets.
"Here, Granny," she said, taking the crown and setting it on Al's helmet, then fixing it in place with the magnets. "That'll keep it from falling off!"
"Thanks, Winry," Al said.
"You're welcome, your majesty," she replied with a bow. "What are your commands?"
"Don't get carried away," Ed grunted, sliding his brother's plate across the table and scraping off half its frosting at once.
"Hmm," Al said, lifting a finger to his chin in an obviously faked moment of intense concentration. "I think my brother should sing for us."
Ed choked, Pinako chuckled and Winry laughed outright. Ed glared at his brother. "I am not going to sing," he said.
"You know the rules, Ed," Winry chided him between giggles. He turned his glare on her, but she could almost feel it bouncing off. "Al's the Yole King; he's in charge."
"I'll make it easy on you, I promise," Al said earnestly. "How about the wassail bowl song?"
That Ed didn't succumb to apoplexy right then and there Winry counted as one of the graces of the season; that he actually sang, or at least mumbled, his way through a verse alone before everyone took pity on him and joined in had to be one of its miracles. Al's subsequent commands were far less loaded: Pinako was required to tell jokes ("Clean ones, Granny!"); Den was put through her limited repertoire of tricks; and Winry was taxed to report her most embarrassing cooking mishaps (automail mishaps having been declared off-limits on the grounds of patient confidentiality). Winry laughed until her over-full belly ached; she stretched in her chair, arching her spine to work out a kink. It was good to be happy. She'd bank this memory against the chilly, dark hours of worry that were sure to come once the Elric brothers were out of her sight. And they can remember, too ...
Pinako folded her napkin on her plate. "Well," she said, "shall we continue this around the fireplace?"
"Over popcorn, Granny?" Al asked eagerly.
"I don't see why not, as long as we can find the basket." Pinako frowned. "The last time I saw it, it was in the back of the hall closet, I think."
"I'll help you look," said Al.
Winry glanced at Ed, puzzled not to hear him immediately seconding a plan that involved a snack. Surely dinner alone hadn't stuffed him? He was sucking on his fork, regarding Al with a tilt to his brows and a set to his jaw that was almost a scowl. Was he tired? In pain? He never admitted to either when it mattered -- only if he needed an excuse to shirk some petty chore, like ... "Why don't you and I clear the table, Ed?" she asked cunningly.
His attention jumped to her, but Al broke in before he could answer. "That's a good idea. You help Winry with the dishes, Brother, and Granny and I will look for the popcorn basket."
Ed sat up, gripping his fork like a dagger, but before he could protest, Al added complacently, "Remember, I'm the Yole King. What I say, goes."
Ed's mouth snapped shut into another one of those almost-frowns; then he slumped forward so that his blond sidelocks hid his face. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say ... your majesty."
He began piling plates noisily together, but Winry shrieked and pulled them out of his grasp. "That's my mother's bone china, Ed, not restaurant stoneware! Be careful!"
"See?" Ed grumbled (to the world, because Al had turned his back on his brother to pick up the ottoman and was pretending not to hear). "She doesn't want my help!"
The world, in the person of Pinako, replied with an enough-of-your-nonsense sniff and handed him a teacup. Ed sighed gustily, collected the others with exaggerated delicacy and followed Winry into the kitchen.
For all the help he gave her in there, however, Winry decided after they'd finished the first round of plates, bowls and cups, he might as well have remained in the dining room. He'd laid claim at once to the tea towel, leaving her the heavy labor at the sink, but he dried the dishes so slowly she kept running out of room in the rack. "Clear me some space, Ed," she asked again, trying not to sound impatient. "I don't have any place for the servingware."
"I see that," he snapped back. "Just give me a second."
She gritted her teeth. I will not nag, I will not nag, I will not nag ... "I'll give you ten," she said evenly.
He dumped the plate he was holding onto the pile on the kitchen table, making her wince, and grabbed two more from the drying rack. She set to work on the pie plate, unsure what had gotten into him. It couldn't be the task he'd been set -- he'd have rushed through it, helter-skelter and slapdash, nagging her to pick up the pace. He'd been rather ominously quiet ever since Al had made him sing -- was he still embarrassed? She considered his abstracted, I'm-not-concentrating-on-my-hands air and dismissed that possibility, too. Whatever was percolating in his head wasn't making him self-conscious. Maybe an inspiration was brewing. She could understand that -- some mornings she dressed in fits and starts or brushed her teeth endlessly while her brain pondered an exciting new possibility to explore in the workshop. But in that case, wouldn't Ed be manic, not grumpy? She usually was ...
Winry set the pie plate in the newly-freed space and began washing the serving dishes. The stew-pot could soak overnight, which left only the silverware. Rinsing the casseroles, she glanced at the drying rack, but Ed hadn't taken anything else out of it. She swept the silverware into the sink with a crash that was answered by a jump from her companion and, after a few seconds, the removal of a bowl from the rack. She jammed the larger casserole where the bowl had been and balanced the smaller one precariously upside-down over the teacups. Then she zealously scrubbed knives, forks and spoons, waiting to discover whether she was going to have give up and yell. Her china sculpture sat undisturbed for several long minutes. Winry shut off the water and pulled another tea towel from the drawer; laying it beside the drying rack, she transferred the silver onto it. Then she turned to see Ed standing at the counter next to the stove, eating gingerbread out of the cookie jar and staring off into space.
That does it! "For heaven's sake, Ed," she demanded, "what's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," he answered, pulling his left hand hastily out of the jar.
"It's not nothing -- something's been eating you since dessert," Winry insisted, then grimaced as that sentence replayed itself in her ear. A smile ghosted across Ed's face, emphasizing his previous lack of good humor, and Winry took a shot in the dark. "Don't tell me you're jealous that Al got the crown?"
"What? No!"
Yet she'd come near the truth; she could hear it in his voice. Edward Elric was good at keeping secrets, but only from those who could misuse them or be hurt by them. So she waited, filling the silence between them with patience, and he finally mumbled, "I was just -- it's stupid -- "
"What is?" she asked.
"Something I read once. About the Yole King." He took another bite of gingerbread but went on speaking through it. "Stupid stuff, about how, way back when, he might've been a human sacrifice, for a good year or something." He swallowed. "That's why you give him whatever he wants for a week: because a human sacrifice is precious." Ed all but spat the word, spraying crumbs, and wiped his lips savagely on his sleeve.
Winry felt a shiver crawl up her back. Granny had said over dinner that, when she was young, people used to throw a straw man onto the New Year's bonfire and predict good or bad luck depending on how it burned. Twaddle, Pinako had opined, her mouth as prim as Ed's was angry. But what if, once upon a time, it had been a real man? A -- a human sacrifice? That's why you give him whatever he wants for a week: because he's going to die. She crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring the damp patches her hands made on her sweater. Because he has so little time ...
"Hey," Ed said, all the ire gone from his voice. "Winry?" He waved a cookie-filled hand across her line of vision. "It's probably all made up; I don't know why I let it bother me." He watched her uncertainly; as she pushed herself away from the sink, Winry wondered what her face had been doing while she was thinking.
So little time ...
"It's all right," she said, forcing her lips into a smile. "At least the worst thing Al asked you to do was sing." Ed's brows drew down and Winry forged on with the joke, wagging a finger at him. "Just be grateful I didn't find the crown in my slice ... "
His ears all but pricked up like Den's at the sound of a challenge. Winry's face stopped fighting her; her smile broadened as Ed squared his shoulders and scoffed, "You as Yole Queen? I'm shaking in my boots."
"As well you should," she answered, looking down her nose at him. He rose up, surely unconsciously, on the balls of his feet to meet her gaze, and she giggled, spoiling the majestic austerity she'd been attempting.
He smirked at her as if he'd scored a point, then pressed his notional advantage. "And what would you ask me to do, huh?"
To that question, there were answers and answers. Winry chose one that only made her skin prickle gently with blood-warmth. "I'd ask you to stay till New Year's."
Ed's heels dropped back to the floor as he looked away from her, a faint flush spreading across his own cheeks. He shook his head and Winry's pulse began to pound audibly in her ears. She hoped he wasn't going to make the usual excuses. She knew them all by heart -- could mouth the whole tired litany in order as he recited it. Who did he think he was fooling? Why didn't he just say it straight out? I have more important things to do ...
A clatter of footsteps announced Al well before he ducked under the lintel and stopped short, his head swiveling from Ed to Winry. "We found the popcorn basket," he said. "Um, did you finish the dishes? What's going on?"
... and time is running out.
"Ed's snitching gingerbread instead of helping me like you told him to," Winry said, putting her hands on her hips.
Ed's jaw dropped. He raised his hands in protest and then stared at them, as if surprised to discover them clutching cookies. Al sighed. "Brother," he said, "if you're going to steal sweets, you should at least share them."
Ed rolled his eyes. "Fine," he grumbled. "Here."
He tossed his left-hand cookie to Winry, who caught it against her shirt and ostentatiously brushed herself and the gingerbread clean before taking a bite. "Thank you very much, Ed," she caroled.
Ed made indistinct, probably insulting noises around his own mouthful of cookie. "Are we having popcorn now?" he asked Al after he'd cleared his mouth.
"Granny Pinako's building up the fire," Al answered, rubbing his hands together in what Winry had come to recognize as a mildly nervous gesture. "I was wondering ... would you two want to go outside and count houses first, like we used to?" He cocked his head to one side, watching them hopefully.
Counting houses wasn't an official Yole tradition, just something they'd always done. Winry thought that maybe her parents had started it; she remembered being carried out into the cold and looking down the hill toward the lamp-lit windows of Riesenbuhl when she couldn't have been more than four years old. When Ed and Al and their mother took to joining the Rockbells for Stilly Night, the boys had made it into a kind of contest, striving to pick out the most houses or the farthest ones. Winry hadn't bothered to keep up the custom in recent years: Granny complained that her old bones disliked the chill, but she'd never been that enthusiastic about the game to begin with, and Winry had found that standing in the dark alone wasn't fun at all, really, however pretty the view. But with the brothers here again, just like old times ... "I'd love to!" she exclaimed, stuffing the rest of her cookie into her mouth and skipping over to the coat tree to dig out her winter jacket. "Lemme ge' m'coat!"
"Brother?" Al asked, turning to Ed.
Winry watched them out of the corner of her eye as she pulled her scarf from her right coat-sleeve. Ed's feet stayed flat on the floor, she noticed, as he tilted his head back to look his younger brother in the eye. "Sure," he said; then his face blazed into a grin. "Bet you I count more this year."
"Bet you don't," Al replied immediately and Winry groaned to herself. Some things just don't change ...
"Winry!" Pinako called from the parlor. "Can you bring the popping corn from the pantry?"
Winry dashed back through the kitchen and ducked under Al's arm. "In a minute, Granny!" she yelled. "We're going outside to count houses!"
"Good!" her grandmother answered with inexplicable vehemence. "Take the dog out with you!"
With a scrabble of claws, Den bolted between Al's legs and skidded across the linoleum to the kitchen door, trailing unmistakable whiffs of the result of feeding a dog sausage-and-bean stew. "Oh, Den!" Winry exclaimed, pinching her nose shut. "Phew!"
Ed made a dive for the door, yanking it wide to let a breath of fresh cold air in and the odiferous animal out. "'Oh, Den?'" he repeated. "I think you're blaming another one of the victims there, Winry." He glared over his shoulder at Al, who mimed complete innocence with a facility astonishing in a suit of armor. Then again, Winry thought, her breath catching between a chuckle and a sigh, he can't smell it, can he?
They followed the dog into the yard as soon as Winry and Ed had donned their coats and Al had set aside his paper crown.. Outside was chilly, but not bitter: the wind that sighed and rattled in the trees pushed Winry's clothes against her body without cutting through the fabric. Den ran to meet them at the foot of the steps, cavorting around Al and dodging his laughing attempts to seize her collar; then she bolted off nose-down into the darkness to crash around in the windbreak. Tracking rabbit-spoor, Winry supposed. Den had never actually caught a rabbit, but she lived in hope.
The brothers surged across the lawn toward the wall that marked its edge, quickly outdistancing Winry, whose eyes adjusted more slowly to the night's erratic brilliance. The electric lamps she and Al had set in the upstairs windows made a brave show, far brighter than the thin candle-flickers at ground level. Above, the stars drew familiar pictures, mirroring what passed beneath them: two bright-eyed dogs hunting a hare couched forever just beyond reach. A first-quarter moon glided westward into the woolpack advancing to shroud it. Shadows melted into objects and objects masqueraded as shadows -- Winry stepped over sticks that weren't there and tripped on hollows that were. "Wait up!" she called after her companions.
Only Den answered her summons, reemerging from the brush to walk at her heels, panting. Al and Ed marched on, oblivious; Winry cursed them under her breath and struggled to catch up.
" -- three, four, five -- "
"How d'you make five already?"
The brothers were arguing, of course, each trying to steal a march on the other in the house-count. Winry's irritation went wry; she'd probably have to umpire. Oh, yes ... just like old times ...
"The Andersens, the Wrights, the Bolts -- " Al enumerated as Winry overtook him.
"The Bolts?" Ed scoffed. "You can't see their house from here. The hill gets in the way."
"I can too. The attic windows show just above the top."
"No, they don't. Your eyes are playing tricks because you know it's there."
"They are not -- "
Winry shouldered between them. "You two!" she said preemptively, because it sounded as if Al were about to bring up the forty-odd centimeters of height he had on Ed at the moment, and the resulting explosion wouldn't be conducive to holiday harmony. "Don't argue -- just count."
"Al's cheating," Ed declared, right on cue.
"I am not!" protested Al. "Tell him, Winry!"
Winry grabbed Al's left hand and Ed's right, effectively silencing their owners, and towed the brothers all the way to the wall before either boy's gloved fingers responded to her grasp. Both hands closed gingerly on hers as she climbed the stile, white kid over steel as gentle as brown leather over ... nothing. The contrast between their hesitancy and her own fierce careless grip gave Winry a hollow ache in her chest. Tenderly and secretly she ran a thumb across Ed's nerveless knuckles, then looked up at Al.
At first she saw only a grim silhouette, all points and angles but for the soft curve of his panache bobbing in the breeze. Then she spied the faint radiance of his soul in the eye-sockets of his helmet, star-bright in the darkness, twin lamps to light the traveler home. Winry lifted her face to the wind and let it scour away the water blurring the edges of her vision. Soon, she prayed. Please, let it be soon.
Overhead, the true stars wheeled slowly toward the dawn of the year's shortest day.
Author's Note: To date, the Amestris of the FMA manga appears to have no knowledge of Christianity and, therefore, none of Christmas or its related customs. On the other hand, cultures all over our world celebrate holidays on or near the winter solstice; I have borrowed freely from those traditions to create an Amestrian Christmas-analogue. "Yole" is a common Middle English spelling of "Yule"; it comes from an Old English word possibly meaning bright. "Stilly Night" is my own invention from the etymology of the word "solstice" [ > Latin sol, sun + sistere, to stand still]. The idea of Stilly dumplings, though not the recipe, comes from a Chinese Dōngzhì menu. Winry's Creatan meringue is this world's Italian meringue and it is, indeed, an excellent way to use up the egg whites left over from making a golden cake. Putting symbolic charms in the Christmas dessert is an English custom, probably related to a more widespread European one of baking a bean into a Christmas or Epiphany cake; whoever finds the bean in his or her slice is hailed as the King/Queen of the Bean and frequently takes charge of whatever revels are in progress. The parallel to more serious ritual lotteries has been noted by many commentators (among them, Terry Pratchett in Hogfather). Yes, there is a Dyngus Day and it does involve splashing people with water. Finally, Christmas lights, like so many other modern cultural phenomena, sprang from the inventive mind of Thomas Edison, who pioneered the first outdoor light display at Menlo Park in 1880 and the first Christmas tree decorated with electric bulbs in 1882, although neither invention saw widespread use until the early twentieth century.
[Disclaimers: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Winry, Ed, Al, Pinako and Den
Pairing(s): Ed/Winry. Sort of. If you look veeery closely ...
Rating: G
Word Count: ~6100
Warnings: None. This piece presupposes the events of chapter 44 without explicitly quoting them. Timeline? What timeline?
A/N: This piece was begun (but, alas, not finished in time) for the
ed_winry community's Christmas Challenge, ostensibly to the prompt "research at the library". Unfortunately, one small piece of information Ed found while doing said research quickly pushed the story off in an utterly different direction. I could weep (I work in a library!), except that I rather like this window into Amestrian solstice celebrations and Winry's relationship with the Elric brothers. Maybe I'll have them visit the library another day. UPDATE: Please note this is the unrevised version of this story. The revised version is here. Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, ed_winry, winrylovers, fma_writers and fma_fiction).Dedication: For
light_rises, who codified the Third Commandment of FMA Romance: "Thou shalt not write long and involved Ed/Win fics which give the impression that Al (a) is unimportant or (b) never existed."-- The Sussex Carol
Winry scraped the last of the icing from the bowl and daubed it onto the cake, spreading the white meringue gently to cover the golden-brown crust without tearing it. Meeting resistance, she paused to dip her knife into the mug of warm water at her elbow, then continued smoothing and swirling until the cake's top was as evenly frosted as she could make it. Laying the knife aside, Winry rotated the plate on which her creation rested to check it from all sides. Mm-hm, she thought, well-pleased. That'll do.
She lowered the glass cover onto the plate and pushed the whole thing to the back of the counter. A golden cake was as much a Stilly Night tradition as the cornmeal dumplings her grandmother was mixing up by the stove, but they seldom bothered to make one for just the two of them. This year, however, the Elric brothers had blown in to share the holiday, and one unexpected treat surely deserved another.
Dropping her knife into the icing bowl, Winry carried it and the mug to the sink. A chill from the window met her there, sharp contrast to the warmth radiating from stove and oven behind her. She turned the faucet and the hot water quickly breathed a thin film of condensation onto the glass. Winry squinted through it at the sunset burning orange and gold between the long grey lines of cloud on the horizon; the trees in the windbreak between the house and the fields nodded courteously to one another as the evening breeze caught them. Winry washed and dried her utensils while the sun slipped from sight, limning the sky in shades of lavender and rose. "It's getting dark, Granny," she said. "Can we light the windows now?"
"No candles upstairs," her grandmother said as she placed another dumpling atop the simmering sausage-and-bean stew.
Winry brushed a stray lock of blond hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. "Not even in my room?"
"Not even in your room." Pinako checked the flame beneath the pot, took another lump of dough between her floury palms and began rolling it into a ball. "House rules."
And when it's my house, Winry finished silently, I can make the rules. "All right," she conceded. "I'll set the table afterward."
Pinako shook her head. "No, the boys can do that. Share the meal, share the work."
"House rules!" Winry chanted, and Pinako looked over her shoulder to share a grin with her granddaughter. Winry hung her towel on its hook, untied her apron and tossed it onto the coat tree by the back door. "I'll see if they want to help with the lights, too."
She danced into the dining room, where Ed and Al had taken over the table. They were writing some kind of complicated report, or series of reports, to be posted to Central after the holiday -- third class, Ed had insisted, after Al had dissuaded him from mailing whatever-it-was postage due. The younger brother looked up politely as Winry entered, his large gauntlets shielding his work from view. "Is it time to clean up?" he asked, his voice ringing incongruously sweet from within the plate armor that housed his soul.
"Soon," Winry answered. "Granny's just started the Stilly dumplings, but everything else is keeping warm. D'you want to help me light the windows?"
"Sure." Al shuffled his share of the papers together and picked them up. "Brother?"
Ed grunted and bent lower over the table, his nose almost touching his notebook. "Finish this first," he muttered, adding under his breath an uncomplimentary assessment of his military superiors that Winry chose not to acknowledge but couldn't honestly disagree with.
The phone had rung late that morning -- right at the beginning of Central's workday -- and Ed had argued with it for an hour, never quite loudly enough for Winry, in the kitchen separating eggs and measuring out orange extract, to hear what the Fullmetal Alchemist was being ordered to do, or where, or when. It was only after he'd stomped into the dining room to consult with Al about train schedules that she'd realized they would be leaving tomorrow. Her spirits had collapsed like a cooling cheesecake; she'd barely managed not to wail But it's Yoletide! and prove herself both spoiled brat and country bumpkin. No one in Amestris really believed anymore that an enterprise begun during the week between Stilly Night and New Year's was doomed to failure, but no one in Riesenbuhl ever started one then, either. Ed's assignments were dangerous enough (as yesterday's automail repairs bore witness) without courting ill luck. Unless they want him to fail, she thought uneasily.
But Al had added his papers to his brother's and was waiting for her, so Winry shrugged off her momentary disquiet. "Okay," she said. "Do your best!"
Ed groaned and let his forehead hit the table with a thump, his left hand waving them feebly away. Winry chuckled, patted his shoulder encouragingly, and trotted off with Al following in her wake.
After a stop at the hall closet to retrieve the house's supply of battery-powered emergency lanterns, the two mounted the stairs to the second floor before dividing their forces. Al clanked toward the back of the house to do the guest quarters while Winry dealt with the bath and her own bedroom. The unnatural neatness that made it, too, feel like guest quarters had disappeared by now: Winry dodged a gaping suitcase and a derangement of tools to set a lamp on the north windowsill, then hopped across her unmade bed to the east wall's casement. Parting the curtains, she peered for a moment into the deepening dusk.
Away downhill and up again, where the sloe-dark fields met the navy-blue sky, the Andersens' windows twinkled like quartz flakes in a fieldstone wall. They must be having quite a party, she thought. Granny had said Mrs. Andersen had said her son would be home on leave from the army for the Yole Days. Winry hadn't seen Ben since he'd enlisted two years ago; she wondered if she'd recognize him at the New Year's bonfire. I will if he comes in uniform -- and if he doesn't, I bet even basic training couldn't make his ears lay flat.
She flicked the switch to turn on the lantern and pulled the muslin panels together behind it. Everyone who could visited family at Yoletide -- Winry hadn't thought twice about raiding her own savings for trainfare when Garfiel offered her the holidays off. The railroad companies might charge the earth for tickets, but the carriages were still jammed full. The final stragglers would arrive tonight, met by the candles (or incandescent bulbs) burning in every window, a tradition older than memory: beacons for travelers on the longest night of the year, guiding the sons and daughters of Amestris safely home.
Or maybe just another country custom the rest of Amestris was forgetting. "Do people in Central light their houses for Stilly Night?" Winry asked Al as they dragged a side table in front of the glass doors to the upstairs porch.
"Oh, yes," he answered. "Not just the windows, either -- they have strings of bulbs in all different colors and they hang them along the eaves and in the trees and criss-crossing back and forth across the streets." He carried a brass lamp to the table and Winry plugged it in. "It's really pretty."
"I'd like to see it someday," said Winry, trying to imagine the scene.
"Maybe next year, if we're in Central, you can come visit us," Al offered.
It was like him to invite her, Winry thought as she straightened, to act as if they could make plans for the future which nothing more than life's usual uncertainties could hamper. "Mmm," she said. "I don't know if I'd want to leave Granny alone for Yoletide and you can't shift her from Riesenbuhl with a block and tackle these days."
Al shrugged, switching on the light, and Winry hoped he hadn't heard more than a polite excuse in her demurral. "I like it better here myself," he said. "Everybody wishes you a glad Yole in Central, but I'd rather hear 'Have a good Turning!' from you and Granny Pinako." He bowed creakily to her, like a knight out of a medieval romance, and Winry's heart lightened.
"A good Turning, then!" she said, bobbing a curtsey back. "C'mon, let's do the candles in the dining room. I think -- " she cocked her head at the muffled noise of her grandmother and Ed sniping amiably at one another -- "Granny's persuading your brother to set the table."
Al giggled, always a surprising sound emerging from so fearsome a figure, and they ran downstairs to join the others and lend a hand with the final preparations.
Pinako had already sent Ed and his magnum opus packing and was bundling up the everyday checked tablecloth in order to lay the fancy damask one. Winry brought her mother's wedding candelabrum with its dangling prisms out of the china cabinet and went to the sideboard to find three candles for it. Someone had raided the drawer -- Ed, she guessed, foregoing the dubious pleasure of setting the table in favor of lighting the downstairs windows. Winry glanced at Al, dutifully fetching out the company china and silverware under her grandmother's direction, and sighed. Then she fitted the tapers into the candelabrum and set it in the center of the table. Ed bustled in with hurricane lamps, but as soon as they were kindled in the casements Pinako corralled him to help Al with the place settings and ordered Winry to feed the dog ("We can't have Den underfoot begging all evening"). Al and Winry exchanged a look and their tasks as soon as her grandmother's back was turned; Ed winked at Winry and handed her the dessert forks.
Had Al ears to bend, they would have stuck out as far as Ben Andersen's when Pinako finished scolding him for filling the dog dish with Yoletide sausage-and-bean stew. He endured her tirade with imperturbable equanimity, meekly chirping yes, Granny and no, Granny in intermittent counterpoint to Den's eager gollops. Winry bit her lips to keep from laughing while Ed clutched his middle and wheezed with the effort of remaining sober. Pinako finally shooed Al out of the kitchen so that she could ladle the stew -- "what's left of it!" -- into the big tureen, but called him back to bear it to the table.
Winry, meanwhile, shut off the oven and drew out the side dishes: maple-glazed parsnips, carrots in horseradish sauce, and a garlic-studded mashed-potato-and-cabbage pie. One by one she carried them into the dining room to sit on the trivets Ed had distributed haphazardly across the tablecloth. He hovered over each delicacy as it arrived, sniffing appreciatively and trying to stick a flesh finger into the pie. Winry slapped his hand away. "Can't you wait?" she asked quellingly. "You'll burn yourself."
"Not if I'm quick," Ed replied, grinning and unquelled.
Winry snorted. Pinako, entering behind her, turned off the overhead light, making both teenagers blink; then she struck a match and lit the candelabrum. Subdued glimmers pooled like water on the china, while brighter sparks danced along the silver. Al brought the ottoman from the parlor so that his knees wouldn't scrape the underside of the table when he sat, and placed himself on Ed's right; Winry settled opposite him on her grandmother's left beside the kitchen door. Pinako poured everyone a glass of cider and cleared her throat.
"Well, here we all are," she said. "Now that you three are out making your ways in the world, that's a rare thing. Enjoy it." She raised her glass. "Here's to a good Turning!"
"A good Turning!" they chorused and clinked their glasses together. Al set his gently down as Pinako, Ed and Winry drained theirs, then poured his cider into Ed's cup while Pinako refilled Winry's and her own. Ed, meanwhile, reached immediately for the ladle and began dishing himself a generous helping of stew, snagging four of the Stilly dumplings as well.
"Help yourself, Ed," Pinako said dryly as she set the pitcher of cider aside.
Ed looked at her, brows up in well-faked astonishment, and held the bowl out to her as if he'd intended to do so from the first. "Pass me yours, please, Granny?" he asked, his voice dripping with courtesy, as if deliberately overlooking a faux pas. Al and Winry caught each other's gaze again and stifled chuckles. Pinako raised her own eyebrows right back at Ed and silently traded bowls with him.
Despite the holiday specialties and the candlelight, the meal was not all that different from any they had shared over the past two days. Ed filled and refilled his plate, consuming second and third helpings while Pinako and Winry were still finishing their first. It was no use warning him to pace himself or to leave room for dessert. More than ever, Winry reflected, it seemed plausible that the accident that had deprived him of his left leg had somehow hollowed out his right.
His younger brother's needs were less easily satisfied. With Ed's attention otherwise engaged, Winry and her grandmother conspired as best they could to ensure the meal involved sufficient conversation to content Al. They had long since run out of news: Pinako wasn't much for gossip and the Elrics were as closemouthed as ever about their research. (What kind of "research" stripped the gearing of an automail knee Winry wasn't sure she wanted to hear about, anyway.) She kicked herself for not rationing her stories from Rush Valley more carefully, but she encouraged Al to describe Central's Yoletide light displays again and that inspired a discussion of holiday customs new and old. Pinako had anecdotes from her childhood to contribute, explaining traditions lost or changed across the turn of the century, and they quickly fell to debating the origin and meaning of first footing at New Year's or splashing people with water on Dyngus Day. Al leaned forward, speaking quickly, not even noticing how the table shook when he brought his palm down to make a point, and Winry rubbed her hands smugly together in her lap.
They had not yet exhausted the topic when it came time to clear the table for dessert. Al and Pinako, still arguing whether the Feast of Fools had any connection to the old lunar calendar, gathered up dishes and utensils. Ed leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded as if the meal had drained rather than filled him. Winry tweaked his braid when she passed by with the dessert plates; he tilted his head to give her a look deeming that provocation too feeble to merit reply. "Did you make a golden cake?" he asked.
"What do you think?" Winry parried, and whisked away before he could respond.
She loitered in the kitchen until the rest of the party had resumed their seats, then carried the cake into the dining room and presented it with a flourish. Al applauded and Pinako, pouring tea, paused to nod approval, while Ed sat up abruptly, as if finding his second wind in answer to this new challenge. Winry loaded a generous slice onto his plate. Scooping up a dollop of frosting, he licked it cautiously off his fork.
"Hey, Winry, this is good!" he exclaimed, sounding surprised (as usual. Winry had given up being insulted by this, since Ed never seemed to realize that it might seem insulting) "What is it?"
"It's a Creatan meringue," she explained. "I needed something to use up all the egg whites left over from making the cake and I was tired of macaroons. I found this in my mother's recipe box." She got it from your mother, I thought. The recipes were annotated as precisely as the medical books in the bookcase upstairs -- "Dr. Stevens adv. 3 g. sufficit" in the same copperplate hand as "Trisha says don't overbeat eggs!" But if Ed didn't remember the meringue, maybe his mother had simply offered hers some advice. "I'm glad you find it edible," Winry said dryly, watching him scrape all the frosting from the top of his slice and shovel it into his mouth.
Ed swallowed. "Your cooking's always edible," he said. "But this -- this is good." He pushed the cake over and separated the layers so that he could extract more of the meringue.
Winry beamed, looking down at the cake plate to hide the extent of her pleasure. Ed's bluntness, however irritating, did ensure that his compliments always meant something. She cut another slice and handed it to Al. "I baked the charms in this year," she said. "You can take your chance with everybody else, Al."
"Thank you, Winry," Al said, "but my brother can have mine."
"Only after you've poked a fork through it and made sure there's nothing in there for me to break a tooth on," Ed put in swiftly. He stabbed his own piece for emphasis.
"When did you ever break a tooth on a Yole-charm, Ed?" Pinako inquired as she accepted her portion of cake from Winry.
"I haven't ... yet," he answered darkly. "Ha!" He dug out a small waxed-paper envelope, opened it, and triumphantly held up a silver key. "The key to knowledge! We'll have this stupid assignment finished in no time, Al!"
"And you'll probably learn a lot from it, too," Al returned, deadpan, and Ed reached out to whack him on the arm, automail meeting armor with a loud clang. Winry laughed and took a careful bite of her own slice.
She had tried to distribute the charms evenly in the top layer and it seemed to have worked for the most part. In her own piece she found the six-cen coin, for riches -- "I know that's true; I wrote your bill up this morning, Ed!" -- but Pinako pulled out both the wedding ring and the bachelor's button -- "Does that mean you're going to get married again, Granny? Or not?" "It means that all this fortune-telling is superstitious silliness, child" -- which left Al, investigating his slice with the care of a mountain-climber testing the stability of a snow-field, to open the paper containing the crown. "I get to be Yole King!" he exclaimed.
Winry's hands flew to her mouth. "I knew I'd forgotten something!" she said. "I'm sorry, Al. I didn't make a crown for you to wear ... "
"That's easily mended." Pinako pushed her chair back and walked quickly to the secretary in the corner. Opening the bottom drawer, she withdrew several sheets of yellow paper, which she cut and pasted together into a crenelated circlet. Struck by an inspiration of her own, Winry dashed into the kitchen and pawed through the junk drawer until she found several small magnets.
"Here, Granny," she said, taking the crown and setting it on Al's helmet, then fixing it in place with the magnets. "That'll keep it from falling off!"
"Thanks, Winry," Al said.
"You're welcome, your majesty," she replied with a bow. "What are your commands?"
"Don't get carried away," Ed grunted, sliding his brother's plate across the table and scraping off half its frosting at once.
"Hmm," Al said, lifting a finger to his chin in an obviously faked moment of intense concentration. "I think my brother should sing for us."
Ed choked, Pinako chuckled and Winry laughed outright. Ed glared at his brother. "I am not going to sing," he said.
"You know the rules, Ed," Winry chided him between giggles. He turned his glare on her, but she could almost feel it bouncing off. "Al's the Yole King; he's in charge."
"I'll make it easy on you, I promise," Al said earnestly. "How about the wassail bowl song?"
That Ed didn't succumb to apoplexy right then and there Winry counted as one of the graces of the season; that he actually sang, or at least mumbled, his way through a verse alone before everyone took pity on him and joined in had to be one of its miracles. Al's subsequent commands were far less loaded: Pinako was required to tell jokes ("Clean ones, Granny!"); Den was put through her limited repertoire of tricks; and Winry was taxed to report her most embarrassing cooking mishaps (automail mishaps having been declared off-limits on the grounds of patient confidentiality). Winry laughed until her over-full belly ached; she stretched in her chair, arching her spine to work out a kink. It was good to be happy. She'd bank this memory against the chilly, dark hours of worry that were sure to come once the Elric brothers were out of her sight. And they can remember, too ...
Pinako folded her napkin on her plate. "Well," she said, "shall we continue this around the fireplace?"
"Over popcorn, Granny?" Al asked eagerly.
"I don't see why not, as long as we can find the basket." Pinako frowned. "The last time I saw it, it was in the back of the hall closet, I think."
"I'll help you look," said Al.
Winry glanced at Ed, puzzled not to hear him immediately seconding a plan that involved a snack. Surely dinner alone hadn't stuffed him? He was sucking on his fork, regarding Al with a tilt to his brows and a set to his jaw that was almost a scowl. Was he tired? In pain? He never admitted to either when it mattered -- only if he needed an excuse to shirk some petty chore, like ... "Why don't you and I clear the table, Ed?" she asked cunningly.
His attention jumped to her, but Al broke in before he could answer. "That's a good idea. You help Winry with the dishes, Brother, and Granny and I will look for the popcorn basket."
Ed sat up, gripping his fork like a dagger, but before he could protest, Al added complacently, "Remember, I'm the Yole King. What I say, goes."
Ed's mouth snapped shut into another one of those almost-frowns; then he slumped forward so that his blond sidelocks hid his face. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say ... your majesty."
He began piling plates noisily together, but Winry shrieked and pulled them out of his grasp. "That's my mother's bone china, Ed, not restaurant stoneware! Be careful!"
"See?" Ed grumbled (to the world, because Al had turned his back on his brother to pick up the ottoman and was pretending not to hear). "She doesn't want my help!"
The world, in the person of Pinako, replied with an enough-of-your-nonsense sniff and handed him a teacup. Ed sighed gustily, collected the others with exaggerated delicacy and followed Winry into the kitchen.
For all the help he gave her in there, however, Winry decided after they'd finished the first round of plates, bowls and cups, he might as well have remained in the dining room. He'd laid claim at once to the tea towel, leaving her the heavy labor at the sink, but he dried the dishes so slowly she kept running out of room in the rack. "Clear me some space, Ed," she asked again, trying not to sound impatient. "I don't have any place for the servingware."
"I see that," he snapped back. "Just give me a second."
She gritted her teeth. I will not nag, I will not nag, I will not nag ... "I'll give you ten," she said evenly.
He dumped the plate he was holding onto the pile on the kitchen table, making her wince, and grabbed two more from the drying rack. She set to work on the pie plate, unsure what had gotten into him. It couldn't be the task he'd been set -- he'd have rushed through it, helter-skelter and slapdash, nagging her to pick up the pace. He'd been rather ominously quiet ever since Al had made him sing -- was he still embarrassed? She considered his abstracted, I'm-not-concentrating-on-my-hands air and dismissed that possibility, too. Whatever was percolating in his head wasn't making him self-conscious. Maybe an inspiration was brewing. She could understand that -- some mornings she dressed in fits and starts or brushed her teeth endlessly while her brain pondered an exciting new possibility to explore in the workshop. But in that case, wouldn't Ed be manic, not grumpy? She usually was ...
Winry set the pie plate in the newly-freed space and began washing the serving dishes. The stew-pot could soak overnight, which left only the silverware. Rinsing the casseroles, she glanced at the drying rack, but Ed hadn't taken anything else out of it. She swept the silverware into the sink with a crash that was answered by a jump from her companion and, after a few seconds, the removal of a bowl from the rack. She jammed the larger casserole where the bowl had been and balanced the smaller one precariously upside-down over the teacups. Then she zealously scrubbed knives, forks and spoons, waiting to discover whether she was going to have give up and yell. Her china sculpture sat undisturbed for several long minutes. Winry shut off the water and pulled another tea towel from the drawer; laying it beside the drying rack, she transferred the silver onto it. Then she turned to see Ed standing at the counter next to the stove, eating gingerbread out of the cookie jar and staring off into space.
That does it! "For heaven's sake, Ed," she demanded, "what's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," he answered, pulling his left hand hastily out of the jar.
"It's not nothing -- something's been eating you since dessert," Winry insisted, then grimaced as that sentence replayed itself in her ear. A smile ghosted across Ed's face, emphasizing his previous lack of good humor, and Winry took a shot in the dark. "Don't tell me you're jealous that Al got the crown?"
"What? No!"
Yet she'd come near the truth; she could hear it in his voice. Edward Elric was good at keeping secrets, but only from those who could misuse them or be hurt by them. So she waited, filling the silence between them with patience, and he finally mumbled, "I was just -- it's stupid -- "
"What is?" she asked.
"Something I read once. About the Yole King." He took another bite of gingerbread but went on speaking through it. "Stupid stuff, about how, way back when, he might've been a human sacrifice, for a good year or something." He swallowed. "That's why you give him whatever he wants for a week: because a human sacrifice is precious." Ed all but spat the word, spraying crumbs, and wiped his lips savagely on his sleeve.
Winry felt a shiver crawl up her back. Granny had said over dinner that, when she was young, people used to throw a straw man onto the New Year's bonfire and predict good or bad luck depending on how it burned. Twaddle, Pinako had opined, her mouth as prim as Ed's was angry. But what if, once upon a time, it had been a real man? A -- a human sacrifice? That's why you give him whatever he wants for a week: because he's going to die. She crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring the damp patches her hands made on her sweater. Because he has so little time ...
"Hey," Ed said, all the ire gone from his voice. "Winry?" He waved a cookie-filled hand across her line of vision. "It's probably all made up; I don't know why I let it bother me." He watched her uncertainly; as she pushed herself away from the sink, Winry wondered what her face had been doing while she was thinking.
So little time ...
"It's all right," she said, forcing her lips into a smile. "At least the worst thing Al asked you to do was sing." Ed's brows drew down and Winry forged on with the joke, wagging a finger at him. "Just be grateful I didn't find the crown in my slice ... "
His ears all but pricked up like Den's at the sound of a challenge. Winry's face stopped fighting her; her smile broadened as Ed squared his shoulders and scoffed, "You as Yole Queen? I'm shaking in my boots."
"As well you should," she answered, looking down her nose at him. He rose up, surely unconsciously, on the balls of his feet to meet her gaze, and she giggled, spoiling the majestic austerity she'd been attempting.
He smirked at her as if he'd scored a point, then pressed his notional advantage. "And what would you ask me to do, huh?"
To that question, there were answers and answers. Winry chose one that only made her skin prickle gently with blood-warmth. "I'd ask you to stay till New Year's."
Ed's heels dropped back to the floor as he looked away from her, a faint flush spreading across his own cheeks. He shook his head and Winry's pulse began to pound audibly in her ears. She hoped he wasn't going to make the usual excuses. She knew them all by heart -- could mouth the whole tired litany in order as he recited it. Who did he think he was fooling? Why didn't he just say it straight out? I have more important things to do ...
A clatter of footsteps announced Al well before he ducked under the lintel and stopped short, his head swiveling from Ed to Winry. "We found the popcorn basket," he said. "Um, did you finish the dishes? What's going on?"
... and time is running out.
"Ed's snitching gingerbread instead of helping me like you told him to," Winry said, putting her hands on her hips.
Ed's jaw dropped. He raised his hands in protest and then stared at them, as if surprised to discover them clutching cookies. Al sighed. "Brother," he said, "if you're going to steal sweets, you should at least share them."
Ed rolled his eyes. "Fine," he grumbled. "Here."
He tossed his left-hand cookie to Winry, who caught it against her shirt and ostentatiously brushed herself and the gingerbread clean before taking a bite. "Thank you very much, Ed," she caroled.
Ed made indistinct, probably insulting noises around his own mouthful of cookie. "Are we having popcorn now?" he asked Al after he'd cleared his mouth.
"Granny Pinako's building up the fire," Al answered, rubbing his hands together in what Winry had come to recognize as a mildly nervous gesture. "I was wondering ... would you two want to go outside and count houses first, like we used to?" He cocked his head to one side, watching them hopefully.
Counting houses wasn't an official Yole tradition, just something they'd always done. Winry thought that maybe her parents had started it; she remembered being carried out into the cold and looking down the hill toward the lamp-lit windows of Riesenbuhl when she couldn't have been more than four years old. When Ed and Al and their mother took to joining the Rockbells for Stilly Night, the boys had made it into a kind of contest, striving to pick out the most houses or the farthest ones. Winry hadn't bothered to keep up the custom in recent years: Granny complained that her old bones disliked the chill, but she'd never been that enthusiastic about the game to begin with, and Winry had found that standing in the dark alone wasn't fun at all, really, however pretty the view. But with the brothers here again, just like old times ... "I'd love to!" she exclaimed, stuffing the rest of her cookie into her mouth and skipping over to the coat tree to dig out her winter jacket. "Lemme ge' m'coat!"
"Brother?" Al asked, turning to Ed.
Winry watched them out of the corner of her eye as she pulled her scarf from her right coat-sleeve. Ed's feet stayed flat on the floor, she noticed, as he tilted his head back to look his younger brother in the eye. "Sure," he said; then his face blazed into a grin. "Bet you I count more this year."
"Bet you don't," Al replied immediately and Winry groaned to herself. Some things just don't change ...
"Winry!" Pinako called from the parlor. "Can you bring the popping corn from the pantry?"
Winry dashed back through the kitchen and ducked under Al's arm. "In a minute, Granny!" she yelled. "We're going outside to count houses!"
"Good!" her grandmother answered with inexplicable vehemence. "Take the dog out with you!"
With a scrabble of claws, Den bolted between Al's legs and skidded across the linoleum to the kitchen door, trailing unmistakable whiffs of the result of feeding a dog sausage-and-bean stew. "Oh, Den!" Winry exclaimed, pinching her nose shut. "Phew!"
Ed made a dive for the door, yanking it wide to let a breath of fresh cold air in and the odiferous animal out. "'Oh, Den?'" he repeated. "I think you're blaming another one of the victims there, Winry." He glared over his shoulder at Al, who mimed complete innocence with a facility astonishing in a suit of armor. Then again, Winry thought, her breath catching between a chuckle and a sigh, he can't smell it, can he?
They followed the dog into the yard as soon as Winry and Ed had donned their coats and Al had set aside his paper crown.. Outside was chilly, but not bitter: the wind that sighed and rattled in the trees pushed Winry's clothes against her body without cutting through the fabric. Den ran to meet them at the foot of the steps, cavorting around Al and dodging his laughing attempts to seize her collar; then she bolted off nose-down into the darkness to crash around in the windbreak. Tracking rabbit-spoor, Winry supposed. Den had never actually caught a rabbit, but she lived in hope.
The brothers surged across the lawn toward the wall that marked its edge, quickly outdistancing Winry, whose eyes adjusted more slowly to the night's erratic brilliance. The electric lamps she and Al had set in the upstairs windows made a brave show, far brighter than the thin candle-flickers at ground level. Above, the stars drew familiar pictures, mirroring what passed beneath them: two bright-eyed dogs hunting a hare couched forever just beyond reach. A first-quarter moon glided westward into the woolpack advancing to shroud it. Shadows melted into objects and objects masqueraded as shadows -- Winry stepped over sticks that weren't there and tripped on hollows that were. "Wait up!" she called after her companions.
Only Den answered her summons, reemerging from the brush to walk at her heels, panting. Al and Ed marched on, oblivious; Winry cursed them under her breath and struggled to catch up.
" -- three, four, five -- "
"How d'you make five already?"
The brothers were arguing, of course, each trying to steal a march on the other in the house-count. Winry's irritation went wry; she'd probably have to umpire. Oh, yes ... just like old times ...
"The Andersens, the Wrights, the Bolts -- " Al enumerated as Winry overtook him.
"The Bolts?" Ed scoffed. "You can't see their house from here. The hill gets in the way."
"I can too. The attic windows show just above the top."
"No, they don't. Your eyes are playing tricks because you know it's there."
"They are not -- "
Winry shouldered between them. "You two!" she said preemptively, because it sounded as if Al were about to bring up the forty-odd centimeters of height he had on Ed at the moment, and the resulting explosion wouldn't be conducive to holiday harmony. "Don't argue -- just count."
"Al's cheating," Ed declared, right on cue.
"I am not!" protested Al. "Tell him, Winry!"
Winry grabbed Al's left hand and Ed's right, effectively silencing their owners, and towed the brothers all the way to the wall before either boy's gloved fingers responded to her grasp. Both hands closed gingerly on hers as she climbed the stile, white kid over steel as gentle as brown leather over ... nothing. The contrast between their hesitancy and her own fierce careless grip gave Winry a hollow ache in her chest. Tenderly and secretly she ran a thumb across Ed's nerveless knuckles, then looked up at Al.
At first she saw only a grim silhouette, all points and angles but for the soft curve of his panache bobbing in the breeze. Then she spied the faint radiance of his soul in the eye-sockets of his helmet, star-bright in the darkness, twin lamps to light the traveler home. Winry lifted her face to the wind and let it scour away the water blurring the edges of her vision. Soon, she prayed. Please, let it be soon.
Overhead, the true stars wheeled slowly toward the dawn of the year's shortest day.
Author's Note: To date, the Amestris of the FMA manga appears to have no knowledge of Christianity and, therefore, none of Christmas or its related customs. On the other hand, cultures all over our world celebrate holidays on or near the winter solstice; I have borrowed freely from those traditions to create an Amestrian Christmas-analogue. "Yole" is a common Middle English spelling of "Yule"; it comes from an Old English word possibly meaning bright. "Stilly Night" is my own invention from the etymology of the word "solstice" [ > Latin sol, sun + sistere, to stand still]. The idea of Stilly dumplings, though not the recipe, comes from a Chinese Dōngzhì menu. Winry's Creatan meringue is this world's Italian meringue and it is, indeed, an excellent way to use up the egg whites left over from making a golden cake. Putting symbolic charms in the Christmas dessert is an English custom, probably related to a more widespread European one of baking a bean into a Christmas or Epiphany cake; whoever finds the bean in his or her slice is hailed as the King/Queen of the Bean and frequently takes charge of whatever revels are in progress. The parallel to more serious ritual lotteries has been noted by many commentators (among them, Terry Pratchett in Hogfather). Yes, there is a Dyngus Day and it does involve splashing people with water. Finally, Christmas lights, like so many other modern cultural phenomena, sprang from the inventive mind of Thomas Edison, who pioneered the first outdoor light display at Menlo Park in 1880 and the first Christmas tree decorated with electric bulbs in 1882, although neither invention saw widespread use until the early twentieth century.
[Disclaimers: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]
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Date: 2007-01-27 10:02 pm (UTC)I hate to have to point out an inconsistency in such an awesome story, but it was bothering me, especially since the rest of the story was amazing. "She got it from your mother, I thought." I meaning Winry, I assume? =P
Now...I squeal excitedly over your OMG AWESOME story that COMPLETELY brought back my holiday spirit even though its been WEEKS since the holidays which is completely random but I dont mind it cuz reading your story seriously felt like Christmas again nevermind that it's not Christmas in your story and btw awesome researching and how do you know all this and Dyngus Day sounds fun until I got curious and researched it on Wiki and the stuff with whipping each other with willows that might have stemmed from pagan rituals and whatnot but WHO CARES your story was AMAZING that thats the whole point of this run on sentence. :D
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Date: 2007-01-28 03:50 am (UTC)Whoops! Thanks for noticing that -- I forgot to italicize that sentence to indicate it's Winry thinking. Now corrected.
Now...I squeal excitedly over your OMG AWESOME story that COMPLETELY brought back my holiday spirit even though its been WEEKS since the holidays which is completely random but I dont mind it cuz reading your story seriously felt like Christmas again nevermind that it's not Christmas in your story and btw awesome researching and how do you know all this and Dyngus Day sounds fun until I got curious and researched it on Wiki and the stuff with whipping each other with willows that might have stemmed from pagan rituals and whatnot but WHO CARES your story was AMAZING that thats the whole point of this run on sentence. :D
Please breathe. You're making me nervous. :-)
But thanks! I aim to please and this story is certainly less angsty than my other Christmas 'fic (http://nebroadwe.livejournal.com/9066.html). I didn't know all the funky details -- okay, well, most of them -- until I started doing the research. But I do work in a library, so research is easy to slip in during my breaks. And I want to be the kind of writer who worldbuilds the cultural small stuff properly (frex, I actually checked when linoleum was invented to make sure I could have it on the Rockbell kitchen floor in the early twentieth century), just like Diane Duane and Barbara Hambly and Lois McMaster Bujold. For that, it helps to have a yellow belt in research-fu and to be something of an anal-retentive weenie.
Peace!
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Date: 2007-02-08 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-27 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 04:00 am (UTC)Oh, dear. I mean, [blush]. But thanks! This is something that I try hard to do well; I have a bad allergy to soppiness, but I do want to put my characters through the emotional wringer occasionally. I really work at under-writing those moments as much as possible -- to listen for the characters' voices and avoid cliches if I can. (It doesn't always work. For instance, Winry's "hollow ache" at the end may mutate to something else before this piece goes to archive.) The last few paragraphs of this 'fic still make me nervous, but I couldn't think what to do about them and decided to post and see whether the solution suddenly jumped out at me after I saw it on LJ. (Or after someone posted some helpful concrit. I don't mind taking advantage of my readers' clarity of vision. :-)
Peace!
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Date: 2007-01-28 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 04:07 am (UTC)Peace.
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Date: 2007-01-28 07:34 am (UTC)I always do love how you weave many different sources and little tidbits of information that are so incredibly relevant to the story into each of your pieces.
Plus, you get bonus points for mentioning 'Hogfather'
^_^
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Date: 2007-01-28 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-29 06:19 am (UTC)Still, it was lovely!
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Date: 2007-01-29 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-29 10:21 pm (UTC)Of course, my reaction might be a sign of a post-Christmas hangover, so take it with a grain of salt. ;)
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Date: 2007-01-30 01:19 pm (UTC)Post-Christmas hangover? My sympathies ... ;-)
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Date: 2007-01-30 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-30 05:56 pm (UTC)What happened with that contest, anyway? I noticed a few people giving up and posting their work despite the fact that the contest hadn't been judged or whatever. Did something go wrong in the organizer's life?
... the cake brings back memories of biting off the Golden Baby's head in a king cake one Fat Tuesday and having bad luck ever since...
Ouch. Can't you -- I don't know -- find a handy grove and sacrifice a student or something and get that cleared up? Surely one of them has to be willing to take a knife for some (admittedly, posthumous) extra credit?
... especially liked the little touches of Mom's belongings being brought out for the traditional celebration and the lights and especially the sense of family and friendship at the end
Oh, dear. Don't kill me if the candelabrum disappears in revision -- I'll bring it back in a drabble, I promise. I'm glad the friendship came across well --
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Date: 2007-01-30 07:17 pm (UTC)Ouch. Can't you -- I don't know -- find a handy grove and sacrifice a student or something and get that cleared up? Surely one of them has to be willing to take a knife for some (admittedly, posthumous) extra credit?
DO NOT TEMPT ME
Oh, dear. Don't kill me if the candelabrum disappears in revision -- I'll bring it back in a drabble, I promise. I'm glad the friendship came across well -- light_rises really hits the nail on the head with her dictum about not forgetting Al's place in the trio even if one's writing Ed/Win. And it plays to my strengths: I still can't write romance without having it sound drippy, but I can write friendships.
Won't kill you though I don't think details = dead weight but then again that's an ongoing debate in literature isn't it? Miminialism (which personally I hate) vs taking the time to paint a scene with words. And i know what you mean, Al does seem easily forgotten. Hopefully I've not been guilty of it
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Date: 2007-01-30 10:07 pm (UTC)Oh, good. Looking forward to it.
"Ouch. Can't you -- I don't know -- find a handy grove and sacrifice a student or something and get that cleared up? Surely one of them has to be willing to take a knife for some (admittedly, posthumous) extra credit?"
DO NOT TEMPT ME
[gets behind you very quickly]
Won't kill you ...
Well, that's a relief. I've got at least three more stories to finish. Falman's been whispering in my ear for days now.
... though I don't think details = dead weight but then again that's an ongoing debate in literature isn't it? Miminialism (which personally I hate) vs taking the time to paint a scene with words.
I guess for me it's not so much a matter of how many words as of the right ones. (I do prefer maximalist prose, like Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I also can get pleasure out of Hemingway's short stories. Occasionally. :-) My problem with this story in its current form is that some of the words don't seem to be right. I usually start with sketchy outlines, then overwrite like crazy, then pare back. Some of the "business" parts of this story seem insufficiently pared to me now. Mind you, the very end is actually a bit underwritten still -- there's a timing thing to prose that I have a hard time explaining even to myself, a sort of need to make the amount of sentences in a scene somehow match what's going on in it, and I just don't think I've struck the right balance yet in the backyard stuff. Although it is now miles better than it was in my first finished draft.
Gleh. The next person who says to me, "You write? That must be fun!" is probably going to get a good ding round the ear ...
And i know what you mean, Al does seem easily forgotten. Hopefully I've not been guilty of it
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Date: 2007-01-31 03:04 am (UTC)For me I tend to write dialogue first then go back in and try to flesh out the description.
What I think i liked about the candlebrum and the dishes was that, that's how it is in my family, treasured dishware that only gets trotted out once a year...though lately we've all been lazy and it's like slap it on a plastic christmas plate we don't have to wash...
oh and my other favorite writer comment, 'oh you write, that has to be so easy. You don't need talent'
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Date: 2007-02-03 07:40 am (UTC)THIS WAS GREAT! I always go from bad to good in a comment and I hope I don't sound harsh or anything, 'cause I liked this, I swear.
However this story seems very... packed. You have sooooo much information about the Holiday in which sometimes works and sometimes feels really weird to read, like you had a lot of inspiration to write this story but when you finally got to writing it you had to really push yourself or something to do it and that resulted in a lot of description. (But then, that's what I do, so maybe I'm just assuming everyone else does the same thing when they really don't?) The thing about the Yole king was so unbelievably perfect for the theme of fma and the story at the same time, but it did kind of take a while to get to.
Ack I really hope that doesn't sound condescending or anything! This was a really enjoyable read, it was! The hints of Edwin were cute and OH-EM-EFF-GEE you didn't dis/dismiss Al! So many people just cut Al out or totally shaft him in EdWin fics but you didn't! Yay!!!!! And I liked that you made Pinako and Al go off and do some activity together with an actual reason pertinent to the story; it gets really old always reading the basic 'Pinako conveniently went off to do some random errand and Al followed, thusly leaving Ed and Winry alone together all day,' in other fics.
It's also really refreshing to read something with so much thought behind it. That's so creative of you to give fictional [Amestrian] life to an old holiday, especially since they have Christian themes in FMA but no direct mention of it. (I reached that problem in one of my fics and just did a total cop out and had the Ed/Al/Win trio explain that they had something like Christmas but it wasn't called Christmas... and that was it. Oh man, I feel so lazy now haha.)
Anyway. Overall I thought this was really cool... I loved your perfect balance of humour and slight trepidation (anticipation? can't think of the right word...) towards Ed and Al's last night. (Aaaaaaaaand I hope you don't hate me for this probably pretentious sounding review. Heh...)
Yay EdWin forever!!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-04 03:09 am (UTC)Got it in one. One of my eighth-grade graduation gifts was a thesaurus; it's the most useful reference tool I own -- not only for creative writing, but for the academic stuff as well.
However this story seems very... packed. You have sooooo much information about the Holiday in which sometimes works and sometimes feels really weird to read ...
Got a minute to point out a specific place where weirdness happens? I'm revising this piece, but I have to admit that the Yoletide infodumps weren't high on my list of trouble spots. (With one exception, very late in the piece, when Winry is reviewing house-counting as a tradition.) I actually thought I'd managed to work in those explanations pretty handily -- I was alert from the start to the difficulty of getting the information across without descending to "As you know, Bob" passages.
... like you had a lot of inspiration to write this story but when you finally got to writing it you had to really push yourself or something to do it and that resulted in a lot of description.
Sort of -- I see excess now mostly in the blocking, the descriptions of who stands where and does what. I don't have a very visual imagination, so my initial drafts are always sketchy in that area and my second drafts overwrite it in reaction. (Sometimes with too many synonyms. :-) Is that what you're seeing or is it something else?
The thing about the Yole king was so unbelievably perfect for the theme of fma and the story at the same time, but it did kind of take a while to get to.
I'm working on that. I am kind of expecting a reader who's run across the idea of Royal Sacrifice before (see, in addition to Pratchett's Hogfather, Joy Chant's Red Moon and Black Mountain or Mary Renault's The King Must Die) so that Ed's revelation about the Yole King's possible antecedents comes as an Aha! moment and doesn't need much explaining. On the other hand, I want to give the reader unfamiliar with the concept enough information to go Aha! after Winry has her say about it. It's a tricky balance.
The hints of Edwin were cute ...
Phew. I high-concepted this to my offline beta as "Ed and Winry look at each other and blush" -- which is about as close to romance as I can get at the moment.
... and OH-EM-EFF-GEE you didn't dis/dismiss Al!
I couldn't; he's so firmly there in what's a longstanding three-way friendship first and a love triangle of sorts second. I see any Ed/Winry romance as arising out of that friendship, a development in a relationship that already exists rather than a lightning strike from nowhere. Moments like her tweaking his braid, for instance, could be flirting or could be friendly teasing. I also wanted to show both Ed and Winry responding to Al as a person with a problem rather than simply a problem. Al's a sweet soul, but he's also no dope, so I had to make sure that their kindness to him didn't read as condescension.
It's also really refreshing to read something with so much thought behind it.
I'm a compulsive backstory builder. Two decades of academia will do that to you (beware, beware!). :-)
Overall I thought this was really cool... I loved your perfect balance of humour and slight trepidation (anticipation? can't think of the right word...) towards Ed and Al's last night.
Thanks! I like to mix emotions in my stories, so that the serious ones have a touch of silliness and the silly ones a thread of seriousness. I'm glad it seems to have worked here (bar the overwritten bits). And thanks for the concrit: it really does help. I'm still learning how to do this writing thing, after all ...
Peace!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 02:09 am (UTC)I love the details. They’re just the right things to note. Believe me, anyone can sell me easy on some good description and a few words that go over my head (of which you use a good balance). I’m not that hard. Yet the moments of life you choose to show are just… they’re simply what is needed, written beautifully.
I count three times that the images really resonated with me: the candlelight pooling like water, Winry tripping over unseen things, but in particular stepping over what doesn’t exist, Ed saying “Not if I’m quick.” and the result of feeding a dog stew (I have fostered cats for seven years, I’ve seen almost everything nasty and animal related.)
Other good things (I wish I had a pen and could just underline this stuff): Arguing with the phone as an ‘it’ rather than a person.
I appreciate the way time is skipped over for humor and goes directly to Pinako scolding Al about Den. It was good timing and got a good laugh.
Winry’s analysis of Ed’s behavior, in particular how it goes rambling about feeling manic and ideas.
Wow, of course, to the human sacrifice bit.
All the interactions delight me.
Research is always good.
Suggestions (I can think of much, really): Seems strange for Al to be interested in popcorn, considering all.
I had to reread white kid over steel about four times to figure out what it meant.
Love your writing! Home I'm not treating this too, er, critique-y, but I think that's what you want.
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Date: 2007-02-14 05:32 pm (UTC)Thanks very much! Always glad to make people laugh and wonder.
I love the details. They’re just the right things to note. Believe me, anyone can sell me easy on some good description and a few words that go over my head (of which you use a good balance).
Also always glad to build vocabulary. :-) I'm still sweating the whole details-of-description thing every time I write: I'll be buzzing along and then have to stop to brainstorm how something looks/feels/smells/tastes/sounds and hope an image or two turns up that isn't completely trite. I guess all writers cannibalize their own existence, but it still surprises me a touch that for every three or four descriptive moments in a story that I'm just building from scratch, there'll be one that comes straight out of me doing or experiencing something directly (in this story, it's Winry maneuvering in the dark). It's not any easier to write the latter than it is the former, though, which hardly seems fair. [grump, mutter]
Suggestions (I can think of much, really): Seems strange for Al to be interested in popcorn, considering all.
I actually thought about that, but I reasoned that a) Al could be nostalgic for the making-of-popcorn event itself, even if he couldn't eat the stuff (more than half the fun of food on an open fire, IMO, is making it and laughing about making it -- see "flaming marshmallows" :-); and b) popcorn in a long-handled basket has sense components Al could still enjoy: the noise of the popping, the way the corn explodes in the basket, things like that. There's no place to explain that in the story, of course, so I just hoped my readers would at least pick up A, given that Al just participated in a toast he couldn't drink and sat for a meal he couldn't eat. I'm surprised nobody else has called me on this one yet.
I had to reread white kid over steel about four times to figure out what it meant.
I'm used to kid == leather in glove contexts, but it occurs to me to wonder whether kid would be strong enough to take the pounding Ed's hands receive. Must investigate this ...
Love your writing! Home I'm not treating this too, er, critique-y, but I think that's what you want.
Not at all! It's exactly what I want. Thanks again!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 02:48 am (UTC)The dinner scene, on the other hand, never jolted me in any way. I found it honest, and the idea of anyone having dinner more for talk than food wasn't a problem.
And that's about all I have to say. Yay.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 07:37 pm (UTC)That'll do it. I've never popped popcorn over an open fire myself; I borrowed the idea from a popcorn-popping scene illustrated by Garth Williams somewhere in one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books -- maybe Little Town on the Prairie? (They always say, "Write what you know," but they don't usually go on to the corollary, "Increase what you know through reading, research and generally bothering knowledgeable people for details of their specialties until they scream at you to go away." :-)
The dinner scene, on the other hand, never jolted me in any way. I found it honest, and the idea of anyone having dinner more for talk than food wasn't a problem.
Back when I was in grad school, the talk I could get over dinner on a grad student's budget was almost inevitably superior to the food. :-)
Peace!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-28 11:22 pm (UTC)Instead, I'll just get to what really matters: reading this made me happy. ^^
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Date: 2007-10-29 02:28 pm (UTC)