AN: Just a little Almei on a Sunday night. Enjoy!
"So, remind me what I have to do again?"
"Well, as happy as I am that you've finally grasped the Dragons Pulse, there's only one way to be sure," explained his teacher as she smoothed the little black fabric on her lap. "You need to be able to sense others by their Chi and not with your other senses."
Alphonse sat up straighter when she moved to stand behind him and closed his eyes. "So you're going to blindfold me? Couldn't I just close my eyes?"
"No, because you always peek. You have to put your trust into the flow of energy around you, Alphonse-sama. Heart, body and soul."
He grinned and raised two fingers to his temples. "And use my other sense like this?"
"Laugh all you want but after this, you'll know exactly what I mean, Alphonse-sama."
His Xerxian eyes fluttered closed as the soft black fabric slid across his eyes. "I've told you, it's just Al."
He felt something land on his shoulder, just knowing little Xiao Mei had decided to help blindfold him and lifted a spare finger to scratch her between the ears, and she rewarded him by nuzzling her face to his. The fabric gathered with each coil around his head and soon he was swaddled in warm darkness, and whilst not being too tight, it was comfortably firm. Like somebody cradling a babe. The bamboo forest around them was no more.
Mei looked down as his shoulders relaxed and his golden head loll forward ever so slightly, but not enough for the small flaps of cloths for leave her grasp. Even when he was sitting and she was standing he came up to her waist and from this angle she could clearly see just how broad his back was and how undoubtedly strong he would be beneath his clothes. He favoured the deep blue Xingese jacket over the others and as she trailed her fingers to his shoulders she couldn't tell what felt better- the silk or the man.
"Alright, you're ready to begin your lesson. Stand up," she said. He reached one hand over to hers as he slowly got up, already feeling off balance without his sight. Xiao Mei leapt off of his shoulder to her human sister. "I'm going to walk you around and then leave- try to sense me and point at me when you can."
Her grip pulled him sharply to his left, then backwards and he stumbled. "Where am I going?"
"You already know the area where we've trained so far today," she explained. "You need to start afresh in an area you don't know, Alphonse-sama."
Even though he had her small hand firmly grasped in his, her student still waved his free hand in front of him and his steps still tentative. "It's Al."
…
It was a long while before they stopped. He had started to get use to feeling of blind tugging and then it stopped.
Her hand was gone, leaving his palm cold and empty.
"M-mei?!" he gasped. He flung his hands around him, hoping to find her, or at least something to help him gain some sense of his surroundings. "What's going on? Where are you? I don't know how to deal with this!"
"You have to try and find me, dummy!" Al spun round, her chidings coming somewhere behind him. "Just point and I'll reply yes or no."
He was hesitant, but then nodded in determination. Soon she was quiet again, sneaking off, prowling in silence.
This was it, his lesson had begun. Taking a deep breath, he dipped his head down and slowly relaxed his taut muscles with a deep sigh, imagining a silver mist expelling from his mouth like on a frigid morning. He didn't know why, but it helped to picture these sorts of things. He called forward his other senses and suddenly the world around him made a little bit more sense. Judging from the smell, they were still amidst the bamboo and there were undoubtedly flowers nearby- the small pale purple ones she liked so much but he couldn't name them- their scent strong enough that he could almost taste it, as pure as the cleanest air. There was the trickling of water nearby, the calls of birds above him and the rustle of leaves below. He knelt down and tapped the ground, sweeping away the leaves until he found the soft, spongy moss and gently laid both of his hands against it. This wasn't Alchemy, it was finding the golden channels of energy beneath the world.
In the armour he had vision and hearing, even touch was numb and faded. And now here he was, using them all again, only replacing sight with a new Chi sensing technique. Part of him felt like laughing- he had waited four years to close his eyes again and now they were regarded as useless, locked away beneath a mere scrap of fabric-
There it was! A faint pulsing sensation at his fingertips. He couldn't see it, Mei said it doesn't look like anything, but Al needed to picture something. It was like an underground river made of pure gold, sparking and shimmering like waves. They lapped across the backs of his hands, slowly working their way up his arms and across his chest like arms trying to pull him deeper. It was very warm, like sunshine and blankets. It branched beneath him, Alphonse Elric standing in the centre of a mass circle of liquid light and found what he was searching for.
A glowing orb, white and glowing and surrounded ripples. He had found someone's Chi.
Sadly, there were also several others. Mei could be anyone of them.
Lifting a finger, he pointed to the closest one. "There."
"Wrong! Try again."
"Oh," he said lamely. Her voice came from the opposite direction but no doubt she'd change that.
He tried again, this time focusing on the sizes of the orbs. "Up there?" he asked.
Mei was currently climbing over a boulder and she had to look up. "That's a crane, Alphonse-sama." Again, she moved around him, circling him like a playful cat.
"It's Al."
…
They tried this for the next twenty minutes and each time he got it wrong. As pleased as he was to be able to sense Chi, he couldn't distinguish one life from the other. He picked out Xiao Mei three times and he didn't realise. And frankly, Mei was a little hurt that even being the only other human nearby was not enough for him to find her. In the end, she gave up correcting him, planning to reply only if he got it right.
That was her plan at least. Sadly, Alphonse didn't quite know of this silent treatment and with each passing second became tenser and tenser, his training. "Mei? Come on, Mei, answer me! Please?" He stood up and took a few hesitant steps, tripping once, and his palms searching for her. "Are you mad at me? Are you even there?"
The princess felt a nudge on her arm and turned to look at Xiao Mei's worrisome expression. When her beloved Panda was no longer siding her Mei knew that it was wrong to just leave him like that. Still, she was pretty pleased with the fact that he could have taken his blindfold off by now, but chose to stagger around in the darkness for her. She slid down the bamboo tree she was in and marched over to her student whilst he was tapping the ground with his tiptoes.
"Alponse-sama-"
"Huh?" The lad spun round on the spot and started forward again. "You're still-"
But Al wasn't able to finish his sentence because he hadn't counted on Mei to be so close. He felt her head on collision with his chest and his instinct to swing his arms over himself like a barrier and realising too that he was had the princess in his grasp. His overly tight grip was making her wheeze but he was reluctant to let her go. Purely because his own balance was off kilter with the blindfold. He could feel his feet stammering on the leaf puddled ground and the momentum pull his body forward like a toppling tree. In a last ditch attempt to avoid hurting her he swung his body weight and lifted her off the ground, clutching Mei as his back hit the dirt and she rolled out of his grasp.
"Oh, my goodness! Al?" she squeaked besides him, "Al, are you hurt?"
He raised his golden head enough to rub the back. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"You nearly squashed me," she said, "but you didn't… Thank you."
"Can I take this blindfold off now?"
Instead of answering, she just grabbed his hands which had already been making their way to the knot. He froze, not expecting it but compiled by lying still once again. Her hands were warm, warmer than he remembered from earlier as they flowed from his and down his wrists, skipping to his shoulders and grazing his collarbone. She lifted them and for a lost millisecond they were gone, only to return on his face, holding him as though she were blessing him and he took this as a sign to lift his head. Her warm fingers trickled down and in no time at all, the intrusive black flap was gone throwing him from utter darkness to blinding light. It took him a while to adjust, thankful that the bamboo leaves shielded him from the worst of it whilst little bits of sun fell like waterfalls behind Mei.
She was leaning over him, an unreadable look on her face. She had been aggravated that his lessons was far from progressive yet she couldn't deny that she had felt touched at his gesture, the two looking like fools as they wobbled like branches on a windy day. And of course, he was a gentleman.
She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, wearing it partially down a lot more recently. He hadn't realised that it had fallen past her shoulder and puddled on his body but most of it had. It was funny, he had thought her pretty for a long, long time, but right now there were no words to describe how- dare he even think it?- beautiful she was. The sun behind her caught the shine in her hair in much the same way it got caught up in his. Blonde was so rare in Xing that many didn't know if it existed and his arrival caused a bit of a stir in the palace, particularly the young maids. Mei resisted the urge to bite her lip as they merely looked at each other before Alponse seemed to remember himself and sat up. Reluctantly they broke their gazes as she moved to make room, standing to awkwardly brushing off her dress.
"I think now's a good time to end the lesson."
"Yeah."
So slowly they shuffled off but not before she reached up to pluck a couple of leaves from his hair. He pulled a flower from hers.
… She called me Al.
I was listening to the Mushishi soundtrack as I worte this, it really helped. If you'd like, look it up. It's a seriously beautiful anime :)