"Mum! Mum! Look, look!" The two boys ran across the grassy slopes to where their mother was hanging out sheets in a rural backyard. She was tall, with long brown hair and a soft and gentle face which reflected her soul. The boys were laughing, both with messy blonde hair and hands clutched around small metallic objects which they were happily giggling about amongst themselves.
The older boy, Edward held his out first. "Look, Mum! Look! I made a dog!" the metal lump shaped like a little sausage dog gleamed in the sun, and her son's talent shone through amazingly in the perfect way it held itself. "Al made one too, Mum!"
The second boy held out his almost shyly. It didn't meet his brothers at all in the areas of skill and poise, except for the tail. Where the first's tail was off centre, Al's was straight and true and directly where it needed to be. "But mine isn't nearly as good as Brother's." Al said almost sadly. Edward laughed.
"My two little alchemists!" Their mother praised. "You're just like your father." Edward frowned immediately.
"Come on, Al. Let's go show Winry." He ran off.
Al looked after his brother almost sadly. But after the moment, he turned to his mother with a pitiful expression. "Mama, why is brother so much better than me?" He looked at the lumpy dog in his hands sadly. "We've done the same amount of work."
His mother sighed, holding out her hand. Al gave her the dog quietly.
"Alphonse, did you know there was once a famous artist who could paint anything in the world?"
He looked at her and shook his head, not understanding why his mother was telling him this story, but quiet all the same.
She smiled softly. "He was the best painter the world had ever seen. Except in his paintings he would always paint the women and girls with hairy underarms."
Alphonse giggled. "That's silly. Why would he do that?"
His mother ran a loving hand through his short hair. "That's what everyone else wanted to know too. They even asked him about it many, many times. 'Why do you paint hairy underarms?' They would say. 'It ruins your beautiful pictures.'" She placed the dog down on a little stump. "Even his young apprentice would ask him, whenever he painted a picture. The man would just smile and say," She put on a funny voice for entertainment sake, "'Why, it's because then no one points out any other flaws with my work. It makes them perfect except for one thing which is deliberately there!' He would say, and everyone except the apprentice would think that it was wonderful, and that they should have thought of that."
"What did the apprentice think?" Alphonse asked quietly.
"The apprentice thought it was rather silly. After all, even though the apprentice wasn't very good at painting yet, he was getting better because everyone was pointing out the areas where he could get better."
"Oh." Said Al.
"Then, after ten years, the apprentice became a famous artist and was much better than his master." The woman said, watching her son carefully, to see if her point was getting through. "He had his art in all the famous art galleries all around the world, and in one, one of his pictures hung up next to a picture that his master had painted. All the people who would walk past them would look at the apprentice's picture and smile and say, 'That's such a beautiful picture! The art is so much better than this one over here. It is beautiful and there is nothing wrong with it at all!' Then they would turn to the master's picture and say, 'This is simply not worthy of a place next to this picture. It is ugly and out of form and to top it all off, the artist has put hairy underarms on his women!'"
Al laughed at that. His mother always told the best stories!
"Now run along, Alphonse. Your brother is waiting."
When Alphonse caught up to his brother, Edward was smiling. "What took you so long, Al?"
"Mama wanted to talk to me about something." He said, and Edward grinned at him, his little metal dog fisted in his hands. Al looked at it. "It's sad that your doggie's tail is crooked. Otherwise it would be perfect." Al said.
Edward looked at it himself for a moment. "Naah, that tail is like that on purpose." He said very knowledgably. "'Cos then no one can say that other things are wrong."
Alphonse looked at his brother a moment and smiled quietly to himself. Mama was right. He thought. It is silly.
.
A/n: This is something that has been playing about in my head for a couple of months. I just finally got it down on paper.
I didn't make up the hairy underarms thing, it's a story my mum used to tell me, because I'd always do something deliberately wrong to make everything else seem better than it was. So, thank mum for this one!