A/N: Written for the Monopoly Game Challenge on the Fullmetal Alchemist: A Bit of Everything Forum (link's in my profile – and come join us if you're interested in anything FMA). The square I landed on was Oriental Avenue (therefore the genre is family), the prompt was (steam) train, and the property has a hotel so it had to be an AU.
This is either inspired by Enid Blyton or that Hunters Episode (in Digimon) with Locomon. Or both. :D
the steam train that took to the skies
There was a train that always came when the sun went down, quiet like the whispers in the trees. A steam train, like the ones in their worn picture books, with smoke that danced dizzily with the clouds. The children crept aboard, and the steam train took them into the sky where the sun shone without restraint and the wind faeries danced.
Alphonse wished his brother believed in faeries and steam trains too. Then they could share that adventure together. But Edward took after his father: he believed in facts, and nothing more. It made Alphonse said, because the world above the skies was a beautiful one, by far eclipsing the quaint little house on a hill in the countryside. Even if the countryside had its own brand of beauty, pollution and war had murkied it. Those things simply didn't reach past the clouds, couldn't touch the gentle faeries, their skin and wings the palest green and glistening in the warm light of the sun. Nor could it touch the vines that grew from the clouds and wrapped around air, with little flowers peeking out of scattered buds.
Alphonse really wished his brother could share that with him too.
Beside him, Fletcher reached for his hand and smiled. 'Your brother will see this one day,' he said, gesturing at his own who sat on his other side. 'One day you'll find a way to show him.'
Alphonse smiled at that. He hoped so, because he really wanted to share the night ride with his brother.
.
'Where were you?' Edward demanded when Alphonse had snuck into their bedroom through the window.
'On the steam train, brother,' was Alphonse's reply, as the boy himself stifled a yawn. 'You really should come one day.'
Edward muttered something and crawled back to bed. Alphonse quickly changed and slid under his sheets as well, and after a night out drifted quickly to sleep. But Edward watched him. Saw how his face glowed with the wind like it always did when he came back from the steam train, as he so claimed. Saw how his lips were twisted into a serene smile that hadn't been there when they'd been set down to sleep.
But that could be from anything: could be from playing about in the woods with the night animals. It didn't mean that the steam train was real. It didn't mean that the faeries were real either.
But there was a little seed of doubt in his mind that grew a little more each night.
.
Alphose was sitting next to the Tringham again, and he followed them out. Fletcher immediately chased after the faeries, and they giggled and led him in a merry game. Russel, as he usually did, gravitated towards the flowers. This time Alphonse followed him.
'They don't last long in our world,' Russel said sadly, picking a flower and looking at its bright smile in his hands. 'It's a shame; they're too beautiful to not share with the rest of the world…' His wistful tone said he spoke of his father: the man who had passed his love for plants and nature to both his sons before his death.
Alphonse picked a flower as well. Nothing like that grew in the countryside. And the countryside wasn't a dull place, but it couldn't live up to that brightness.
.
Edward noticed the flower. Edward noticed all sorts of little things; he'd inherited that from his father. He saw the tiny little thing in Alphonse's grip as the boy snuggled into his covers. He saw how it glowed from something that didn't seem to exist in their world.
And he saw how, in the morning, it had turned grey and paper-like, the only colour being clumsy streaks of purple like a childhood scribble. But he remembered what he'd seen before.
'A dream..?'
Alphonse saw him looking, and he smiled. 'Did you see?' he asked, eyes shining with excitement. 'It doesn't last long here, but above the sky the gardens are scattered with them.'
Above the sky…he would have said such a place did not, could not exist, but he was thinking now he could believe in such a place after all.
'Come and see,' Alphonse begged, seeing an opening, as he always did. If his brother weren't so stubborn, they'd have gone together months ago, but Edward simply refused to accept it.
But that would change, eventually.
.
Alphonse had surrendered the window seat to his big brother. After all, with Edward's first trip on the steam engine, he had to have the best possible seat.
In return, Alphonse played tour guide. 'See,' he said, pointing down. 'That's England. And that's Britain. And that tiny little island's Australia.'
'Australia is the largest island in the world,' Edward said in a bored tone, though his eyes sparkled with fascination. But even the bored tone vanished when they passed through the clouds and into the gardens with the wind faeries above.
The steam train stopped and the children poured out. Alphonse grabbed Edward's hand and dragged him over to a vine where tiny little flowers sprouted. 'See,' he said excitedly. 'This is the flower I brought back that time.'
Edward saw. And he also saw the faerie that had followed them, interested in the new addition to the party and eager to play.
The Elric brothers chased her through the flower vines for most of that night.