When young and old in circle around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets and the lads are shaping bows ...
With weeping and with laughter still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old.
-- Macaulay, Horatius
oOo
Forget homunculi -- these days, when Ed visits Central, children ten times more persistent hound him. Tell us about the monster on the island! Tell how you lost your watch in Rush Valley! Tell about the battle on the train! Reticence fires their imaginations; rebuffs fall on selectively deaf ears. Ask your father. Ask your mother (and I didn't lose it -- it was stolen). Ask your uncle -- no, not your Uncle Roy! All right, listen, here's what really happened ...
Time has already cast its glamor over his youth; his best hope for theirs is to transmute legend into wisdom. Listen. Listen.