Two figures walked down the beach, a tall, middle-aged woman, and a young, headstrong boy. They walked in silence for some time; then he spoke.
"Teacher?" he asked. "I understand alchemy's law of equivalent exchange, but I don't understand how it works." The boy looked up to his teacher, whose eyes were hidden by dark sunglasses.
Silence followed, but then she sighed. Taking the staff she had in her hand, she pointed out over the water.
"Look at the water Micah," she said. "What do you see?" "Waves," he replied. "Yes, waves. And what do you observe waves as?" she asked calmly.
Micah seemed slightly confused by the question, but he answered nonetheless.
"A ridge in the water, located between two depressions." This received a rare grin from his master. "A wave is a ridge, followed by a depression, then another ridge, and after that?"
"Another depression?"
"Yes," she replied. "The waves are a continuous cycle of ridges and depressions, much like alchemy."
"I still don't see it," he replied; looking out over the vast, blue water. Micah's teacher shook her head softly, then knelt down and drew a line in the sand with her finger.
"This is perfectly still water," she explained. "There is no movement. See this as an area unaffected by alchemy."
She placed her index fingers together in the sand just below the line. Moving from left to right, she traced her right index finger through the sand, making another line. She then created a valley and a hill running through and along the line.
"This is the water on a windy day. The straight line represents the water levels from the still day. Do you follow?"
"Yes Teacher," was the simple reply.
"Good. Now, when the day is windy, does the water stay at its natural level, and rise from there?"
"That's foolishness!" Micah stated. "The water cannot manifest itself out of nothing! If the water rises in one spot, it dips in another to even things out!"
The woman began to laugh. She pulled herself up, and faced the water. "Is alchemy really all that different?" she asked simple.
Micah looked puzzled, and stared intently at the images his teacher had made in the sand. "No!" he replied at last, almost in a laughing voice. "I guess it is the same. But…"
"Something else?"
"I have seen you create your weapons from sand, but there is no hole left afterwards."
"Ah, I was wondering when that would come up. When I create my weapons, the sand isn't taken from just a small surface area," she began.
Using her index fingers, she drew a transmutation circle in the sand, and extracted a pair of ornate sais.
"The sand," she continued, "comes from the entire beach – that is within the perimeter of my strength. If I were to use little effort, then the area from which I received the sand from will have a small pit in it, but if I put all of my strength into transmuting the sais, then who knows how far the sand could come from?"
Micah sat in the sand, silently trying to absorb the information he had just ascertained. When he looked up, he saw two figures running down the beach. When they noticed him watching, they waved, and then one dove behind a nearby dune. The second figure continued up the beach, this time walking at a much slower pace, and moving as silent as possible. Micah looked to his teacher, who stood at the waters edge and grinned a devilish grin. At last…it was time.