Disclaimer: *gasp*, of course not!
Author's Note: Wow, I have just had a lot of ideas lately. Which is weird, because usually I try to think too hard about one idea and then that just gets pushed too far and it ends up not even being good anymore. Definitely writing a lot of one-shots from now on. Lord knows I've read millions of them in the last couple days.
Seasons
Spring.
Summer.
Fall.
Winter.
Edward's favorite season was fall.
It hadn't always been. He had loved the summer, oh how he had loved the summer. He had loved it with a burning passion that overran his senses and filled his mind with everything warm and beautiful and alluring in the world. He had loved the kiss of the sun on his small arms and the warm breezes that carressed his being with gentle hands ablaze with ecstasy and enthusiasm. He had loved the long hours of the sun's life and the short hours that was the moon's. The rapture of every organism with the energy and spirit that leaked from everything that was summer to him. Everything that was beautiful to him was summer.
He hated summer now.
He had always liked spring too. Spring was quite beautiful, particularly so in Risembool. The sun gaining a new powerful life almost as if it were being reborn, along with the rest of the world. That's what spring was, a time of birth and new beginnings. A time to celebrate the new refutation of the world around you with a raging fervor of joy. The snow slowly melting away to reveal underneath it miles upon miles of fresh, new life. Every animal awakening with thoughts of adventure and glee. All of this beauty as the world began it's preparation for his very favorite season of all. Kicking off the start of what would become summer.
He hated spring now.
Winter had never been disliked by the elder Elric brother either. Though it was in fact Alphonse who had always loved the season the most, and still continued to to this day. Winter was a leek pristine promise to every being on this world. A canvas for mother nature to paint her masterpiece upon. All sparkling snowflakes and glimmering ice. Winter overtook the whole world in a silent, quiet, calm blanket of calm slumber that overtook everything in delicate pleasantries. Winter was a layer of pure innocence and naivete that drenched him in the pleasures of reckless abandon and righteous truth. It was a time for looking ahead into the future, of expectations and for anxious promises of a coming time for becoming alive.
He hated winter now.
He had never liked the fall.
Truth was, he had always hated the fall.
Everything was dying. It truly was the fall, the fall of beauty, the fall of life. It was a time of nostalgia and regret. What could I have done? What should I have done? A time for longing for the pleasures of the past. A dark time. Fall had always come like a dull, grim beacon of death and stole away his warm summber breezes and his brilliant season of life and love. It had aged the air and the atmosphere and the leaves on the trees all around him. It brought icy gusts of breath upon his peeling, sunburnt shoulders that stung like small bites from fanged teeth. It brought cloudy grey skies that gnawed avaricious and greedy at the radiant beams of sun, coveting the shine that brightened the day and hiding it away behind their own ugly skins. It brought death all around him, blowing in the wind, seeping into his lungs, crunching underneath his feet on the still, still ground.
He loved the fall now.
With the fresh breath of springtime came fresh bruises.
Rain came often in spring, to replenish the world with its much-needed elixir of life: water. A reign of refreshing liquids that nature would sip into its parched mouth and put to quick use. The ground was slick and decieving as well, and his unfeeling limbs would always be caught slipping in puddles of mud and against rocks he had misjudged the texture of. He couldn't trust himself to walk in spring. Edward also found an aching shoulder and an aching leg out of this season of life. It the beginning of spring it would be tolerable. Everything starts slow, the small saplings of each plant takes in the water and must start small before they can become beautiful bunches of flowers and grasses that adorn the ground around bountiful trees, branches reaching outwards. It was the same with the aches that sprouted from his automail, like the fresh new roots of a weed that was just asking to be ripped from a grandmother's well-tended garden. He wished he could rip this from his being. It always began at the places where metal met flesh, and as time went on it spread, spread through nerves and veins until he could feel it throughout his whole being. Ghost-like pains that made his actions feverish and thoughts too quick.
He hated the spring.
The heat was unbearable in the summer. The fresh rays of sun that he loved so much no longer kissed his skin, but burnt his flesh and ravaged his mind. Each tendril of heat seemed to find its way to the metal of his arm and leg and that of his brother's metal body. Red hot, searing hands grabbing tightly ahold to the solid material and boiling, broiling, blistering, baking, burning. He hated it because he couldn't touch Al. And everytime that he tried to place a comforting hand on his brother and flinched unconciously away in pain it pained his own heart. He knew it must pain his brother to see him move pointedly away from him like he did. As summer went on into even more blistering levels of heat and despair from Edward he learned to deal with these things over and over again. He had blisters on his hands from when he would place this comforting hand on his brother once more, and this time be prepared, prepared to lay his hand there and let it burn. His shoulder and leg had callouses, areas where the burning metal attached to his flesh felt as if it were melting, burning his skin and the pink body underneath it with fiery devotion. He walked with his arm held slightly away from him, as not to burn his own side with his own arm.
He hated the summer.
Cold was all that he could feel in the winter. Cold, cold, cold. Even the most mild of winters felt arctic to Edward Elric. The season itself would grace everything with sweet decorations of icicles on every ledge and opening that offered up its property to be built upon. Edward was no exception. The icicles took up house in his chest, in his hips, peircing his body from the metal ports that housed his prosthetic limbs. He felt frigid, the cold penetrating him to his very core until it hurt, it hurt so much. It hurt to walk, it hurt to move, it just hurt. It took all of his self-control not to be gracious to himself and allow a limp to accompany his walk, not to restrain using his right arm in any way at all. But he must not look as if he were in pain, after all, this was Al's favorite season, why ruin that for him? Why make him worry? He could deal with the fact that it was cold, cold, cold, and that he had to go to the doctors while Al was away occasionally, just to check if he had frostbite.
He hated the winter.
Autumn, fall, yes, he loved the fall now. Everything was dry and he trusted himself to walk full and steady upon the crunching ground. The temperature was perfect, he felt no aching pains in his shoulder or his leg, only the weight that he had become accustomed to over the years. There was no frostbite to worry about, no blisters burning fresh on his hand, although they had not quite become callouses by this point in time, at least they seemed better to him. The storms didn't come so often, the world was being sapped of its life, so he felt no pains that accompanied the predictions that his metal limbs provided for him. The death that he had hated so much in the past now became a thing of ineffable brilliance. Everything must die.
All is one, one is all.
If nothing died, there would be no room for things to be born again, there would be no reason for things to live, there would be no need for a blank canvas of hope that came before the beginning of life. There would be no pregnant mothers, holding their swelling stomachs with more love and care than he could ever imagine. No new-born babies, crying with an sweet alertness that would never exist if not for the grandeur of their birth. There would be nothing good in this world if there was not death to come first. Edward supposed that was just the end of the spectrum he belonged on. And he was okay with that.
After all, he loved the fall.