Really short. More like a drabble. But it's really cute! And now I'm up to date!
Some things can be taught.
Some things have to be discovered.
Of all the things Al learned in Xing, that was perhaps the lesson he learned the best. Someone could teach you the words for every item and action in Xingese, they can teach you the grammar, they can teach you the proper intonations. There is no substitute for spending hours in a room where it's the only language spoken though. That is the environment in which you have to know how to use the words in rapid succession and make something intelligible out of them.
No matter how much you study a map of one of the most complicated cities you're ever been in, until you stand in the middle of a tangle of streets and try to figure out your way to the meeting place you arranged five hours earlier, it means nothing.
Customs could be taught in a round-about rough matter, he supposed. Many times, he received hissed-out-of-the-corner-of-the-mouth instruction ten minutes before he was supposed to demonstrate his knowledge of said customs. If all customs and offences had to be discovered on one's own, Al would have been sent home out of shame a long time ago.
Alkahestry was perhaps the most structured set of lessons he had while in Xing. Those, at least, were lessons he could follow. For the most part. Compared to the rest of the things he had to learn, alkahestry was the least of his worries, despite the fact that it relied so much more heavily on the senses than the alchemy he was so familiar with. That did not have to be learned as quickly as possible if he were to survive, though. It was almost relaxing. That is, it would have been relaxing if it did not involve hiking up mountains, dodging and throwing knives, a sparring viciously with his teacher.
Over time, and with much patience on his teacher's part, Al began to get the hang of things. He could have a fluent conversation with someone in Xingese after enough months. In a short enough amount of time he could find almost any landmark from a handful of description in the Xingese capital. He no longer insulted anyone with the way ate his soup or said hello to someone of higher rank than him. He even managed to pick up the mystical qi that Mei kept going on about.
Then there were the lessons that came slowly. They came over time, in pieces, sometimes so slowly he didn't even know he was learning until the lesson was over with. The lessons that taught him just how much influence a smile could have on him. How long the feeling of softly brushed fingers could last. He learned more about courage when he thought there was nothing else for him to learn. He learned that there were some things that you could care about more than your own life and not know it. He learned a different type of love than anything else he had ever felt before. He learned what if felt like to have someone wrap their arms around you and want to hold them so tightly that it might hurt them.
And when he looked into her eyes and held her hands as her brother on about what it took to make marriage work, he learned a type of joy that was so complete he could stay in this moment forever and never wish to leave.
When he kissed her, he knew that there was no better teacher he would want to learn that from.
