Her fifth birthday was different than those previous. Sure, some things never changed. Instead of a sugar-laden birthday cake, the day was celebrated with a dessert in the form of a fruit and nut bread baked with some cinnamon and anise. This was the treat always used on special occasions for the family and the making of this treat was one of the only times that Damia had been seeing her mother un-obsessed with her alchemic research for the past two years. She did not know what it was about this bread that leveled out her mother's mind but she was not going to ask. She knew that this special recipe was from Galicja, her mother's birth-land. Maybe for Dante it was simply being able to have a sample of her home country while residing in Amestris.

So yes, Damia Elric's fifth birthday began as normal. But shortly after the sweet breakfast, she received her first present, a present that would serve as the building block for the rest of her life. There was a different air about Dante. The usual serious and regimented woman seemed warmer and almost excited as she handed her daughter a book.

A beginning alchemy book.

Damia took the book and immediately opened it. Bernard, one year her junior, leaned over to look as well. Even though both of them were quite smart and literate for their ages, this book, despite composed of remedial information, contained much vocabulary foreign to them both.

"Dante, isn't she –" Hoenheim began to say a bit uneasily. He was not sure exactly how he felt about a five year old already being encouraged to engulf herself in alchemy. On the other hand, five years was the minimum age where it was considered appropriate to begin teaching alchemy, since it was assumed that the child's energy would have hit a certain degree of development by then.

"She'll be fine," Dante interrupted before sitting next to Damia. Both of the two children were completely fascinated by the drawings of transmutation circles in the book. She put her hand on Damia's shoulder. "It'll be hard for you to learn by yourself, of course, so I'm going to teach you everything in this book and more."

Damia looked up at her mother with vivid, eager eyes. "Really?" she asked. "You're gonna take me in the basement?"
"No, not the basement," Dante replied to the question concerning the part of the house which served as her lab. "That's too advanced. Way too advanced. But you're going to start now when you're young so you'll have the potential to be a master when you're older."

"And me?" Bernard asked with a spark of enthusiasm in his voice.

"Your father can teach you next year when your energy is more developed," she replied. "Let's go outside and begin," she added to Damia.

"Okay!" Damia exclaimed, beaming with excitement as she held her new book and followed her mother outside. She did not once look back at her pouting, sulking brother.

A moment of silence passed before Bernard glanced up at Hoenheim. "So, what are we gonna do?" he asked flatly.

"I thought maybe we'd go for a walk and I can teach you some history," Hoenheim answered, his mind still somewhat concerned with exactly what Dante would be telling and teaching their daughter.

"Oh no," Bernard groaned. He then puffed out a sigh and stood up. "Well, let's get this over with."

Damia did not have many memories of her mother. For the past two years, Dante was always working and researching so if she and Bernard were not alone they were under Hoenheim's supervision. The young girl was glad to receive the rare attention of her mother, especially since she was to learn alchemy, a word that one could not go a day without hearing in the household. It was like a rite of passage to be let in on the secrets of the esteemed word. Because Dante was a Wind Alchemist and Hoenheim was a Light Alchemist, being introduced to the science was similar to an initiation into the family. At least that was how it appeared to Damia.

Outdoors, the two began with Dante going over the four main branches of alchemy: Fire, Light, Water, and Wind. She made it clear that each of these specialties would only be able to be explored after having a solid foundation of General Alchemy.

Damia pointed to the page in the alchemy book displaying the transmutation circle for Water Alchemy. "Under here, it calls Water Alchemy 'The Mad Man's Art'. Why?"

Dante smiled. She was happy to receive this question as the answer would display a great pride in her lineage. "There is a special technique with this type of alchemy that very few people are aware of. It's passed down through families and anyone who knows it takes the secret to the grave unless they have a child of their own to teach." She put her index finger on the page and traced over the transmutation circle for water. "And I know the secret."

"But you're a Wind Alchemist."

She nodded. "I learned that from my father. But my mother was very talented with water. I know the technique but never fully developed it." Her tone turned somewhat solemn. "My older brother chose water so I wanted to master wind."

Damia was puzzled. She never knew that she had an uncle. Even though she never met her grandparents on either side, she knew that her mother and father both had to have had a mother and father. Hoenheim had told her and Bernard that the reason they never met their paternal grandparents was because he had left home to avoid having to become a carpenter. But Dante, in the slim moments she spent with her son and daughter, never once said anything about her family except that she was Galicjan.

"Will my uncle teach me water?" Damia asked.

Dante simply shook her head. "My brother Ludwig died long ago." She turned to Damia. "But when you're ready, I can show you what I was exposed to and perhaps his talent will live again through you."

"Talent?" she asked.

With a smile, Dante replied, "He was the best! And Damia, you can be the best too! And do you know why?"

"Why?" she asked with excited eyes.

Dante ruffled her daughter's blonde hair and said, "Because you're a Lubelczyk. You're half-Galicjan. The Galicjan people are strong and everlasting. That's why, after so many centuries of wars and chaos that Galicja is still one of the most powerful nations!"

With a wide grin, Damia beamed and repeated ambitiously one of her favorite Galicjan words, "Tsar!"

Dante smiled and nodded. Damia's personality and eagerness to learn alchemy was oddly comforting to Dante, yet a bit eerie at the same time. Not only did the girl physically resemble her side of the family, but she had the ambition, curiosity, and drive mirroring almost exactly what she remembered of Ludwig. It was astounding to Dante just how unexpected life could be. It happened not to have ever crossed her mind that one of her children would turn out to have the attitude so much like the older brother she desired to find a way to resurrect from the dead. That was what was a bit eerie.

As she began to show Damia how to draw the simplest transmutation circle, Dante could not help but think about her deceased brother. She was always haunted by wondering if Ludwig – or anyone in their family – would have been able to protect their village from the invading Ishvalans if they were not dependant on the transmutation circle-holding gloves for Water and Wind Alchemists. Dante knew that it was possible to sense the molecules and create intangible circles out of the atoms in the air, because she herself had developed that ability. However, by the time she accidentally stumbled upon that skill out of necessity and fear, it was too late …

"Mommy, look!"

A beaming Damia pointed at what she had just created – her first transmutation – taking a medium-sized rock and changing it from a circular blob to a finely-chiseled little pyramid. The young girl looked at her hands in awe that they had a role in morphing the rock but never once touching it after it was placed in the middle of the transmutation circle.

Dante was impressed at just how sharp the edges and how smooth the sides of the pyramid were. "Damia, that – that's excellent!" she said. "We'll keep working on this for a while. Step by step, let's see how much you can change a rock from its original form." She grabbed another lumpy rock that was about the same size as the first one. "All right, erase the first transmutation circle and draw it again. It's important not to recycle used circles because the energy from the first transmutation will interfere with the next one being properly done."

Damia began to erase her first circle in the dirt. "Can I try making a cup?"

"Sure, whatever you'd like," Dante replied. As she watched her daughter continue on the procedure, she could not help but be reminded again, over and over, of her life in Galicja. The memories just kept falling back into her conscience, eventually poisoned by the indelible horror of her village being infiltrated and destroyed by the Ishvalans.

The day of destruction brought four years of enslavement, suffering, and peril in the eastern land nicknamed "The Land of the Sand People".

And then …

The light emitted from Damia's transmutation ever so slightly blinded Dante. The light appeared just as she began to remember the day she, out of fear that all Galicjan slaves would be massacred, decimated her owner's estate and fueled the beginning of the Philosopher's Stone. That light, obviously much stronger and brighter than Damia's small transmutation, was one of the eeriest things that Dante ever experienced. She could remember almost feeling death, as the light encompassed her and seemed as if it was going to burn her soul from her very flesh, until a twist of fate decided to spare the then sixteen year-old girl. In an instant, the light had disappeared and Dante was left alone in the desert. All of the estate was gone, as well as all of the people who had been there, both Galicjan and Ishvalan. The then terrified Dante began searching, desperately calling the names of her brother, parents, and friends before she stumbled upon a small, crimson-colored stone. It was not until she picked up the stone and felt the energy distributing throughout it that she realized exactly what she had done …

Now, almost twenty years later, that same crimson stone lay under glass in the basement, slowly but surely being developed in its obsessed creator's plans in securing an immortal body. The securing of an immortal body all in the name of being God, to spit in His face for the Galicjan enslavement being part of His Divine Plan. A life to last forever, to never die, to contain the principle of finding a use for the accidental deaths of Dante's people, simply so they would not have been destroyed completely in vain.

"It's not as good as the pyramid," Damia said. She held up a small cup. The shape was successfully made, but it lacked the fine-tuned smoothness of the previous transmutation. Inside it did not even completely form a hole, as a bit of a lump of rock still remained "un-scooped" out.

Dante took the cup. "It's not bad at all," she said with assurance. "Remember Damia, this is only your second transmutation. I think it's a success that you made the shape correctly. Try again and concentrate more. Concentrate more on what makes a cup a cup – that it can hold something inside of it. Place some more energy toward that purpose."

Damia nodded and immediately began smoothing out the dirt to make a clean slate for a new transmutation circle. She held a spark in her eyes of determination, a spark almost speaking "I'll be damned if I don't make a perfect cup today."

As her daughter began drawing a new circle, Dante picked up the alchemy book and started flipping through the first chapter. She was proud that Damia had ambition and even, apparently, talent. Maybe it was good to remember the painful memories of Ishval on this day, the day on which she would commence training her daughter. Maybe it was actually productive for Dante to be reminded of how she and Ludwig were both once novices themselves; and that even though only she had been able to successfully stumble upon doing so, that it was possible to perform alchemy without a transmutation circle.

If Damia learns Water Alchemy, she'll be taking the same path Ludwig did, Dante thought. But Damia can master it and figure out how to wean herself off of the transmutation-circle gloves.

She smiled. Her daughter could aim to complete what her deceased brother was unable to accomplish.