Chapter 74 - Puppetmaster

With a jovial snap of his right arm, Thomas whipped a colourful hat back at a grumbling young man, "Edward Elric you are nothing but a spoilsport."

It was true, he was not a fun sport! After being after duped by his father and Winry, who'd taken off into London and left him at the Hyland house, he wished to be nothing more than a spoilsport.

In the span of two hours that afternoon, he had been taken captive by this family, locked away in the master bedroom, forced to strip, then re-dress at their beck and call at least four times. He was their little marionette and the strings danced about with every "Please Edward" and "Oh come on" that came from their mouths.

"I think this one works the best, actually," Thomas tilted his head, "I mean, just the way the drape on the side hangs, it doesn't look awkward at all without your arm."

"Oh lovely," the words slid from the corner of Edward's mouth, "I look like some seventeenth century courtyard child in bloomers and white tights… but it's okay because it hides the fact I'm less one arm. That's so reassuring, thank you Thomas. I really appreciate the jes-"

The elder of the two couldn't help but laugh, "That's not what I meant by it, don't twist my words. Everyone attending is going to look foolish. Have you seen what I'm wearing? Have you seen what your father chose? Just bite your bitter tongue for a change and play along like a good chap," he couldn't help but broaden his grin at the sneer Ed sent his way, "It's for an old man's birthday for goodness sake, it's not like you will be on stage performing."

Edward looked back at his own reflection in the full-length mirror. The simple shoes were the only thing truly comfortable; the white tights itched, the pantaloons over his hips and thighs looked ridiculous, and the vest would have been tolerable if not for the frilly, button-up collar. Thomas received silent acknowledgement that the drapery over his right shoulder did take away most of the awkward look that the other outfits had. The hat was just preposterous; a black, turned-up brim with a deflated fabric balloon flopping limp to whichever side Ed chose.

"Well, did you like any of the other outfits? I think this was the last one Patti brought in for you," Thomas gave a light sigh, dropping his arms over his knees as he sat down, "she worked really hard picking out outfits you might like from her sister's theatre closets," he watched as Ed's shoulders sank, "the party's tomorrow night, I don't want to have to tell her that you're being a piss-poor sport about the whole thing."

Oh no, Edward didn't want to be part of that conversation what so ever. From the time he'd met her, until the time he'd vanished to Germany, being in the same room with her had felt uneasy enough. They would carry on the most disjointed conversations. Someone would speak and Patricia would look away, her voice was nervous while his faltered, and somewhere in the back of Ed's mind was the uneasy understanding that, more so than not, she felt either intimidated by his presence or was simply afraid of him.

For Ed's part, he wanted to have nothing to do with her; he wanted to look, appear, and be disinterested in her. Most of all, Ed wanted to dislike her – she behaved nothing like his mother, so couldn't this ghostly image simply leave him alone? Yet, Ed found himself wanting to indulge in the guilty pleasure of knowing everything about her.

There were occasions when the insecurities of each other's presence would lapse; though, more so on this return trip than had ever been established before. Yet, Edward carried the fear that for just a moment he would find himself curiously watching her, without conscious thought for his actions, she would notice and that look of unease would return to her eyes before she'd quickly look away.

The look in her eyes before she'd turn away hurt more than any words his mother had ever spoken.

Once, there had been a time where a great, disastrous and unspoken misunderstanding between Edward Elric and the future Patricia Hyland had manifested itself. It had never been verbally discussed nor acknowledged, so each was left to guess what the other was thinking, or at least, trying to think. Ed's generally anti-social disposition at the time did nothing but hinder progress. The young Elric could only surmise what a young woman in Patricia's position would think; to have the friend of your future husband act out of sorts around you, have him struggle in conversation with you, then to catch his eyes wandering over you…

"This'll do," he surrendered.

"Are you sure?"

Ed turned to face Thomas, rolling his eyes, "You whine that I won't choose something, then you question me when I say I'll wear this?"

"Alright," the man raised his hands in defense, "then it's decided. Patti took your clothes into the other room, hurry up and change before lightning strikes me down or you see fit to change your mind."

Snorting, Ed tossed the hat into a vacant chair, "Don't patronize me Thomas."

"You woke up on the wrong side of the bed today didn't you?" came the unfazed response, "I can see why your family dumped you off in my care and didn't stay around. They'd probably grown weary having to listen to you all morning."

"Winry's already chosen her outfit, so she didn't need to be here," Ed scratched over the back of his head as he pulled himself out of the room, "plus she had some errands or something to run, my dad just volunteered out of the blue to drive her. Usually he makes me escort her around, so it can be his turn to stop the car every 5 or 10 minutes when she wants to get out and have a look around."

Ed found himself shaking his head while lifting his gaze into the opposite room. Uninterested in responding to the man who teased him, Edward's eyes carried curiously around the walls of a much more silent space. The room wasn't quite as he'd remembered it being a half hour ago, obviously it had been tidied from the stacks of clothing that had gathered throughout the afternoon. Slowly his expression slipped as it began to fill with signs of confusion – indeed, all the clothes had been tidied and cleared out, including his.

"Pat-"

Edward never had a chance to finish her name, and Patti's reaction was far more stifled than his. Her hand had come up to cover her mouth while Ed had given a startled gasp at the woman who'd appeared out of thin air.

"Sorry."

"Don't be," she moved fast to clear the moment, breaking contact and ushering herself into the room swiftly, "I came in unannounced, my apologies."

"No, it's alright."

The conversation ended there with a sudden derailment, and Edward found himself giving the woman a curious eye, wondering what brought the sudden delightful glow to her face…

… Wait.

"You approve?" Ed glanced down at his outfit.

"Do you approve?" came the response.

"I guess," he gave a shrug of his shoulders. Yes, this would have to do, even if the thought of humouring the masses for an evening made him wish he'd never gotten out of bed that morning, "but I'd think I should change out of it for now, I just can't find…"

At the trailing of his voice, Patti's flew in, "Oh, that's right, I moved it all to straighten my linens. Give me one moment Edward, I'll be right back with them."

The woman was swift in her movements, leaving Ed silent in her wake as she vanished from the room. He stood without a word, without movement for far too long, allowing no excuse for his silence, before finally he slid his feet farther into a study room that appeared as though no fingerprints had ever tarnished the pure, unadulterated surfaces. His eyes drifted around the room. It always bothered Edward when he'd realize that he was looking for pieces of a life he'd set ablaze within the Hyland home. There was always something intangible that existed within this family's walls that caused him to do that. He never knew what he was looking for, and never seemed to find it either. Today, his eyes floated up to what looked almost like a mural: the London bridge. A night scene painted out with heavy brush strokes, and the bridge lights nothing but thick, white dabs of oil paint. The world was sealed within an extraordinarily detailed gold coloured frame and Edward looked while it swallowed the entire wall.

"Sorry Edward!"

The woman moved into the room again as he turned back to see her. Within her arms, she adjusted the perfectly folded garments Edward had walked through their door wearing.

"I had put them under one of the costumes you'd had on- oh?"

Edward froze, watching as the woman's hand reached to grab what had slipped out of his bundled clothing. With a slight ting, the pocket watch he'd retrieved from the clock shop earlier that day bounced off the carpeting.

For the thousandth time that day, Patricia apologized. Edward wondered if the words were programmed into her by society. He watched her thin hands take hold of the foolish bookmark in his life, the glaze on her red fingernails caught the light's reflection much the same way that the silver on his watch did. Her voice came and Edward found himself giving no acknowledgement to it, his mind focused on the soft, right hand cradling the replicated symbol of how he'd managed to so badly lose his way.

"You know Edward,"

The words came out like opening lines to a letter. His mind came to attention as the watch was placed carefully in his left hand. The silver chain slowly wound down into his palm, wrapping circles around the watch's edge.

"Thomas told me once that you carried this as a reminder of some things you'd lost track of in your life, but you still didn't want to forget about them. I think your father told him that, but please don't get upset with him, he never elaborated to what that was."

With the slight twitch of his thumb, the polished cover of the watch flipped open. His reflection flickered not only in the glass face, but in the smooth, unadultered inside-surface of the silver lid as well. Funny, he thought, how he could see things in that concave surface that he'd kept so close to his person before.

"It's a very elaborate watch, did you lose a lot of things in its time?" The quiet, familiar voice drifted with the most astounding calm and innocence.

Edward snapped the lid of the silver pocket watch shut. His tone quickly changed; the mediocre, frank tone that Edward used carelessly swung about, and Patti found herself having to accept that he had, almost instantly, ran off and hid behind it.

"Thanks for grabbing my clothes, Patti, I'll be back down in a minute, alright? Tell Thomas to dress up in whatever he's wearing tomorrow night, I need to see what I'm up against."

She only nodded as he took the clothes from her arms, cautious hands folding up into her chest as the burdened man walked out of the room.

"Hello again, my dear!"

Nina's grin flashed wide, her hands tightly gripping the edge of the white desk as she shifted her weight from side to side, "You're always so busy with papers, Miss Dy, do they ever give you a break?"

The modest young woman laughed, tapping a finger atop one of many piles of paper that had grown like weeds over not only her desk, but of the empty associate desks around her, "Nina, I'm the lowest one on this office totem pole, I get to take care of everything everyone else doesn't want to deal with."

Wrinkling her nose, the child rocked on the balls of her feet, the white lace ends of her baby blue dress danced around her, "That's not nice of them, they should buy you lunch for all the things you do."

"You're so sweet, Honey," the secretary's chin-length, brown hair bounced around her face as she moved from the desk, lightly rubbing the tips of her fingers in Nina's hair, "but if they treated me to lunch, I wouldn't be able to get all these files sorted for tomorrow."

"Is it interesting at all?" the shorter of two brunettes tossed her woven hair over her shoulders.

It had been just the two of them for the last ten minutes or so. Not long before that she had spent her time entertaining three office women. The other two had both been mothers, where as the 'office maid' didn't consider herself old enough to start a family. Nina loved how the two mothers fawned over her. She loved the attention. She loved how they re-tied the two bows in her hair, how they praised her for keeping her white gloves, shoes and shoulder purse so clean, and how they did nothing but shower her in praise. 'Nina' loved how she could wrap them up so easily with her smile, and then decorate their behaviour with a bow much larger than the ones at the ends of her hair. They nearly cheered with delight, because with each passing day they would fall in love a little bit more with this little girl as she became more social, more interested, and drift away from the cold, anti-social child she'd started out as. Her laugh made them giddy. Her smile got her everything she asked for. And if she was lucky, her 'innocent' childish inquiries got her information.

The wicked little mage loved her precious magical spell, and she'd cast it over everyone.

Raising her nose in the air in jest, Miss. Dy shook her head, "Your dad's job is interesting, but it's nothing you'd like at all. It's all government things. Personnel reports, cross border relations, negotiation reports, conflict and conflict resolution papers, military authorization paperwork and one or two inquisitions in progress; all sorts of crazy, uninteresting things for your dad and his peers to look at."

"His job is really that boring?"

"Not really," dropping a stack of empty files on an adjacent desk of secretarial and operational mish-mash, the elder of the two little women gave a shrug, "he gets to meet all sorts of neat people, he gets the chance to go to interesting places, he gets lots of neat things and lots of people look up to him to boot. Even if the muscles in his arms aren't that strong, he's still a powerful man!"

Nina laughed, "I like that. That's nice he lets you help so much."

"Well," sliding back into her desk, Miss Dy grinned sheepishly, "I don't help him directly, but I help the people who help him directly. Make sense?"

A slow nod came about in response and the child transitioned her thoughts, "Maybe today he needs more help, he's taking a really long time."

The young secretary tapped her pen against the desk, "Yeah he is, hopefully he doesn't take too much longer." The woman's thoughts drifted away from her work as she smiled back at Nina, her pen finding a resting place in the crease of folded paperwork, "It's nice he takes time out of his day to spend time with you. My dad never invited me out for lunch at work when I was little."

Nina glanced away with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, "He's sleepy all the time after work. Sometimes we read stories but not always."

Lacing her fingers, a mused grin grew into Miss Dy's expression, "And you two have 'tea', that's just really cute."

With an exceedingly affirmative nod, Nina folded her arms across her chest, "Tea and cookies."

The secretary gave a laugh, finding the whole story simply darling, "And you like tea, Nina?"

Slowly her head tilted, opening her lips to spill some perceived honesty, "No, but we add honey and it tastes lots better."

The woman couldn't hold her giggles at the comment, amused by the family setting she painted in her mind.

Childishly, the girl's face contorted again, "And I'm thirsty just waiting today. Tea's usually almost finished by now."

"I know," standing up again, Miss Dy, stepped away from the confines of her desk, "I need to fill my coffee cup, so why don't I snag you a glass of water while I'm at it?"

"Really!" her eyes widened with delight, a favourite tactic that worked so well.

The woman's hand landed over the doorknob, pushing it open as she looked back over her shoulder with the wink of her right eye, "Of course, I'll be right back, okay? And if your dad comes by, all the better."

"Thanks Miss Dy!"

"Hang tight."

The thin covering of bangs across her forehead shivered as a light breeze blew through the room upon the closing of the door. What an interesting situation Dante's maleficent soul had conjured up. With the grace of an orchestra conductor, the glove-covered, impish hands landed carefully upon one of many curious piles of paper that had befallen the desk of Miss Dy. It wasn't the first time she'd poked her nose into the files of this room, and as she was now, tangible treasure was not something she could dig up as easily as it had been when she stood hip-to-hip with the most powerful man in the parliament. Word of mouth and convenient eavesdropping were effective, but hard evidence was much more reliable. Miss Dy rarely had treasure to begin with, it was the other women she loved courting, but whispers in the wind had yet to deliver information regarding the office's 'one or two inquisitions'.

How curious.

The cotton-covered stubs of fingers slowly flicked through sheets, inwardly cursing at the lack of thin, mauve fingernails that used to flip paper so easily.

"Hello," Dante sweetly greeted the linked chains of tractor fed typewriter paper and swept them out of the pile like a magician. Pinched between her thumb and fingers, childish eyes scanned the numbers, phone numbers, trace-routes, times, dates and codes upon the sheets, "I don't think I'll be needing honey in my tea today."

The three pages were folded four times, and tucked into the zipper'd purse pocket that bounced on her immature hip, beneath a flower petal handkerchief one of the office women had given her. She couldn't have cared less what that woman's name had been.

The mystery was lost.

So many of life's mysteries go by the wayside as you grow older, but this one had been a fancy Winry hadn't acknowledged since she'd been a little girl sitting in her mother's lap, combing through their catalogues.

So this was how wedding dresses and fancy gowns held their volume.

The hoop skirt and petticoat had to have been the second most horribly contrived thing that she'd ever put on since coming across the Gate. However, the first was undoubtedly, unconditionally, absolutely the nearly unbearable 'traditional corset' Patti had laced her into.

"Well," Patricia tapped a finger to her cheek, admiring the finished products standing before her, "I think you two look darling."

"Your grandfather is insane, Patti," Edward replied flatly, exchanging a glance with Winry as the two stood at the middle of the room.

"Edward Elric be nice," the mother's moderately stern words drew a childish, sulking expression to his face, which did nothing but cause Winry to giggle. Gathering up the loose ends of her costume experiments, Patti bundled the belongings in her arm and turned to the next room, "my grandfather is a very vibrant and colourful man; he's a lot of fun to be around."

"Uncle Edderd!"

The name never ceased to make Winry giggle or Ed shake his head.

The child tugged on his cape until he handed out the undivided attention she desired. Crouching down to an easier level for the girl, Ed pulled on a grin for the little girl while the mother quietly slipped herself out of the room.

"Do you have a toot?"

The question sunk Edward, "A what?" he quickly glanced up to Winry who could only give a wide eyed shrug at the question.

"What's a 'toot'?" he couldn't help but surrender to the absurd question, momentarily wishing the girl's mother would return to play translator.

The child's face wrinkled horribly, "Like in my book. Mummy reads the book!"

Ed's facial expressions were just as liquid as Margaret's and again he contorted with the confusing question. Bound too tightly to come down to either of their levels, Winry joined in the conversation from above.

"Which book does Mummy read to you?"

"Piper book!" the little girl quipped.

"… Piper book…?" Winry's gaze cast to the ceiling in thought.

"Pied Piper?" Ed cocked an eyebrow.

"Yes!" if the girls head had not been so tightly affixed to her body, she would have tossed it across the room from her nod, "I liked Pie Piper!"

Winry couldn't allow such a foreign conversation right beneath her nose to go unquestioned, "What's a Pie Piper?"

Ed gave a laugh, rising to his feet once again, "Pied Piper. It's a children's story book."

"What's it about?" even if it was a children's story, it wasn't a story that was part of Winry's childhood. She found herself captivated by the mystery children's tale, irregardless of how strange it was for her to inquire with as much curiousity and mystique as Margaret.

"I tell!" the little girl bounced, her tiny hands grabbing onto the front of Winry's dress as the two people towering over her looked on, "There are bad mice in all sorts of places that don't go away. The Pie Piper comes and dances and toots and the mice go far away. That's Pie Piper."

"Yeah, it goes something like that I guess," Ed's brow quickly rose at the bare-bones summary of information, "Margaret, did you want to know if I had a 'flute'?"

Like there had never been any doubt, Margaret nodded, "Uh huh, I said that. Froot."

After a moment of consideration and a glance to Winry for some feminine insight, Edward's face slowly blanked, "Why would I have a flute?"

"Because!" once again, Margaret bounced with untamed exuberance, "Uncle Charles says you're Pie Piper!"

For all that Winry didn't know and didn't understand about a Piper who scared away mice with pies and flutes, she understood enough to recognize when the ceiling of patience and tolerance that teetered delicately above Edward's head had come crashing down around them.

"… What?"

Winry glanced between her suddenly boiling companion and the completely unaware child, who was astoundingly oblivious and unfazed by Ed's sudden flare of discontent.

"He says if I ask you can play froot and dance like Pie Piper!" a delightfully hopeful voice squeaked.

A recently filed fingernail, once chipped and torn from hours of woodwork and construction, scratched lightly at Winry's temple. Strangely enough, the blissful ignorance standing before the thrashing rage managed to tune out the unease, and unintentionally did the world a great service by muffling most of the forthcoming noise. Winry's fingernail continued to scratch at her temple, wishing that Dr. Wilson didn't have the power to turn Ed into a walking time bomb, but thankful Ed's manners behaved well enough to remain somewhat composed in front of the toddler.

"… He said I'd do what?" the restraint holding Ed together sent a quiver through his voice.

Clearing her throat, Winry stepped into the conversation, hoping she could keep Ed from bearing fangs in front of the poor child, "Margaret, your Uncle Edward doesn't have a flute, so he's not this Piper's Pie. Would you go tell your uncle that?"

For Margaret, it was as though she'd been told she couldn't cuddle the neighbourhood stray, and with hints of whining protest, the child's lower lip grew a little larger, "But Uncle Edderd looks like Pie Piper."

When it came right down to it, all Winry really wanted to do was laugh at the absurd sounding situation. Ed was acting no more mature than his pint-sized admirer and, besides that, what did mice and pie have to do with it anyways?

"I am not dressed as the Pied Piper, Margaret," Ed snorted, holding his distain at the back of his throat.

Winry wondered if Edward even realized how futile an argument with a two-year-old was.

"But Uncle Charles told people you're Pie Piper!"

With his right eye twitching, Ed's voice rose where his rage could not, "You know, if I had a flute, I know who's ass I'd sho—"

"ED!" Winry's hand slapped over his mouth before he could go any farther, quickly ending Edward's side of the debate, "now listen Margaret, Uncle Charles is a very funny man who likes to tell funny stories that aren't always true. So, listen to Aunty Winry when she says that you should go tell Uncle Charles that both Uncle Edward and Aunty Winry don't think calling Uncle Edward names is very nice, okay? And if he has a problem with that, tell him to come talk to Aunty Winry and I'll set him straight, okay?"

"Okay I go talk to Uncle Charles about Uncle Edderd, Aunty Winny and Pied Piper now okay?" the child had nearly vanished before her last words had reached anyone's ears.

Winry's hand slipped graciously off Edward's face, realizing the lid was teetering on his mental teapot, "Okay..."

"And we came to England WHY?" the disgruntled voice blurted out with a hefty sigh.

"Ed," Winry's tone dropped flat, matching his simmering temper strands with a mildly annoyed gaze, "as I see it, being called names by a child can't be that bad."

The snap of his hair couldn't keep up with the sudden shake of the head Edward gave, "That's not the point, Winry."

"No Ed, I got the point, I just don't see how it could possibly be that bad. While some child is running around calling you some pie and flute peddler, I'm stuck in this dress, bound so tight that I can barely breathe. My back is going to kill tomorrow. You got off easy. So, unless you want to trade outfits and wear the corset…?"

With the snap of her tongue, the angry mechanic had diffused the teapot, "That's alright, I'll pass."

Taking up two huge handfuls of fabric in each hand, Winry hiked her dress up off the floor, turned on her heels and marched out of the room, "Don't you dare bitch around me tonight. Smile, be nice, and pat the little girl on the head once in a while."

Even by three in the afternoon, the sun still hovered boisterously above the landscape. Accosted by the radiant yellow ball above the earth, a forgotten inlet in a subsidiary road laid lifeless; nothing but cooked dust, littered with crumbling, wooden buildings. Before a long forgotten and obviously neglected gasoline stop, two dressed-down figures loitered around a precariously perched, but quite functional, telephone stand.

The suns rays were quite entertained by the two figures doting on the dust covered communication box. An hour earlier, the yellow annoyance in the sky had tumbled down from above and strangled the radiator of the car the two figures had occupied. And now, after an hour's walk, and almost another hour of pacing in the sand, this poor metal box had became the recipient of a vicious, vulgar tongue.

By the afternoon, the sun had done a marvelous job of boiling Mustang's frustration. The radiator had lit the aura engulfing him, the long walk heated the pot, and it had been the forty-five minutes he'd spent with his forehead resting against the filthy, metallic phone box attempting to get through to Central that boiled things over.

"This is fucking ridiculous…" Mustang's finger twitched.

He hadn't heard a human's voice since he'd originally dialed in.

"I have extra change if you need to plug the phone again…"

Riza sat at the side of the crumbling, asphalt road, any signs of tire tracks, horse hooves, carriage wheels or life had been buried beneath the dust that covered the path.

"Why do we play funeral music for the hold music?"

"Is it our own funeral?" it took the palms of both Riza's hands to wipe the perspiration from her face, "Sorry Sir, I don't have that kind of change."

Mustang's eyebrow twitched like his fingers did, "It'll be Havoc's funeral if he keeps running up the telephone bill."

Riza frowned, her arms draped over her drawn up knees, "I would still like to know why our last telephone conversation went the way it did. Lieutenant Havoc locked himself up in code, I'm impressed we were even able to find our way out here. It's not like him to convolute things so much."

"Major," Mustang's brow lowered in thought, "you were the one who supported the use of various degrees of telephone code during missions."

She nodded, not disagreeing with her superior officer, "I know I did, but I did not expect to translate a conversation with Lieutenant Havoc."

"Taking into account who Brigitte is and the things she had in her possession, and then the show Lieutenant Ross put on for the procedure, I have no doubt he was moving cautiously."

Riza's head shook lightly while her fingers moved over her brow, sliding stray, blonde hairs aside. Her thoughts were at an impass, stuck on an unexplainable situation, "Have we ever found out how this child ended up in the care of the most highest ranking official, or why he gave her up without a legal battle?"

One of many frustrated sighs escaped in Mustang's breath, somewhat frustrated by that, and many other questions that he could only theorize and hypothesize answers for, "I doubt he realized her impact. The child is product of a level of alchemy I'm not even comfortable with, let alone familiar with. The Prime Minister is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a master of alchemy."

Defying the sun, that had brought her to the roadside to begin with, Riza rose to her feet, dusting off the jeans that had been rolled up to her knees, "But if we decide that the girl crossing this 'Gate' is no longer theory, but fact, how did she wind up there? Someone must have known and someone should be held accountable," turning with her thoughts, the Major's strides took her out towards the dry, open fields, "I can't believe she could have appeared out of thin air and had no one notice – especially if the first certain location of this girl's existence is the Prime Minister's residence."

Mustang shifted his weight from left foot to right, running his free hand through sweat-dampened hair, "Alphonse has no idea how she got here, the first time he saw her was in the family courtyard."

"What about the possibility that she is simply a homeless child?"

"We don't forget it, but the type of information we've stacked up against the option has me-"

Mustang stopped mid sentence, his shoulder's relaxing in relief of the welcomed sound of a ring tone, "Finally…"

It was eerie, Riza suddenly realized, how nothing more came from her superiors lips. Her heat stricken gaze peeked over her shoulder to the disturbing, slit-eyed look Mustang wore, his lips cracked open in confusion, his gaze locked in the corner of his sockets as he attempted to see the receiver pressed against his ear.

She didn't speak, Mustang's left hand rose for her silence as he attempted to steady the situation, debating if a sound would eventually emanate from his lips. Echoing faintly from the receiver at his ear, 'hello' came across not once, but twice, before the brigadier general ended the conversation with the slow and methodical replacement of the earpiece on its cradle.

The beads of sweat running free over her forehead took a new course as her blonde brow tightened, "… Sir?"

"Major, what might be the reason Hakuro is seated at my desk?"

"Pardon?" blue eyes widened without concern for the flood of daylight around her.

"Sitting at my desk, answering as though it were his department?"

Hawkeye straightened her posture, holding dialogue within her superior's gaze as the dual sets of eyes rushed to dissect what little information had suddenly arose.

Mustang was the first to bristle, throwing his gaze down the road they'd walked along over an hour ago, "It's simply quicker to walk than to wait for the radiator to cool at dusk. It would take too much time to find a well in what's left of this town."

"Do we head back to Central tomorrow, Sir?" Riza rolled away the stiffness in her legs and arms from the hour of lethargical lingering.

Taking his first, frustrated strides back towards a lake house, buried behind the sanctuary of wilderness greenery, Mustang did not respond to the question.

Left foot over right foot, stutter step, slide – at least no one could see her feet if she missed a step on the dance floor; this floor-length, flowing gown with it's sparkling headdress and tightly bound torso was more like a device than an article of clothing. Corset, stockings, wires, sleeves, layers combined with balance and coordination were going to put her in the hospital by the end of the night, she was certain of it.

The party was nice, the atmosphere was pleasant, the people were courteous, and for some reason everyone touched her hair and commented on her eyes. Winry'd found that had happened in Germany too, but could never understand why. However, she enjoyed the atmosphere in London, it was nothing like she'd experienced in Germany – that place had her frightened, though she found herself at a loss when it came time to convey that. For the time being, she was determined to enjoy London to the best of her ability; though, her enjoyment suffered a blip whenever Patricia pulled the strings on her costume to keep it from sliding too far down.

Catching someone's cry of Edward's name, Winry tried to look past her current dance partner's shoulder, attempting to catch a glimpse of what gave her non-participatory escort cause to roll his eyes.

"Edward Elric?"

"Oh, hey…"

The woman, bundled in one of the more elaborate dresses of the evening, swept her way over to him. The reaction on Edward's face would remain static while inwardly he cringed: this was the sixth person tonight that he could remember the face of, but not their name or where he should have known them from. From his chair at one of the many round, white cloth covered tables spread out around the hall, Ed turned to face the approaching sound.

"Oh my goodness," the older woman, her moderately aged face wrinkled wherever her smile created a crease, greeted him with a delight that he could only sheepishly reciprocate. He'd never bothered to become acquainted with many of the people his father socialized with, or his neighbours, or many of the Hyland family's extending family and friends. Back then he hadn't been interested, he had not been ready or able to accept the world he'd been unceremoniously deposited in.

"It's so good to see you again, you know, I think I may have heard rumblings that your family was in town but I don't think I gave the stories much merit. My goodness, what a striking costume you've come in! I'm not sure if it's your age or the costume that has you looking so much older," the woman took his hand as Edward rose to his feet. He was absolutely certain it was not the costume giving her that impression; he felt like a circus clown.

"Well," he skittered around the greetings all together, "my father and I dropped in somewhat unannounced."

"Is your father attending the party?" the woman shone with delight that dug out an uneasy laugh from Edward, "I haven't seen him since the minister's luncheon years ago."

Scratching his cheek, Ed took a glance out onto the dance floor, "Yeah, he's out dancing with someone last time I checked… but I don't see him."

"What a lovely thought. I'm going to take a gander out on the floor. Would you tell your father I say hello if we don't cross paths tonight?"

"Definitely," it was a foolish, obligatory grin he extended to her as she swept away.

Without a chance to position himself back in the seat he'd happily occupied, a hand gripped around his upper arm.

"I think I've danced with everyone but you," Winry quipped.

"I don't dance."

"Including your father!"

Regardless of the interference, Ed sat down, "You're not going to win. I'm not dancing."

"Come on Ed, humour me," Winry's arms flopped around childishly in protest.

His eyes suddenly narrowed, "How much have you had to drink?"

"I have no idea," her hands landed on her hips in whimsical defense, "nearly all the nice gentlemen I've danced with have bought me something. No one seems to care that I'm not old enough for most of it."

Ed snorted, giving a his head a shake, "That's because they all have their eyes on the girl with the perfect blonde hair and crystal eyes."

"My eyes. Are. Blue," with her gaze tossed to the ceiling, Winry spoke as though she'd just announced that not only were her eyes blue, but the sky was as well.

A moment of silence between the two inflated like a balloon, and finally Winry glanced back down. Her head tilted like a curious child, perplexed as to why Edward's face was buried in his hand.

"Ed?"

"Go outside!" he laughed, lifting his head and catching Winry entirely off guard, "go outside, get some air, clear your head and then come back."

Wrinkling her nose, Winry's exaggerated movements zoned in on the giggling companion, "Why should I do that and will you dance with me after I come back?"

"Because it'll do you some good to get fresh air and no I won't."

"Thomas is right," she blurted out, spinning on her heels, "you are a spoil sport. I hope that chair is the most uncomfortable chair in the whole building."

"Take deep breaths."

"Whatever!"

"You know…"

The third voice into their conversation made Ed jump, and his attention shot up to Patricia, who took her own startled step backwards at the sharp reaction her voice had caused.

"Sorry…"

"Stop that," Edward dropped the words before he'd thought far enough ahead to stop himself.

"… Stop what?" the woman drew a concerned look into her expression.

It was too late now, and Ed chose one of the many things he wished she would cease doing, "Stop saying you're sorry for everything. You don't need to apologize to me for anything."

The response was far more uplifting than he could have hoped and the concern he'd had about making that request from her fell off his shoulders as she laughed.

"Very well then, Mr. Elric," her voice always seemed free of burden when she laughed, "I want to thank you very much for the birthday wishes and nice gift the three of you came with for my Grandfather. He was so delighted with seeing you and your father again, as I'm sure he mentioned to you," she again found her words caught up in controlled giggles while watching Edward shake his head and look away. In the middle of the few moments of conversation he'd held with the jovial, old man, Margaret had jumped in to make sure her great grandfather knew that Edward was dressed as the Pied Piper. All privy to the conversation laughed with approval, and he could have strangled something.

"It was very thoughtful indeed, but I do think you should dance with someone on the floor before the night is through."

"And I'm thinking otherwise," Ed's gaze quickly found its way to a window, not wanting to get locked into any sort of agreement brought on by any woman's pleading gaze.

But the giggles never seemed to dull, which tickled Edward's ear more than anything. From the corner of his eye he glanced back to the giggling voice, unable to resist the sound.

"You know what I've always wondered about you Edward, where you picked up that strange accent you speak with."

Edward's expression blanked, "My what?"

"You don't really speak with an English accent, it's not a Scottish or Irish one, nor is it an American one. It's almost sounds like you've learnt the language second hand, and you speak with the accents of your mother tongue, but I know English is your first language. I've just always found that fascinating about your mannerism and the way you speak."

Finding himself unable to conjure up a response to the comment, Ed simply straightened around in his chair.

"Your father speaks with such a nice, refined English, but you've always been so strange. And then you introduced Winry, and I was astounded – there was yet another person who spoke Edward English! Everyone's enjoyed listening to her tonight, I'm glad you brought her to visit."

The sheepish grin found its way back into Edward's face, but it was far less contrived than the one he'd had throughout the night, "I'm glad everyone's enjoying having her around, I didn't realize we spoke that differently from everyone."

Patricia had mastered the art of crouching in the bundled dress she adorned, and sunk down below eye level with the seated man. Her delighted expression never faded, "Do all the people from your past talk like you two do?"

It was so rare for Patti to allow him to look into her expression without the flickers of the woman's unease that he used to see in her years ago, and that made it all the more impossible to deny her: 'they probably do.'

No, it simply made it easy.

And that was all her inquiring mind wanted to know from the man who didn't feel like mingling with the rest of the party during the dancing hours.

Still giggling, Patti rose to her feet and stepped away to make her exit from the conversation, "It was just something that's always struck me. And just to state the point again, when Miss Rockbell comes back, you should take her up on the dance floor! She thinks you're sulking."

Like a riled kitten, Ed frazzled, "Patti, I really don't-!"

"I'm not sorry I brought it up!"

The woman's interjection came as she turned away from the conversation entirely, and Edward remained sitting alone at the chair next to one of the many round tables in the rented out hall. For no reason he could explain, he found himself laughing again.

Izumi had known, full well, how long Mustang had been behind her on the top stair of the backyard porch. She could almost count it down to the second. Bathed in a twilight of powerful pinks and royal purples, the teacher would not invite the man behind her to engage in conversation. For the most part, she didn't care for his presence to begin with. She begrudgingly accepted his presence as a person Alphonse trusted, and little more.

He had been, after all, a State Alchemist; regardless if the Alchemist title was listed in the military ranks or not. A Dog of the Military.

Mustang was as much a stubborn mule as she was - it was a great impasse in their 'business-only' relationship. He continued to stand behind her, aware that his presence was known, but fully expecting the woman to eventually turn around and address him. She must know by now that he was standing out there for a reason, and this woman loved to question his reason.

Izumi said 'right', Mustang wanted 'left'.
Mustang said 'go', Izumi announced 'no'.
One said 'do this', the other said 'do that'.

It was an infuriating and endless contradiction of events, despite the moments when the alchemists within them could draw common ground for conversation; their applications of principles and ideas took divergent paths.

The treatment of Brigitte was the most controversial. Mustang wanted the mystery of the child's world solved before the mystery of Edward, and Izumi was far more interested in the stories the child had to tell, and the links she made to Edward, than the world beyond the Gate from where she feared the child came.

And then Izumi's bitterness towards the military set in, and Mustang established the line where he was right and she was wrong – a line Izumi disagreed with. Of all their little battles, this one was the most silent. And to spite their childish battle, the clouds in the sky grew bored, the sun gave up and the world laid to rest, disinterested in the petty strife between two adults.

In the end, it was Mustang who gave the woman this evening's victory, employing a military tactic in which the concession of little strifes could eventually lead to a greater success. He had too much on his mind to fight such a petty war of wits any longer.

"I don't care for whatever secret you're trying to protect. I have no interest in knowing what the Gate is, or how it impacts me, because until I spoke to that young Elric weeks ago I hadn't known it existed. Obviously, if by this time in my life I haven't learnt about it, it's not useful to me," the words came out with command, the cross look in his eyes conveyed through the tone of his marching voice, "But you are telling me that it is an omnipresent player in this game we're involved in. I need to know how you know so much about what this Gate is that Alphonse is looking for and that Brigitte may have something to do with."

"You're looking to justify its existence by having me confirm it for you?" the answer Izumi gave came much quicker than Mustang had expected, and the sudden sound of her voice nearly caught him off guard, "To be honest, I know very little about the Gate. I had someone remind me of that recently. And any worth while information I have is second or third hand knowledge."

"Are you pursuing it for first hand knowledge?"

Izumi scoffed, nearly finding herself laughing at the suggestion, "I can't imagine what the cost of first hand 'knowledge' would be. I don't even know if it's first hand knowledge we need or if we can proceed without it."

Mustang's hands came to his forehead. Rubbing his thumbs into his temples, he slowly exhaled the frustration growing in his chest, "I do not understand how you've come to accept that there is an entire world within this Gate where people can exist. Where is the proof of this Gate?"

Her hands gripped the dried, wooden stair as Izumi pushed to her feet. Smoothing the length of her dusted, white jacket, she turned to look up at the officer, her hands falling low on her hips as her mind attempted to reconcile information.

"One," a hand slowly lifted from her hip, "I have seen it. Two, Ed has seen it."

It was not the answer Mustang had anticipated, nor one he had been prepared to receive. There was visual confirmation of this entity's existence? The officer's arms came up slowly, folding across his chest as he listened with the widest ears he'd ever granted his combatant.

"At least three other people have seen it, and one of them was an alchemy specialist I'd known and respected years ago. I didn't realize the enormity of her knowledge until after I'd lost contact with her," her hand lowered to her hip again, Izumi's figure slowly darkened into a silhouette against the shimmering moonlight reflection that bounced off the lake top, "Brigitte's first known location was within the property walls of the Prime Minister's residence. The last known location of this woman I'd once respected was in the Central Market as it exploded."

"Excuse me?" Mustang stepped forward, his arms falling to his sides as he moved.

Izumi's hands rose, stopping the officer where he stood. She was, by no means, finished, "The person I'd spoken within that market had the knowledge and words of this woman I'd once been associated with, a woman who knew far too much about the Gate Al is looking for, but her face had changed. That day, she had face of your Prime Minister's ailing wife."

"Preposterous. She'd changed faces! That's absurd," Mustang was stopping this astoundingly ridiculous story; it had a hole he could drive a truck through. He'd known that woman, if only by association, "No, the woman married to Sebastian Mitchell was the fledgling alchemist assigned to Lieutenant Yoki in Youswell years ago. She is not even old enough to be your peer let alone an alchemy specialist."

It rattled Mustang's cage how Izumi's voice laughed back at him, but it did not mock him. He couldn't pinpoint just what part of her bitter tone seemed to pity him instead. The puppet master's strings wound through a mountain of societal ignorance.

"That's the mistake, Mr. Mustang. My mentor is over five hundred years old."

It would be one of the few moments in history when a marionette would be cut from its strings. This story would keep Mustang's attention wrapped around Izumi's every word. His body was locked in still frame but his mind's eye ran free, fascinated with this new, darkened side of the world suddenly at his disposal beneath the starlit sky.

"Until Lior, she had what were the only shards of Philosopher's Stone left in existence from a horrible moment in time. The Stone allowed her to, among countless other things, transfer her soul from a dying, withering body to another. The alchemy behind it, I'll never know. The methodology behind it, I'll never understand. The inhumanity behind it, I'll never comprehend. But the woman I spoke to in that market was my old mentor, wearing a new guise. I can only imagine why she let me confirm that for my own eyes."

The light from behind one of the curtain-closed windows fell dark, shading out what pale parts of the back porch had once been lit. The wind laid to rest at Izumi's feet, listening with ears wide open, silencing the rustling leaves of the trees that engulfed the lake.

"And she told me that, 'yes', we are indeed mistaken. We don't want anything 'from' the Gate, we want something 'from the other side'. Couldn't Edward Elric be on the 'other side' of the Gate? It bothered me while she spoke, and it was not just her words that did that. She had me thinking back to a poor, young woman from Lior who was the last person to see Ed alive. I thought of the description she'd given me of this unexplainable woman she'd known named Lyra – a woman Ed had known as well. A woman who was there when Ed had died."

There was that part of the story again. A staggering question mark that no one had an answer for, but everyone had to accept as fact: that at one point, Edward Elric had, in fact, died.

"In the end, this faux wife left me to chase some ancient riddle out to Ishibal. I…" Izumi's brow tightened, allowing her voice to vanish. Her mind raced, stumbling through a spider's web of strings woven by a master craftsman, "I have no idea what I found. But, what I found when I came back here was a little girl who'd come out from under the same roof where the puppeteer of this deplorable 'Gate' riddle lived."

"Lyra was the name of the woman who'd married the Prime Minister," Mustang's voice carried low, without intrusion, but delivery of fact in the dark of night, "and she passed away before Brigitte arrived."

Izumi's head shook, her teeth running over her bottom lip. Moving forwards, her sandy, bare feet crunched against the wooden stair-planks. Narrowing her eyes to adjust to the pale house light that soon fell over her face, Izumi's gaze drifted back to the officer. She watched him for a moment, the officer's concerns had been ensnared and tossed to sea by the breeze left in her wake.

"Why would a woman hell bent on staying alive for so long allow herself to pass away? And then, days later, a child with information from this storied life beyond the Gate appears in the house she haunted. Dante is free somewhere in that house."

Mustang's thoughts lay atop the lake like a fresh shipwreck, resting dead in the calm after an unforeseen storm. The male voice finally stepped in, the depth of his concern seeping back into corners he'd been in earlier that day, "She's a puppeteer, you say?"

"A master."

"She's running her strings through my office," with a pattern he could not control and a performance he could not direct.

Dreadlocks bounced over the back of her neck as Izumi turned back into the house. The screen door scratched along it's runners as she opened it, dislodged to a point where it was too much struggle to properly set it on its tracks.

For each string cut, ten more were woven. And all Izumi had to do was look over at Brigitte, sprawled out on the living room floor in her night shirt and shorts to realize she still had no answers to any of the 'whys'.

"And he was very nice to me when we were dancing, because my feet didn't always know which way to go, and he said that was okay."

A sloppy trudging of feet clattered along the road as Winry's sentences ran on one into another. Though, Edward found his path to be slightly more in line with the direction they'd been heading. He made his way along behind her, his hand buried deep within his jacket pocket and shoulders drawn up to keep the lobes of his ears warm with the collar of his jacket.

"And after the song finished, he told me my dancing was good even though that was the biggest lie anyone had told me all night. Then we went over and he asked me what I might like to drink, I told him he could choose for me because how would I know what these people drink here. He had that nicely dressed bartender pour me this drink of something and said it had Vodka in it. Ed, please tell me what Vodka is because more than one person drank it I think."

Along an untouched street, two sets of footprints left a path in a thin bed of lightly fallen snow. The powder continued to drift carelessly down around the two pedestrians walking without care for common street sense. The flakes played beneath the lamplight that lined the sides of the road, uninterrupted by most life that should have been sound asleep at this 2AM hour.

Without wind, and without the nasty, bitter bite of cold that had come and gone since they had arrived, Ed and Winry chose to take the 40 minute walk to Dr. Wilson's flat, as opposed to imposing on any of the overly-intoxicated lingering partygoers. It had taken a bit of time to sort through the disaster of garments that had accidentally exploded from the constant coming and goings of attendants, but they had found their own clothing and were finally able to free themselves from all the constraints they'd put up with for the evening. Bundled in their coats and decorated in borrowed mitts and hats, they had made their way through a slumbering city.

Though, it was not exactly a quiet stroll.

"It's a Russian alcohol. Did you like it?"

"No, it was disgusting," Winry tossed her loose, waist-length blonde hair over her shoulders as she swung her body about in rejection of the drink, "but everyone else seemed to and I drank it anyways to be polite. You know it started to taste better after I'd had it a few times; either that or I got used to how bad it tastes. I can't imagine why everyone willingly orders something so nauseating, I don't understand it at all."

Again Ed bobbed his head, "It's an acquired taste."

"Nearly all of the drinks people gave me had some additive that tasted bad. They seem to have a lot of these 'acquired tastes'," Winry's sentences ran on in single breaths, "like their taste in clothing. I cannot figure out how all those women WILLINGLY wore those dresses. I was horrified when I found out that it was actually fashion."

"You sure didn't like that dress…"

"I'd never been so happy to be naked in all my life."

Ed's hand escaped his pocket slapped over his face.

"You know what else I noticed Ed," he figured it was Winry's hundredth analysis of the night, the vast majority coming to light in the last 20 minutes, "I am the only person who calls you 'Ed', everyone says 'Edward'. There has not been a single person in London and I don't think too many in Germany who called you 'Ed'. Why does everyone call you 'Edward'?"

Giving a slow exhale into the sub zero air, Ed watched as his white breath slowly dispersed, "I have no idea."

The two walked at a pace that, despite their uneven styles, moved in time with the other. While Winry pranced herself around in disorderly strides, Ed constantly remained a stride or two behind, finding that his constant pace somehow never fell behind or overtook Winry's path.

"Ah!"

The exaggerated finger point of the intoxicated flatmate caught Ed's attention.

"At the end of the block, that's Mr. Wilson's, isn't it?"

Indeed, beyond this crossroad of North to South and East to West was the house; unlit in the silent night, lightly dusted in this powder white like all its neighbours. Tight family dwellings lined the path to it, and the path from it. The left side of the street seemed to mirror the right and the place at the end of the street had nothing to distinguish itself from the rest in that block.

"Yeah."

Crushing the fine dusting of snow beneath her feet, Winry spun on her toes to face the straggler, "Before we go home Mr. Elric, I want to make sure you know that I am disappointed you didn't dance with me, or anyone else for that matter."

"I don't dance, Winry," he said with the shake of his head.

"I'm also disappointed that you haven't said more than four words to me since we left. You say 'yeah' or 'that's nice Winry' or give some generic response to my question. I'm trying to hold a conversation with you and you are almost as unwilling as you were to dance. Are you mad at me? Did something set off the great Alchemist Edward Elric?"

"I'm listening."

The response was frank and given not as a response to the question, but as a statement of fact.

"What was the last thing I said?" came the challenge beneath the nearly weightless whiteness floating down around them.

"That I'm ignoring you."

"Before that."

"That everyone calls me Edward."

"… Before that!"

Ed sighed, "You asked about Vodka."

"Why are you listening?" Winry tossed the question into the air, suddenly more confused over why he was listening than not ignoring her.

The longer Ed took to respond, the longer his gaze was lost in the street, examining the darkened windows beyond which people slept, the more Winry realized why it took him so long to respond.

Ed glanced over his shoulder, examining the haphazard path they'd woven to end up at such a crossroad, "You know, Al and I used to walk for hours. Sometimes it felt like days. Al talked constantly, he loved to hear the sound of his own voice – he said it made him feel real. Oddly enough, this side of the Gate is so much louder than ours, but no one says anything I really want to listen to, can relate to, or even care about, so I just ignore it. It's nothing but noise. The walk from A to B is usually just a waste of 30 minutes of my life that I won't get back."

Winry's hands, tucked away in the blue and white knit mittens she had borrowed, held onto the jacket buttons high at her chest with her arms folded in front of her body for warmth. Silent, beneath the sky floating freely around her and surrounded by the flickering streetlights, Winry realized she had been granted a position in life that Alphonse and Edward had always been worried about letting her have. She looked back at the man who spoke in the most backwards way, and despite an endless night of alcohol, she slowly translated a profound compliment.

"Didn't you want to go on a walk?"

"I did?" She blinked at Ed's sudden statement.

He nodded, "Back in Germany. You said you wanted to go for a walk somewhere and find something different."

Winry's brow rose as Ed's hand lifted and chose a street path that was neither the way they came nor the way they should have headed.

"We can walk that way for a while if you like."

How was London this horrible place that Ed claimed it to be? Did he imagine all that? This place was not home, that was for certain, but of everywhere she'd been thus far, London had been everything Munich hadn't, "Alright."

What Winry could not get out of the conversation, and what the bubbling intoxication prevented her from getting near, was how that walk had gone from A to B with Edward's ear locked into the conversation at hand and not feverishly thrashing about in the dead of night, searching for, but terrified to find something - anything. He'd been balancing so dangerously on edge, and he knew it had shown up in his temperament, and it had nearly drowned him in exhaustion not long ago. He either slept endlessly, or not at all; his minds eye was cruel to him. His imagination was worse, because it had fuel from atrocities he'd seen and experienced first hand. Then, there were all of the 'what if's.

He would never discuss it, and he would do everything in his power to prevent the world from seeing it, but he'd questioned himself from time to time: was he simply concerned for his own safety and those around him, or absolutely paranoid? Be damned if he'd allow an outside party give him the answer.

But, this.

This had been the most enjoyable conversation he hadn't taken part in. Twenty minutes of his life taken away by a voice that was almost as familiar as his own, going on and on about nothing at all. Without reason, in a place he didn't like, but didn't fear either, the sound had tossed away the worries he'd carried on his back.

As far as Edward was concerned, they could walk around the block until the sun came up.

To Be Continued...

Author's Note:

There has been a long gap between the previous chapter and this.

Apology is given where one is due. I stopped writing the story for a number of reasons, one of them was how I'd found I was directing the plot, it was leading towards things I don't think I wanted and I wasn't able to change the direction of where my thoughts were going. So, I stopped and stepped away to "clear my head" so to speak, and I apologize for leaving you hanging. I'm glad did that, because the things that had been frustrating me have left. The big kicker, however, was most likely the stress from graduating school poisoned my muse, horribly distracted me, then my muse did not follow me to Japan, and it didn't re-surface until I unearthed my desktop computer in January. So now that I'm back home, I'm settled in my own place without interruption, I seem to be able to concentrate and my crazy imagination is running away on me. I love when that happens it's exciting.

So I apologize for treating my readers with such poor respect, but I don't think I realized why I'd turned up my nose at the story until recently. If you're still reading, thank you so much for putting up with me. I hope you enjoy the next installments of the story.

Story Notes:

I felt bad asking AmunRa to beta after having such a long absence. It's kind of like that rude family member that shows up without warning and expects to stay the night ;. Zrana and UmiMikazuki spoke up and volunteered to read over the chapter! Thank you!

If I do any temperature referencing, I'm doing so in Celsius, and not Fahrenheit.

Heh, I just generally felt "out of shape" writing this chapter after so long. I hope it's not too noticeable that it's been a year since I last wrote!

I think that's it for now!

Thank you!