Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist
A/N: Please forgive the long delay and the tiny tiny chapter- my university work has been terribly pressing this year, and I have exams in the next couple of months, so this story will unfortunately be dormant for a while. But fear not, gentle readers! This story will be continued and finished in due time. Many many thanks for your patience and indulgence!
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"You are an ice Dragon?"
The blue nodded, opening his mouth to breathe icy vaporous wisps into the air. "A water Dragon, actually. My element is water, it just so happens that my flame is ice."
Edward nodded, scribbling frantically. Maes was a beast entirely removed from Roy, he was discovering. Rambunctious, energetic and quick to enflame his more reticent friend's temper, the blue was a burst of new life in the castle, and he had thoroughly disrupted their routines with the ease of a bull lumbering through a cobweb.
"Then, you must live in a frozen landscape?" the Mage hazarded.
Maes grinned. Somehow, the expression appeared more garrulous on him than on the black. "That is so. The icy wastes of the far frozen north, dear boy, are what I call home. I can withstand Roy's dreadful furnace once in a while, though it is a sore trial to be away from my Gracia."
"Gra-"
"She is my mate, a water-wyrm, and oh, you have never seen so fine a Dragon! Scales of peerless turquoise, shimmering like the surface of a lake, beautiful eyes that shine brighter than the sun, claws of-"
The litany of Gracia's charms went on for some time, during which Edward found himself inching towards the doorway of the great room, wondering if he might slip away in a clandestine manner before the Dragon's voice was the cause of his untimely death.
When Maes paused for breath, the Mage said hurriedly, "Yes, yes, she sounds wonderful, does she never visit?"
The blue dragon shook his head, an odd motion that involved a wagging of the serpentine head at the end of the long, sinuous neck. "It is a rare misfortune, that you will never see my Gracia," Maes said, in the manner of one offering condolences for a bereavement. "In truth, she does not willingly travel beyond our cave- she prefers to stay and guard our egg."
"You have an egg?" Edward leaned forwards, his pencil never pausing. "Is it the fem- er, Gracia's duty to protect it?"
"Her," Maes corrected, sniffily. "My egg will hatch an angel dragon, sweet as my beloved Gracia, elegant and wondrous, and she will be the best of all Dragons, and-"
"I fear, Fullmetal, that you have doomed yourself to an eternity of witless wittering," came an amused voice from the hallway.
Edward looked up and grinned to see his host. The black Dragon stood in the doorway, his head ducked under the arch of the door to view the proceedings within. He could not fully enter, as the room was barely big enough to accommodate Maes' bulk, and even then, the wirier of the two Dragons had been obliged to curl up his coils very tightly.
"How can you prattle at such length in such a small space?" Roy continued, in a taunting tone. "Does not the hot air oppress you intolerably?"
Maes snorted, humour dancing in his green-gold eyes. "If we were to discuss hot air, Roy, it is you who would prove the more intolerable."
Roy laughed at that, and conceded Maes the victory with a salutary sweep of his foreclaw.
The blue grinned, and turned his attention back to Edward. Roy settled where he stood snaking his shoulders and the foremost tips of his wings into the room as he lay down to listen.
"As I was saying," Maes continued, with a mock-angry glance at Roy, "Gracia remains to guard our egg, because that is what her instincts lead her to do. You humans, you have the parental instinct for your eggs?"
Edward nodded, choosing not to explain that human reproduction differed immensely from Dragon reproduction, and that the laying of eggs was not actually involved.
"With Dragons, the strength of the instinct varies between individuals," Roy put in. "My parents were of a saner temperament than Maes, and preferred to leave me to the volcano's keeping."
Maes bristled at that. "I am not insane!"
Roy raised one of his heavily-ridged eyebrows in response.
The blue flicked his tongue out at the black. "You must not believe him, mageling. It is no sign of a deranged mind to nurture one's egg."
Edward opened his mouth to ask how exactly ice Dragons were incubated, whether they relied upon the cold for life, as flame Dragons relied upon heat, but Roy spoke up before he could form the first syllable.
"You and your mate have kept a near-constant watch over that egg for more then twenty years," the black said. "That is sanity?"
Edward found his eyes darting back and forth between the two Dragons as they talked. This had the well-worn, well-used feeling of a long-standing argument, an old and tiresome point of debate from which neither combatant would give ground. Each was firm in his unwavering opinion, despite the seeming longevity of the discussion.
Maes, unexpectedly, cocked a grin at his friend, rather than snapping a retort. "I sometimes wonder," he conceded. "But then I think of my sweet Gracia, and how beautiful her egg-baby will be, and twenty years is just a hiccup."
Edward wondered what exactly caused the dim glimmer in Roy's eyes. It was heated like envy, quiet like grief, and poisoned with a healthy dose of longing.
