This, too, is for S. J. Smith, who is too noble a soul to consider replacing someone's bath salts with something else. Probably.
We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.
Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world,
the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "On Friendship"
oOoOoOo
The boardinghouse is stuffy in summer, chilly in winter, and smells of cabbage in all seasons, but since Winry only sleeps and stores her clothes there, these defects hardly signify. She reserves her ire for the cramped washroom, complaining relentlessly to the Elric brothers about its lack of a tub. Ed replies that baths are for babies and even Al wonders whether showering isn't more efficient. She always knew they were idiots.
Trudging home from work Saturday night, she barks her shins on the big tin basin and box of bath foam sitting outside her door and revises her opinion.