These are for the LiveJournal user known as kanja177, as compensation for One of Those Weeks.
Nature invites to repose ... there is no petulance, no fret;
there is eternal resource and a long tomorrow, rich and strong as yesterday.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
oOoOoOo
This sticky summer morning the bus seems full of shrieking children and their already exhausted parents. Elicia bounces in her seat, pointing out every landmark en route to Central Reservoir, her period of oscillation shortening as they approach the park gates. "We're here, Auntie Winry, we're here!" she announces, and climbs over her mother's lap to collide with a fat man wrestling a picnic hamper as wide as he down the aisle. "Sorry, mister!"
While Gracia pursues her disappearing daughter, Winry helps wrangle the hamper, transmuting a peevish grumble into a grunt of thanks. Customer service teaches its own alchemy.