~Chapter 5
"Does anyone have a frickin' fan!" Edward continues to complain about the scorching heat, desert heat.
Al sat in the shady corner where the kerosene lamp's light reached for him, but never set a finger on him. Then to his left was Armstrong, who sat in a the only chair in the Ishbal community while the Roy sat on the sandy floor, jotting down notes as fast as he could in his fifth tiny notebook. He reached the last page and stopped. His hand swiftly threw that notebook into the pile of four to his left, his black eyes venture over to the other corner to see giant columns of never-used notebooks, laughing at him.
Sweat runs down his hair and face as the night heat finally started to poke his buttons.
He takes off his military jacket, which didn't do much at a time like this, so he lifts off his black undershirt, soaking wet, and threw it over at Ed.
It slapped him in the face and complained even more. He went onto one of his little rants.
Being Roy, he ignored it and closed his eyes for a quick second.
His sweaty body shines in the dimming light of the kerosene lantern in the middle of the room. It looked like he was polished with floor wax.
He gets a salty taste of his own sweat from his drenched hair. His bangs stuck to his head and he wipes it to the side.
Mustang points a lazy finger at the three, "You guys have to do half of what I did. Each one, two and a half notebooks."
~WHAT WENT DOWN~
The fire went to bed
Roy snaps his fingers and it awakes
Ed stops his rant after ten minutes
Rosa walks into the room
Right when Ed gets the idea to strip down to his boxers
Crickets chirp
The air turned to molasses
She carries four plates, two in her hands and two balanced on her forearms. She awkwardly walks over to Armstrong first and he takes the first plate on her arm that was delicately standing. She then went to Al, then hesitantly glided over to Edward. She turns around to look towards Roy, who is nonchalantly taking off his boots, and freezes in her own foot-steps. Her cheeks instantly turn the brightest pink and her pupils dilate.
Roy looks up after throwing his boots at Edward and noticed that her feet were in cement and her eyes were affixed on him. "Am I making you feel uncomfortable, Rosa?"
She shakes her head to wash the thoughts out of her head and out her ears. "Uh...I don't think so." She sets the plate besides Mustang. A big meal of an apple and some roasted beets.
Roy picks it up and sets it on his lap. "Ya wanna eat with us tonight?"
"No thank you. I'm not allowed to." She walks to towards the other side of the tent to go to the divider.
"You're not? Where's your food?"
Rosa stops in her path once again with her hands on the sheet in front of her. "I'm not allowed to eat in the morning or night, only the after-noon and it's only an apple. It's part religious and part of the situation we're in right now."
Roy set his plate back on the ground, "I'll only eat if you eat. That's not very fair."
Al speaks from his isolated corner, "I'm not hungry at all. You can have my diner if you want to, Ms. Rosa."
She looks up to meet eyes with the metal armor in the shaded corner, they seem like endless pits. But she knows that there is a kind boy in there somewhere.
She begun to walk away again, but Roy grabbed her arms, wrapping his soft, white glove around her bicep.
She turns back to look at him, staring into his loving eyes, "Why is your community so mean to you?"
She slides her arm from his grip and genitally grabs his wrist to guide him to the back of the tent. They walked in between the Elric brothers and underneath the the back of the tent. They slip out into the desert and into the near distance.
~BACK IN THE TENT~
Ed rants about Mustang throwing his boots into his face and the heat
He remembers that his brother is made of metal
Metal+Ed's stubborn mind=cold
The thought made sense to him,
he sits on his brother's lap without thinking
"Brother, it was warm today," Al starts, "and metal is a good conductor."
Ed felt his skin sunburn without the necessity of the sun
He got up as quickly as possible while patting his aching burns
He trampled over the kerosene lamp
They were wrapped in midnight's dark arms for the rest of the night
The sand glowed blue in the full moon's light. They walked for five minutes straight without a single word gliding out into the settle breeze of night, being carried like a feather into the sky.
Rosa was the first to speak, "We were here at one point before the war started. I haven't been back since I was little, probably five. But my community of Ishballites, we've always been nomadic. But we'd stay for a lot longer in one spot than we do now. This is where we stayed the longest, it was my hometown and it's know in ruins."
"This isn't answering the question on why your people are so cruel to you." Roy stops in his steps, not moving until he got a sold answer. The wind becomes stronger, shoving loose sand up off the ground and onto the back of his legs, sticking to him like velcrow.
Rosa also stops and looks down. The sand was blowing away in front of her to uncover something. The wind becomes violent in just that area and clears away all the sand to show off a transmutation circle glowing brightly. It was like Hell was released and everything was blinding, except for a tiny, black box in the middle.
Roy looks in pure astonishment, he's never seen anything like it. He looks at her hands, the tops of her hands glow with the same pattern of the circle and the thorns that were bracelets now strangle her blood. They dribble down the indents of her hands and run off her fingers. He runs up next to her in amazement, his eyes as wide as saucers. "What is this?"
Rosa continues to stare at the circle on the floor, her eyes focused on the box in the middle. She begins to tell Roy the story behind the whole thing, "My mother was an alchemist like me with one difference: she was on the voyage for the Philosopher's Stone. She was an alchemist buy secret, very cryptic. She wanted to find all answers to eternal life, but died by the circle, eaten by truth. I was the one who came out when I heard the screaming. She was being grabbed by all these black arms coming from the ground. I ran over to help her, but her fingers skimmed across my hands and scarred them with the circle she died at to pass the horror onto me. So my village think that I'm possessed by a demon, they also believed this about my mom. So they all assumed that she gave it to me. She continues to stare at the black box in the middle, her green eye glowing on and off. "That in the middle, no one has ever gotten to that without dying. I wish to know what's in it, but I'm afraid no one will ever know."
She looked down at her feet, choking on her own words as they spilled out of her mouth and shattered on the floor, "Mom always wanted to find the secret behind the Philosopher's Stone, but was sent a message from Karma! Why did you do it Mom? Why did you leave me with this burden?" She starts to bawl. This was something bottled up in her ever since that day, she's been waitin gfor someone to tell for a little over a decade.
Her knees give out and she collapses to the ground with her face buried in the palms of her hands. "Why am I such a failure! I can't do any good! I can't even talk, for I only cry!"
Roy sat down next to her ad rubbed a soft hand on her bare back below her rose-petalled-top. "None of that is true, Rosa."
"You're just saying that to make me feel better!" Tears jog down her perfect skin and soak into the desert sand.
"That's not true, I swear." He wraps his arms around her, holding her closely to his body. He rests his forehead on her hairline and closes his eyelids softly to morph into a soon-to-be broken daydream. Roy savors the sweet tasting moment.
"Then name one good thing about me, Roy. Just one."
Roy easily thought of many things about her that he loved:
She was beautiful
Perfect skin
A golden personality
A "dreamy" body
Nice eyes
Everything about her was just unique!
But none of those things came out of his partly-opened mouth. He wanted to say something, but just couldn't bring himself to. She would figure out that he had a crush on her and that was the whole reason to why he came back. That was another thing, she was so intelligent! She was much, much smarter than he.
He never said a single word, his heart had taken over his thoughts and his lips were crawling to her forehead, but she pulled away in sadness and rage before he could kiss her.
"I told you!" She stood up with steaming tears and looked down at him. "You're a high-ranked millitary man staring at a low-class, homeless, ugly Ishaballite! I'm the lowest of the lowest in today's society and there's nothing good about me at all!" She runs away with tears trailing behind her.
Roy reaches out a desperate hand to stop her, but fails. He sat there, staring at the transmutation circle. The box was comfortable, it had its legs crossed and its hands neatly folded. It knew its secret inside its stomach was important and would only be know by it.
Roy stood up to stand with his feet only centimeters away. He attempted to grab it, but the transmutation circle shocked his hand when it was over the box. He pulled his hand back in pain. Mustang would have to think of a better plan in order to get that.
He looked down at his hot hand; the tips of his fingers were burnt. They cried for help and comfort, just like his beautiful Rosa.