Chapter 8--Spectrespecs

"Mum told me once that fried Gurdyroot is one of the ingredients in the most powerful love potions in the world," said Luna matter-of-factly as she placed another spoonful of Gurdyroot soup in her mouth.

Ed choked on his own soup and looked at his bowl apprehensively. "Um, Luna, didn't Rosa fry these before she added the broth?"

"Oh, yes. I suppose so."

Ed looked at her, wondering why she could be so calm. "Luna, then aren't these going to…I mean…we're not going to…um…"

Luna's spoon paused on the way to her mouth. "Don't worry Ed," she said, reaching over to pat his hand. "Adding beef stock counteracts the effects."

Still not entirely convinced of the safeness of his soup, Ed grabbed a roll.

"Sho haf oo foud adyshin?"

Luna shook her head and kept spooning Gurdyroot soup into her mouth. "No, I haven't found anything recently. There are a few ideas that keep popping up, but nothing really on exactly how to get to Amestris."

Ed sighed and absently pushed his bangs out of his eyes. Leaning back on his chair, he stretched his powder-coated hands to the ceiling and sighed again. He and Luna had been holed up in the lab since the day before, gradually making their way through the massive pile of books Rosa kept bringing for them. Ed was getting a little frustrated. He was used to ing alchemic codes, so he thought the notebooks would be no problem, but Luna's mother didn't use codes. She used wizard words like 'Treachation' and 'pre-extended Portkey' and things that Luna seemed to understand but he didn't. It irked him greatly.

The two finished their lunch and each grabbed a new book. There was a moment of silence in which each tried to absorb what they were reading. Ed glanced over at Luna, looked back at his book again, and then decided to chance a potentially stupid question.

"Um…Luna? Mine's blank."

"Mine too."

"Is that normal?"

"Probably."

Ed poked at the page with a powdery finger. "Is it hidden by wizardry?"

"Now that's an idea!" Luna smiled at him. She pulled out her wand and started muttering incantations and prodding at the pages of her mother's journal. The only effect was a slight sulfuric odor and the cover of the journal turning fluorescent orange.

Ed waved his hand in front of his nose and pushed himself away from the lab bench. "I'm going to go see if Rosa knows anything about the blank books."

Luna nodded absently; the lab book was floating in a lightning bubble over her head.

Rosa was found in the kitchen cleaning up the remains of their lunch. She seemed puzzled by their dilemma. Luna's mother had written in the notebooks, she was certain. She accompanied Ed to the lab, where Luna was still trying wizardry to see the pages. The book looked a little worse for wear.

Rosa fluttered around it, turning pages with great care. Finally she sighed and turned to Luna. "I really don't know if I can help you. I'm absolutely your mother wrote in this book, but I don't know how she might have hidden the words, unless maybe she made it so you needed something specific in order to see them, something besides wizardry…" Rosa paused, and Luna gasped, and twin looks of comprehension crossed both their faces.

"Spectrespecs!" they shouted together.

"What?" said Ed.

"I can't believe I didn't think of that!" said Luna as she scrambled for the door to the office. She came out again clutching two flamboyant copies of a magazine entitled The Quibbler. Luna scurried to the lab bench and started flipping through pages until she came to a cardboard page with a pop-out set of the most bizarre glasses Ed had ever seen. They were huge, with multi-colored spiral lenses and fluffy feathers for decorations. Luna handed Ed a pair and tore another pair out from the other copy. Rosa fluttered out with her own miniature pair, and Ed watched as they both settled down to read. Thinking that this was the most ridiculous thing he had ever done, Ed slapped his Spectrespecs on, paused to take in the now brilliantly multi-colored lab, and pulled the journal toward him.

"Oh, wow!" Ed exclaimed, but quickly fell silent after a dirty look from Rosa. He murmured something apologetic and took a better look at the lab notebook in his hands. The pages, formerly blank, were covered with writing. Smiling at the oddness of wizardry and the Lovegoods in general, Ed started to read.

Unfortunately, the Spectrespecs did nothing to help any of them decipher what exactly Luna's mother was trying to say. Instead of getting clearer, her writing was getting more and more difficult to understand. Her shorthand consisted of abbreviations—most of which neither he nor Luna knew. Rosa wasn't really any help, either. For being a lab technician, she had unfortunately spent a lot of her time in the kitchen making butter tarts and other various tasty treats.

"Luna, I've been trying to get through some of the later notebooks, and the letters 'CHS' keep popping up."

Luna frowned. "Show me," she said, pushing her soup away and reaching for the book Ed was reading.

Ed pushed it her direction. "See? In the later journals the initials 'CHS' keep popping up. I think it's important. Look. Here it says 'CHS may know more about inter-world travel.' And then 'CHS can punch through world barriers?' And then the last one: 'NEED TO FIND CHS!!' It seems like your mother was trying to find this 'CHS', whoever he—or she—is, and that they have more information than even she has here."

Luna pulled his notebook closer and skimmed through the parts he had been looking at and then a few more. "Hmmm…page seventy-one has jelly stains on it."

"Luna!"

She smiled vaguely and hummed tunelessly for a little while. "You're right. In one of mine she mentioned him as well, and it seemed like she really wanted to find him. I think we should look through more of her later books and see if she ever found him."

Luna gave him back his book, and pulled another one off of the stack. They quickly skimmed through the last ten notebooks, noting each time CHS was mentioned. It got more and more frequent as the books got later and later, but even in the final one the last note about CHS was an even more urgent scribble about the importance of finding him. Ed and Luna then spent an hour trying to guess what it stood for, and see if Luna recognized any of the names they came up with.

"Do you think we really need to find him?" asked Luna after Ed had given his next guess, Charles Humperdink Shultz. "I mean, if my mum was able to punch through with just this"—she waved a notebook—"then do we really need to know what he has to say? It seems to me that she got pretty far on her own."

"Well," Ed responded, "from what I'm gathering your mother only had partial information. She had enough to get through the Gate on this side, but she couldn't open the one that goes to Amestris. That's what the black arms that you saw meant. I think this 'CHS' guy probably knows how to punch through both Gates, and that's why she wanted to find him."

"Oh," said Luna. Then she shrugged, smoothed out another piece of parchment, and started writing names with the initials CHS.

"That's a stupid name."

"Clink Harthromb Skeenk is not a stupid name!"

"Clink? Luna, who on earth would have the name 'Clink'?"

"CHS, maybe!"

"Luna, be reasonable. Skeenk?"

"Ed, you know close to nothing about my world. How do you know it's not a common name here?"

"…"

"Exactly."

"Shut up, Luna."

"How DARE you tell her to shut up, you HORRIBLE LITTLE boy!"

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SHORT?!"

"You ready for a break?"

Luna made a noncommittal noise and turned another page. Ed sighed and removed his Spectrespecs. There was a handy string that came in The Quibbler so he could just hang them around his neck. It took a moment for his eyes to get used to the drabness of the lab after the bright colors from his glasses. Standing up and stretching, Ed decided to go take a look at some of the other rooms in the lab. First verifying with Rosa that it was alright (it was, though the second door on the right sneezed when it was opened), Ed set off down a long corridor. He was reminded of a very similar hall in the Lovegood's house, where he had first discovered magic. Grimacing at the memory, Ed opened the first door.

It was a baby's room. A small white crib with silver coverings was in a corner next to a rocking chair on which hung a clean spit cloth. The chair jerked spastically, as though an invisible hand was trying to rock it but couldn't find the energy.

"The spell is wearing off," said Luna softly. Ed glanced back at her. The baby room had huge murals of Mr. and, Ed assumed, Mrs. Lovegood. They seemed to be alive, though they didn't move. There was a magical quality about them.

The next was a play room, neatly cleaned and organized with all sorts of toys that Ed had never seen before. The murals in this room were of tropical places with bizarre creatures poking their heads around huge trees.

"Luna, were these all for you?"

Luna was prodding a tiny broomstick with her foot. "All what?"

"All the rooms."

"Oh. Yes. We used to live here, you know. Mum would get ideas during the night and have to run out to the lab to write them down, so we couldn't live too far away." Luna left the broom alone and turned her attention to a little box in the corner. "I wonder what this does."

Squirk.

"Luna, do you think you could give me a little warning before you decide to poke something that squirts pink and green ink all over me?"

Luna shrieked with laughter, so much so that even Ed had to join in. He liked laughing with Luna, he decided. It kind of reminded him of laughing with Al, before—

Well, before their mother had died.

Ed sighed and rubbed his Spectrespecs on his shirt as Luna's wand siphoned away the rest of the ink. He was peering through them to make sure the ink was gone when something flickered at the corner of his eye. Ed froze, lowered his glasses, and took a closer look. There was nothing. Thinking he must have imagined it, Ed continued cleaning his Spectrespecs.

There it was again!

Ed whirled around, and Luna copied him.

"Did you see it?" Ed whispered.

Luna peered at him curiously. "See what? I thought we were keeping Wrackspurts from getting into our ears. I thought I heard one. It confuses them to have two people doing the exact same thing."

Ed was about to reply with another inquiry about what a Wrackspurt did when he saw something again, and quickly turned to face the other direction.

It was as Luna turned as well, with her Spectrespecs bouncing against her chest, that Ed realized what he had seen. He gasped, which Luna copied. Ed slowly placed his Spectrespecs on the end of his nose, which Luna did just after him.

"Oh my goodness," said Ed.

"Oh my goodness," said Luna.

Covering every surface of the wall was handwriting that Ed recognized from the journals. He even could recognize a few rudimentary transmutation circles.

"Luna, I think sometimes your mother couldn't wait until she got to the lab."

"You know, Ed, I think I agree." Luna gazed at the notes covering ever surface.

Sudden inspiration struck him, and Ed turned to face her. "Luna, which room were you in when your mother died?"

Comprehension dawned on Luna's face, the same expression as when she had realized they needed Spectrespecs. "Down this way!"

Ed followed Luna as she raced down the hall, past three other doors, pulled open the door, and into a room with large murals of four different animals—normal ones this time. But neither Ed nor Luna noticed the snake, badger, eagle, and lion. Their eyes were trained on something only they could see. Spectrespecs perched firmly on their noses, they read the large words scribbled on the farthest wall, right under the eagle's half-unfurled wing.

CHS—in Sweden?

Well, there you have it, folks! Chapter 8! Luna's being a little dense right now, as many of the more...shall we say...intuitive readers may guess, but that's just part of her charm, I guess. So Ed and Luna are going to Sweden! Woohoo! I've never been there. I hear it's quite pretty, though. Or is that Switzerland? Whichever, I'm sure they'll have a grand old time!

...if they actually get there, of course. Who knows? I do, but I'll never tell...Mwahahahaaaa...

Thanks for all the title ideas, everyone. I appreciate them all--keep 'em comin'!

A little story that isn't very interesting but may make the other FF writers nod, grimace, and pull their hair out: I've been reading the last few HP books lately, trying to get a little more info about Luna and stuff, and of course I read a few of my more favorite parts as well...(U-No-Poo, anyone?) Thinking I was going to reel out a wonderful, masterfully-written chapter, I started chapter 8. So imagine my shock and horror when I re-read the first two pages and realized that Luna was turning into Hermione!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! So, I quickly deleted (actually, cut and paste) the two atrocities and started afresh. Again. And again. And again. Argh! Stupid Hermione! Not that I don't like her. It's just I wish she would stay out of my writing! Luna is not Hermione. Yes. I suppose the only good thing I got out of starting this chapter three times over was an idea for a short story staring Colonel Mustang that I may have to play with later. I don't think I'm talented enough to write two stories at a time.

Please and thank you for reviews, and may all your dreams come true--except that one. You know the one I'm talking about.

Ciao!

churu