A/N: Um...a day late...Sorry? No, next week's posting day won't change.

Most of the 'traditions' here are made up completely, but have a basic premise in two points: the presentation of Ishbalans being strongly family-oriented and Arabic nations being intrinsically less 'rushed' than the rest of the world (and Ishbalan society seems to follow that trend, too). I felt these ways of doing things would make sense for them given those two points.

Starting

Morning came too soon for Ed, but Rashad just found his sleepiness amusing. It had been a long journey, and it was only now, when he'd been able to relax, that he'd realized it. Travel normally didn't have much effect on him, but that was taking into account a teen's body, not the body of a child less than half that age—a body not used to travel. Breakfast was quiet, and Ed was only thankful he was already used to traditional Ishbalan foods so nothing bothered him when he tried to eat it. They tended to spice things more than Amestrians did, even breakfast foods.

As they were finishing, Rashad said, "I know you want to get to work, and Zahir and Nasima do, too, but we have certain—traditions which need to be met regarding a newly-returned member of the family who had been away with a caravan. One of those is to spend at least a day re-establishing those bonds of family, which would have weakened at the very least over the time the caravan was away. For young children, like you three, that's even more true, and we're going to have to follow those traditions. One of which is for me to re-introduce you to the town, and especially to the Market."

"If it's family, why does that exclude your brother?" Ed blinked in surprise.

"Because he's the second stage of the re-introduction, which will be tomorrow," Rashad told him in some amusement. "The first day is for immediate family—parents and their children only. Because it's you this is based on because I've been in and out of the city several times over those two years, and you have no immediate family but me, it's me you're spending today with. The same is true of Al and Winry with their new families. Tomorrow, other blood relations and very close family friends can join in."

For a minute, Ed thought about the words, then asked, "So why is the Market so important to you showing me around and us otherwise just spending the day together?"

The Warrior-Priest became highly amused as he replied, "Because that's showing 'others' we're abiding the requirements."

"...You mean you're taking me to the Market to show me off?" the boy asked in amusement, his lips twitching.

"That's a reasonable comparison. Just don't say it in a public place or one where the Priests can hear you. They're very particular about what something means by the words used to describe it, and to them, no, this isn't 'showing you off', it's 'showing others we're reaffirming a bond after an extended time away'. As my son, you would be very aware of those differences, and would act accordingly." The older man paused for a minute before asking, "Is there anything in particular you would actually like to do today, besides just wander or stay here?"

"Huh..." Ed murmured as he thought about the question for a minute. Then, he asked, "Do you have any public libraries, or is it just bookstores?"

"There is one that isn't attached to the Temple, but it's not very large and is largely records of folk stories and things along that line. Some data is kept there which the Priests don't endorse, giving the impression those are also fiction and more about finding hidden meanings rather than actual education. We could stop there if you'd like? We can also stop by the shops I know of which sell some books and scrolls," Rashad agreed. "Do you want to do that this morning, or in the afternoon?"

"Yes to the library and the shops," Ed smiled. "Maybe this afternoon, though, since I'm still tired."

"Fair," the man agreed, then actively showed him around the apartment, which he hadn't done the night before due to how late it had been when they'd left Zahir's. And while Ed called them 'apartments' mentally, he realized the Ishbalans just unanimously called their living spaces 'homes', no matter what form they took, and didn't specify a 'type' of home.

Rashad also went over some of the things Ed would have to know and be able to say or act on in the moment for it to be believable the boy was his son. It didn't take overly long, and Ed was allowed to go lay down for awhile again. Before eating lunch, Rashad quizzed him on the things they'd gone over earlier, and when he was satisfied Ed would be able to manage, they had their meal, then went out. It was a relaxed walk the boy wasn't actually familiar with—he'd always been going somewhere or doing something before—but it gave him time to look around. At the same time, he noticed other parents with children who had been in the caravan (who he recognized) doing the same thing, stopping at shops or just wandering slowly down streets.

Since they had stopped at some of the shops on the way—and Rashad had bought a book for Ed at one of them (Priests got discounts! Who knew?)—Ed was a little more prepared for what he'd see at their 'library' when they finally reached it. The lighting wasn't the greatest, but it was good enough, so even though Ed couldn't read most of the books on the shelves, it didn't stop him from searching through them eagerly. He also ignored Rashad's amused expression as he did, setting aside a few things to look at more closely later. When he'd found everything he wanted, he realized Rashad had been picking them up as he'd set them aside, and with the last one, there were nine in the man's hands.

"Really?" he asked the man in puzzlement.

"It's a library," the older man answered in amusement. "We can take them home with us and read them at our leisure. Come on."

He then led the way to librarian's desk and asked for the list to remove the books, which the other man pulled out and filled in for them before waving them away. From what Ed had been able to tell, all he had done was written down the names of all the books and Rashad's name, and hadn't said anything about returning them.

"How long are we allowed to keep them for?" he asked when they were back outside in the sun.

"Until we finish with them or someone else asks for one specifically," the man answered, still looking a little amused. "Traditionally, that means we'd read them one at a time and return each as we were done with it. If you want to keep one longer to make notes on or read again, we'd go on to the next book while that one got set aside to go back to later. They'll expect two to three weeks for sure for nine books, just for the first read-through. Anything not returned by then is assumed to be one we were more attached to, so may keep for upwards to a few months."

"Oh, okay," Ed agreed, wondering at the sheer laxity of the system. Then again, these people were a lot more relaxed and laid back than his own were, so maybe it was all just part of not being rushed?

They kept going around for awhile, and even stopped to pick up some groceries and treats on their way back home for supper. That time, Ed sat at the table as Rashad cooked the meal, feeling like he was watching Angeal, Sephiroth, Kariya, or Tseng do so. The only thing keeping him from adding Ansha or Tifa to the comparison was the fact that they were women. But, the reminder was painful as well, and he dropped his head onto his crossed arms on the table to cry silently. When were they finally going to get there?

"Is something wrong, Ed?" the older man asked worriedly over his shoulder.

"Sorry..." the boy muttered, then lifted his head to prop it on one hand. "I didn't tell you much about Minerva or the people who followed her. There's a lot to tell, but they're the ones I've spent most of the last nine thousand years with..."

"Minerva sounds like it would be a name from the coast of the inland sea," Rashad commented. "Do you want to talk about it now, or wait awhile?"

For a long minute, Ed had to pause to think about that—it was the same hesitation he always got when in a new dimension of Gaia. He'd never fully gotten over it, and now, these were people whose reactions he knew nothing about. Finally, he lifted his shoulders in a shrug and told the man, "The Minerva I mean isn't from this planet, Rashad. Neither are the people I spent that time with."

For a long time, the man was silent. When he set their meals on the table—including the promised treat from earlier (which the boy took as a shockingly good sign, because announcing things like that without a premise had never gone over well before)—he asked, "Do you feel up to explaining what you mean? I've already seen you prove everything else you've said, so I don't have a reason to think you're lying. But, I also have no idea what this is actually about, what it means, why it's important, or how it relates to why you're crying now, unless it's just loss because you've been reset without them again."

Shaking his head, the boy answered, "It's loss, but they should be arriving here sometime in the future. Entities like Ishbala, Minerva, and Truth don't know how to reference time the way we do, so to them, 'soon' could be in five hundred years."

"Truth?" Rashad asked in confusion.

"...Okay, I guess I should sort of start at the beginning..." Ed answered with a faint sigh, then began telling the man about how he'd ended up on Gaia to start with, how he'd ended up dimension-hopping, and how he'd ended up in his past body. Even glossing over a lot of the details like he'd done with Sarah and Yuri didn't make it easier or all that much shorter to tell—if anything, the details he had to fill in for the man because he hadn't known him until that day in the woods made it longer. Other than asking a few questions, the man just listened quietly until he finished, by which time, they had also finished eating.

After several minutes of silence, the man asked, "So the gist of it is that the entity who sent you to another world in the first place has demanded you return, and because you had such a strong bond with the other world's essence, 'she' agreed to come with you?" When Ed nodded, the man added, "And you know she is going to arrive at some point in the future, but you aren't sure when, and you're sure she and those she brings with her will be allies trying to save the world, not destroy it?" When the boy nodded again, the man commented, "A meteor will do a lot of damage when it lands, especially since it would have to be pretty big to keep people inside it."

"Yeah, normally," Ed agreed. "And some damage can't be avoided completely, but as far as I know, she works to minimize it as much as possible. Like by slowing down before she lands, so the impact isn't as hard and doesn't spread as far. But, because of my dimension shifts, I don't have an active memory of that happening, only that we've sometimes talked about what she would do when others asked. She also tries to aim for places which aren't populated—say, in this area, out in the middle of the desert where Xerxes was."

"And Xerxes is on our border, so chances are, we'll be affected if that's actually where she aims for," Rashad commented thoughtfully.

"She won't—" the boy began.

"Ed..." the older man sighed faintly, and the younger fell silent. The Warrior-Priest went on, "I'm not accusing her of anything. Like you said, some damage is unavoidable, but no matter how much she reduces it, if she lands in Xerxes, we're going to feel some of it. That's just a fact, and one you affirmed." When the boy gave him a worried, wary look, he added, "Knowing that means we can prepare. Just the fact that she would plan to land away from populated areas is already a good thing, but for what she can't protect us from—or what Ishbala can't protect us from, because he knows she's coming—being able to prepare will mean we'll come out of it better."

"...How would you go about telling people, though? Without saying way too much to people who would think it was some fantastical, fake story?" Ed asked slowly.

"Besides sharing this with Priest Ishan, who is more open than most other Priests to unusual things, and both of us working out a way to do that, if you and Zahir's group can release Ishbala before she gets here, he'll tell us," Rashad replied evenly. "And by the way you've been talking, there's a good chance you'll only need a few months at most to work out how to take that barrier down. Unless Minerva arrives before then, we'll have his support, and that will mean everyone will listen or they're fools. Well, at least the Ishbalans will listen. I can't speak for the Amestrians or the Xingese, who are the next most likely groups to be affected by it."

After a long moment of silence, Ed sighed faintly and nodded. "Okay, I'll leave telling people about it to you—or Ishbala, depending on the order of events."

"Are you going to let us meet them?" Rashad asked with an amused smile.

Blinking in surprise, the boy commented, "I have nothing against it, but they're going to look and mostly act like Amestrians or Xingese—or, actually, they're closer to the Japanese, I think—with some quirks. The difference is, once they hear about the situation from me, they'll stop the Führer in his tracks. I think the question is more how accepting the Ishbalans will be of people who look like 'the enemy' to them. And who are openly led by a much-loved and strong woman."

"I suppose I can't argue that," the man agreed. "Who are the Japanese, though?"

"They're people from some islands further east of Xing, who Amestris knows about and sends an Ambassador and a periodic rotation of troops to interact with. We know some basic stats and do a little trade with them, but otherwise don't know a lot," Ed explained in mild amusement. "Some of our soldiers even brought back some of their board games, but I never learned to play the one I saw—shogi is too much like chess."

"I see," the man agreed, then eyed the pile of books from the library and the one they had bought, which had all been set on the end of the counter away from the food. "By the way, can you even read the books you chose from the library? The one I bought for you is in Amestrian, but those..."

"I picked some because they had arrays in them I wanted to examine, not to actually 'read' them—I can read the arrays just fine without having text to explain them," Ed told him with a grin. "A couple, I just liked the texture of the cover, or the images in the book for one of them—it reminded me of a children's book of fables or fairy tales." He paused and eyed the amused man thoughtfully, then said slowly, "There was one man, Kariya, who liked to read to me, even when I looked like an adult to them. I mean, if he sort of took the 'father' role in a particular dimension, he would. To him, that was a way of bonding with someone who's 'family', and there was no age limit to him, so I kind of thought you might not mind reading some of them...to me..."

The older man blinked in surprise, then his gaze softened and he agreed, "If that's something you want, I can do that. Maybe each evening, we can make a habit of reading one of the stories before bed? Because you look like a six-year-old, no one would question it, and it will be a new experience for me. Until I start doing it, I won't know if I like it or if it serves as a method of bonding, and I'm not opposed to trying it."

That made the boy smile faintly and nod. "Yeah. Thanks."

"There's only about an hour left before bedtime now, so did you want to do something else for a bit, or go to bed early?" Rashad asked.

"I can look at the arrays in one of the other books until then," Ed immediately offered. It was true that he wanted to know what those arrays were for, too.

With the man's agreement, he picked one of the books with the named arrays and took it to what was now 'his room' in the apartment. It was small, only barely big enough for a bed, a trunk for storage, a small shelf for things like books, and a window. The window ledge was big enough for him to sit on, so he'd be able to do that during the day, but as it was after dark, he had to read by the lights in the room, which were two small oil lamps sitting on small shelves attached to the wall at the head of the bed. It didn't take him long to settle and start assessing the arrays in the book he'd chosen, quickly working out what they were, what they would do—and worse, what flaws most of them had. Someone using this book would end up with a lot of rebounds.

He was about half-way through when Rashad came in with the rest of the books, putting the bought one on the shelf closer to the window and the library books closer to the door, keeping the book of fairy tales in hand. Ed set aside the book with the arrays, and found Rashad moving it to the top of the trunk—clearly, he expected the boy to at least try to sleep after reading the first story. He then sat on the bed at Ed's hip and began reading out loud, knowing the languages well enough to translate rather adeptly as he read—and just like with Kariya, he drifted into sleep as the man read.

FoWD-HC

The following day was much the same in over-all activities, only that time, Salim, Halimah, Winry, Zahir, Nasima, Al, and two other children and their parents from the caravan joined them. They ended up at Salim and Halimah's for supper, and the next day—and the first meeting of the alchemy group since Ed's arrival—was tentatively planned. (Morning was going to be a trip to the Temple to worship, but it wasn't a 'service', and the rest of the day was going to be the alchemists getting caught up. They would also be expecting Ed.) Otherwise, the focus of the day was still on 'family', and that was the first time Ed also had to use one of the things Rashad had taught him to react to a certain way. That had impressed everyone there, and it made him (both Ed and Rashad, actually) proud.

Morning's planned worship at the Temple saw Rashad lead the way to a specific room for the men and boys, while the women and girls went further down to a different room. In the caravan, worship had been lax at best, though had still happened, so seeing the actual worship they did when they had a city and a designated location for it was mind-boggling.

Other than men with their young sons (or women with young daughters), it was also generally private and included some (to Ed, a lot, though he'd seen worse) bowing. Incense also seemed to be a focal point for it, and small tokens of things like grain (something they called couscous), a couple coins, additional and unburnt incense, or herbs were laid out like offerings at each station, and a Priest presided over it, then moved the previous offering to the wall when the worshiper left. Rashad had to leave Ed there for a bit while he went to do some of his duties as a Warrior-Priest, and the presiding Priest got Ed to get up and sit against the wall by the door after a certain amount of time.

While people-watching was fascinating in the Temple, Ed was more than happy to leave. They had lunch, then Rashad offered to take the children for awhile while Ed and the alchemists worked. Ed had thought for sure Al and Winry would insist on staying with him, but instead, they surprised him by practically demanding they be taken to certain other places. Al wanted to see whoever was their doctor so he could make more healing water to give them, and Winry wanted to go somewhere with things she could fix. Rashad agreed to take them to those places, and they happily left.

"So, what kind of father is my brother turning out to be?" Zahir asked in faint amusement as he sat beside Ed at the table and Nasima began pulling out large scrolls and pages of notes. Salim and Halimah were waiting at the door to let the others in, as they would be arriving shortly.

"Shockingly good," Ed answered in amusement. His expression then turned sad as he added, "It's just sad that his wife and child..."

"It was, and still is a bit," Zahir agreed. "But if that had never happened, he wouldn't have been there for you to meet and to speak for you so you could reach us here. I don't know what the bond between you and Rashad is, but I doubt things would have gone so well for you without him."

"...That's possible," the boy agreed. "And to be fair, I don't know why he and I have a bond like that. My only past experience with him was when he went insane and began killing people, or trying to, including me—since I'm sure he told you this isn't my first try." Zahir inclined his head at the words, so Ed went on, "Now, the things which led to him going that route probably won't happen, so he can stay the way he is now. And that's good."

"I agree with you there," Zahir chuckled.

Others started arriving then, and Ed watched them trickle in to sit at the table or on the counters. The majority were men, but there were other women besides Nasima and Halimah—three of them for a total of five women. Otherwise, the rest of the total of fifteen were men, and Ed made the new total sixteen. No one said anything until everyone was there, most of them just peering at Ed curiously. A few were more suspicious than curious, and Ed could think of at least three reasons for why, so ignored the looks until they were ready.

"Okay, we're all here now," Zahir said as Salim and Halimah found places. "This is Edward, who has been going by Jed around town so the Amestrians don't know he's here. He's also the young alchemist Rashad told us about."

"How does he look like one of our children?" one man asked sharply.

"I know a set of arrays that changes a person's appearance until the change is removed or changed by re-activating the same arrays," Ed answered flatly. "I can show you if you want? It should only take about half an hour to draw them all out so you can see all the instructions." Everyone blinked and stared at him at the pronouncement.

"A sample of your knowledge and skill is a good thing to have before we start work on the serious issue—the wall you sent word of," one of the women put in gently, and several of the men nodded agreement. "It gives us a better idea of your skill level so we know what we're working with."

"Sure," Ed agreed. "Aunt Nasima?" he asked with a grin, and she chuckled as she passed him some blank sheets and charcoal. He set to work right away, and the others waited quietly. Starting with the main array, he drew that one larger on one sheet, then put two each of the sub-arrays on each successive page; each page he finished got passed around for the group to examine and discuss quietly. Finally, a little over half an hour later, he'd finished the last one and it was making the rounds.

"How did you do that so quickly?" Salim asked curiously in fascination. "These aren't simplistic arrays—they're very, very complicated. Usually, each one would take half an hour to finalize, but you just did around twenty in that same half-hour."

"That's what familiarity does to a person," Ed answered dryly. "And I've been able to memorize a whole lot of arrays and sub-arrays and entire systems of data in that format. Memorizing set codes doesn't take nearly as much as memorizing the processes of changing those set codes. The 'Change' application of these arrays doesn't usually need to be changed to do what it was intended to do—give people different hair and eye colors, and adjusting skin tone to some degree. And, because this is using an array system, the amount of data in each array is actually less than you'd find in the single arrays most Amestrians use."

"You're obviously quite good at this," one man allowed gruffly. "I was skeptical when I saw a six-year-old, but no child could have done this with such precision unless they knew what they were doing. We should get started on what needs to be done to take down the wall blocking Ishbala from us."

"That's what we're here for," Ed agreed. "I have a few preliminary ideas of how to take it down, but for this task in particular, those ideas are going to have to be made into a completely new array which sixteen people or less will be able to activate. We make a big enough hole for Ishbala and he'll be able to shatter the rest himself." He turned back to the stack of papers Nasima had passed him and began drawing again. "I had learned the arrays for an effect—I'm going to nominally call them 'spells' because it's easier—which was intended to remove other effects, including shields and other defenses. 'Dispel' is our best starting point."

"Couldn't it just take down the wall?" someone asked in confusion.

"The way it is now, no," Ed replied, still working. "It's not strong enough to do so. And this alchemic wall was made with a different type of alchemy from either alkahestry or alchemic alkahestry on steroids. The latter is what I use. And I found already that trying to mix straight alchemy into alchemic alkahestry effectively creates a conflict of interests. We have to overcome that difficulty to take down the wall. That's why I need your help to work out the details of how to work the array to do what we need it to." He then passed out the base array for Dispel, and two other sheets with two arrays each. "Other than these arrays, the ones for Change actually also apply here, so all but one of those pages forms the rest of the array system for Dispel."

After studying the array system and clarifying some points, the group set to work picking apart the arrays. Not for the first time, Ed wished Genesis and/or Ria was there to help, though even with them working together, it still would have taken time to create a new array system to use. The group was turning out to be helpful and thoughtful, though, so he was grateful—that would make things easier.