Wow~! Taking a cue from my Al nightmares, neh? *shudder* Warm blood. @_@

That was...descriptive. A really dark one this time, but variety is the spice oflife.

You did such a wonderful job at using descriptive imagery in theme 82. It was a truly unsettling read, but not all fiction can be heart-warming. I love your writing style; you certainly have a way with painting images with words. I'm looking forward to theme 83.

W0ah. That scared me there in the beginning, but then I realized it was just a nightmare Winry was having...whew! Haveeee mercyyyy....lol. Wonderful theme, haha, once again. I really love it! Awesome. Can't wait for the next theme!! ^^

You're simply amazing, I hope you know that,

[well you probably do since it was mentioned, quite a few times actually...well maybe more then a few!]

These little stories you create is just GREAT, just the content and composition in which you have put through these magnificient pieces! The way you simply paint a picture in the readers head is just phenomenol. I'm looking forward to reading every update!

*shivers* Nightmares can really get to you sometimes. It was an unpleasant read, but worth reading, nontheless. Please keep up the good work!

This... has got to be one of the greatest fan-fitions I've ever read...

I salute you.

sniffle... Poor Winry... and Ed... This one definitely left an impression. I'm glad you're continuing to write! Keep it up

Sorry i haven't comemnted on your works recently. But i read all the new ones and all i have to say is 3 simple words:
Oh.

My.

Gawd.



They were so wonderful, you truely have a talent! I love it how every single one is so like eachother but so different in story and description. You blew me away with Themes 78,81,and 82. They were so wonderful and descriptive, they make you feel like you were there. They were very sad but i salute your greatness. I love your stories so much best things i ever read actually <3 Continue what your doing please, you have dedicated followers. Expect somthing in the future when you finish all your themes.

Thanks for the read <3

These. Fics. PWN. I wish I could write that good...

Ok, so I went back and read every one of them.

The first time I posted I simply posted for theme 1, and it took me a couple days.. Hours of time to read all of this.

They are magnificient. After reading theme 82 and realizing that it would all be ending soon it made me quite sad. However, there may be more to come.

So, I'm going to tell you that your qriting is great, in all styles that you have shown here. (3-4 different styles aye.)

I've read a lot of fan-fictions, short, long, thick, deep. Yours simply show that you don't need to have long, thick, and deep fan-fictions to have a true meaning. Yours are short and subtle, that show true emotion, as if there were no true other way. However, there are, you completely change each theme. Some seemed as repeats to the last. 67, 69, and 71 I believe, they all seemed to have the same meaning, the same presence/aura. You know, the same idea, as if all of them different parts of a longer and more thick fan-fiction but removed and placed as a theme.

I love your work. Keep at it.

..//Perry

*

Theme 83 – With three years’ eyes

“A story?” Ed asked, giving Elysia Hughes a look of utmost disbelief. After years of study in the depths of alchemical tomes, wading through words whose meanings had to be sifted from the detritus of a thousand years…he was being asked to read a bedtime story to a three-year-old girl?

The book was pink. Its cover art involved a unicorn and a hyperthyroid-afflicted-looking princess. It would take a deadly weapon to get him to open it, let alone read it aloud.

“Please?” mewed the deadly weapon herself, clambering up to park her cuddly little toddler bum in his lap.

Ed knew in that moment that his battle had been lost before it began.

Heaving a defeated sigh, he opened the book and began to read.

“’Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess with hair like golden—‘”

“A toy doctor.”

“What?”

Startled by the interruption, Ed looked down into limpid, adorable, totally demanding eyes. Elysia’s chin was jutting stubbornly.

“A beautiful toy doctor,” she repeated, impatiently. “The most beautifullest one ever.”

Ed winced. There was no denying that face.

“Whatever,” he gave in, bemused but obedient. “‘A beautiful…toy doctor, with hair like golden wheat and eyes like a summer sky, beloved by all her subjects.’” What miserable tripe, he silently grumbled to himself. “‘Tragically, it was foretold by the royal seer that a dragon would carry her off on her sixteenth birthday.’”

“How old is Winry?” Elysia asked suddenly.

“Almost sixteen,” Edward said, wondering where this had come from.

Elysia looked thoughtful. “That’s really old. How old are you?”

“We’re the same age,” Ed said, wondering when they would return to stupid sugarfluff and hoping the distraction would last. But Elysia’s face cleared.

“Okay,” she said, evidently satisfied. “Read more.”

Completely confused by now, Ed obeyed. “’The fated eve arrived, and all the knights of the land assembled to defend their beloved prin—‘“

“Toy doctor!” Elysia protested.

“Uh…‘their beloved toy doctor. But the only one she cared for was the prince of—‘”

“Alchemist.”

“…..what?”

Elysia gave him a look as if he was a hopeless idiot. “I want the story to be about an alchemist. Like my most favorite brothers.”

That explained that. “But, the toy doctor…?”

“My sister is a toy doctor,” Elysia cried, exasperated.

“But…you don’t have a sister!” Ed protested.

A clank of metal and a chuckle announced Al’s presence behind them.

“She means Winry, Brother,” Al explained, amusement dancing in his eyes…

Everything suddenly clicked.

“HEY!” Ed howled, red-faced. “I am not playing Prince Charming to that grouchy, violent, pain-in-the-ass little tomboy—”

Elysia pouted and slid off his lap, pulling her book out of his hands. “You’re too noisy, and you don’t know anything. Mommy reads better’n you.”

And with that, she toddled out of the room.

The brothers stared after her. Then Al coughed tactfully.

“Amazing what these three-year-olds will pick up on, isn’t it?”

“Oh, shut up,” Ed growled, and stormed away.

Al watched him go, and smiled inside.

*

...and Chi smiled inwardly too. Children are perceptive to these things, but you made sure it was still perfectly innocent. Bravo

Never would have thought of that one. That one is definitely unique fro mthe other 82.

I am so glad to see that you updated Tobu. Number 83 was truly sweet and I love your description of Elysia's book. Children really are more perceptive than some adults are. I look forward to reading your next short fic.

wow...this is absolutely beautiful writing. i haven't finished reading all of them yet, but i can tell you're a great author already.

I'm not sure i'm supposed to do this... but..


BUMP FOR PLEASURE

Sorry I haven't read any of these for a while, a long while.

82 was... interesting. Aside from the graphic descriptions, I love the role reversal, how it's Winry saying that she'd make sure no harm would come to Ed, not the other way around like normal.

83 was really cute. I can totally picutre Elysia making Ed tell that story! Kepp up the great work!

Wow I was really impressed by your latest theme! It was cute and funny. I can never get tired of Ed in denial. I can't wait for your next update. Keep up the awesome work.

Theme 83 = cute. i absolutely love it. :]

wow... definitely the best thing written...ever... im not going to say which ones my favourite or whatever, cos they're all great. this is the only fic i always check up on!
nearly at 100! w00t!

*

Theme 84 – Things Left Undone

There was sunlight draped all over the room when she went to wake Edward: pooling on the floor, puddled among the folds of the blanket where he’d kicked it to the foot of the bed as he slept, glinting off his automail, nestled in his hair. Framed in the wash of light from the window, the bed and the boy recumbent on it looked like something out of a classical painting, blankets trailing to the floor. About to shout him awake as usual, Winry stopped as if struck still, her hand pressed to the doorframe, arrested by the unexpected beauty of the moment.

When he shifted in his sleep, sighing faintly, the movement—instead of breaking the spell—only tilted his face toward her and into a sunbeam that suddenly gilded his eyelashes and brows, and limned his skin with a soft glow. A liquid trill of birdsong rolled in at the window, and Winry’s heartbeat quickened, as she wondered why she’d never noticed he—

The breathless moment suddenly shattered into a fit of helpless, smothered giggles, as Winry realized that for a second there she’d been comparing Edward—sprawly, snore-inclined Edward, who kicked in his sleep and mumbled nonsense and dangled his limbs over the edge of the bed and drooled—to an illustration of a sleeping princess in a book of hers. Worse yet, honestly, to be compared to a princess in the first place! If he’d been awake and aware of the thought, he would have tried to kick her in the shins for it.

Once her laughter had faded a bit, Winry walked to the side of the bed and gazed down at her friend’s sleeping face. Up close, she had to admit, Edward was neither ethereal nor particularly feminine-looking. The square, stubborn jaw and slightly overlarge nose somewhat gave the game away. It had been a trick of light and shadow, she supposed; or just all that hair framing his face and catching the sun’s rays. He left it loose for sleep, and it was spread across the pillow in soft blonde waves.

Hesitantly, Winry reached for his shoulder to shake him awake, then paused, dropping her fingers to rest lightly on that soft hair instead. She wasn’t used to seeing it loose. Edward always tied it back with something. She’d never even realized quite how long it had gotten. Lightly, she combed her fingers through a lock, careful not to snag it on the rough callus of her fingers.

It made him look…different, left undone like that, she realized. Not feminine, but younger, softer, more innocent.

Maybe that was why he always tied it back, she thought, dryly. If anyone had a complex about appearing tough, it was Edward.

Shaking her head ruefully, Winry disengaged her fingers from Ed’s hair and set about nudging him awake. She would not—absolutely not!—tell him any of the things she’d thought on seeing his hair undone. He’d never let her see it loose again, if she did.

And that, she reflected as Ed began to frown and grumble himself awake, would be a real tragedy.

*

Aww haha that one was sweet Tobu, poor Ed being compared to a princess. It was a good situation to tackle, adorable without being too sickly.

Aww! Winry's playing with Ed's hair... It's awesome how something so innocent as waking up Ed can turn into something so profound.

*

Theme 85 – Parents

The doorbell rang, a musical double-note, and Sara Rockbell breathed a sigh of relief as her three-month-old daughter’s howls faded for the moment. Winry had been refusing to sleep normal hours since the move, and walking her around the house until she quieted was getting old.

Hurrying across the kitchen, Sara threw open the door to a blast of December air.

“Thanks for the distraction,” she said breathlessly, pushing her wavy brown hair out of her face and doing her best to smile warmly. “Winry loves the doorbell, I’d ring it all day if it wouldn’t be just as…”

Her voice trailed off, as she realized that her visitor was for once not another crotchety farmer coming to call on their prodigal local boy and meet his new wife and baby, but a young woman about her own age, with soft green eyes and long hair dusted with snow, wrapped in an enormous men’s overcoat.

Winry waved a damp fist at the newcomer and whimpered faintly. The woman smiled, offering a finger to her; Winry clamped her little hand around it and promptly tried to put it in her mouth.

“She’s got a good grip,” the woman said approvingly, straightening up to smile at her new neighbor. “I’m Trisha Elric, from down the road. You must be Sara. I’ve heard a lot about you…”

Sara flushed. “People keep telling me that.”

“Urey’s been bragging you up for years,” Trisha assured her.

“Typical Urey,” Sara said, rolling her eyes fondly. “Listen, it’s freezing out here. Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?”

Trisha’s face brightened, and she followed her inside with more familiarity than Sara felt yet in her husband’s childhood home, shrugging off the outsized overcoat. As the thick folds of fabric came off, Sara saw the silhouette underneath and stopped in her tracks, her mouth forming a delighted ‘o’.

She had a sister here after all.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said, smiling down at the heavy swell of her new neighbor’s stomach. “Just a few weeks to go…unless that’s twins.”

Trisha laughed and shook her head. “No, thank goodness. Just one, for now.”

“Believe me, one is more than enough to start out with. You hear that?” she added to her daughter. “You’re going to have a friend to play with!” And I’ll have one, too, she thought gratefully.

Playfully, Sara held out Winry to let her little hands rest on Trisha’s stomach. “Say hello, Winry,” she instructed. Trisha giggled, charmed at the baby’s tiny fingers…

“Umph!” she exclaimed suddenly, her eyes widening. “Hey!”

“What?” Sara asked, startled. “Are you alright?”

“He’s got a wicked kick,” Trisha explained ruefully, patting her stomach. “It’s hard to sleep, sometimes. I suppose that was a hello?”

Sara chuckled. “How polite of him…or her,” she corrected herself, gathering her daughter back into her arms.

“Now, don’t you go kicking back someday, young lady,” she warned Winry fondly. “I think this should be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

*

In a moment, I'll stop making a squee sort of sound. Gosh, not even born and their bonding, very unique. Thanks for updating again so very soon.

Aww that was so cute! I loved it. It was unique and well written. Thank you so much for uppdating. Keep up the good work.

*

Theme 86 – Unconscious

There may have been a time when Edward liked dreaming, but it’s long past. He has the sense to realize that an addiction to sleeping pills would be neither healthy nor a guarantee against it, but if there was a harmless drug he could swallow to smooth every night out into blissful blank nothingness from the moment his eyes closed until the moment they opened, he would take it nightly without a second thought.

Like any hatred which really boils down to a fear, he makes excuses to himself. Dreams are a waste of time, he insists to his unconscious as he lies uneasily down for the night. The theory behind sleeping is to rest, isn’t it? Then what’s the point, if the minute you drift off, you’re suddenly standing in a circus tent in the middle of Yolk Island, trying to build a go cart with your scary ex-alchemy master?

Logic doesn’t work on the unconscious, though, particularly when it’s built on lies. Transmuting a toy with Izumi is not the kind of dream that fostered Ed’s hate. His vivid imagination has far more dank and fertile grounds of memory to sow seeds in, and they come up in a jungle of screaming dead faces and looming golden doors, gasping jaws and trembling bloody exposed ribs with a slender arm beckoning above them, his mother’s face and his brother’s disintegrating body swimming through the dream-ethers to beg him to try again, or to never have tried at all.

Those dreams have been familiar fare since he was eleven, making the sensation of lunging up out of sleep with the sheets tangled sweaty around him nearly as familiar as the feeling of a normal drifting into wakefulness. It’s only more recently that new flowers have started blooming in his dream-jungle.

The other night, for example, when he found himself running in the familiar black void, crying out for someone—and a voice began to cry back, the darkness peeling away until suddenly warm arms wrapped round his waist with a press of yielding heat against his back and a whisper over his shoulder, I’m here…

Or, hideously embarrassing, sitting in the old wooden chair in the Rockbells’ workroom with Winry kneeling next to him, telling him insistently that he had to take his clothes off so that she could fix his automail; himself arguing angrily that he’d never had to take them all off before and he damn well wasn’t doing it in front of her, if she’d developed a sudden thing for stripping she could do it herself—and then in the sudden blindsiding way of dreams she’d laughed and said, “Fine,” and he’d blinked and then she…

Dreams, Edward knows from something he’d once read, are your mind’s unconscious way of telling you things you haven’t fully figured out on your own. He finds himself not wanting to think too hard about what they are telling him now.

*

A special note of thanks to Mitch Hedberg, whose comedy routine on dreams was the inspiration for part of this theme.

Full of angst and yet full of love, I bow to greatness *bowing*

Awwwwwwww... These are lovely and cute!

I read all these 86 themes at once! (Well, I was playing around with screwdriver and hammer around theme 30...)

You're wonderful author and I think I'll worship you now. *worships*

Themes 84-86
*B-E-A-U-TIFUL!!
'nuff said. :]

Please update soon! I love your work!

The first one was so cute.
Actually, they are all very cute.
I love Edwin Fanfiction.
Your stories are sweet, and no short of beautiful!
You are a very descriptive writer!

I haven't finished reading them, but I love them so far.
Which would you say is the most romantic
(My Screwed Keyboard Won't make question marks )

Update soon!
Another thing, about 84...
I always noticed Ed's nose was pretty damn big, especially as he gets older.
This may seem weird, but I'm glad someone pointed it out.
I'm not sure why... Feh. -Shrugs-

You are an absolutely *amazing* writer. I read straight through your entire thread and got an account on here just to let you know that you rock as an author. Seriously. Keep it up!

*

Theme 87 – Change

Ed’s not one for domesticity, but he promised to help with dinner today and all that teasing from Al about broken promises is starting to itch. So he’s making pasta, because it’s easy. He hates spaghetti, long and clammy and slithery, but he can deal with its various cousins, and tonight’s fare is tiny bowties.

The Rockbells’ gas stove is a new invention, and the blue flame fascinates him on a little-boy level, so he turns it as high as it’ll go under the heavy pot of water. He’s bored, of course, because easy cooking is never particularly interesting, but the flickering ring of fire is something to watch, at least. He’s just about to lose interest in it, too, when he notices the little bubbles forming all over the inside curve of the pot.

Curiously, he scrapes the tip of the stirring spoon through them, making a trail of bare black iron, then another. Smiling, he writes his name in the bubbles, then Al’s, then Winry’s. He’s got nothing better to do at the moment, so he settles down watching, to see how long it takes for the new-forming bubbles to encroach on the space.

With the gas flame roaring against the bottom of the pot, it doesn’t take long for the bubbles to multiply and swell. Formulas for heat conduction and maps of water molecules humming in his head, Ed watches fascinated as they reach fisheye size, nudging and clamoring and crowding each other around until they begin to rush up the side of the pot in streaks, then in droves. The surface quivers like an earthquake beginning, shakes and rolls and starts to froth up into a real rollicking boil…

It’s strangely fascinating, like major alchemy in progress, like witnessing some grand natural phenomena, a solar eclipse maybe; he feels almost privileged to be watching, caught up in a moment of childlike wonder.

Coming into the kitchen to check on his progress, Winry finds him hovering over the pot of water like a cat motionlessly stalking a fishbowl, and laughs.

“A watched pot never boils, you know,” she points out, nudging him as she walks past.

He smirks, pointing to the hissing water. “It does when I’m watching.”

Looking at him, with a rare sunny infectious grin beaming all over his face, his cheeks flushed from the steam and strands of buttery-gold hair coming loose from his ponytail to trail down his neck, she can understand the pot’s motivation.

*

the last one was cute^^ you showed edward's fascination for that brief moment in an amazing way^^ and the last line was the best conclusion possible here XDDD

once again amazing work, I can't wait when you finish them (although I don't want you to as it'll mean you won't write again ;_;)

Aww. XD That last one was cute. Edward is (easily amused in a scientific way) so very paitent. :X

I also really liked your previous ones as well (the ones I haven't read until just a few minutes ago).
I think 83 was one of my favorites.

It's so depressing to think that this is going to end soon. :[
But that just makes these upcoming ones more fascinating. >D

i don't think i get it..
but 0hk. i'll act like i get it. xD
simply clean, good. ;]

The last one seemed like a fic about Ed...and you added a comment about Winry to make it Ed/Win. I'm not saying it was a bad fic, not at all, but it seemed like you had to add something to make it Ed/Win.

*

Theme 88 – Point of View

He wasn't really what you'd call handsome and she knew it full well. They say it’s all in your point of view, beauty in the eye of the beholder and all that, and your typical beholder would certainly give him a second look…but on that second glance, simple facts inevitably became apparent.

His face was too angular, sharp-featured, its range of expressions elastic and often bordering on comical; and while he was slowly growing into that prow of a nose, the prow of a nose was also—stubbornly—slowly growing. The brilliant hazel-gold of his eyes was remarkable, but a little unsettling; his mouth, though expressive, was a bit too wide for classical beauty, and always hanging open at one thing or another, in sleep or boredom or surprise.

He was gradually getting taller, and his build was an appealing one, lithe and long-legged and muscular, just starting to expand into broad adult shoulders and hands; but he was skinny from years of eating for two; and the weight of his automail had twisted his growing young body, deforming his pectoral and the muscles of his thigh, putting a slight permanent tilt on his hips, spreading long ragged pink stretch marks across his skin where the securing bolts pulled.

Striking, yes--his wasn't a face you'd easily forget--but handsome, no.

And yet. The eye of one particular beholder knew every line of that angular face, and had watched him wrinkle that nose at milk and chores when it was a childish snub; she'd seen tears gather unshed in those eyes and knew by heart the smiles tucked into the corners of that mouth. She understood what he'd sacrificed for his brother, and why; she'd driven in those bolts, and seen the fiery intensity and determination that burned under every inch of scarred skin.

Was it any wonder that, to her, he was beautiful?

*

Aww. Edo-kun is beautiful for me too.

Beautiful work of art, as always.

Edward is definitely striking. (you can't forget the antenna) XDD

Though I loved how you mentioned Winry's thoughts of how Ed looks with "Point of View".
and at school, we were just talking about what "beauty" was and how it differed from person to person. <3

*

Theme 89 – Parting gift

15 Jun 14 – Goddammit he’s done it again. Had the nerve to call me up and ask me to haul my stuff all the way out to Central to fix my poor arm. Yes, my arm. I refuse to call it his anymore, all he does is smash it to bits.
…I hope he’s okay.

17 Jun 14 – What the crap did he do to my arm?! Dug it apart down to the frame and can’t find anything broken, except for crack in casing. Starting to suspect saline damage, from salt deposits on internal workings. When’s he been to the ocean lately?

Asked Al about ocean, said they got sent to coast to investigate groundwater contamination. Casing cracked in fall down rockslide, got full of seawater, STUPID IDIOT! Could have been killed.
Will have to replace most of damaged parts on rush order. Am definitely charging extra. Might squeeze some sense out of him.

19 Jun 14 – That Idiot trying to bribe me again. Thought he was done with that when we were twelve. Bought me 1 pair blue agate earrings, told me they match my eyes. Suspect he was coached by Al, as immediately ruined effect by adding he would kick me if got more holes punched for them. Am tempted to do it just to spite him.

20 Jun 14 – Dropped new earring down sink drain by accident. Don’t care. Who wants stupid earrings anyway?
Ed’s automail almost fixed. Time to go home soon.

He found out about the earring. Transmuted a hole in the pipe and got it out. Earring was filthy so he cleaned it too.
Not sure what to say.

21 Jun 14 – Heading home. Ed and Al saw me off at train station. Got Ed to pay out the nose for repairs, so Granny should be pleased. He’s got enough research funds, it’s not unfair of us…
He hugged me goodbye. Just up and grabbed me, the dumbass. About died of surprise. Don’t know what was in his coffee this morning but it needs to be made illegal.
First time he’s hugged me since we were kids.
It felt…warm.
Train is too loud to think right now. Will figure this out later. Time for a hard-earned nap.

*

Been reading these. They rock greatly.

>< Aaw. So cute.

I'm glad to see you finaly updated! I really enjoyed theme 89. It was unique since it was in a diary format. Keep up the good work!

Aww haha poor 'ole Winry, think I'd be confused if Ed acted like that too.

wonderful. loved them both. :]

Why the sudden stop love? O.o

Don't remember reading #87, so I'm glad I found it. "Formulas for heat conduction and molecules of water molecules humming in his head", that was freaking brilliant. You put me to shame. *Hangs head* Just so Ed doesn't ruin Winry's pot by burning the water away (I did that when I was 7), or she'll burn his little head with a wrench. LOL