ironysoul | (no subject)

Adjusting to life in Xing wasn't the most difficult thing Al had ever done. But it wasn't the easiest, either. There had been a very definite "settling in" period. Adjusting to a new culture, a new country. Without money. That had been exciting. But now, he had the backing of two major clans. The Emperor himself. And he was currently the only alchemist in Xing.

At first he hadn't liked it. He wanted to learn Alkahestry, and all the other alkahests wanted to learn was Alchemy. But now that they were settled, he'd found a good balance. Learning and teaching... in fact, he was something of a local celebrity.

But they'd worked it out now. And he really loved Xing. He loved being important, but just another person. Not an Elric. No relation to the Fullmetal Alchemist.

He was browsing in the marketplace, carefully considering fresh fruit and vegetables. They ate in the inn, mostly, but Chimera ate. A lot. And if Al didn't do the shopping, the stuff they ate wasn't very good for them. So here he was, hunting for healthy chimera snacks. And that was when the ruckus began.

Al looked up, shielding his eyes against the desert sun, and squinted at the next stall over. There was a lot of yelling in Xingese, high and fast-paced, and a tiny woman, even shorter than Al, seemed to be going wild.

Threaded | Flat

Edmund was utterly bewildered. One moment he had been on that rickety train, a loud screeching in his ears like the most awful nails on a chalkboard, and the next moment he was in the bright sun of a desert market, being wailed on by a woman with a very scratchy broom, and he hadn't the faintest idea what she was saying and was just covering his head with his hands and protesting in English and Narnian and Calormene and every bits of whatever language he'd learned before, even if none of them were anything like what the shopkeeper was berating him with. Latin? Greek? Scraps of German? None of them seemed right.

The nineteen-year-old was probably a strange sight amongst the market, his classically British features highlighted by pale freckled skin, crimson lips, and wide dark eyes framed in a wild thatch of curls. Oxford had certainly not contributed to any sort of taming of said curls, when plenty of co-eds (and dormmates for that matter) delighted to set them unruly with wayward fingers run through them. Edmund might huff and puff but at the end of the day, he was helpless under a good head rub.

There was a flash of golden hair across the way, but Edmund was too busy throwing evasive hands in front of his face to properly make out the features of the fair-faced youth squinting at him. "I'm telling you, I wasn't stealing!" he tried in English once more, a good proper British accent.