The Water Alchemist

Growing Pains

Welcome back to The Water Alchemist. I don't own any of the intellectual property of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Chapter Forty-Three

Growing Pains

***

"This stupid library barely has anything on alkahestry," Ed sighed, hitting his forehead into the table they had covered top to bottom with volumes of redundantly useless information. "And we still haven't found that girl either."

"It's quite frustrating," Al agreed with a sigh.

Ed sat up and leaned back on the heels of his seat, staring at the exposed beams of the tall ceiling. He was having a bad case of déjà vu, this whole ordeal reminding him of the last time they had holed themselves up in a library searching after information. It felt like a lifetime had passed since they had learned the gruesome truth about the Philosopher's Stone— they had kept something from Marina then too, and Ed frowned thinking about it. They needed better results than they had then. They pulled every book that had any connection to Xing, at the slim chance they were coded or would mention alkahestry in passing. They had quite the variety, from cookbooks to travel guides. None of them had been significant in aiding their research, though.

He rocked forward, resting his hand in his chin, examining the remaining stack in front of him. He pulled a book from the top of the stack and handed it to Al before grabbing the one beneath it for himself. He flipped the page open and noticed at the bottom of the title page was a seal. He probably wouldn't have paid it much heed had it not been for the split second the seal reminded him of the transmutation circle on Marina. He stopped to examine the circle. It shared in the sun and moon motif, but it lacked the diamonds or multiple symbols for the word 'God'. It was simpler than that, a double circle with a strange shape inside it, between the sun and moon. The constellation looked like a distorted trapezoid with an 'S' sticking out from it, and below that, there was a single word— Leo. Ed closed the book, re-examining the title a moment. The book was called 'The Vastness of the Universe: An Exploration. Volume 7.' A line down was the author's name. Mira Kim. Ed furrowed his brows. He turned to the books he had already looked through, curiously finding another book by the same author, but this time it was a book about wildlife, called 'Creatures of the Universe. Volume 6.' Ed pulled it from the stack, and Al looked up at him briefly as Ed opened the title page. There was a similar stamp, but the shape in the circle and the word below it were completely different. It looked like an elongated, upside-down 'Y', and the word Cancer was below it. Ed turned to Al.

"Al, how much do you know about constellations?" he asked his brother.

"Um, not much," Al said, scratching his helmet.

"Damnit, me either," Ed said, looking through the rest of their stack for more books that shared the author. They hadn't picked out any more books by that author other than what he had in his arms.

"Well, we are in a library," Al pointed out. Ed blinked a moment and turned in his chair, looking over the expanse of shelves at their disposal. He stood quickly and wandered to where he thought he'd find some information on the stars, and Al followed. "What are you onto?"

"Take a look," Ed said, handing over the two books to Al. Al flipped through them, seeming a bit lost.

"I already read this one. It was just about exotic wildlife. There was only one chapter on Xing, but it didn't even cover alchemy," Al said as Ed stopped in front of a shelf, trailing his hand along the spines of the books before he plucked a volume from the stack.