A Melody at Midnight

Part II

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." Oscar Wilde

"The balance is so difficult to get right, as with it having too many iron atoms would cause the mechanism to get heavy..."

"Yeah, so of course the motor and exhaust cannot be too dense, and you have to compensate the wires and joints into it!"

"I mean, I was thinking of designing your latest automail from bronze extracts, noting on how durable they can be, but an alloy with nickel is always the best thing," Winry rambled, so caught-up in our combined interest in machinery, since it did overlap with alchemy in many ways. "Nickel is flexible as well as light; see, so it could in essence make you much taller by putting less pressure on your body. It's really challenging to temper with though."

"After all this time, being an engineer is like being an alchemist, only more specific to metallic and electric bonding, while we have the laws to follow..." I gripped my hand, noticing for the first time how the initial impulse rushed down from my skin into an electrical signal in the wire to trigger the motor and move my fingers to a high degree of proficiency. The only difference from a real arm was...you could not feel anything with automail, unless it deliberately activated pain receptors in my shoulder. No warmth. No nothing...Those damn laws.

"In order to gain something, something of equal value must be lost. Equivalent Exchange. Human transmutation is a no, no. Even for all your good intentions, you and that idiotic brother had to break the taboo. Now you are still idiots. Correct?" Winry questioned as a thought struck her head, so she leaned forward to inspect the elbow of my automail, a smile creeping along her face. This was fine, so long as it meant that I could finally be taller than her. The embarrassment humiliated me...

"Yup, you nailed it. I should hand this over to you," I mentioned as I tossed my silver apparatus over to her, the hexagram of the Führer kindly acting as our leash, constantly reminding us how we were pawns of the military and how he would win any petty games we decided to play. The games that Truth constantly mocked me for in his radiating, white void.

"It is not only the theory we have to crack, yet the philosophy too. Even though I could transmute lead into gold as you could temper iron into steel, what about the alchemist? We are not omnipotent catalysts and therefore we have to compromise the laws of nature with the laws of alchemy. Every object essentially has a soul inside of it, acting as the fifth element, and we use the energy from that soul to catalyze these transmutations from tectonic energy in the earth to our summoning circles, or matrix. We call this "quintessence", using the most powerful element of them all to do so. Only these are more like bonds than a conscious being, which is where Al and I made our mistake. There's no real equivalent exchange for a living soul, aware and equally alive.

"That is when Truth comes in; fixating you in place to master the laws of alchemy, and it likes irony. Bittersweet irony. So, this is how I ended up with these beauties, which in turn helped to flourish your obsession. A win-win situation for us all," it was funny how I was lecturing a practical surgeon like Winry. All people saw in alchemy was a neat trick to fix a broken bike, but it had so much depth and clarity to beguile my enigmatic mind. I simply cannot understand all of it, despite the textbooks I absorbed as a kid.

It would always possess a serene magic to it that a mere human like myself could not hope to dabble into. Therefore, it frustrated the hell out of me but I kept returning for more as in a love-hate relationship. Winry was right...I am a moron, completely and utterly. I have always been a dreamer, and no fantasy could come crashing down to destroy our goals. They were a purpose to live.

As Winry was about to make a reply, the fumbling waiter quivered next to us, his arms a-flutter as he tried his best to disguise his panic behind his back. "Sir, Ma'am, I'm so sorry, but there has been an extra delay on your food due to a lack of supplies which we did not foresee before. Please accept our humble apologies; we ensure your meals will arrive before you in approximately half an hour."