Where most people saw only a narrow, muddy street, Ed Wolf saw an intricate mesh of gears and cogs, writhing and twisting, spinning and fluidly rearranging, stretching across his vision and beyond to the edges of the Earth and even to the edges of the cosmos. Every snowflake that fell and every gust of wind that whistled by set some of them into whirling motion, and these few set their neighbors spinning, and their neighbors' neighbors, and thence mapped each and every cause to a billion subtle effects spanning the breadth of the universe. The learned called these interactions Chaos Theory. He called it his sixth sense.
If he really focused, he could imagine a certain cog moving and observe how it would influence the others. Sometimes he'd lay abed all night, awake, moving this cog and that to decide what he should say to a certain girl, or how to avoid another beating. His sense wasn't perfect, though. Nowhere near so. Particularly when he tried "seeing" hours or even days before the occurrence of whatever event was entertaining his apprehension. There was just so much left in the cards at that point, so many interlocking possibilities and what-ifs, such long and wide chains of gears, that it was simply too much for a human mind to keep track of. He was gifted with a complete understanding of the present, and cursed with the toil of divining the future from it.
The sky was the same ashen gray as the snowy ground, and the rest of the visual world bled a ruddy red from the brick walls of Pittsburgh. It was the sort of day Ed would be content to spend without stepping foot outside his home, but the stars had insisted it was important that he did. Direly so. His parka kept out the worst of the deep winter's chill, but he still shuddered now and then when some tendril of cold snaked its taunting way to his skin.
He came to the mouth of an even narrower alley and briefly looked around before entering. Nervousness began to inch into his chest as he continued. He knew there would be at least some disagreement to conquer, and perhaps a lot of it. Perhaps too much. And in that case, the stars did not show a kind future.
When he gazed upon the stars, they showed him things that the gears and cogs never could. Rather than showing all of the possibilities that might be, the stars showed the possibilities that needed to become reality. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they were nothing more than pretty lights in the heavens, but on the other few occasions they leapt and cavorted in a cosmic dance to imprint upon the blackened sky their exhortations and demands. Never suggestions. The stars always spoke urgently when they chose to speak at all, and to ignore them was to invite ruin upon yourself. Something powerful spoke through the stars, neither angel nor demon, and concerned with a far grander scheme than either. The Star Maker.
Voices began to flow over the cracked bricks of the alley - first a young woman's, subtly agitated and harsh in its smoothness, and then in response a man's, solid and blunt, but with an undertone of tiredness and learned indifference.
Ed emerged into their midst, in a sort of alcove where two alleys met. The two voices went silent, and two faces turned to regard him curiously. Leah leaned against a wall, drawing smoke from a cigarette, but exhaling nothing besides foggy breath. She seemed dressed more for a chilly late spring morning than a brutal mid winter's evening, and the few wandering snowflakes that fell on her rain jacket melted into tiny rivulets of water which dripped to the ground and quickly froze again. Despite her hood, her cascade of dirty blond hair was damp.
Alphonse stood beside her, topping her by nearly a head. He lifted a bushy eyebrow at Ed to ask the obvious question, well? He was a statue of a man; tall, wide face, revealing eyes, all flawlessly combining in a handsomeness that seemed entirely unaffected.
Ed didn't immediately see Coal, sitting against a wall opposite the pair. The shadows seemed to reach out from the wall to embrace him with darkness, hiding all but his outline to all but the most observant. He gave a shallow nod of acknowledgement.
