Title: Substitution
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters: Alphonse and Elicia.
Setting: General.
Rating: G.
Length: 398 words.
Summary: Alphonse reinterprets a game with Elicia.



Truth be told, Elicia Hughes wasn’t very good at the game of hide-and-seek yet.

Alphonse spotted her in thirty seconds. The end of her pink sash, which had come undone in all her running around, was trailing from behind the bush she chose for cover; but he made a show of not picking out her hiding place for several minutes more. When he finally did, he told her enthusiastically how he thought he’d never find her—which made her beam up at him as if he didn’t look like most toddlers’ nightmares.

That made him ridiculously happy… until the next words out of her mouth.

“Now it’s your turn to hide, so I can find you!”

The boy twitched, feeling a sudden drop within the empty hollow where his heart should have been. He quickly looked down at his huge steel frame, and then around them at the environs of the little park in the Hughes’ neighborhood. The playground facilities were built to child-size, while the few bushes were barely as tall as his knees.

“Uh, Elicia, I don’t think that’s going to work…”

“But you have to! That’s the rules!”

“I know… but there’s nothing around that could hide me. See? I’m bigger than everything here!”

Elicia pouted, and Al sighed.

For a brief second, he considered trying to cajole his brother into the game. Edward was sitting on a bench with a book, oblivious to them both. However, he would surely read some disparagement about his height into any remark that he could hide more easily—and Al had no desire to subject Elicia to one of Brother’s infamous rants.

His mind flailed momentarily for an idea… and then he had one.

“Elicia, can I see that marble you found?”

She willingly handed him the blue marble some neighborhood boy must have dropped. Al knelt down on a patch of bare earth, and quickly drew a transmutation circle. When he touched the array, the soil beneath it congealed, morphing into a small clay cup. He repeated the process twice more, until three identical cups stood in a row before him.

“Let’s just pretend this is me,” he said mischievously, as he slipped the marble beneath the center cup and began to shuffle them. “Now, see if you can pick out which one it’s under!”

His shell game amused the girl for the rest of the afternoon.

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2016 Jordanna Morgan