Title: Meteorology
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters: Al and Ed.
Setting: General.
Rating: G.
Length: 328 words.
Summary: Alphonse watches the weather.
Note: Also to be submitted for the genprompt_bingo prompt “The Sky at Night”.



In his long journey with his brother, Alphonse Elric had become skilled at reading changes in the weather.

This was not so simple for the armor-bound boy as it would be for others. Al could not smell the earthy petrichor scent before a rainfall, nor feel the cooling of the air. However, he could see the darkening of the sky, and the sway of tree branches in a rising wind. He could hear the deepening rustle of that wind, and the fainter scurry of animals seeking cover. By these things he learned to be alert to signs of an oncoming storm; even at night, and even in the dark of a woodland where the Elrics camped a short distance from the road they were traveling.

Through his unsleeping night, Al watched as the stars were gradually veiled by tattered, fast-moving clouds. When the winds that drove those clouds descended far enough to shiver the tree canopy, turning up the undersides of the leaves, he rose and collected a few handfuls of dry fallen twigs: enough to fuel the campfire through the remaining hours before dawn. Then returning to the fireside where Edward slept, he scratched a transmutation circle into a bare patch of earth, and pressed his leather fingers to it.

Gentle blue light flared. Like metal filings drawn to a magnet, the loose topsoil for several feet around the camp flowed in toward the array, congealing and rising up in a slow-motion wave. As it crested and curled forward at a height of some four feet, the earthen wave froze solid, forming a cavelike half-dome of solid rock that overarched both the fire and Ed’s sprawled figure.

Settling himself with a scrape of steel against the side of the alchemized covering, Al looked up to the sky with a contented inner smile—just as the first patter of raindrops began to ring hollowly on his helmet.

And Brother slept on by the sheltered fireside, safe and dry.

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2019 Jordanna Morgan