Icy fingers brush down his arms and tapdance down his spine. He repeats a series of numbers in his head, followed by names that form the basis of all reality.
Twenty. Calcium...twenty steps. Ed shivers, feeling the sweat dribbling down like tears on his cheek.
Twenty one. Scandium..steps..of alchemy... He clutches the dull brown tunic he wears a little tighter about his body. He blinks the stabbing brightness away from within the folds of his stolen--no, borrowed-- headpiece. First step..Understanding..
A little girl, feet bare skin, quickly dances her way across his path in into the shade provided by a smooth round awning. The shrill cries of a colicy baby in a cooing mother's bare arms. Round buildings like sculpted beehives.
A desert. He's in a desert, and dully aware that he shouldn't be this cold, shivering on such an obviously warm day, in a place filled with hot sand that he can feel beneath the thin layers of cloth wrapping his right sole.
He gasps as his shoulder roughly brushes the sandstone wall on his right, and suddenly numb fingers drop the cloth. Funny bone, he thinks, as he looks down and flexes his unfeeling fingers. It's oddly comforting to not feel them. I wonder why? He places his hand against the friendly warm wall, and pushes himself more upright.
Thirty four.
Thirty five..
It's far easiler to make his way with his hand there to steady him, and he glances about once more, curious.
This place is utterly unfamiliar-- from the people to the style of buildings to the very smell of the street food sizzling in the air.
He senses rather than sees movement along the arcing towering wall across the way, and by instinct darts his eyes at the slight movement. He expects a chance observation-- the passing flight a strange bird, or perhaps even a variety of cat he has never seen leaping upon its chosen prey..
(Oh how his Al would love the soft purrs of a cat!!)
He widens his eyes in alarm at the unexpected shape of the dark shadow splayed against the blazing orange of the distant rock: Outstretched arms well behind the upright torso held aloft by pumping legs.
Eyes locked to the increadable sight of a person blithely running UP the distant great wall, his heart pounds against his ribs when he sees a glint of metal on the tiny forehead.
Ed stumbles forward hurriedly and scrambles around the rounding wall. His unfeeling left foot slips on a rolling something he somehow knows is glass, and his legs give way from beneath him. He tumbles hard, breathless, landing soldily on his back.
Head pounding in time with his racing heart, he sees more of the headbanded people-- this time slowly WALKING up a nearby round building.
His pride balks at the strewn refuse about him, but he drags himself behind the scant shelter from view offered. He hears the wafting of their voices, and, by they way they gesture in his fleeting glimpses of the pair, he concludes they are in deep discussion over something. Since there are no shouts or grabbing hand directed his way, he breathes out a breath that its something that is not him.
"What the shit.. Kind of alchemy...?" He mutters, pulling up his legs to his chest. Or is it alchemy at all? The thought winds its way through his pounding skull, and in time he owlishly watches more people wander up and down the round walls as though it was a completely natural form of travel.
"Am I in Xing..?"
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