This is for Artemis Rae, who is also considering Hohenheim's backstory.
'Tis
no sin love's fruit to steal; / But the sweet theft to reveal,
To
be taken, to be seen / These have crimes accounted been.
--Ben
Jonson, "Come, My Celia"
"It must be inconvenient, being human," mused the homunculus. "Your kind is forced to gather in communities and breed in order to survive."
"Don't call it breeding," Hohenheim retorted, his face sunset-reddened.
-- for he and Mechthild did nothing so profitable ("My masters, this lad's worth his weight in copper for the blood in him -- out of a weaver by a stonemason -- and all unformed yet: you may mold him as you like ... "), nothing so calculated ("She brings a fine dowry and court connections, but if she cannot bear sons, like her sister, then she's a poor bargain!") when they met on errands in the market and lay together behind Mayo's stall, skin chafing skin, transmuting time into pleasure, each moment forced to ripeness like an unseasonal hothouse fruit: hurried, surprising, and sweet --
"If you say so," replied the homunculus.
Author's Note: It occurred to me to wonder what those people whose names Hohenheim remembers meant to him before they were nothing but names. I cheated a bit with the format, but the original part of this drabble is exactly 100 words; the remaining 40 -- the framing dialogue -- are paraphrased from the manga.