Souvenir

S J Smith

Word Count: 341

Rating: Anyone can read.

Characters: Katherine Armstrong, Xing

Summary: She couldn't wait to show it to him.

Disclaimer: Do I look like a Holstein to you…? Wait, don't answer that.

Warning: None

Series: Manga

A.N.: Written for the LJ community, "FMA Fic Contest", for the prompt 'Armstrong'. Thanks to D. M. Evans for the edit.

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She had known the world was big but had never really suspected it to be so large. Amestris was not the whole of the universe and the mansion she'd lived in since childhood was not the beginning nor the end and while, in theory, Katherine knew this, she had never really experienced it herself until her big sister, Olivia, suggested that they leave Amestris. She really had hated that, leaving behind Alex Louis and Olivia to battle out whatever they were fighting about. It wasn't fair but she guessed Olivia probably knew best, at least in this case.

And a trip to Xing! What a marvelous place it was, full of exotic people and scenery, of wooden and gilt towers that reached for the sky and new and unusual foods to try. Katherine just wished that her brother had managed to make the trip with them. He would have loved the sculptures of the great Fuu dogs, the sinuous dragons adorning the architecture. She could only imagine how Alex Louis would have incorporated these forms in his alchemy.

Father and Mother had rented a lovely cottage in the Emperor's capital, something that could've tucked itself into a corner of their mansion back home and still had room left over. The gorgeous fountains and the peacocks that stalked around the garden reminded her of home. Feeding the beautiful fish, in all their shades of gold and white and black, was one of her favorite times of day. Katherine wondered if there was a way to bring them home with her when Father and Mother decided it was time to return.

Olivia wouldn't approve; she didn't care for pets, but Alex Louis would transmute the soil into a beautiful pond if Katherine asked him. She could almost imagine it, a little taste of Xing in the Armstrong gardens, and her brother helping her feed her fish. He'd transmute her dragons and Fuu dogs to decorate the pond and Olivia would threaten to eat the pretty fish.

And everything would be all right again.

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