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Luck was with them—they entered the Chang clan’s territory just before midday, reaching the shelter of Mei’s childhood home just as the ferocious summer sun was reaching its highest. Of course, Alphonse was a little less lucky than the rest of their small party; Zampano and Jelso were escorted to guest lodgings right away, relieved of their burdens and allowed to rest through the most intense heat of the day, and the Imperial bodyguard accompanying them at Emperor Ling’s insistence seemed to disappear once within the bounds of the village and its private guard.
For her part, Mei was delighted to be home again after an extended visit in the Imperial City, and even more delighted to introduce Alphonse to her entire extended family—all of whom had gathered to greet them when they arrived. Al wasn’t yet fluent enough in Xingian to follow the rapid-fire talk that erupted all around them as Mei tugged him about by the elbow, letting her many aunts and uncles and cousins-eight-times-removed pinch his cheeks and touch his sun-bleached hair with delight. “Gold,” they said over and over (he recognized that one, less important for alkahestry study than alchemy, but it had come up in a vocabulary lesson), and “West.” It didn't seem to be only his exotic good looks causing the stir, though; Mei was blushing a bit more than he thought strictly necessary for a simple introduction, and he couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard the word for “wedding” being whispered under Grandmother Chang’s breath. Alphonse just kept reminding himself to be polite, and to look up matrimonial words and customs later. Just in case.
***
The temperature eased after sunset, and so did the slightly overwhelming attention Al was receiving; in the after-dinner lull, Mei took him by the wrist and led him out of the house she’d grown up in and through the village.
“This village has always been prosperous,” she informed him, Xiao Mei perched drowsily on top of her head. “We’re a little better off here, because of my status as part of the Imperial Family…and for another reason,” she added mysteriously. Then she cracked a smile, almost disbelieving. “Ling’s done a lot to improve things for our clan, though. Now many villages look like this one. My people are healthy, they don’t go hungry, their houses don’t fall down around them in disrepair.”
“I didn’t realize things were quite that bad, before,” Al murmured. Mei grinned up at him in response.
“It’s all right. Changs are survivors.”
Al couldn’t help but grin back at that. “I guess that’s something we have in common.”
Evening in the village was serene and quiet; Al and Mei didn’t speak again until they hit the settlement’s outskirts, where the huts and houses gave way to a tract of flat, packed earth crisscrossed with scuffed lines and tracks. At the center of it stood a low little building, meticulously painted in warm browns and golds. An unusual color scheme in this region, Al mused as they approached—then got distracted when he looked closer at the dirt and found patterns where he’d assumed randomness. Alkahestry. A training field?
Alphonse couldn't yet make use of the “dragon’s pulse,” as Mei called it, but was slowly learning to sense the potential alchemic energy in the earth; as they crossed the dusty ground around the building, the pulse tingled, tickled, just at the edges of his senses, growing stronger the further they went. An ideal place for learning the art, with so much energy converging here that even I can feel it. The little building still didn’t seem to quite fit the bill, though, until Mei caught him by the hand and led him inside.
A silent, nearly-empty room; at its far end, a statue, worked in wood and bronze and gold, a bearded man in flowing robes with hands outstretched. Between them, he held open a scroll, inscribed with—Al was surprised to find—what looked to be ancient Xerxean script.
“The Western Sage,” Mei murmured reverently into the stillness. “The stories say he came through the desert from Xerxes, and paused to take rest right here where the temple was built. The Dragon’s Pulse is very strong here.”
“Yes,” Al murmured, looking up into the Sage’s face. It had a vaguely familiar look about it; the gold inlaid in his hair and his beard, and in the irises of his eyes…. So it was him. “I can feel it.” He steps forward to trace his fingers over the inscription on the scroll, slowly making out letters he and his brother had first seen scattered through their father’s journals, but learned to decipher much later.
Mei stood beside him, quiet and still; even Xiao Mei perched in subdued reverence on her mistress’ shoulder. “‘Learn not for thyself,’” the girl recited, and Alphonse smiled just a little at the words.
“’…but for the sake of thy people.’ It sounds like something he would say,” Al remarked softly, and he caught Mei swiveling her face up toward him out of the corner of his eye.
“Have you read about the Sage? I know there is a similar story in your country…”
“Yes, the Eastern Sage.” Al knelt down then, pressing his palms to the floor at the Sage’s feet. The power he’d been sensing really was strongest here, and gave him a bit of a jolt when it thrummed up through his hands. “Tell me more about the Dragon’s Pulse?”
Mei knelt beside him, studying him rather intently for a moment before speaking. “It’s the heartbeat of the Earth, the source of an alkahestrist’s power. You just have to feel its flow, push a little of yourself out into it, let it lead you where you want to go.”
“Lead me where I want to go…” Alphonse closed his eyes, slowly matched his breathing to the steady ebb and flow of the energy. Then, gently, that push…like alchemy, like he’d been doing all his life at the edge of a chalked circle or between clapped hands, and it came so easily all of a sudden—the lesson that had evaded him when he’d studied with Mei in the armor, the lesson he hadn’t tried yet since. Something just slid out of him, thinly tethered, and skated out beneath the surface of the Earth. It dragged him, fast and sure, and very, very far; he knew it must be, because it took so long to find its target that Mei was calling his name and shaking his shoulder urgently when he finally opened his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked, peering into his face, her voice sliding up into a squeak.
Alphonse took her hand, so much smaller than his, and pressed it to the ground, covered it with his own. “Follow me,” he breathed.
Mei flushed furious red, but after a moment he felt her energy trace out along his own, stretching, thinning, until she was panting with effort beside him and the energy shuddered to a stop. “Farther…than I’ve ever tried to go before. Must be hundreds of…thousands of miles. Where is the end?”
“Aruego, I think,” Al answered in hushed tones. “Ed. Ed is the other end.” And there he was; without alchemy but filled with life energy, bright and golden and very much like Al’s own—and, not surprisingly, quite like the energy that still lingered in the floor beneath his hands and knees. One he knew, though he couldn’t say quite how.
Mei’s energy was pulling back, and he let his own snap back as well, like a tape measure whizzing back into its casing. The girl flopped onto her back beside him, with Xiao Mei curling up on her stomach; Alphonse, a little dizzied and high with his full energy’s return, lay beside her.
***
“How did you do that?” Mei asked sometime later, a hint of jealousy tingeing her tone.
Al looked up at the statue, looming over them upside-down, and pointed a bit dreamily in its direction. “The Sage.”
Mei pouted. “I grew up here, why can’t I go as far as you?”
Alphonse laughed. “Don’t make that face. It’s…well, you remember my father, right?”
“Of course.”
“And you remember the power he had. And all that stuff with the Philosopher’s stone, the blood, the people of Xerxes?”
Mei turned to frown at him. “It was really a very busy time, but I suppose I do.”
“Well, my father came from Xerxes.”
“That’s silly, nobody comes from those ruins! Except maybe Ishvalans who were refugees there.”
Al rolled onto his side to face her. “Mei. He came from Xerxes before it was a ruin.”
He watched as her eyes narrowed, as suspicion turned to confusion and then to slow, dawning disbelief. Her mouth worked, her eyebrows shot up into her bangs, and poor Xiao Mei looked from her mistress to her second-favorite person in all the world in bafflement. When it seemed she would never find something to say (perhaps for the first time ever in her life), Al laughed. “So, you see, Brother and I—”
But Mei cut him off. “Well, you don’t have to spell it out for me!”