• I had never imagined that the train would go so fast. It was really amazing. The rain stopped as the train arrived to the next town, and the air was a bit wet and warm. I only visited the store at the train station and bought some apples, and then I quickly returned to the train. This was not far enough from the Green Village.
    I kept traveling until I was thrown out of the train when they noticed my ticket had gotten old two stations ago. After that I decided to stay for a while in the town I had been left to. It was much bigger than the Green Village, but it seemed to be in a bit poor condition. It was in the middle of a desert and it looked like there had been an uprising or something in there.
    I still had two apples left, but they were not much for a dinner. If I could do alchemy properly, then I could propably make an apple pie out of grass and these apples, I thought dispiritedly, and made some bread instead. It tasted, well... Extraordinary, when I put some slices of the apple on it.
    After I had eaten, I started to look for a place to sleep in. I didn't have enough money to stay at an inn, so I had to find some kind of shelter or something to sleep under. I was pretty used to sleeping outdoors since I had not always been living in the old cottage in the Green Village. In fact, I had started using it only a month or so ago.
    Well, I found a nice shed with lots of straws in it. I could sleep on them. There was a big horse in there too, but it didn't really matter. I do get long well with animals. It was already about ten o'clock when I got to sleep.
    When I woke up in the morning, I had caught a cold. My throat ached. I've gotten less hardwearing while living in the cottage, I thought. I've got to toughen myself up.
    The town had a big, somewhat religious-looking building in the middle of it, but it was all ruined. There was a big statue going through it as if it had fallen from the sky (the statue, not the building). I had gotten to the centre of the town.
    I found it hard to find any plants from the downtown area. It seems that I have to walk a long way until I can ind anything to transmute into some bread, I thought sadly. I only had few cenz left of my money, so I propably couldn't buy any food either.
    I was so hungry that I decided to ask from the stall in the next corner if they could sell me something very cheap. I decided that if they didn't have anything cheap enough, I'd pay by working.
    "Excuse me", I said to the girl in the stall. "Do you have anything very... very cheap?"
    "Oh, are you from far away?" she asked back. "We give food for free, since there's been a great uprising in here and people have no money on their own". She smiled kindly to me.
    "Oh. Do you think I could have some food too? Well, maybe not, since I'm not from here..."
    "Of course you can get food. You look like you're starving", she said. "Just sit down and I'll give you some."
    "Thank you very much!" I said and sat on the stool on front of the stall.
    "By the way, my name is Rose", the girl said. "Who are you? Where are you from? You can't be from anywhere nearby, or you would know a bit more about how thw things are in here."
    "My name is Blade", I ansvered her. "And I am from the Green Village, the east. I left my home because I got bored to my life like it was. It's just the same, being a poor orpan in Green Village or anywhere else."
    "Oh, so you're an orphan", Rose said.
    "Yep, my mom and dad died in the Ishbal war. My dad was ishbalan, that's why my skin is a bit dark."
    "How on earth have you even staid alive?!" Rose cried.
    "Well, my grandparents raised me. They died when I was five years old. Next five years... I don't know myself how I kept on living. Then I met an alchemist who taught me how to do a bit alchemy, and after that I've been doing pretty well. I can make wooden cups and bread with alchemy."
    "Mm", Rose said. "Alchemists were also the ones who saved our town."
    "What happened?" I asked.
    "Well, we got tricked on a false religion that promised us that even the dead would come back alive. But some alchemists just came by and stopped that rubbish. Well, that caused the uprising, but something more terrible would have happened if they didn't reveal the truth."
    I didn't ask for more information. I felt kind of jealous of those alchemists. They had been very skillfull. I understood now how the statue had destroyed the church.
    Well, I ended up selling some cups to the people for the town (for very cheap prices) and buying a new train ticket with the money. There didn't seem to be any opportunities for me in this town. My new ticket was to the Central City, since I had decited to check up the place. Maybe I could find... Well... Something there.