It was not the sort of day for jotting down hopeful notes from the interminable piles of books that sat on the library table in front of him. Nor was it a day conducive to reading, for hours on end, devouring every tidbit of information he could.

No. It was the sort of day for pushing a pencil across a blank piece of paper in meaningless lines, considering them, and then erasing them all again.

What point was there? Every lead he'd had had evaporated, like snow sublimated to steam by no more alchemical means than the advent of sunlight. Not that there was any sunlight, today. Central City was painted in shades of grey, layers of shadow under the clouds, without even the respite of rain.

So Alphonse sat in the library, his chin in his hand, ignoring the books he'd so painstakingly pulled down from their shelves, and doodling.

He'd drawn perfect circles since he was seven years old, mastering it before his older brother, a fact he would only mention if Edward was already arguing with him. He wasn't rubbing it in today. There weren't many things in the world he wouldn't have given for one of Ed's first circles, now, carefully scratched into the hard-packed earth behind their house, asymmetrical there, by the point-inverted triangle. And, of course, the lumpish incomplete transmutations that would result, and the way Ed would kick up frustrated dust even as he learned.

From memory, as his thoughts wandered, Al sketched alchemical arrays at random, jumbled on the paper-- symbols temporarily released from the burden of meaning. Or at least consciously so; things carefully memorized over the years could not be so easily forgotten.

In the corners of the sheet, the weights and measures, curved lines in ancient scripts. [Four for the seasons, for the cardinal directions. A dram, a pinch, a scruple, an ounce. What measurements for hope or despair, what weight a human soul?] A five-pointed star. [Five for the elements: air, water, earth, fire, ether; point arrayed in concordance with the alchemist's will against nature's. Five for the senses, for the fingers of the hand.] Two triangles superimposed-- the six pointed star. [Three and three. Familiar shape, that, wound round with a circling lines, the beginner's alchemy circle. The beginning. From this point all lines diverge, to this point, all lines converge. He could draw it in his sleep, he could draw it with a stylus held between his toes.]

With a little twiddling, a seven-pointed star, one that had always been a little counterintuitive to his hand, though Edward had never faltered on it. [Seven for the days of the week, for the planets, for the disciplines, proper studies for an alchemical student learning the science. Seven for each of the alchemical metals.]

Feeling the rhythm, pencil lead tracing silver along the white paper, the next step was an obvious one-- just another point, another footfall along the well-trod path. An eight-pointed star.

[Eight for... eight for-- eight for a child lost a soul traced in blood and niisan--!]

Looking at the pencil lines, gone flat steel-grey with the shadow of his unsteady hand over them, he wondered what he'd just been thinking about. Eight points for... rebirth and creation, wasn't it?

There was a hollow burn in the back of his memory where that lesson should have been.