Apples for fortune

[grassangel]

Title: Apples for fortune

Day/Theme: Nov. 23, 'o love, be fed apples while you may'
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters/Pairing: Riza Hawkeye
Rating: PG

 

One wouldn't think Riza Hawkeye, woman of the modern day, had any insensibilities.

However, every year when apples come into season, her fruit bowl is constantly overflowing with succulent fruit and the scent of baked apple constantly lingering in the air.
She peels the fruits carefully, knife slowly travelling its way around and around before a single spiraling peel is thrown over her shoulder and peeked at before moving onto the next one, the process repeated.

Then, when the longest day of summer rolled around, worn socks were gathered up and sewn together; a sock doll the end product. This end product soon tossed up into the roof space, the previous year's doll retrieved and burnt in the fireplace along with other odds and ends.

There are many other things, like leaving a saucer of milk out on top of the counter, out of Black Hayate's reach every night. Collecting leaves every autumn, eggshells throughly crushed before being disposed of, sneezing habitually to the right, always picking up a fallen pencil and greeting Black Hayate every time she left him at home.

Little things that weren't really superstitious, just odd and maybe a bit old-fashioned.

But she always stopped peeling those apples whenever that peel thrown over her shoulder didn't fall in a spiral.