People, in a lot of ways, were a lot like books. You couldn’t judge them by their covers, some of them were more difficult to read than others, and they all had different stories to tell. But even though they were similar, people were a whole lot more complicated than books, and dealing with people meant talking and interacting and a whole host of other things that Sheska sometimes found difficult and taxing. Books were often more enjoyable than people. They were hardly demanding, they never yelled, and Sheska found their company far more easy to handle than any person’s these days.

Except for Winry. Maybe it was because Winry was such an open book. Everything was there, written on her face and in the hold of her head and the set of her shoulders. Maybe it was because Winry wore her heart not only on her sleeve, but on her entire body. There were no secrets to Winry, no words that meant one thing when she was thinking another, there were no mysteries. Her eyes were twin scrolls in blue ink, her smile was a descriptive sonnet, her calloused hands were bold print primers.

When Winry was working, Sheska could watch her for hours. Each spark from her welding torch told a million stories. The jumping of the muscles in her shoulders and biceps spoke volumes, and Sheska wanted to commit all of it to her memory, to imprint it on her mind the same as she did the words that she read. She could recite Winry’s face and form with complete accuracy, from the soft fringe of her bangs to the ragged nails of her slender toes. Winry was a composite of words, though sometimes Sheska could only call one to mind; stunning. Even with grease on her cheeks and dirt beneath her nails and sweat plastering her blond hair to her neck, Winry was stunning.

At night, between cotton sheets and stripes of moonlight, Winry was another sort of book altogether. The sort that made Sheska blush and stutter. But Winry never blushed. She was bold and brash as any man, and she never turned out the light completely. And her hands told other sorts of stories, and the calluses on her fingers were somehow rough and smooth at the same time and her eyes were so blue and that was when Sheska lost the words. But it didn’t matter. She always found them in the morning - they came back to her in a flood as she watched Winry sleep, bringing a flush to her cheeks.

There were all sorts of books, just as there were all sorts of people. Sheska would often think, as she idly toyed with a strand of Winry’s pale blonde hair, that if a person was very, very lucky they’d find that perfect book. The one that had everything they wanted, the one that never failed to make them smile.

Sheska had found hers, and wasn’t going to let go anytime soon.