Once upon a time (so she told the story), there was a young girl and a young boy who fell in love over the carcass of a bear and got married. And it was a beautiful wedding, too -- the groom's family catered, and the bride created most of the decorations herself, using scrap wood and metal and a few well-placed alchemic circles.

And then the couple went on their honeymoon (which basically amounted to camping out a safe distance from Dublith, so they could get away from their hordes of well-wishers -- because in a small town, everyone knew everyone, and the wedding had been the biggest event in years), and then came back to start their life as a married couple. They opened up a little butcher shop and hired the boy's young cousin to help out in the shop, and so they lived peacefully for many years.

Then one day, the boy (who had now become a man) said to the girl (who was now a woman, and pregnant at that), "We need to build things for the baby."

She looked thoughtful, and put a hand over her belly. "You might be right," she said. "I'll have to see to that."

***

"It's not much," Izumi said, "but for a first try, I don't think it's bad."

"..." said Sieg, very expressively.

"It could be worse," Mason said, tipping his head to one side. "Is it a ... sheep?"

"It's a bear! A bear!" Izumi turned on him, her hands on her hips. "Are you saying it looks that bad?"

Mason quailed, more out of instinct than anything else. "N-- no, ma'am, it's not that bad, it's --"

"Eh." Izumi hefted the stuffed animal. "It's a first try. I should get better eventually."

Mason caught it when she lobbed it at him, then fumbled it for a bit, peering. The stitches were lopsided. "Ms. Curtis, you made this?"

"I already said that." Izumi rolled her head till her neck popped. When she laced her fingers together and stretched them, there were bandaids on two of her fingers. "Ah, that's better. Yeah, I made it, so?"

"By hand? Not with ..." Mason drew a circle in the air with one finger. "You know?"

"Of course not," Izumi said firmly. "This is going to be for my child, and I didn't make him with alchemy. His things shouldn't be made with alchemy, either."

"Oh." Mason blinked, and set the bear down. After a moment, it sagged to the side. "It's ... very nice?"

"It's crap," Izumi said dismissively. "Not bad for a first try, but otherwise crap. I'll try again later."

***

The cradle didn't turn out much better. It buckled and collapsed under the weight of the two stuffed bears Izumi put in -- both also products of her own handiwork.

"Just have to keep trying," she said.

***

"Buying formula from the store won't hurt the baby," Sieg told her.

Izumi continued to look insulted. "My cooking isn't that bad," she said. "I've done enough reading, I know how what babies need -- it should be fine, right?"

"It should be," he agreed. "But they've been doing only this for years. At the very least, we can buy some, just in case it goes wrong." Like the bears, and the cradle, and the shirt she tried to make.

Finally, Izumi sighed. "You might be right," she said finally. "... but I'm still making those clothes."

Sieg didn't argue. They had a system that worked perfectly for the two of them: it was all a matter of taking victories where you could find them.

***

The end of that story didn't exist (as she told it), because there was some point between the rest of the story and "happily ever after" that went wrong. Rather than question, the girl shouldered this and moved forward, leaving behind pieces of stuffing and broken wood in her wake. Only the first one survived.

Years later, she gave the bear to a young boy with blonde hair and bronze-sheened eyes. This boy had lost a mother, and the woman had lost a son, and so they suited each other.

"It's ... nice?" he asked.

"It ... belonged to your brother," she said, and didn't fill in the rest of the details. She didn't have to: she'd told enough of a lie that he believed her, and went to sleep with the lopsided thing next to him on his pillow.

She thought someday she'd retell the whole story, from "once upon a time" to "the end."

And as she watched the boy sleep, she thought maybe this time she could actually use "happily ever after" in between.