EYE ON AMESTRIS | June 28, 1915
RUSH VALLEY — by Alice Turan — Nestled between rocky highland and prairie, Rush Valley is arid and dry in the summer. And yet, take one step onto Main Street and you’d think you were by the tropical shores of Creta, judging by the shimmering sea of automail. The metal does nothing to appease the heat; walking down the street is like navigating a flock of radiators. The streets themselves are lined with ateliers, often with their goods on full display for enthusiasts and customers alike.
Turn just off Main Street, though, and the scene changes: this is where the locals go, away from the hubbub of tourism. There’s still chatter here, for sure, but the slogan-yelling has stopped altogether, replaced by hushed, intense conversations. This is where we find the good automail shops, and we mean really good: shops run by world-class mechanics who forego lush living for the grind-and-polish of metalwork. And here is where we find Winry Rockbell.
The sixteen-year-old automail mechanic can be counted among the world’s best, having made her first automail limb at the age of eleven. Since then, Rockbell has been practicing her skills through her constant maintenance of childhood friend Edward Elric, better known as the Fullmetal Alchemist, and her apprenticeship in Atelier Garfiel, the namesake of which (pictured below, at left) is a leading expert on heat-resistant automail and metallurgy. Rockbell is also under the wing of Dominic LeCoulte (pictured below, at right), known best for automail that incorporates sophisticated weaponry without sacrificing size and shape.
Rockbell expects to complete her apprenticeship by winter of next year — a feat almost unheard of these days, since a standard automail apprenticeship is five years or more. Furthermore, she has already set up shop here, in an alley between Main Street and the town plaza. The second branch of Rockbell Automail is busy, even on a Friday; the phone seems to be ringing non-stop, the customers are loud and oddly jovial, given the pain that comes with reattaching and adjusting automail limbs, and whirring saws and clinking metal soon become background music.
Winry Rockbell herself emerges from the din; with her aureate hair and feminine curves, she must seem an angel to her customers, her image contrasting with her sharp warnings, meticulously detailed instruction, and gruff words. For a teenager, she is so very motherly, and her stern manners betray a fierce pride in her work. This isn’t the first shop she’s run; Rockbell Automail’s first branch is back in her hometown of Resembool, where her grandmother, Pinako Rockbell (unsurprisingly, also a famous automail engineer known by some as the “Pantheress of Resembool”), still resides and works.
What’s next for the Winry, the aptly nicknamed “Rock of Rush Valley”? Not only is she following in the footsteps of her mentors by dabbling in extreme-condition automail gear, but she is also giving a nod to her medical origins by beginning to experiment with automail joint replacements, and someday, perhaps, automail organs. Rockbell dreams years ahead of her science; let’s hope technology can catch up with her.
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