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If there was one thing that Sarah Rockbell prided herself on in her life outside of her work as a doctor, it was the fact that she just knew, instinctively, when people were the right fit for each other. All through her teenage years, when her friends and acquaintances had been pairing up, she had always known which relationships were destined to go the distance and which ones weren’t quite there yet. She never usually intervened in that sense, she just let things run their natural course, and when the break-ups inevitably happened, she was there with a shoulder to cry on and the suggestion that perhaps this other person would be a better choice. Every single time, she had turned out to be right.
That was why it was so frustrating that having got everyone else around her nicely paired up and seen so many of her friends start lasting and fulfilling relationships, and having got married herself to a man who could not have been more perfect for her, Sarah could not for the life of her manage to find a suitable match for her best friend.
Trisha was an anomaly. She was like any other normal girl and yet at the same time there was something about her that was a bit odd and unique, and she deserved to share her life with someone who was just as odd and unique as she was. This was where things became unstuck, because Resembool was a town full of oddities at the best of times and Sarah knew that everyone was unique, but no one else in Resembool was odd and unique in quite the same way that Trisha was. There were several farmers and gardeners, for example, but no one really talked to their tomato plants and treated them as family members in the same way that Trisha did. Above all else, Trisha was a gentle soul, an old soul in a young body sometimes, and she needed a fellow old soul to match her. It shouldn’t have been too hard. Trisha did always tend to prefer older men and her attempts to date people her own age had been… well, that had been a very interesting stage of her life and had led Sarah to the brink of despair more than once.
Even so, there was still no one in the small town who seemed to match Trisha, and Sarah was beginning to get desperately creative. Maybe they would have to spread their search further afield into the surrounding villages and potentially into the city, although Trisha was in no way a city girl and baulked at the thought of leaving Resembool for the bright lights of Eastern.
Honestly, when she looked back on it years later, Van Hohenheim turning up out of the blue when he did had really been a godsend to Sarah’s sanity.
She knew of the man, of course she did, he was something of a living legend in Resembool, their friendly neighbourhood cryptid with weirdly unique alchemy abilities and an apparently unchanging face for all the time that he had been coming to visit. Indeed, Pinako’s photo albums were testament to that. Sarah herself hadn’t seen the man since she was a kid; it had been that long since his last visit to them, but she didn’t let that put her off. Hohenheim was definitely an old soul, like Trisha, and all the tales that Pinako had told her of his various mishaps over the decades made it clear that he was completely harmless for all that he was immensely, scarily powerful. And no one could deny that he was odd and unique.
It looked like he was going to be the perfect match. Now all she had to do was get him and Trisha in the same room together and see if there was a spark. That was where the trouble lay, as when she had suggested such a thing to Pinako, she had been met with hysterical laughter.
“Oh, Sarah. I can appreciate what you’re trying to do but Hohenheim’s as thick as two short planks when it comes to the fairer sex. He wouldn’t know that Trisha was interested in him even if she threw herself at him.”
This was not the most encouraging of starts, but Sarah was not to be put off quite that easily. It would be an easy enough set up. All she had to do was invite Trisha over to dinner to meet Hohenheim before he vanished out of the village on whatever new quest he was on. Then, all she had to do was make sure that Hohenheim didn’t vanish for a while and she had a couple of weeks in which to work her magic. She hoped that Pinako could be prevailed upon in that regard. She was his oldest friend, after all. Hopefully he would stay at her request.
With the pseudo-date all set up, all Sarah could do was wait and hope.
X
“Sarah, I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve here but this is entirely ridiculous, you know.”
“No, it’s not! The future happiness of my best friend is at stake here! I have to do something and I think it’s working.”
Up until Yuriy’s comment, Sarah had thought that the evening had gone very well. Hohenheim and Trisha seemed to be getting on well together and had managed to spend most of the meal in conversation about either Hohenheim’s travels around the world or Trisha’s botanical expeditions in her greenhouse, and they were definitely interested in what the other had to say rather than merely being polite. To that end, Sarah had ushered Yuriy and Pinako into the kitchen, ostensibly to help her prepare dessert, but really to leave the other two alone for a while.
(They probably would have got on better if Sarah hadn’t kept peeking around the kitchen door to see how they were doing, she would admit that freely, but she had to keep an eye on them in case something catastrophic happened. Hohenheim could only be described as ‘skittish’ and he was already prone to vanishing acts. She didn’t want him running for the hills so soon, especially without having any peach crumble. Sarah was proud of her peach crumble.)
“Well, it won’t work if you keep interrupting them,” Pinako pointed out. “Get back in here and help me with the custard, both of you. They’ll never get anywhere if they’re being watched, and goodness knows you’ve been watching them all evening.”
Sarah gave a dramatic sigh, but nonetheless came back into the kitchen to assist Yuriy and Pinako with the custard. It was not a three person job, especially because Yuriy’s cooking skills left a lot to be desired (the man could burn water), but Sarah appreciated the help that Pinako was giving to the two potential lovebirds nonetheless.
At last, moving back into the other room could be put off no longer, and Sarah was very pleased when she entered with the crumble to find that Hohenheim had not run for the hills, and he and Trisha had in fact pulled their chairs a little closer together in order to talk better. She was even more pleased when they both coloured up on realising they were no longer alone, and kept looking at each other all through dessert.
This, she thought, was a match very well made, and she was justly proud of herself for it.