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There is a story about a boy who made wings of wax and feathers to let him sail into the sky. The story tells how he flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted, the feathers falling away until the boy tumbled down, crashing onto the rocks below.
It's a common story, repeated in various ways, always with a boy challenging a greater being than himself, and being thrown to the ground, crushed, vanquished, left to die.
Alphonse Elric tells the parable to his students, but challenges them to think beyond the boy's death. Should the gods strike down someone for curiosity? Should they kill one who has excellent ideas as well as the ability to carry them out? Or should they set them up as examples, so that others might learn of that story from the mouth of the boy himself, a humbler, wiser man, who survived a brush with a god?
Perhaps the thought shouldn't be so much about extremes but what one can do to learn from the mistakes of others. But Alphonse lets his students draw their own conclusions regarding that.
In the mean time, he considers the phoenix, and his brother. A house was burned and a family lives in the new home built upon what some might consider a foundation of ashes.
Maybe the story should be about what happens next, but Alphonse already knows how he wants it to end – the boys grown to men, their wives and families around them. Instead of Icarus, perhaps they should compare themselves to the phoenix, brought forth from the ashes and growing in the warmth of the sun.
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