Mikasa was better about my sporadic disappearances after that strange, joyful day beyond those walls.
Armin still got worried and irritable but he stopped spending all his time searching for me, preferring to just tell me off when I got back instead.
I didn't mind much. When that happened I was still running on sunshine, open skies and free winds, smiling as I recalled my hunts, and already planning the next as I tried to calm him down with the gifts of flowers and fruits I had crafted from earth and air.
It didn't really help that much though, at least not at first.
For some reason he seemed frightened that I had stolen them, quickly grabbing my works and hiding them from the others in the shack, but as the weeks passed, the other family continued to pay us no attention (as per thank-fuck-fully usual) and absolutely nothing came of it, he started to accept them with resigned sighs of thanks.
Bunches of large, shining buttercups and soft, sweet daisies lined the windows, perfumed white and pink wildflowers were dotted through Mikasa's hair, and the old man took to pinning a single scarlet red poppy to the breast of his coat, trying once again to ruffle my hair as he would leave for work. Apparently where he cleared spaces and built more shacks for the flood of asylum seekers.
I was finding that Armin really was quite the clever human. Whenever he left the house he was searching for work, chatting to the locals with overly innocent expressions as they whispered gossip about this and that. I tried not to smirk every time he subtly directed the talk to different job opportunities.
It seemed as if farming was the way to go by what little I understood, it had better food benefits and didn't require many qualifications as they would happily take cheaper labour.
I felt quite pleased with the decision myself. I wondered what vegetables and fruit they grew here; the only food my humans were given by the military was one roll of bread each day, when they were lucky.
I don't know what they would have done if I hadn't been able to craft fruit for them each day, pushing my creations into their hands or mouths before they could argue.
There was another pressing problem other than my humans' lack of food though.
To put it simply the issue was that the other humans didn't have the same support as my group did and they were quickly getting desperate at the meagre supplies.
I really couldn't go around giving fruit and vegetables out to everyone. At least that's what Armin told me when I explained my idea.
He was right though, I really would attract military attention if I did that...
However, while I had been hesitating, Armin's predictions about gangs were coming true.
It was no longer safe for the public to walk around at night, even in groups, unless you were the military or part of one of the bigger gangs- and even they weren't safe entirely.
My humans had managed to stay mostly out of it. Being children and an old man made them much less useful in terms of gang life and, on top of that, they stuck very rigidly to the Military areas or at the hut after dark.
But I was starting to notice, over the next few weeks, that the gangs of sallow looking humans were loitering around earlier and earlier, and in a larger number of places.
Humans had hurried whispered conversations on street corners, murmuring things about the military police and having to deal with things themselves.
Armin was hearing similar things on his trips to the market. He wasted no time in telling us that if we saw or were in trouble we shouldn't delay to look for military help, just run like hell into the military areas and hide.
I found the idea of hiding laughable but managed to keep a straight face as Armin lectured us.
About two days later we got the exact same lecture from the old man.
It appeared that many of the Military had only been intervening with things when they it involved the original inhabitants of the city, making the targets of the increased crime rate an unfortunately obvious choice.
The flimsy wooden shacks of ours and our neighbours shouldn't have stood a chance when the looters came-
- and passed by.
I sat in the corner of the shack unconcernedly playing with a 'pack of karrds' (a small, but interesting, paper offering from the old man) as the others hovered around the curtained hole of a window, quietly panicking and ducking down as the torch baring humans passed by and, to their surprise, kept on passing.
Those 'karrds' were actually kind of fun.
I wondered vaguely, as my humans checked the barricade at the door and looked at each other in relieved confusion, how humans thought to use a few slices of mashed up wood in such a variety of ways.
The next morning the houses of the children and elderly in the refugee villages seemed pretty confused about the night's events, with many strange rumours floating around about why they were spared yet their neighbours weren't.
"I heard the looters were all the elderly, protecting us!" I heard one gap toothed child exclaim to a crowd as I walked past.
"No my mum said it was the Goddess of the walls, defending the defenceless!" Yelled another, a girl this time.
"I heard it was the shadow of death, a man with midnight skin who put his shadow on our houses to scare off the looters!" Exclaimed a skin headed boy of about Armin's age.
"Why would death do that?!" The children started yelling at him.
I raised my eyebrows at the loud debate but quickly dismissed it as unimportant and carried on with the others to the crop fields.
Those looting humans had been foolish though. Even the military couldn't ignore the attacks on the refugees when they grew to that scale.
What humans do to each other really isn't much of my business though, I thought a little later on as I ran a rake through the dry soil we were supposed to make life from, subtly digging deep into the earth with my bare feet as I made my way across.
Those humans that weren't caught were much more subtle in their actions, less head on and blunt.
The main targets still remained the refugees though.
Rocks broke under my feet now as I stamped down hard.
It wasn't my business to interfere in human affairs but attacking the defenseless? The children and the elderly? Well that was another matter.
Perhaps that's why I felt such a burning disgust for those abominations or 'Titans' as they called them. It wasn't that they ate humans. That was fine, I would be a hypocrite if I got upset about that.
My problem was the humans they chose. In that they made no choice. Instead they tried to eat them all.
Innocent, guilty, young, old, they all fell victim to their obscene hunger.
Such dark thoughts would often fill me with a deep bubbling vehemence in my stomach and an insatiable appetite for their blood. On days such as these, after seeing my mortal promises safely 'home', I made my way to the wall and took flight once again, quickly making my way to the large forests in which the survey Corpses were often encamped.
The trees, while absolutely massive, were spaced quite well apart.
This allowed the humans a lot of fluidity in their movements, and in turn gave me the chance to find and follow after them with much more ease.
On the last day I would come look for them I found a perch to watch them moving through the forest and I saw a small group had stopped, looking up through the branches, staring at me.
I stared back.
The tallest, a man with blond hair and a thick brow, gazed at me with a steady fearless expression.
I bobbed my head back once more, and then turned from them, taking to the air again to circle back and slice down on the neck of a small Titan.
The humans moved on and I flew high above, my sharp eyes following the twitching shake of trees that followed their wake.
Then the wind stopped.
For a moment the world went still and heavy with a bitter tang in the air, and I plummeted to the earth, as I quickly and ferociously spluttered and snapped my wings to and fro to stay up in the frozen sky.
Then the moment was gone as suddenly as it came and wind rushed through my feathers once more.
I didn't panic or curse or question what the hell happened. I knew what happened.
I knew what happened...
Gently, quietly, I lowered myself to the ground and slowly walked back over the soft forest floor to the edge of the place in which no wind blew.
Grass grew wild and twisted over shattered rock; faint white woodland flowers entwined themselves over a rusted metal bell and around a small pool of what once would have been pure water, which now stood stagnant and choked with weeds.
I took a deep breath, not thinking- no- not caring that I had no real need of it, and stepped forwards onto the sunken and lopsided stones that once made a path into a shrine.
It's no longer a shine though, I thought as I stared at the forgotten and broken remains.
It was the grave of a God.
I fell to my knees, feathers moulting off of my body into swirling wisps of smoke, as I simply stared.
I... I didn't know the God's name. They were most likely a forest deity of some kind. Small, probably took the form of a furry mammal of a sort, with strange ancient eyes peering out at the world.
I stared at the lifeless mound of rubble and earth and came to face a truth. The truth. What I had been trying to avoid, to not face, for some time now.
…The empty plains... the unmarked territories... the empty feeling that had been creeping in on all of my senses.
My eyes swept over the rubble before me.
The Gods were gone.
I am alone.
I- I don't know how long I remained there, how long I simply sat, staring at… it.
My breathing had stopped, my eyes had become as dry as sand and my body thrummed with the ache of being so very still, but I didn't notice. I didn't notice anything but the soft bittersweet scent of the white flowers as they hung silently in their motionless little world.
Then there was a slow echoing thud in this empty air.
Slowly I came back into the world, looking up and around to see the lumbering naked form of a Titan about to enter the faded God's domain.
I couldn't even move as the hot, molten wave of rage took a hold of me.
How dare it? How dare it try to step foot here!? It would intrude on the place of a forgotten God who can no longer defend it!?
My eyes spluttered and flared with green light and suddenly I could move.
I stepped out of the domain, to where the wind blew once again, towards the lumbering thing.
I will not fight on the grave of one of my own.
Instead I pushed back at the thing, fingers rushing into the thick knot of hot flesh in its legs and using my sheer strength to flip it onto its back. I was on it before it realised it was on the ground.
If that thing could realise.
Your fault….
My hands formed into enormous fists as I threw all my body into each punch, hammering down into it with no thought of anything but the feeling of breaking bones beneath me. Fountains of stringy mashed up flesh flew up around me, my eyes streaming with golden tears as I carved a jagged hole it its chest with fist, teeth and fingernails.
It's your fault!
I knew it could keep healing. So what? That only meant I could keep tearing into it, listening to its gargled breat- that's not right, its lungs were gone now- listening to the gargled noises it made as it was turned into living mulch.
These Titans hadn't been here before and here they were now, where I could see nor feel no other Gods.
They had something to do with this. They must have something to do with this.
How dare you?
How dare you!?
HOW FUCKING DARE YOU!?
Steam billowed out from about a mile around me as strings of rotten giblets and cherry red flesh evaporated away.
The thing below me lay still, breathing raggedly as it stared at me through unfocused eyes.
Then its teeth snapped forward with a clack as it mindlessly tried to devour its torturer.
I spat in its face and quickly dodged to the back of its neck, killing it instantly with a revolted stomp of my foot.
There was no silence after it fell though. No peace to allow me to reclaim my calm. None of that.
No- instead there was the slow solid thump of another Titan as it drunkenly stumbled towards me, uncaring of the fate of its kin.
I ran forwards, my voice inhuman now, becoming an echoing screech as I took wing and exploded through the thing's upper chest, savaging through what little was left of its nape before I flew up once more into the air.
The Titans stopped lumbering towards me now, distant eyes rolling off me as I sliced and hacked and ripped into them.
I screamed and shouted with each blow and spurt of blood I inflicted on them but they continued to ignore me.
Why weren't they fighting back?
Look at me. Look at me! FUCKING FIGHT ME!
Then one did.
Its head was tilted on the side, eyes deformed into small sightless slits as it blindly grabbed me from behind.
I twisted in its grip as it lowered me to its gaping mouth.
Caught. Well okay you fucker, just try eating me, break your teeth on me. I don't care.
But it didn't eat me. Instead it simply juddered and fell backwards to the Earth, hand losing its grip and allowing me to break free with ease.
Not that I couldn't have done that moments before if I had wanted to.
My wings spluttered as I pushed myself up and saw what happened.
That blond man from earlier was slicing down on the neck of another Titan before jumping back to the tree, surrounded by the others as they asked for commands.
He didn't answer them, instead looking at me as I settled on a nearby tree and watched him with numb interest.
If I wanted to I could take that as a sacrifice... he killed it for me...
I made myself think of what sort of request this strange man could have. A man who put his own kind at risk to 'save' the life of what he probably presumed to be a simple animal.
I had to admit, I was marginally impressed by his mind-set.
Speaking of the humans, they seemed not to be handling this influx of Titans very well.
The group of humans had quickly spread out, each tackling the Titans in pairs or threes as the blond one continued to expressionlessly observe me.
I wasn't quite sure I wanted to accept his sacrifice now if he could allow those he was responsible for get attacked like this.
He looked like a real git.
With a sharp screech I dived down from my perch and sliced down on the neck of a Titan about to consume a tall man with a short light coloured undercut, snatching him up as he fell to the earth and quickly tossing him up to the blond man.
"What the fuck?!" Shouted tall undercut man.
Ignoring them I dived down again, thoughts of rage and revenge forcefully banished from my mind as I simply attempted to fulfil Karlula's request.
I didn't fulfil it though. I didn't save them all. I hold no power over death nor time. There were too many of the humans in their grips to save them all.
A male and female died before I could reach them, painful screams muffled and cut off as they were torn in half and stuffed down gaping mouths.
And suddenly that stinging burn of anger filled me again, making my eyes sharpen and driving me forwards once more as my scream echoed out from me, human and eagle and wolf and bear and everything all at the same time.
The stench of the human's fear and excitement surrounded me as I cut down on the last Titan, falling to the earth with heaving breaths.
I was tired. I was furious yet calm, sad yet joyous in my slaughter, but that shivering, prickling throb of pain deep inside me just wouldn't go as I thought of those two humans who were still half alive and defenceless when they were swallowed and as I thought of the gods – oh the gods- my gods- it was all too much.
Too much…
I ignored the yells and shouts around me as I jumped up, wings beating hard against the air as I took to the sky, flying back to where I knew my mortals would be waiting, back to where my last living friends were.
I fell into my tree behind the tall walls, exhausted not in body but in mind as I took back my usual form and lay back on one of the branches, simply staring up at the sky.
I tried not to think. I just looked up, green eyes almost blue as they reflected the tender colours of the evening sky.
Pink stained clouds flowed like ships across the shimmering silky blue sky, the faint lights of stars brightened and shone, moving across the pale expanse in their strange, ancient dance.
…I think it was night time when I finally came back to myself. It certainly was dark at least but I wasn't really paying attention to the sky any more. Instead I was suddenly thinking of Armin and Mikasa, of how I usually didn't stay away this late, of how they would be upset if I stayed out any longer.
I speedily made my way back to the quiet shack, ignoring the groups and quiet gangs of humans lurking deep in the shadows.
My foot froze on its way down to the earth, hanging mid-air as my eyes swivelled over the silent hut.
The hut was quiet… It was never quiet. Usually Armin and the old man would be chatting while Mikasa set up a fire and the other group of humans would be talking annoyingly loudly to themselves.
There was none of that.
It was silent.
There was no fire.
I entered the hut and the hush was suddenly shattered.
"Eren! Oh thank Gods you're back!" Armin all but screamed as he threw himself at me.
Startled I fell back to the ground with a sharp yelp as the boy hugged me tightly, red scarf held tight in his hand.
"Armin what has happened?" apprehension slowing my voice as I asked the panicked boy my question, eyes fixed on the scarf.
Armin drew back and bumped his head against mine, eyes wide and dripping tears.
"Mikasa's been taken!"