2.
/basement/
It was the year 839.
There would be 6 more years until the fall of Wall Maria.
If there was anything I remembered about the show, it was the gruesome way in which the characters died that really got to me. Their bloodied half bitten corpses, their lifeless eyes, scattered limbs. To want to willingly follow that timeline was ridiculous, but I had something that no one else had, and that was the priceless knowledge of the future. I suppose it was a risk worth taking.
My four year old self sat on my Mother's lap as I watched her count the coins in the little satchel that she stitched together. It had a faded pink lily on it. She smiled her distinct smile and pinched my chubby cheeks lightly when she realised that there was more than enough money to place food on the table this week.
"Lily, want a treat?"
I looked up at her and nodded.
"Let's go!"
Mother helped me lace up my tiny leather boots and pulled me too my feet. I pushed off the ground with my chubby hands and wobbled. Mother caught me swiftly and righted me.
Whoops. Still wasn't too steady on my feet.
My small hands grasped her index finger as she strolled slowly through the markets of Shiganshina. I really loved going outside. The dirt paths and small stalls reminded me of a raw, genuine community. And of course, the 50m wall humbled me. The last time I tried to catch a glimpse of the top of the wall, I'd ended up with my bottom on the dirt floor, because I couldn't tilt my head far back enough to grasp its true enormity. Mother had frantically pulled me to my feet and dusted off my baby clothes, but Father clutched his belly and laughed and smiled at my clumsiness.
I felt Mother pull me close to her billowing skirt when a gang of teenagers ran by. These street kids roamed the streets all day, causing a ruckus – plucking apples out of loosely guarded stalls, giving tilted beer mugs an extra push, so that it spilled beer down the shirts of wealthy-looking businessmen. Carefree laughter of the teens and hurled insults of their victims mingled and echoed through the streets. They came out of their houses in the morning, wearing clean, ironed and lavender scented clothes, and returned to their homes at night with ripped shorts, torn tshirts, dragged in through the front door by angry looking mums with their hardened hands pinching their sons' ears.
I suppose that this was the result of not having a school to attend. This was one of the things I had noticed in the Shingeki-no-Kyojin universe. It lacked teachers, scholars, academics, education. But I could also see how there was no need for it.
Its short 100 year history was passed down by word of mouth alone, and skills like trade were shown to children by their parents. Simple skills like blacksmithing, farming, shoe-making, pottery had unique family quirks. Mother knew that the Johnson family made their apple pies with dusted sugar and not granulated sugar – just how she liked it, and frequented their store often. Father liked the way the Takahashi family shined his leather boots, for cheap. It was no wonder they were the most popular leather-oiling business running within the Shiganshina town.
We stopped by my favourite sweets store. Mother says that the moment she saw that I couldn't manage to control my drool – darn these weak and gullible baby face muscles – and saw that my eyes had widened to the size of mini saucers, my favourite sweets store had been determined.
My small hands left prints on the glistening glass panes. I looked at all of the cakes and toffees and candies on display. I was in child heaven.
There were the rock cakes – which made up for its lesser than average taste with its quantity, the strawberry filled mini puff pastries – which were best appreciated in one bite, but I had to savour the taste by taking smaller bites, the cheese tarts – a beautiful mix of sweet and savoury, Father claimed that he saw my eyes watering when I had first tried these, the egg pudding – oh, so smooth, the toffee bites – oh, so creamy and so much more. I was at a loss.
Deciding to be a bit braver than usual, I pointed my finger at the pistachio cookies.
"I want to try those today." I tucked my hand behind my back and looked up at Mother. She moved her hand to her mouth and laughed.
"Three of those please!" Mother relayed my order to the shopkeeper.
The beautiful unclouded sky was orange by the time we got back home. I loved everything about our little cottage. It was small, compact, and surrounded by hand-made wooden fences. Our two goats bleated and our three hens crowed softly upon our arrival. They provided us our breakfast every morning. Occasionally, mother would put in the effort to make goat's cheese as an addition to our dinner. It was a lovely break from my typical urban setting.
Other days, Mother worked hard at home knitting pieces of clothing to donate and sell, and Father worked as a farmer in his little plot a few yards away. He grew beans, chilli, spinach, corn, carrots. When peach pits were first introduced to our small village, Father gave away a large portion of his fortune to become one of the first to get his hands on a peach pit. Our little family took turns feeding, nurturing and watering the little peach tree. It grew into a lofty tree in our backyard and produced Shiganshina's finest peaches. Everything was organic here, and Father's crops were up there with the other farmers. We were oft blessed to eat the vegetables and fruits that he grew, which Mother cooked to a golden perfection.
We were such a humble family. I never wanted to take this for granted. The food on my table, mostly provided by the labour of my Father's hands, the clothes on my back, the result of my Mother's nifty fingers.
Originally I had been indifferent to my parent's gestures, but over the four years, I had gotten used to their nurturing personalities. They really wanted the best for me and meant me no harm. I reassured myself that it was normal to have been suspicious, but as time passed I just couldn't find it in me to love them back. Something so tangibly raw pulled at my heartstrings whenever I thought of the remains of my past life.
Despite not having the need to have books, I considered myself lucky to have been brought up in this household. Father still liked to read and so, books lined the oak bookshelves, and as soon as I could recognise characters I began to read. With hours and hours to spare each day, I flipped through the pages of books to realign my past knowledge to what was here. There were books on mythology, recipe books, the world's short history, a map of the world, medicinal books, blacksmithing, farming, you name it. These books were often just loose handwritten notes tied together with thin strips of bamboo. I spent every spare moment of my time poring over these prized books. Life was finally getting a little more interesting than lying in my cot, unable to move.
Mother and Father didn't question my thirst for knowledge, or my fast learning abilities, such as how I could have possibly started to comprehend numbers, currency, lotions, and medicines in a heartbeat. To them, I was their perfect little angel. I tried my best to stall the learning process, but boredom often got to the better of me. When Grisha Yeager visited individual houses for our half yearly medical check-ups, he often dragged little Eren along. I admit I treated Eren like less of a friend, and more of a tool to measure my age appropriate intellect.
Eren starts gurgling and saying random words out loud? I had better do the same.
Eren starts stringing together barely perceptible sentences? I had better do the same.
Eren starts walking and crawling? I had better do the same.
But I hadn't seen him of late. He was also four years of age, and Carla had taken it upon herself to home school him and have him do some chores because she thought it was a better use of his time – they were now up to counting and numbers. I had better start blurting out some numerical nonsense now. Being a kid was seriously harder than I thought it would be.
A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts.
Father was home. I ran to the door and stopped abruptly. Oh, right, I was still too short to reach the door knob. Bad habits, I laughed it off in my mind. Mother ran up to the door and opened it for me.
"Welcome home", she smiled, and leaned forward to kiss his cheek. Boy, having grown up in a family where affection was rarely shown, I felt so uncomfortably awkward I just had to avert my eyes.
"How's my baby girl doing today?"
I looked down at my leather boots and nodded. "Good, I think. We brought some cookies for you."
Father blinked, and his eyes widened at my response. "For me?"
I nodded solemnly. I took out the pistachio cookies and put it in his palm. "I hope you like pistachio, Dad."
"Oh Lily, you know I love anything you give me."
He walked over to pick me up, laughing and swinging me around, calloused hands making me feel so safe. Though, that was largely a process of trial and error. The first time he had tried to swing me around; I involuntarily started to wail at the strange, bottomless feeling of falling. I ended up a sputtering mess on the floor as Father dropped me lightly on the floor, leaving Mother to scold him and soothe me as he sheepishly scratched his head.
And without drama, the days passed.
It was about this time when I encountered my first mirror. It was up on mother's bathroom bench, a small circular shape fitted into a metal stand with ancient markings etched into its frame. I couldn't take my eyes off the face staring back at me.
I had messy brown hair – it had always been black before. I had hazelnut brown eyes. I had pudgy cheeks. My forehead was lower than I remembered it to be. My nose was barely a nub protruding from my face. I had long eyelashes – though I remembered that babies typically had quite long ones, lucky – they really had no idea how expensive it was back in my world. I twirled my hair between my fingers and admired the way the light and dark shadows worked wonders on it like never before.
I could really get used to this.
And then I learned how to write, and began to scrawl dates, timelines, graphs which were destroyed with water immediately after they were created to hide my knowledge. I tried to connect the dots, remember the main events of this timeline, the destruction of Wall Maria, the battle of Trost, the emergence of the Female Titan.
I kept thinking.
If I put myself at the forefront of the action, I could potentially change the plot of the story, and that in itself was dangerous, veering off a known storyline would put the knowledge I have to waste. Also, I could die. If I lived as a civilian, I would not gain the survival skills that soldiers had, and the story would continue on as usual. In that case, how could I save lives? Prevent disasters? Create change? There was absolutely no guarantee for survival, whether I was a mere civilian or a soldier. I thought and thought, but to no avail.
By the age of 6, I was really starting to get used to the world around me. And to be honest, apart from the looming wall in front of me, nothing else was too far from what I was used to. Perhaps, except that I never have a cell-phone with me all the time. Mother was introducing me to new chores, duties, and having me run small errands. I ran around, dropping off grocery bags at the Yeager's place, the Johnson's family, swept the floor until it glistened, washing baskets and baskets of fruit, watched Father make nutritious batches of fertiliser for his crops.
One afternoon, Grisha Yeager stopped by our home. He poked and prodded at my cheeks, had me open my mouth wide so that he could check that my molars were growing right. I had been complaining about tooth pain the other day.
"Are you brushing your teeth twice a day, Lily?"
His accusatory tone in which he asked his question sounded so similar to the dentists in my own world it had me nearly rolling my eyes.
After my check-up, Grisha pulled out a jar of teeth sensitive "toothpaste" and a few apple tree twigs for me to chew to maintain teeth health. He also pulled out a couple of bars of soap that he had started producing a few months ago, and lotions and creams for Mother's newly developed rash and Father's bug bites. My face contorted into a series of strange expressions as I chewed on the tough apple twig. Apparently, it helped clean my teeth when I wasn't brushing it. Kind of like how I used to give my pet dog a bone to chew on to maintain its oral health.
Ancient medicine was weird, but it sparked a little something in my mind. Imagine the impact on this world, the life within these walls, if there a healer, a medic who could save lives on the battlefield. Imagine someone who could preserve severed arms and reattach them, give soldiers another chance at living their lives after they've retired from the military. The only one I had really remembered in the anime was Grisha, everyone else just had a brief understanding of first aid. Did the anime really think that wrapping a bandage around someone's head would prevent a concussion? Ancient medicine was indeed weird, but I was keen to learn it.
"Dr. Yaeger," my own words surprising me out of my heavy cloud of thoughts, "Do you know where I can learn to make things like this?" I poked at the jars filled to the brim with lotion.
"You want to learn?" He looked at me curiously.
"Well, I think it's really fascinating and I want to help people like you help Mum and Dad and I." I looked up at him as earnestly as my doe eyes could. "And I can't find much in these books." I rambled on.
He rolled my proposition in his mind for a moment and nodded slowly at my words. "I can't refuse a keen learner. Meet me in my house tomorrow after breakfast, I'll let your parents know."
I sat up in the chair he was examining my teeth in, face lit up with joy. He chuckled at my reaction. The great taking on an apprentice? Unbelievable! I could barely comprehend how easy it was.
Mother and Father were all for the idea. Whilst they did want me out of the house doing more things, instead of being locked up in my room flicking through the tattered pages of books, they didn't want me running rampant around town, stealing apples and creating a ruckus. This was the perfect opportunity.
The very next day, Grisha introduced me to his home, which was his primary workstation. Jars of cream, dried leaves, stems, roots, hearts and livers of animals were lined up across his shelves, each labelled accordingly. It looked like a scene straight out of a gaming warehouse, or that of a mad scientist.
"Our sleeping quarters are up there,"Grisha gestured as Eren perched on the stairs, mostly hidden from sight. I turned around and waved at him shyly when I felt his eyes following me. He didn't wave back.
"My workstation is right here, you're welcome to enter and get what you need any time." Grisha continued to take me around his house.
"Bathroom is here, kitchen there; living room is around the corner." He pointed and made sure I nodded along to what he was saying. But I was barely listening by the time he had moved out of the living room.
"What's down there?" I asked, and pointing at a grubby staircase leading downstairs to the basement. It was old and looked unused, where mould was creeping along the edges of the wooden staircase. My heart was thumping wildly in my chest. This was the basement, wasn't it?
Grisha didn't hesitate to reply.
"That's out of bounds."
A/N: revamped chapter 2. constructive criticism very welcome!