"Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings."
Oh fuck. Oh,hell.
That's a titan...
And that's a wall. A huge wall. Colossal even. But not really a wall, is it?
It was familiar to me, but in a sense as through the lens of a observer whose viewing was from a safe spot, tucked away in a comfortable bed or couch.
But seeing it RIGHT THERE, there in its endlessly towering stretch of what was brick and of knowing what really laid inside it, up through even the clouds way up into the goddamn skies , I swear I found myself through the neck up overflown with cold sweats. And through and through down the strange clothing I've now only noticed I'm wearing.
A rumble of the earth beneath me and around myself began, and I found myself out of my leering stupor previously etched onto the wall above me. A vibration ran throughout my surroundings.
Oh yeah, the Titan. Shit.
Taller than a 2-story building, arms too small and legs too big. It carried with it a slant eyed expression that looked unchanging. And its mouth was hung gaping open and low, and I felt a shiver rush through me so damn quick when I saw it.
My legs.
They were already feeling like they're about to give in.
Who the hell cursed me to be here, huh? Is it some kind of evil act I did or something? I-i went to church, damn it! O-occasionally. Did my confessions and all that!
I...I paid my dues! How is this happening right now?! And to me?! Come on!
An Illusion! Yes, a goddamn trick!
No! It's a dream! Just a dream! A long one. All those sensations before, they're just my brain and nerves going haywire, right?! Right?!
Who am I talking to?!
A heavy rumble shook my insides.
then another, then another.
Oh god, I think I'm about to puke.
No, No, No! That isn't real either! Ugh, those tricks again!
My thoughts turned dormant as I felt something loom over me, and so close. A heavy breathing so loud between my eardrums.
Coming in upon my peripheries was the visage of two abnormally large legs, and I also felt it become a few shades darker around me all of a sudden.
It's not real.
It's not real.
Just close your eyes.
Just count to 10. Maybe it'll all go away?
A gust of wind was what I felt, and I felt my hair blown back with it.
My eyes opened for a brief second, and the sight of large meaty hand coming towards my face was what came into view.
It isn't really disappearing, is it?
Oh no.
Shit.
A aching pain quickly turning to numbness, I felt my teeth clench hard. I felt my molars crack.A liquid, with a taste like iron started to fill and pour through my clenched teeth, and the sensation of it overflowed out my clenched teeth.
I felt my wind being knocked through and out of me. Somewhere in my ribs quickly ached so bad.
Complete darkness.
Or so I thought again.
Blurryness, to the point of near-blindness. But not quite there yet. Like a flash. I was in the flicker.
Can't
Move.
Still in the air. I was still catching air. I'm flailing around.
I felt the whole of my body flip on its back as I felt myself flying through the air, and I saw a blurry visage.
Blue. No, A a mixture of many colors including blue.
The whole of my frontside submerged and plunged into something. My nose, clogged. Air. Oxygen. Neither of my lungs was producing right now. My eyes could still catch the sight of its end. Of what I was submerged in. Stone. A Canal? I feel like I'm floating around somewhere again.
Oh fuck...
Everything was...burning?
My eyes haven't left me.
My ear, every sound burned in my eardrums.
My nose, every smell burned in my nostrils.
My throat, every sound from inside burned as I elicited one. Even though it was warbled to all hell.
Estrangement.
The view of a crowd of now only struggling overhead gestures and waves slowly furthering away in its distance. The yelling, the moaning, the whining, and the fear palpable crowd in wait for the next boat of transport was what Mikasa was seeing from her seated, almost fetal position from her side.
"Sounds like Eren's stopped." She remarked quietly, even in her wave of thoughts, as the teary and sniffling voice of a boy just ne'er a few moments screamed bloody vengeance was now absent. And she briefly glanced over next to herself to see said-boy sat down, face buried in his knees with a familiar blonde haired boy next to him, too. Armin.
And the gloom of the sitting crowd sprawled tightly around her, and the flapping of sails against low winds mixed with some weeping remained, around to the whole of the boat's deck. She turned to Eren again, hearing small sniffles from him in her ears as she stared at his form.
The other of the soldiers on the boat that Mikasa boarded dared not speak, as their tongues still burnt with the taste of the failure so monumental, and wrinkles on their faces defined in its fullness of the bitterness of their follies. An accomplishment that was of a complete shared and passed-around awareness of themselves in spiral.
"O-o-oh..."A garrison man in full uniform, positioned at one edge of the boat uttered out. His eyes and head panning to that which he stared around, in widened eyes and in dilated pupils.
A few dozen heads also turned to what he stared at, and the same reaction seemed to occur to them too.
Mikasa felt her eyes narrow at the sight, and felt a twitch in her lips behind the scarf. She heard a quiet gasp from Armin, who appeared ghastly pale in his skin.
The back of a figure with the head half submerged, with only his frontside appearing above the discolored water, small framed and moving only by the flow of the water of the canal the boat was moving along. A young boy.
Black haired, and a bruise visible across his chest. Weeds that looked stuck tightly against and over his still floating body. His eyes were closed and he was facing up against the sky.
"H-he looks just our age, doesn't he?" Armin shakily muttered out to Mikasa, to which she only mouthed a tiny "hm" to.
More bodies in a second too appeared out through a curve, and in another second the weed covered boy's corpse seemed to disappear off and into the greater mass of the other corpses and cadavers floating along.
The boat finally came under a high arch above, and just a few distances away was a exit, which seemed to stretch wide and outside the city, seemingly as if leading into a vein-like structure filled with water into a heart.
And the bodies the crowd on the boat saw seemed to disappear, just into a turn that came up a second before.
Mikasa only sank her head further into her scarf, as the boat kept penetrating further outside the walls.
Consciousness.
My eyes shot open. But only my right eye open.
Something was nibbling against my left ear, and my left cheek. It was familiar. Grass.
I felt heavy as I heaved myself from from my laid position. My breathing felt labored. It wasn't just some nightmare. Oh god. It's still there. I'm still here.
Before I knew it, I had my face buried in my palms. A bruise across my chest. Aching all over. It's all...rushing back to me.
I shivered as a chill was spread across my being. I was soaked, and something other than my clothing felt stuck to me, up to my chest and around my neck. I grasped for it with my two hands and yanked it forward.
Large strands of it was what my hands beheld. It was strands of weeds. Oh yeah, I think I was floating in water just a few moments.
I'm in a goddamned fantasy land. Unreal. Just unreal.
And not just any, this was some messed up world for all the reasons that word had value. Of all the worlds, it's this one.
But if it even was somewhere less messed up, I think I'd still be screaming.
This can't be happening to me.
No one or no thing can just do this to me like this! It just can't!
M-my...my rights!
My whole damn existence!
Just...
Just...!
I'm still alive. Just gotta make sense of all this.
I stood up from the grass, my legs shaking like a leaf every second it took to stand up. My eyes darted around my surroundings, and my environment. This...this is Wall Maria right?
Behind me there was the towering wall. And just a few distances to my north, was a canal. A wide canal that was leading its path into the walls, and I turned the opposite way to see that it also lead to a another wall in the distance. Wall Rose. Yeah, that's it.
But any thought of walking there in me was stomped out of me, as the distant figures of titans far across the grass wandering were there in my view.
I only faced myself back into the canal leading into Wall Maria again.
Need someplace to rest.
Need...
someplace to think.
I limped forwards into the stretch of the canal that lead into Wall Maria, shoulders drooped and my back hunched.