Amaranth

Chapter 22: Lisianthus

A few days later, Mikasa received a text from Eternity. It surprised her since she'd expected the girl to text her sooner rather than later, but she was just glad the girl reached out at all. In the message, she'd requested that Mikasa meet her on the Trost side of the mountain since that was the side she was most aware of.

Mikasa was quick to message back and tell the girl she'd be able to meet her that weekend on her side of Mount Maria.

So, finally, it was the time of the dreaded talk. Mikasa stood at the bottom of Mount Maria, staring up at it from the Shiganshina side. Carla had offered to drive her, but Mikasa wanted to pass her house and look for some remnants of her sister. She knew they were there; she just didn't know where.

She made her way up the mountain easily since she no longer had her cast to weigh her down. As fall got closer and closer to winter, more snow coated lower elevations of the mountain, and that was probably the hardest part of the journey.

By the time she made it to her old home, her feet were freezing, and her legs felt like they were going to fall off. Still, she continued forward and entered the house. Upon entering, she realized that the power was off. Shit, Mikasa cursed, They cut the power now that they know no one's living here.

She entered the house shivering, and pulled out her phone. She had to turn on her phone flashlight, so she could see and make her way through the house. She knew that if there was anything left of her sister, it would be on her mother's bookshelf, so that's the first place she checked.

Sure enough, buried behind all the books, was a photo album of the girls. They didn't have a printer or anything fancy in their home, but her parents constantly went in and out of town around the time they sent Eternity away.

She cracked it open, flipping through the pictures. She found many of her and her twin cuddled together on their beds, having small snowball fights, frolicing in the flowers, and tons of other things they would've done at that age.

Mikasa put the album behind her before turning her attention back to the bookshelf. Flowers, flowers, flowers, Mikasa thought as she read through the titles, anatomy, biology, physics, mathematics. There sure are a lot of academic books here. I never realized that.

After some searching, she decided that there likely wasn't another item of her sister's on the shelf. The next best place was her mother's jewelry box, so she cautiously made her way to it.

When she opened the box, she found a few necklaces her mother used to wear. She found more lockets, and she almost laughed when she found one with a picture of her teacher as a high schooler. She almost couldn't tell it was him, but the angry look in his eyes said it all.

As she continued searching, she eventually found a necklace with the word "eternity" on it. It was, very obviously, meant to symbolize her sister now that she looked at her. Her mother wore it almost all the time, but she always assumed that it meant something else. It never clicked for her that it was her sister's name on her mother's neck.

She quickly stuffed the necklace and the locket into her pockets before walking back towards the bookshelf and collecting the photo album. With all the possessions in her hands, she made her way back down the mountain, heading towards Trost.

Even as a child, she never went down the Trost side. She had no clue how to navigate it. She didn't know which parts were slippery, which parts were roky, which parts to avoid. However, she did know the signs for dangerous areas from seeing it on her side of the mountain, so she decided to implement that knowledge and hope it worked.

Soon enough, she made it down the mountain safely using her method. To her surprise, it worked surprisingly well, and she only ran into one spot where she briefly worried for her life. Despite that, she made it down just fine, and it didn't take her long to stumble upon a small little cabin, similar to her own, near the bottom of the mountain.