Skeleton Flowers [Shingeki no Kyojin]

✾ Prologue ✾

Year 845: The Fall of Wall Maria

Minamoto Izanami stood atop of the high hill, the cool afternoon breeze flowing through the length of her long midnight black hair, swaying them away from her face. Her eyes were closed, lips lightly parted and the scent of scattered flowers on the outskirts of Wall Maria's outcrop town, Shiganshina District which had become her home in the past two years.

Izanami was only ten years of age, but she felt like she had been alive for many more decades. All throughout her short life, she had been shunted around all over the last stronghold of humanity. She was born in the depth of winter, to a family that lived under a pseudonym of 'Minamoto'.

Although she had never known her father, who passed away before she was born, Izanami had lived with her mother for two years after birth, and she had imparted their culture onto her: they looked different from others, they spoke an ancient language and had different traditions.

It was this difference, Izanami had understood that brought her mother's demise – she had been killed by overzealous neighbours, blaming her ethnicity for causing bad luck amongst their town. Izanami had barely survived, having been swept away in the night by her maternal grandmother.

The Minamoto Family was an Oriental family, pure and untainted for what they would tell the others, and Izanami had been the youngest person born of such purity amongst them.

Life with her grandmother had been serene for Izanami after undergoing the loss of her mother, which had been a big blow to the three-year-old girl. Yet old age had come to claim her grandmother and Izanami had been sent to live an elderly friend of her grandmother on the outskirts.

Izanami had wanted to live with that woman, and she had lived with her but on the stormy night of her sixth birthday, she had been kidnapped from that household, taken far away from home.

It was a series of places that Izanami did not recall very well anymore – she was sent from one place to another, shunted around as a big leverage, her orientalism and untainted body showcased around the place for the highest bid. She was just shy of turning eight when she managed to free herself, just before she could be placed under the world of unconscious and sent 'far, far, far' away.

Fate had led her right to a woman, her mother but it wasn't until her feverish state had subsided that Izanami realised that this person was not her mother, rather, it was another Oriental woman – one who was just like her, of full heritage. But she only spoke a little of their language.

Yet that woman had been more welcoming than ever, understanding what it meant to be targeted simply for being Asian and she took Izanami to live with her family, the Ackerman Family.

That itself felt so long ago, even though it had only been two years since Izanami and Mikasa had become sisters, and how they had been through many ructions together that ended them up on the Jaeger doorstep.

Izanami opened her onyx eyes, the deep, dark greyness of them sweeping in the sight of the brilliant blue sky above her. White clouds dotted the blueness of it just as the small white flowers in her hair, sitting stark against the darkness of it. She let out a sigh, turning around to look toward Mikasa, who was coming up the hill.

Mikasa Ackerman was Oriental just like Izanami, even if she was only partial. They were both of the same heritage, it appeared yet they looked remarkably different despite both having black hair and dark eyes.

"I can see him," Izanami informed Mikasa as the two of them hoisted firewood on their backs. "Eren is there, by that tree – it appears as if he has fallen asleep, Mikasa. Should we go wake him up?" She wished to persist under the sky a bit longer.