UNMARKED GRAVES, armin arlert

4. girlhood, goathood, godhood

          WEEKS BLURRED INTO A RIGOROUS HUMDRUM of blinding sensations so stimulating that a good twenty Cadets had already forfeited for the fields, or passed out for a motley of reasons. It was a picture perfect cookie cutter kind of thrill your mother had always chased as though it were second oxygen. Running so quickly, you thought your heart would shatter, that the earth would crumble under every foot you land, but it'd be okay because you'd choke it back anyway. You would choke this world back anyway. It was all feeling, all life twitching like a newborn lamb. But goodness, you were alive with your mother's borrowed blood, you couldn't help but wonder and crave for the day when you'd begin to drown in it.

With the overwhelm of physical and mental strain, Matthew's heavy hand at wriggling with social interactions to knitted himself connections subsequently benefited you. Because Matthew befriended Conny through proximity in beds, it was law that Matthew must get along with Sasha. He succeeded in this, and now like law, they became your friends too. However as you began to catch yourself in the cobwebs of these connections, you began to rule out a dichotomy of who you could and couldn't associate with over piles of sleepless nights spent tossing yourself across rock-hard mattresses and itchy blankets.

You could interact with a handful of people, enough to assimilate yourself amongst the clipped chatter. Aside from Matthew, Conny, and Sasha, you made fast friends with Mina Carolina. Mina was a girl who wore her night black hair in pigtails, and you confessed only to yourself that it was cute for a soldier-in-training. Despite her physical appearance, she was authentically sweet compared to Christa's alarmingly saccharine exterior; a very normal girl amongst a group of rather quirky individuals. That said, it didn't come as a surprise you took a fond inclination towards her. Additionally, you continued to acknowledge Armin (who you'd frequent at small talk with), Christa (who remained so sweet it gave you a bad sweet tooth), but not Ymir (who didn't seem to acknowledge anyone but Christa, unless it was someone to poke at).

On the other hand, there were cherry picked people that you couldn't for the life of you interact with. The cheerless blonde you encountered on your first night-Annie Leonhart-maintained her insipid approach not only towards you, but everything and everyone she faced; exhibiting no determination or commitment during training in contrast to Eren's excessive display of those qualities; and portrayed no interest in the flocks of friends that began to fill an assembly that had once been strangers. And although you were well-acquainted with Armin, his childhood friends that never fail to wing his sides-Eren and Mikasa-were difficult to associate with for their respective reasons. While Mikasa was a girl melted from pure metal, excelling in fields that Armin did not, Eren was just stupidly driven that he was the most eager to reach his end location.

At midday, everyone was sent to the main grounds for a first aid seminar. Many peers limped towards the lecture facility with liquid limbs, and when you slumped into the classroom like a bag of bones, you buried your head in your hands. For the past weeks, aside from the scheduled practices and ridiculous hours, it was mandatory to attend various introductory courses that circled around a wide myriad of skills-this be survival, titans, history, mechanics, et cetera. While it wasn't expected-but certainly highly commended-that everyone must retain and excel at every dimension of this pool of skills, every discipline you considered mastering eroded into that hungry nothingness you seemed to find wherever you go, that somehow everyone around you couldn't see. Because even if the flowers were beautiful and the brambles carried berries, those very same flowers would wilt and the berries would burst into mold. That beauty was indicative of an exception to this meaningless monotony; a hole of hope that explained why poets mourn to the moon, why lovers make oaths upon death, why we join our hands in prayer. But it is only beautiful because it leaves.

Your reason to be here rode on one idea: To follow the footsteps of your father. But every object casts a shadow once bathed in light, and as you're slowly being pulled into the wider world, the shadows begin to creep on your skin: you follow your father's footsteps-then what? Once you become a Scout, would you return to your home in Shiganshina? Once you become a Scout, would your parents come back from the dead?