Deluge of Desolation | l. ackerman

The Epoch of Humanity

"Time flies over us, but leaves its shadows behind us."

Nathaniel Hawthorne

(chapter six)

"What lies in the future?". I ask myself that question daily, only to realize I am experiencing the future. I stand in one place, letting time fly by me and numbers tick away as the past presents itself as memory. I realize I am experiencing the future. Every little moment of regret, anguish, pride and happiness I experience, at that point, I am in the future. But it passes instantaneously, and I find myself back at the same place, different time and different numbers, daylight slowly skipping through the leaves, thinking of where I stand on the line of time...and I am in the future again. But as I am thinking of being in the future, I reside in the past.

So where am I? Am I in the past or the future, or perhaps I am in that one microsecond of time and space where the present exists; in between history and our dreadful prospects.

Nevertheless, in this instance of time, everything is fickle. Science is always evolving as researchers learn new laws and create new theories — proving such as fact or myth as each second ticks by— time is ever changing, and our society is never consistent. Innocence and dignity, lost from the evil hands of Satan as he overtakes his victims and commands them to let their calloused bodies do as they please. 

Life is fickle, as well. We rise and we fall, we grow, we evolve, then we die at the shot of a gun or the glint of a blade. In an instant, everything as we know it can change. Our safety being no exception.

Now, as I stare up at the gaping aperture in the wall I never once put my faith into, I see how life is everything but constant. And that terrifies me more than the grotesque titans walking down the streets of my home town, accomplishing the destruction they had always been revved up to do.

I am in awe. Who would have thought that Marley would attack so soon? Not five years of peace and we are already being forced away from such comfort. Bold, Marley is. They are bold for sending their soldiers into enemy territory so blindly. They knew nothing about this place. They knew nothing of the military or the innovations and yet the Colossal Titan continued to break down the wall's gate with ease and bring this island and its people to ruin. He will infiltrate our society, play as one of us and act as if he understands the true destruction he has caused. He will not only mock the unfortunate by doing such, but he will act as if he cares for the unfortunate, bunking with his victims and hiding behind an altruistic act while doing so.

The plan was easy to figure out. Marley couldn't have been more transparent, but with the exceeding ignorance that suffocates these walls, this plan will subsequently be fool proof.

It was so cruel. Now, as old as I am, I see just how horrible Marley and the rest of the world is. To hold us Eldians to the crimes of our ancestors and make us pay reparations because of acts not one person alive has ever witnessed is absurd. Not that our ancestors did anything wrong. But I was always able to see the inequalities they placed on us was for naught. 

We did nothing to deserve such a terrible fate; but here we are, being eaten alive by our own people because those who hold power can do as they please at the expense of innocent and ignorant lives. Children, women, elders, their lives lost for a childish cause.

None of these people deserved this outcome. It was so, undeniably, cruel.

In a transient fear, I grapple the hooks of my omni-directional mobility (ODM) gear onto the roof of a building and harshly rub my eyes dry of the tears that started to form. The battlefield was no place to let emotions dictate decisions, especially when one is as inexperienced as I.