Chapter Text
Prologue
This is the story of how Lexa died. Do not worry though, it was an honorable death, one that her people would be proud of. She could not think of a more honorable way to die, then for the one that she loved.
That being said, this story was not about her. No, she was just a minor player in the story. This is really the story about Clarke of the Sky People. A beautiful woman and warrior after Lexa’s own heart from the moment she laid eyes on her.
This story starts back before Lexa’s time.
Once upon a time, there was a clan known as the Sky People. These people fell from the sky in a large magical ship. The sky people refer to it as the Ark. The Sky People settled close to the Grounders’ territory. Lexa remembers the stories that Indra used to tell her about the Sky People. She would speak of their technology and their guns and their medicine. Lexa was never quite sure if her advisor was speaking with awe or hatred or both.
Anyway, the sky people fell to the ground and their disturbance created unrest amongst the grounders. A war broke out. Grounders and sky people fought for at least a year. There were so many losses on both sides and then things became critical when the grounder’s commander became gravely injured.
The sky people believed that if they could find a way to save the commander, then there could be peace amongst their people. In their desperate attempt to end the killing they searched the land until they came upon a mountain.
At the mountain they found a garden. This garden had all kinds of various things growing in it. They could only be called things because some did not even resemble plants. They were mutations of flowers and fruits and the arkers raced towards it. Amongst the deadly looking plants and other various items in the garden, there was a flower. It glowed brightly and was warm to the touch.
One of the guards from the Ark reached out with his injured hand and touched the flower experimentally. To his astonishment the flower healed his injury. The arkers immediately picked the flower up and took it back to the Chancellor.
The Chancellor of the Ark took the flower to his doctors and chemists and asked them to try and replicate the flower’s properties before they handed it over to the grounders. Thanks to the technology of the arkers they were able to replicate the flower.
The doctors of the ark created a liquid potion out of the flower that healed the commander. A peace treaty was formed amongst the sky clan and the grounder clans. All the while however, the arkers kept the existence of the second flower a secret while they attempted to replicate it a third time.
What the arkers did not know, was that there were people who knew that they had a second flower. You see, there were people living inside the mountain who were the ones growing the experimental plants in the first place. Their president sent out a guardsman, to try and reclaim the flower.
The other person who knew of the flower, was a grounder named Anya. At the time, she was the commander’s second. Anya had been told to go negotiate peace with the arkers. While she was looking around the camp she discovered the location of the flower. As she saw the flower she also ran into the mountain man with the hazmat suit. The mountain man was holding the formulas for the flower in his hands. When he saw Anya, he threw the papers into the fire and grabbed the flower.
Anya chased after him and eventually overpowered him. She killed the mountain man and hid the body.
Anya took the flower and hid it somewhere that no one else would find it. She did not believe that either side should have such an item and have an advantage over the other.
Over time, Anya realized that the flower could keep her young, and she would return to it now and again to regain her youth. Her lasting youth earned her a place of respect amongst the grounders.
The arkers never went to the grounders about the missing flower. They had found the mountain man’s body and presumed that he was the source of the flower’s destruction.
Years passed and when Lexa’s mother was pregnant with her, the sky woman, Abby Griffin was also having a child.
Abby became very sick during her pregnancy and it sent the arkers in a frenzy. She was one of their most skilled healers. Her husband, Jake Griffin, created a search party to find some miracle that could possibly save her. There had been stories from their parents about the magical flower that healed the commander years ago. Jake and Chancellor Jaha took a team of the guard to find the garden in the mountain.
Anya had been in the process of regaining her youth when she heard the guardsmen approaching. She accidentally knocked over the box where she hid the flower and the arkers found it.
Jaha and Jake returned to the camp with the flower and it healed Abby.
A healthy baby girl was born. The chancellor proclaimed she was a miracle child and the other ark families looked at the Griffins in awe, some with fear and distrust.
One night when the council was holding a meeting, Anya snuck into the camp to find the child. Anya prayed that if she just cut a lock of the girl’s hair she could sneak away and continue to stay young. She was not so lucky however.
Panicking, Anya grabbed the child and fled into the night.
Anya found a tower in the territory in between the grounders and the mountain men that had been untouched for years. She took the child there and raised her as her own.
The arkers were in an uproar at the kidnapping of the Griffin’s child. They eventually came to terms with the grounders and believed it was the mountain men coming back for revenge for the arkers taking the flower. As the years passed more and more children, grounder and sky person, went missing confirming this theory.
Lexa became Anya’s second a few years later, and this, this is where the story begins and as you can see, it really isn’t about Lexa at all.
This is the legend of Clarke of the Sky People and how she took down the mountain.