"It's dark."
Michonne doesn't bother a glance at the sky. She knows what dark looks like. It's a high white sun in a smooth blue sky. That brief breath between afternoon and night before the shadows stretch underfoot. In the new world, this is dark.
She's going anyway.
Michonne says this more or less with a shrug, kneeled beside the grill that's more smoker than grill for their purpose. Though they've been stalled from said purpose for what might be a good problem: enough venison for days, just not enough charcoal to smoke it.
A couple spare handfuls were all they scourged from the shed, but with the sheer mass of the pit, spare handfuls aren't enough. Both women knew this before they flamed up the grill. The farmer's daughter due to being a farmer's daughter. Michonne due to memories of a long dead boyfriend blacking steaks to a crisp with a live-as-the-cow center.
The women were gonna go for open fire, but discovering the grill dismissed the plan. Smoking game in the open to let the smell permeate the woods? Risky. No telling if walkers liked their meat cooked once in a while. The grill has coverage and discreetness, exactly what they need. It is the best option. The only option. And Michonne needs to go.
"Being all exposed in the daylight is risky enough, not knowing where he is…" Maggie's lips form a line. "But then to go out, under dark?"
Michonne squints up at her, hand for a hood to banish the sun. Sun that slips away from her each second wasted talking.
"Not to mention alone," Maggie adds, reminds.
Michonne sighs. Alright, alright.
Patting coal-coated hands against the already smudged knees of her jeans, she rises from her crouch to look Maggie on evenly.
"You know me." Her lips tug downward, lingering on the irony, or untruth, of that. "I'm quick. Will be in and out of there long before the cows come home."
Maggie claps her jeans as well, leaving dusky hand prints against the blue fabric.
"Still think it's best you brought someone along." Her look is soft, slightly pleading. "You need to."
What Michonne needs is a wall to knock her head against. And maybe Maggie's too. Doesn't she see? The whole no-I-in-team thing doesn't apply to her as it would someone from, say, that Woodbury troop. Even with the governor who-knows where, Michonne is better off doing this by herself. She, for one, can handle herself. And that's what no one gets. Alone isn't weak.
Not for her it isn't, who's only too used to alone. All those months before Andrea…plus with her katana, the blade that's become beloved, she's never alone, really. Michonne fingers the edge of her sword sheath as she turns back to Maggie.
"It's a low risk trip," Michonne knocks her head back. "The place is just down the road."
The place is an abandoned cabin that she's passed more than she knew. Not too deep in and so emerged in foliage it'd taken several crossings to notice it. But she did notice with Daryl. Both spotting it at the same time as a walker stumbled through the overgrown clearing, followed by several more that seemed to linger in the area. Needing to keep at the hunt, they left the area with a mental mark to investigate later. Agreed it'd be best to return with reinforcements… not that Michonne was gonna tell Maggie this.
