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CHAPTER FIVE // 69 days after the fall. THE WOUNDED RECOGNIZE THE WOUNDED.
I used to think multiplication tables and grammar booklets was the furthest you'd ever go. It used to make my heart ache so badly I could physically feel it in my chest.
You were in the third grade when the world stopped, and so I assumed that meant you'd stay frozen there... in between spelling words and the product of 8 x 7.
I used to think that meant you'd be in third grade forever.
Of course, as you always have and I'm certain always will, you proved me and everyone else completely wrong. You easily made it past third grade because you're brilliantly ( and sometimes highly annoyingly ) headstrong and remarkably resilient. Honestly, I think you were learning things at a faster pace than I was back when I was your age, before the dead had permanently canceled school. Which is... sort of embarrassing to admit ( given that I should've been a better student than you since I wasn't being taught in the middle of a fucking apocalypse ), but I guess that's just another ode to how incredible you are.
Anyways, do you remember Newton's first law of motion? The law of inertia? You learned it back at the prison. Carl taught it to you. It was one of the things that still stuck out to him from when he was in elementary school.
An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
Yeah... so that pretty much sums up the way Scarlett used to be. Before the fall and during the beginning of it.
Unless prompted, unless told, she would literally do absolutely nothing. And that's not an exaggeration. She wouldn't typically speak unless spoken to or do anything without some idea that someone else wanted her to do it. Which if you think about, is a pretty shit way to live.
Who are we if not the choices we make, the things we say, and the opinions and beliefs we're willing to fight and die for? The answer is nothing. We are nothing without those things. ( Don't ever forget that )
And that's how Scarlett would've stayed. Forever at rest. Motionless. Dormant. Empty.
Luckily, she had her very own unbalanced force.
That unbalanced force was named Maggie Greene.
Scarlett could smell the rain even from inside her tent. It had come in the night in a short, simple sweep over the farm's stunning land. She laid supine against her back, staring up at the peak of her tent where the poles formed an X, silhouettes of raindrops littering the top outside. A brown blanket was nestled perfectly underneath her, not rumpled an inch. She tended to stay oddly still during her slumber— everything the same as it was the night before with each new morning. It had always been this way.
