Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 14 - unknown man

A cold wind travels through the broken window and pushes the child's hair away from her back, sending a shiver through her little body despite the tattered blanket wrapped around her like a burrito meant to shield the girl.

Decay hangs in the air, dried blood, rotting flesh and brain goo staining the floorboards from biters long dead. Her current residence is an old home, with mould eating away at the walls and leaving them to rot.

The child was forced to leave the woods and her home, she had grabbed her emergency bag and bolted into zone two, which she had never entered since there were no trees to hide in, so the child wandered around an unfamiliar ghost town, looking like it hasn't been touched since the before.

Every day it hurts to wake up in a foreign house, and every day she wakes up and instantly her thoughts go to check on Dolores, before the reminder that the girl is alone sinks in.

Three weeks since she saw the baby's smiling little face, and in those weeks she has almost completely gone through her food and water supplies. Now the only thing her drawstring bag holds is a single can of raisins, a bag of crackers and a couple of granola bars. But the majority of the space has toys that she had scavenged, it's enough to keep her entertained during the long days with the heat beating down on her, and the nights when the cold creeps in.

She didn't have to deal with the cold that came when the sun set because the basement retained the heat from the day, but now, with nothing to protect her but a ratty and torn-up blanket, she is sitting on her shivering hands to keep them warm along with not having to look at how the icy air is affecting her.

The stars are shining through the dark sky, allowing the child to continue her game of naming them. She doesn't know the actual names that astronomers have given them, so she gives them names much less impressive, such as Anna, Timothy, Jane, Marcus, and other regular names she remembers that belonged to classmates. Toys can only get her so far, so her imagination must take over.

Hunting hasn't been easy, the only animals close by are birds, and with the dizziness that hunger brings it's hard shooting them during flight.

Tessa is adamant about finding a new home even better than her last, with no one close to her. It's what keeps her going through the hunger, the cold and the painful thoughts of the baby. She often wonders how Lola is doing, if she misses her or if she likes her new home. Despite that she was the one to discover and haul all the baby's items, she hoped that Rick and his group had taken them for Lola, to help her get used to living in a prison instead of the basement.

She thinks of what name Rick had given her, hoping it wasn't a dull one like what she had called the stars. Or maybe Carl had named her, after all, Tessa had named Gabriela. Since there were three babies to name, her madre had named Andres, her dad got Wesley, which left the last baby for the child, though they had denied her first few choices, which were Maleficent, Pinkie-Pie and Tinkerbell.

Rick should be grateful she didn't decide to name his daughter any of those.

The child pushes the broken sofa up to cover the shattered window, trying to stop the chill from entering the living room that she is sitting in the centre of with pillows lined up under her, substituting as a bed.

On that makeshift bed is the plush toy of a tiger she had taken from one of the many homes she has stayed in these last few weeks, the girl found that tracing its orange and black stripes helps her sleep, and even if she doesn't she had discovered she liked holding the teddy to her chest while she dozes off.

She had named it Leona, and though it means lioness in Spanish, she still thought it would work for a tiger since they're both technically just big cats.