Torn Apart • TWD

Chapter 22 - tia Vega

A man is watching as a child draws her arm back with a bowstring tightly held in her fingers, releasing it after a breath and sending an arrow soaring through the sky and into a bird that had just set into flight. The man's body is leaning against the wall of a house that is also shielding him from the child who he's stalkings view.

He, along with the acquaintance who is insufferable in the man's eyes, was sent out on a mission to find the one responsible for killing a member of their town. This isn't the first time people have been sent to avenge the man's death, but they had found the group's bodies after they didn't return, which had then led to their leader sending his two best enforcers out to search for the culprit, but all they found was a child.

The two have been following the girl for an hour, they had almost been caught when the sun had reflected off the man's metal prosthetic that substituted for the lack of limb on his right arm, but she had dismissed it as nothing important and kept walking.

They are trailing her in the hope she will lead them to any other people she is travelling with, they believe the girl is involved since the man had been told the group they had sent outs corpses had a type of arrow shot into their brains after turning, and that is the only weapon they've seen the girl wielding so they had come to the conclusion she had been there.

Tessa quickly slits the throat of a bird she had just shot down airborne, sadly not instantly killing it when the arrow pierced its body like she always hopes it will. The girl had left the house she was squatting in after a full night's rest on a relatively comfortable sofa, a hell of a lot more comfortable than that abomination of a mattress at the prison, she had eaten both remaining squirrels to keep her stomach full until night.

She has been walking all day to get to a new house, admittedly not going at her fastest pace with her leg messed up and the unnecessary heat coming from both the sun and her jacket hiding the gun. There is a thin layer of sweat over her forehead as she bleeds the animal out and she ties a rope that's been knotted around the straps of her green bag and attaches it to the bird's leg, letting it hang as she walks.

For a while there has been a disturbing feeling in her stomach that's making the child nervous, it's the same feeling she gets when a biter suddenly jumps out at her, but different. Tessa's been frequently glancing over her shoulder and taking a long look at her surroundings before moving on.

She had blamed it on how no traps were protecting her or giving her the security she once had, but the theory didn't quite pan out since she'd been alone and unprotected before and never felt like this.

The feeling had persuaded her to walk faster, but her quick steps had irritated the wound in her leg and caused her walking to be even slower than when she started. The girl really hates that bullet graze for so many reasons, but the worst of all is how high maintenance it is, needing to be dressed with new bandages daily and take medicine to stop infections, she wants to throw her knife at the person who shot her again. He deserves to be stabbed in the heart more than once for the nuisance he's inflicted on her.

The child's mission is to get to a previous house she has already slept in, if she had decided it was safe enough to rest her head in before then there's no reason it shouldn't still be.

Chirping birds above her head draw her attention toward the sky, two robins are flapping around as they encircle each other, almost like they're playing a game. Tessa can't help but think about how much easier surviving in the new world would be if she could fly as they do.

A pang of guild echoes around her small body at the corpse hanging from a rope around her bag. She hopes the bird she shot down wasn't their friend, and that they're not wondering why the little guy hasn't come to join in the fun.