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I THINK RICK'S GROWING COLD.
There's a hardness in him now, like winter's first frost—quiet and unrelenting. Tonight, he stood before us, his voice edged with something raw, telling us, 'This isn't a democracy anymore.' It felt like a line drawn, an ending to everything we were, maybe even to everything we thought we believed in. The firelight cast shadows against his face, carving a distance that makes him look more like a stranger with every passing day. But maybe that's what survival does to a person; maybe it turns them into someone who belongs more to the night than to anything warm or familiar.
I think about Shane sometimes—how he changed, how the world twisted him into something dangerous, something hungry. When he looked at me that night, there was something in his eyes, something hollow, and I wonder now if he saw himself in the darkness longer than any of us realized. Maybe he let the cold seep in, let it become his answer to everything he couldn't control. I hated him for it, but now, looking at Rick, I wonder if Shane was right about one thing: the world might only have room for those willing to harden themselves against it.
Tonight, as I sat by the fire, its warmth didn't settle, didn't fill me the way it once did. I could feel it, but it didn't touch me, didn't reach the parts of me that have already started to go numb. There's an emptiness that creeps in, silent and steady, and I wonder if that's the path I'll take too—to let the cold settle, to let it shield me. Maybe that's what survival is now: learning to feel less, so the losses weigh less, so the pain has nowhere left to root itself.
Rick is right, I think. This isn't a democracy, not anymore. It's something fierce and relentless, a hunger that cares for nothing but the next dawn. And I'm beginning to understand that, the way he does. Maybe I'll survive by following his lead, by letting my own heart freeze over, one piece at a time.
I used to believe feeling made us stronger, that caring could keep us human. But tonight, with Rick's words hanging in the dark, I'm not so sure. Maybe survival is letting go of what we used to be. I just hope that somewhere, if we keep walking through this cold, we'll find our way back to the warmth.
