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.・゜-: ✧☾ ☽✧ :-゜・.
The morning light stretched longer shadows across the forest, chasing away the last traces of night. The wind howled between the trees, the leaves whispering around her. It should have made Stella shiver, but she was already so numb, she barely noticed.
The Grimes girl sat leaning against a tree, her fingers fiddling with a slumped and dull-looking daisy, her vision blurring as she stared at the flower. What once was so beautiful, now looked almost lifeless.
The night had been a thick, suffocating fog of silence except for the occasional sound of the dead, reminding Stella that Beth wasn't one of them. She was just gone. Completely.
Her stomach twisted and she hunched forward, crashing into a loud sob as her hand clutched over her heart. Everything ached. The memories, the regrets, the sight of Beth's lifeless corpse.
The sobs tore through her, raw and unforgiving, echoing into the emptiness around her. Stella clenched the daisy tighter in her trembling fingers, its fragile stem bending, then snapping. And something inside the girl did the same.
She sucked in a deep breath, attempting to pull herself together but it was useless. The weight of everything pressed down on her as if she was being crushed under the rubble of it all. Her chest tightened, every harsh breath burning inside her.
She hadn't seen Beth since the fall of the prison and had gotten used to clinging to that small string of hope that she was still alive after she split up from Daryl and Levi. Now, there was no hope to latch into.
Beth was one of the few things still good in this world. She was warm, gentle, and too pure for the foul world that surrounded them. She had fallen victim of the cruelty in it and Stella couldn't bear the thought that the person who had ended Beth's life was already dead. With one quick painless shot in the dead. It wasn't fair. She doesn't get to get away that easy after what she did.
Stella spun her head around at the sound of leaves rustling behind her, the familiar groan of a walker approaching her. She sucked in a deep breath, dropping the flower to the ground before she shakily stood up. She was too drained, and exhausted after the day prior she didn't even attempt to do anything about the walker, strolling behind her. She made her way through the forest to where the group had put up camp.
Most of the members of the group had taken off to go to Noah's old home in hopes of finding someplace to settle down. Her father had left along with them, promising his children that he'd be back.
Stella made her way through the forest, reaching their camp when she finally killed the walker. The camp was quiet, still, and almost lifeless, like something had been torn from it leaving it in the abyss of silence. Most people who had stayed back while the others were either mourning for themselves or out scavenging. The only members in sight was Levi who sat with Carl and Judith. The two boys looked up when the leaves under Stella's boots rustled, their expressions tightening at the sight of her.
