𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒍𝒇 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 ➪ «𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑦𝑙 𝑑𝑖𝑥𝑜𝑛»

ch. XVII - 《rainbows and puppies》

oOo

Today was not a great day, Diana summarized. Mostly because Glenn was off to go through unimaginable amounts of danger for their sake.

The weather was all kinds of depressing, gray and colorless and sticky. It dropped everyone's moods about 10%. It was very fitting with the mood of 'farewell'. Diana avoided calling it that. It felt awfully final.

After their incredibly emotional moment the night before, Diana almost refused to let go of Glenn that dawn. Their hug had lasted way longer than a normal hug would have. And after that, as Glenn was getting into the car, Diana's grip on his hand was unrelenting. If you pried her, she would willingly admit she shed a tear or two.

She had total confidence that Glenn would come back safe and sound, and she had told him so. He was amazing that way. But still, an annoying little doubt in the back of her mind told her otherwise.

Back at home camp, Diana overheard her parents talking about the constant presence of death in their lives and how unclear and uncertain their futures were. She heard her mom cry.

Today was not a great day.

Alice was currently experiencing a low phase in her diagnosed bipolar disorder, which contrasted deeply from the energetic emotional high she'd been in for the past couple of days. Being off her meds did that. She was angry and touchy and barely spoke to anyone. They knew the best thing to do was let her initiate an approach instead of forcing one. Those were Alice's rules. She liked dealing with everything on her own terms.

Felix didn't even try to pretend to be okay like he often did. He'd been the last to come out of the tent, eyes were swollen and rimmed red. He hadn't spoken a word to anyone and sighed heavily every two minutes.

The entire atmosphere during breakfast had been runny with unsolved feelings and stuffy with tension. No one dared to speak until the very end when Sam had announced that the self-defense training would not be taking place. It was taken with droopy nods and sighs of relief.

During another shift of nurse duty, the dying flowers Daryl had given her had managed to widen the hole in her chest.

She suffered through her patients' questions, tended to minor injuries and listened to their stories and mostly one-sided conversations with a baseless smile that felt as fake as that last patient's pearl necklace.

When she was done for the morning, Shane approached her station telling her they still hadn't made contact with Glenn. Diana wished and hoped the day would finally end just. So she could retreat to the semi-comfort of her sleeping bag and not have to be a part of the semi-functioning society for a while.

oOo

"Hey Fe-Boy, my man!"

Felix looked up from where he'd been attempting to draw a face on the dirt, a pair of large eyes and a wide smile. He swiped his shoe over it, deleting all traces of the activity and stood to greet T-Dog.

The man had approached Sam about two days ago, saying how nice it was to have another brother around. Sam had resorted to Felix for a translation. Then immediately shot him down with a straightforward, "I've got five brothers but you're not one of them."

Felix had laughed at his dad's candidness and T-Dog's bewilderedness.

He befriended T-Dog with his boyish charisma and the man became a surrogate older brother to him. Felix loved his sisters but there'd been times he'd wished he'd had a brother.

"Hey, T-Dog, how's it going?" They clapped their hands together, similar to the handshake Felix and Glenn had invented for themselves. Except less silly and unnecessarily long.