Starting Over... |Daryl Dixon| |The Walking Dead|

Chapter 17: Family Reunion

"Kayla?!....Kayla!!"

Daryl's voice echoed into my eardrums as I stirred back into conciousness. I had only been out for a few minutes, but it felt like it had been hours. A sharp pain pounded in my head as my eyes slowly creaked open.

I was laying on my back, sprawled out against something cool and damp. The smell of wet dirt surrounded me.

My vision was blurry, and my eyes stung as particles of dust fell into them. I could see the fuzzy image of the sunlight peeking through the trees above me, but they seemed much farther away than usual.

I groaned softly as my head throbbed again... Daryl's voice kept echoeing in my ears, sounding like it was getting closer.

"Kayla!!" He shouted.

Suddenly, the silhouette of his upper body appeared above me where the trees were. He, too, appeared to be way too far away.

"Daryl...?" My voice choked out, sounding weak and strained.

"You okay?!" He called to me, his voice sounding urgent, "Anything broken?"

I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion, still feeling dazed, as I tried to blink my vision clear again. I suddenly remembered running from the creek, the dirt giving way under me, and then my head knocking against something hard, like a rock.

"What happened...?" I managed to croak out a little louder.

"You fell into some kinda revine," Daryl shouted back to me. "Dammit, I told you to watch yerself, girl!" His voice suddenly became sharp and snappy.

As he spoke I started to regain my senses. Despite the piercing pain radiating through my skull, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to sit up.

Daryl was right, I was in some sort of revine, carved out of stone and packed dirt in the forrest floor. There was a shallow pool of clear rain water gathered a few feet to my left, and a large cluster of boulders just next to it.

Looking up, I could see the broken part of the dirt I'd fallen through. I had pretty much ran right over the edge, which was just inches past the treeline, falling a good ten or fifteen feet to the damp, packed dirt below.

"Hey, answer my question," Daryl demanded from above me, "Anything broken? You bit anywhere?"

I knew I hadn't been bitten, but I gently wiggled each of my limbs to make sure nothing felt painful or out of place. I had a few cuts and bruises, but amazingly nothing too serious.

"No, I'm fine..." I yelled up to Daryl, looking up into his now more visible physical features, "My head hurts, that's it."

"Ya got lucky." Daryl sighed gruffly, and I could see him searching the area with his eyes, "Just stay there, alright? I'm gonna figure a way down'ere."

With that, he disappeared. I could hear the tromping steps of Daryl's work boots trail away, leaving me in the quiet, minus the buzzing locusts.

Reaching up to my forehead, I winced as my fingers grazed a raw, tender scrape. It was definately the source of my headache, the spot where I'd knocked into the rock.

I sighed, lowering my hand and staring at my surroundings more in depth, now that I wasn't as dazed. There was the water and the cluster of boulders, leading up to an entire wall of steep, jagged, slippery looking rocks that stacked up to another wooded area on much higher ground.

To my left and right, the revine stretched seemingly for miles, at least as far as my eyes could see. It was as if the forrest floor had just given way and split in half.