SILENCED [TWDGS4 Clouis]

-. ..- -- -... . .-. 5

I stand up and rush into the hall and up the stairs. The chair is empty. Ruby is very much gone. Beside me, Violet calls for Tenn and AJ. They come out from a door down the corridor.
"Where's Ruby?" Violet asks, frantically looking at the blood oozing from her hand.
"I don't know... she could be outside." Tenn says, voice quaking.

I nod to tell her that I'm going and run down the stairs. Quickly, I run outside and scan the yard. After going to the very edge of the area... There she is! She's outside the greenhouse, with Aasim, looking at the grave that they dug. I run all the way over and grab her shoulder. I give them a 'desperate gaze' and motion for them to follow me.
"What's goin' on?" Ruby asks, clearly perplexed. Aasim makes a similar comment. I make my way through the yard and back into the school. Ruby gasps,
"Violet? What happened?"

"I was just clearing up the debris on the outer walls." Violet says quietly. Ruby leads us to the Nurse's office where she takes some clean cloth and wraps it in the place where the fingers should be.
"This fucker jumped me, but I pulled away on time. Except he had ripped off my skin in the last second. I... I made the split-second choice to sever the fingers straight away. God, it was awful, self inflicted torture." Violet grimaces.
Ruby assures her, "It's ok, you're unbelievably strong, Vi." She dabs the wound with some first aid liquid that I don't know or care about.
"Does amputation even work?" Aasim asks.
I stare at Violet, feeling her fear.

Aasim's right, what if the amputation doesn't work? Your best friend is going to leave you, replaced by a husk.

I abandon the thought. On the second and third bed I see the limp AJ and Clem. AJ's leg is dark red mess, and a grim scar lays on Clem's face, still red fresh. I wonder when she'll wake up. I walk past the others and approach Clem. Her breathing is stable, and the atmosphere around her rather fragile self is calm. I scrutinise the scar. It runs from just below her eye down to her jaw, and it looks painful and deep. I wish her easy rest and move away.

~~ 2 weeks later ~~

The afternoon sun glows a fierce coquelicot. I only know that word because of the stupid art teacher at Ericsons. I sit in the yard, bathing in the warm air. It's been hard, living without words. The fear I felt at the start was something I didn't think was possible. Not to someone like me. I guess that fear was so surprising that it left me speechless. Hehe...

I'm enjoying the air of the open forest. I never did appreciate the grounds we had at Ericson until I was locked up in that cell. I cast my mind away from that. The boat and the raiders are history. Violet's been holding up fine, and the finger chop must have worked. In fact, we don't know whether a skin scrape would even infect, but Violet hates risk.

I get up. It's time to check on everyone. I walk out the yard and see Clem working on the tree. She's stripping the thickest part of the trunk with the hatchet. I see that she's struggling with the tree sap rushing out of the tree wound. I come up beside her and crouch.
"Hey Louis." She says. I nod in return. I tilt my head towards the tree and raise my eyebrows.
"No, I can manage myself." She grunts as she hacks at a piece of bark. I get up and walk back into the yard. I see Willy up, on patrol duty. I also see Ruby and Violet discussing something. Either AJ or the Greenhouse, I bet.

About he wounds: AJ is still very weak. His leg slammed against something sharp, Ruby said. As for Clem, apparently it was the knife that she was holding digging into her face when she was caught in the explosion.
"Deepest scar I've seen, all my time as the nurse here." Ruby had said.

I walk up to the two.
"I think there's still a chance for the greenhouse to be useful." Ruby says.
"Let's just give up! We are running out of food! We don't have time to be messing with seeds and saplings! All we have are the jars in the basement, and we need to start hunting sooner or later." Violet argues. She notices me.
"Hey lou. Can you go get those jars of food to Omar? See what he can do with them. He should be somewhere out back, picking herbs or something."
I nod. It's a good feeling, being useful.

~~~

I pack all the jars and carry them to the back gate. I go outside to search for Omar. As soon as I leave, I feel like somethings wrong. I unsheathe my knife and look around.
"Aasim?" I hear Omar's voice. He doesn't sound like he's in pain or anything...

"Hey Louis. What you down here for?" Omar smiles at me. I motion for him to follow me and lead him to the box of food. I guess it there's nothing wrong.
"Woah... I can craft a good meal with this stuff. Is it from the train station?" I nod.

Remember the train station? Remember how you could talk back then?

"I'll put this to good use. Thanks Louis." Omar says.

I head into the building, feeling ready to start playing. Or maybe writing. It would be nice to write a new song. Another song that I could cast my mind back to.
So I sit down and start testing the buttons.

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