PROLOUGE
He remembered a face.
He remembered many faces.
Although those faces were blurred and obscured due to them being a distant memory, he had an idea of who they were.
The first face he remembered was a face of a woman. He didn't know who she was but that was the first face he remembered. Her skin was dark and hair curly. He guessed it could have mostly been his mother.
The other face he remembered a little more than the woman's. It was the face of a man. His hair was long and grey, and he had bandaged eye. He wore the hat that he would wears today and to the day of his death.
She would tell stories of that man to him, along with many other stories that took place before he was born. She was the one who had told him what had happened in the years he could not remember. She would tell him who those faces were whenever he asked and she would always be glad to tell him the same stories over and over again.
The stories that took place before he was born.
The stories that took place when he could not remember them.
The stories that took place in a much happier, peaceful time.
She was his mother figure. The one he always looked up to. She took care of him for those many years and taught him words, and even though she thought it was useless, she taught him how to read and write to the best of her own ability, only because he persisted. He wanted to read the words of the rotting signs and read the stories that were not real; the stories that she would read to him as a past-time.
She was the one who fed him.
She was the one who protected him.
She was the one who loved him, when everyone that once did had died.
Her name was Clementine.