Daryl was embarrassed to admit that it took him a while to figure out that growing up with a brother like Merle had fucked him up something fierce. But Beth had gathered that in all of ten minutes of knowing him, and this was a very relevant thing because right now was one of those Merle engrained this into my brain moments.
The two were headed down a winding road, the kind that could have walkers waiting around every curve, but instead of being alert and scanning the trees or the path ahead, Daryl's gaze was fixed on the sky.
"Y'know, walkers ain't got wings, Mr. Dixon." Beth said over the light crunch of dead leaves, and he dragged his focus back to her grudgingly.
"Don't it bother you?" He asked, brow furrowed in irritation.
"Don't what?"
He stopped walking and tipped his head back to examine the sky once more. "Y'know them ain't real clouds, Bethany."
He usually only called her that when something serious was happening, but no one ever said something like that in all seriousness so she asked, confused, "Do what, now?"
"Just look at 'em," he gestured up at the white puffs with a wide sweep of his hand. "Damn near take up half the sky. Ain't natural."
Beth had noticed quite a while back that whenever the sun was bright and the sky was at its bluest, Daryl would go all quiet and spend more time staring at the sun than aiming his crossbow at every rustle of trees. It took a little more observing to realize that what he was squinting at were the clouds, but only the huge white ones, never those wimpy little wisps of nothin'.
She backtracked the few strides to stand beside him and cupped his face, concern and curiosity in her eyes as she met his gaze. "What makes you say that?"
Daryl ran a hand through his hair in frustration. Like he was irritated that this was a common thing that she just wasn't raised knowing. "When we were little, Merle and me, we had this light in our house." He led her to one of the smaller trees, one that was easy to see around in case a geek showed up, and they plopped down beside each other.
"Well, it wasn't our house," he continued, "just somewhere the state stuck us for a while because dad went on a bender. The family was upper class," he snorted the words like it was laughable that people like that would take in people like them, "and they had these lights in their living room."
Beth nodded, focusing on the clouds to try and see them the way Daryl did.
"It was real fancy, must've changed with the time of day or somethin', like with computers, because it never looked the same. Every time we saw it, there were always these huge clouds, with little ones branchin' off. So Merle and me know – knew—they ain't real, but we never figured out how they got 'em in the sky."
She sat there, bringing her gaze from the clouds to him, staring open mouthed for maybe ten minutes before she finally spoke. She leaned her head back against the tree with an exasperated sigh. "Are you tellin' me," she asked, speaking slowly and deliberately as if to a small child, "that you're a grown ass man and you've never seen a skylight?"
The blank stare he gave was answer enough. Beth pulled him up by the hand saying "Come on, Mr. Dixon, we're hitting the ritzy neighborhoods."