Not only is the quarantine affecting my muse and really wearing on me but it's very hard to continue to write for a couple we haven't seen together in years. I'll try to write a new idea and as you can see, I have difficulty keeping it going. I still love this couple though and I admit that this universe and House Call are my go-to universes when I just want to think about Daryl and Beth for a little bit.

…

Through the back door of the cabin, it opened up into their wide property filled with rows and rows of their crops, their barn where the animals lived as well as the tree with Daryl and Beth's house sitting upon the branches. Each year, they had to work on and expand their fences because with so many animals and their family, they had to eat through the warm months and then make sure they grew enough to get them all through the winter months and that took a lot of crops.

It wasn't easy by any means. They were constantly working. Some days were lighter than others but they never had days off. Every winter, they lost a couple of their animals but come spring, new ones were born and the circle of life continued on – even in a world like this.

The cabin Mulligan's family had built in these mountains several generations ago was a sturdily built, strong house. Mulligan had always said that it had good bones and as the years went on and the house showed no signs of wearing down, the others all came to agree with him.

The family had built it with the front door facing east and the back door facing west with more windows on the south side than on the north. In the winter, the sun's rays poured in through the southern windows and helped keep the rooms warm and in the warmer months, they opened both front and back doors so the breeze could pass through the house.

The cabin was built right by a stream – they actually considered it a small river – and taking their cues from the Romans and their ancient aqueducts, the Mulligans had created their own gravity-fed water system and once he had Daryl, Aaron, and Spencer to help him, Mulligan made it a little better. They found what they needed in the other houses and with plastic piping and large plastic tanks, they built a line for the water to filter from the river into the tank and then with more pipes, they guided the water to everywhere on their property – into the cabin and into the barn and they had several barrels of water outside to help water their crops. Water was constant and even if they went through a drier month with little rain, they still had the river.

Later, they added a filter – their own tight netting – in front of the initial pipe as the water entered from the river to help keep down contamination.

"Man, those Romans knew what the Hell they were doing," Spencer grinned the first time he filled the water tub in the barn and all of the animals crowded around it for a drink.

They bathed in the creek and in the winter, the adults only bathed once a week while the kids took turns in the tub in the cabin's bathroom every couple of days though the water was always too cold and the kids screamed bloody murder about it whenever they were told that it was bath time.

Daryl took it upon himself to build his version of a hot tub for everyone to use.

"Just to shut everyone up," he grumbled though by now, they all knew that he didn't mean it.

Once again, he found everything he needed from the houses also on the mountain. More piping, an old bathtub, and some cinder blocks. He cemented the tub to the cinder blocks so it was high enough for a fire to be built underneath. When it was someone's turn to take a bath, they filled the tub with water from the river and then lit a fire so it heated the water from beneath. There was also a screen added for privacy so everyone didn't see the person getting in and out of the tub, butt naked.

"I feel human again," Aaron smiled after his first hot bath in years and he came into the cabin, rubbing a towel over his hair.

Through the front door, they didn't have anything in the front yard except a couple beekeeping hives for their busy bees, making honey and honeycomb, and that was the spot of their next project.

Mulligan's family had a couple books about it and Daryl didn't think it was going to be easy but the family had already done so much that most people wouldn't think was possible, there was no reason why they couldn't do this, too. It took them awhile to find everything they needed and then it took them about another month to build it just right.

When Daryl walked Beth through the greenhouse for the first time, she began to cry about halfway through because they had a greenhouse now and she could hardly believe it – even as she was already planning what she was going to plant it and how she was going to plant it.

Luckily, they had found packs of seeds during one of their runs and Beth now took care in growing their new produce. Carrots, eggplant, turnips, strawberries, mint, thyme, and lavender. After all of these years, none of them could believe that they were able to grow things all year. Their livestock certainly loved the extra carrots that they were able to get now when it was snowing outside.

In another book of Mulligan's family, Daryl did his research again and worked on his next project, building a sled that could be pulled in the snow when they went out foraging or on a run for something or other. They had a male horse – a wild one that Anna had worked, breaking in – a female donkey and when they bred the two, they got themselves a mule. Some mornings, Daryl would head out into the barn to decide which one to hitch the sled to and he still couldn't always trust his eyes that he had all of these animals now because there just weren't the horse, donkey, and mule. They had sheep, goats, and chickens, too; not to mention that Spencer and Matt were in the middle of trying to domesticate two wild pigs they had gotten from the woods.

It wasn't easy. None of it was easy. They worked for every single thing they had and they worked hard. But with all of their hard work, there were actually things to show for it. This land and farm, these animals, and all of their kids that had been born in this world and were healthy and happy. Daryl was pretty sure all of the adults were healthy and happy, too.

In the barn, up above in the hayloft as he dropped more of the dry grass down below for the animals to eat – grass that they spent all warm months scything and gathering to help get their animals through the winter – Daryl would sometimes think of the first family he and Beth had. He would go months and months without thinking about them but then, he'll be doing something random – like dealing with the grass for the animals – and one of them would pop into his head.

Carl used to come this way but he hadn't been for a few years. It had been too long of a distance and after Beth had showed Carl how to deal with that Negan guy with poison without making it so damn obvious that Carl was killing him, Daryl assumed that Negan was dead and whoever was left of the family was alright.

And then Daryl would wonder if any of them ever thought of him and Beth or the others.

A few years back, Spencer had found a map in a Mulligan family trunk and it was a map of a coal mine. Beth and Rosita immediately thought it was idiotic to even think of doing it but they couldn't cut trees down forever. Countless trees covered these mountains but someday, those trees might thin out and what would they do then? Coal was in these mountains and they'd be stupid to not get some of it for themselves to keep them warm in the winter. But who the Hell knew what was in those coal mines? They could be filled with walkers and even if they weren't, how were they going to mine for coal in complete darkness?

The four men went with the horse and the sled and found the mine. They scouted it for a day, hearing for walkers, figuring out how they were going to do this. Aaron used to explore caves in his spare time – "Of course you did," Spencer teased him – and after getting him harnessed, it was Aaron who went down the shaft with a candle to light when he got down there.

"Hey!" Aaron called up, his voice echoing to them.

"What do you got?" Daryl shouted back down.

"There's one of the trains down here! There's a couple of cars filled!"

Matt took the bucket they had brought with them and tied the rope tightly around the handle. He then handed the bucket over to Daryl.

"Alrigh' Aaron! I'm sendin' the bucket down!"

They filled ten buckets of coal, loading it onto the sled, before they and the horse went back home. The first coal fire Daryl made for Beth in the kitchen's oven, Beth made pumpkin soup and baked milk bread for dinner to celebrate the warmth that filled the room. Wood fires were perfectly fine. They had kept their family alive for many winters up in the mountains but coal was easier to maintain – not having to add nearly as much coal as you would wood – and it lasted for hours.

"I take it back," Beth said, later that night as they laid in their bed together.

In their treehouse, the stove, bathroom and the children slept in the main room and down on the landing, Daryl had constructed it into their enclosed bedroom a couple years earlier.

Usually, they would make sure the stove was burning for the children so they would be warm and downstairs in their own bed, Daryl and Beth would pile on the quilts and wear layers and use one another's body heat. But tonight was an entirely different new story. Beth felt like she was in a Victorian novel or even Elizabeth Bennett. Someone in Mulligan's family had had a bed warmer with a long wooden handle and a small copper pot at the end. Beth flipped the lid back and Daryl deposited a few burning coal embers into the pot before she slipped it at the foot of their bed, beneath the covers.

"What do you take back?" Daryl asked, not remembering the last time he had felt this hot while in their bed in the middle of winter. And despite being too hot already, he lifted his arm and put it around Beth's shoulders because he always held her as he was falling asleep and that wasn't going to change now.

Beth smiled, wiggling her very warm toes, and tilting her head up, she kissed him on the cheek. "Going after that coal wasn't idiotic at all."

...

Thank you!