What the fuck?
For anyone that doesn't know why I'm writing this, go to review 3 of Converging Paths, and read it. I don't know what this person was trying to say- but leaving me messages like that is (I'm sorry to those of you who are Christians out there) unacceptable.
Now, I'm not trying to offend, but I am a heathen pure and simple and damned proud of my godlessness. So leaving me weird messages like that- attached to one of my stories, is beyond insulting. (If I wanted to listen to a sermon, I'd talk to the loons in my family that think that god wants me dead.)
If you have something to say, PM me personally and leave my writing alone. If you want to preach to me- do it outside of my work, not in it.
(Either way it doesn't really matter if you preach at me anyways- I'll still ignore you.)
Dinner for the most part was...nice. Rick did as Sin had requested and off and on would slyly sneak food onto Ali's plate to make sure that she ate enough. And his son, upon seeing his dad do this, decided to help out, though he was caught easily enough by Ali due to his clumsiness.
The hunter- Daryl also contributed a few things.
Three spoonful's of cut up, strawberries, blueberries, pears and tangerines and a few slices of a cut up pork chop. Fortunately, or more to the point, unfortunately- depending on who one asked- Ali didn't catch him as she had the boy, and by the time the meal was over with her stomach was protesting the amount of food that she had eaten, causing her to look a little bit green where she sat holding her middle while everyone sat talking.
"So, um...if you don't mind my asking- Why would you appoint a teenager as your leader?" Andrea finally asked curiously as everyone talking suddenly fell silent as she carefully tacked on, "I mean, no offense or anything to Ali- I'm sure that is a great kid and all, but why your leader? What did she do to earn such respect from all of you? She's very quiet, and has barely said more than two words since we got here for any reason. I can't imagine that she has any combat experience or-"
"I'm going to stop you right there." The red headed man known as Ren said as he set his cup of tea aside and said, "Every one of us is from different nations that have long since died out. Ali- was the princess of a nomadic tribe that wandered from place to place before they were all slaughtered when she was little more than a toddler."
"She has lived alone, witnessed death and destruction in many capacities. She has witnessed cruelty, and suffered greatly at the hands of depraved men. And out of each of those experiences, she has grown. She learned that when she was hungry- she needed to eat, so she taught herself to hunt, track and forage. When she was attacked, she needed to fight- and though she had no prior training before she is quite lethal."
"But above those things, she united warring royal households and saved thousands upon thousands of lives single handedly by acting as a diplomat for them. Before the world fell into ruin- those households and their people finally came to know peace. So do not think that simply because of her age, she is weak and has contributed nothing to us. She leads us because we were falling into chaos again and we all trust and respect her to make the choices that we cannot. I have already lost my two youngest brothers to this pleague. And Sin has lost one of his friends. The other life that was lost was a possible ally. He was young, hot headed and incredibly foolish."
"He questioned Ali's orders at every turn and paid a heavy price for it. We would all hate to see such a thing happen again with you and yours. Now, are there any more questions?"
There was silence for a moment before Sophia looked at Ali and said in an awed tone, "You're a princess?"
Ali looked at the girl for a moment and then muttered, "Former. My people were annihilated."
"But you're still alive. Doesn't that technically mean that you are still a princess?"
"No." Ali said simply as she slowly began to collect her dishes and then stood up and quietly left the room when Ren said,
"In all actuality, Ali has denounced her throne. She felt that stepping up and being crowned when she has done nothing to deserve such an honor would be...well, wrong. Besides, a person cannot rule without people. Without people in need of her guidance, her life would be absolutely meaningless. So she lives with us, as an ordinary girl. As much as I am loath to say it; because it seems like I am belittling or disrespecting her in some way- Her life is no more valuable than ours and vice versa."
No sooner had he stopped speaking, Sin decided to chime in. "Actually, your wrong there Ren. Ali's life is invaluable now more than ever."
Curious as to what Sin was talking about, Dale asked. "What do you mean? How is her life invaluable?"
"Mn. I'll have to show you before you'll understand completely." The man said as he slowly stood up and left the room to fetch the girl and returned a few moments later and brought her over to stand by the table where Rick and his group were seated and tugged up one of her shirt sleeves so that they could see her arm.
There on her forearm was a piece of muscle missing and what looked alarmingly like a fully healed series of puckered little scars resembling teeth marks.
Walker teeth marks to be exact.
His eyes widening in shock as he reached out and very gently grasped the girl's arm in his hands and examined the bite for a moment before asking, "When did this happen?"
"About six months ago. One of the others had gone hunting and wound up injured. The smell of the blood drew a number of those...things and Ali found him just in time to prevent him from losing life and limb. She killed the others before stepping between him and the last one, sacrificing a piece of her own arm so that the thing would be too busy to chew on our friend while she grabbed him and ran."
"D-did she get sick?"
"For a little while, yes, but nothing too terrible. We knew what to look for due to the ones that we lost to bites, so she wasn't alone when she got sick. And we monitored her everyday for several weeks just to be sure that she was fine. But she did run a small fever, and suffered some nausea. All of which were taken care of with some herbs that she has been growing her."
"W-Wait. Okay hold on a second- I'm still trying to wrap my mind around someone managing to survive a bite from one of those things." Rick said sounding more than a little bit rattled by the concept of a survivor surviving a lethal, bacteria riddled bite from a walker. "You said that she has herbs here that she was treated with?"
"Yes. Some old medicinal herbs and remedies."
"H-Has anyone else b-been-"
"Yes, several." Sin said as he reached up to the collar of his shirt and gently tugged it aside a little bit so that they could see the faded old bite wound there. "Myself, Ren, Alex, Jareth and Hina as well as Ali, have all been bitten at one point or another."
Everyone gaped at him for a moment as Dale asked, "When you were bitten, how did you treat the injury?"
"I didn't treat it, in fact the last I recall I was unconscious and bleeding to death."
"Then how-" Glen started to ask as Sin looked down at the girl. Silently indicating that she knew how to take care of walker bites and help the ones bitten actually live.
Now things were beginning to make a tad bit more sense to the group as to why a mere child was leading them. Sin had hinted that the girl was incredibly strong, durable, and intelligent- but this was a whole new level of odd. Now it seemed as if the man were hinting that the girl also had some level of medical knowledge on top of everything else.
Which just may be so.
After all, he didn't know of any other people who had their entire people wiped out as a toddler and lived off of the land for god knew how long just to survive.
Maybe while she had been living off of the land when she were younger she had stumbled upon something that was common knowledge. Even backwater hicks like Merle knew that that tended to happen on occasion. So it was possible, right?
Slowly reaching up so that he could gently tug Ali's sleeve back into place, rick gave the girl an encouraging smile and watched as she tilted her head back to look up at Sin and then nodded her head and said, "I'm going on patrol. Stay out of trouble and please assign rooms for everyone upstairs. And see to it that they have spare clothing and stuff too."
"Okay. Take one of the others with you."
"Okay." And with that, Ali stepped away from Rick and Sin and everyone else and began making a beeline towards the nearest door.