Chapter Eight

After Maggie and Daryl had their discussion at the campfire whenever they would talk to each other they would always try to share a story about Beth, Daryl's mostly involved how strong she had gotten from the time of the prison falling to when she was taken or even sometimes things he noticed about her during their time in close quarters in the prison. While Maggie's stories tended to lean towards the embarrassing side of childhood tales, the kind that your parents always told that would make you blush and beg them to not share that story with everyone they talked to. It seemed to serve as a reminder of what they were looking for and pushed them both to talking to Gareth and the others they lead Terminus about the possibility of sending out search teams, even if it was just some of the people from their group that was willing to go and look for her, then at least it would be something as compared to the fact that no one was looking for her at the moment.

It had took a major part of the week to convince Gareth to even consider talking to the Terminites about letting them go out and look for anything other than food. The group numbers were small and they wanted them to get bigger and it went against their plan to increase to let groups leave and possibly lose people to try and get one person. Though it seemed that they were wearing Gareth down as he agreed to talk to the leading group about it happening. During the last week they managed to get a few more survivors heading into Terminus, there were a couple of people from the prison that showed up but no one that the group was close to. There was also a man named Russ that joined the group, he made the whole group uncomfortable, and set Daryl's instincts on edge.

After being there for only a few days he told the group about how he was separated from his brother, only to find him murdered near a map to Terminus, and said that he decided to follow it instead of trying to go at it alone. This story didn't sit right with Daryl, Rick, or Maggie who made sure wait until Russ had left to remind Daryl, and let the group know, about the flash of a girl they had seen running away from a body, that they assumed now was Russ's brother. It didn't seem to fit with Russ's story about how his brother and him got split up looking for supplies and how he would go on about how well his brother would fight off attackers both living and undead.

Which lead to the group calling small meetings in certain rooms when they were all free so they could discuss anything new they found out about Russ or about the group being allowed to leave and look for Beth, or even go on supply runs so they would multitask and both get supplies and look for Beth or at least leave her signs.

"They are suppose to be discussing our group being allowed on supply runs today during their meeting." Carol said from her chair in the side of the room.

"I am not particularly concerned over helping this group on supply runs or even finding this girl. My top priorities is getting Eugene to Washington and finding this cure, then you all can really go about finding this girl." Abraham added his rehearsed speech from every time they held one of these meetings, and earned two elbows to his sides from Tara and Rosita as well as a glare from Maggie.

"That girl you are so willing to write off, has a name and it is Beth, and I am not leaving this state without finding her first. Though you can feel free to take your scientist to Washington yourself, it certainly wouldn't hurt my feelings." Daryl said leaning beside the door with his crossbow resting at his feet and his arms cross over his chest.

"I'm not leaving either." Maggie added with nods from several other of the group members.

"I think it wouldn't be intelligent to try and go anywhere with colder weather coming soon, and it being even colder in the north it would just slow travel and cause more problems than staying put would." Eugene looked up at Abraham from the floor where he decided to take a seat. Abraham started to argue as Eugene cut him off and add, "Remember I am smarter than you, it is the smarter choice and will lead to us not dying from freezing to death." Abraham groans slightly but managed to nod.

"Fine, we'll wait until after winter to head to Washington." After adding that he got up and walked out of the room, efficiently ending the meeting as everyone filed out to do their assigned jobs for the day.

Beth sat beside Blake on the side of her bed brushing her drying hair, while Reese was getting a shower. Beth was so thankful that they had found this old farm house, after a week of searching for places and sleeping on the forest floor. It was also nice that it had a well just like her Daddy's farm had, it felt amazing to be clean.

"Beth, will you tell me a story?" Blake looked up at Beth with huge eyes.

"What kind of story would you like to hear?" Beth kept brushing the knots carefully from Blake's hair.

"One about a princesses and knights and princes, with you as a princess." Blake smiled up then looked back at the doll Reese had found when she had made sure the room was cleared. Beth nodded slightly at the child's request and thought about the story she was going to tell.

"Well there once was a far away kingdom where Princesses and Princes lived. There was a very kind King named Herschel, and he had two daughters, Princess Maggie and Princess Beth." She set down the brush and Blake climbed into her lap, "King Herschel had a lot of knights to protect the kingdom, his head knight was named Rick, and he had a son named Carl that wanted to grow up and be a knight just like his daddy was. He also had a daughter named Judith, who Princess Beth loved to watch and sing to." Beth smiled sadly thinking about Judith, she missed singing to the little girl and watching her eyes light up over little things.

"Will you sing to me sometime?" Blake looked up and Beth nodded to her.

"Of course, now where was I. Oh yeah, King Herschel's other most trusted guards name were named Tyreese and Daryl, and there was ladies in the kingdom named Carol, Sasha, and Michonne. The knights were very kind and strong and the ladies were sweet and caring, and the knight named Daryl also loved spending time with Judith, everyone in the kingdom did." Blake cuddled in closer to Beth and she held her close. "Princess Maggie had just got married to a very kind and caring Prince named Glenn, and the whole kingdom was happy, well everyone but a very bad man, who didn't want anyone in the kingdom to be happy. It was an evil wizard who called himself the Governor." Beth hear the small girl mutter an oh no and she smiled.

"The Governor had gone against King Herschel before and lost which just made him angry that he had lost. So he planned a way to try and make everyone unhappy and win this time. So he found knights of his own to go against the kingdom, but he told his knights that the kingdom was full of bad people." Beth had never know why the people had done it but she had heard Karen and Tyreese talk about how he twisted everything with the people from Woodbury and she figured he probably did that again. Blake looked up at her waiting for her to continue as she had paused. "So he got his knights together and attacked the kingdom, he took the King and Lady Michonne to try and get the others to give up, but when the Head knight Rick told him they could live in peace together, he attacked the king, the Princesses were watching and were very upset because they had lost their father and a fight broke out between the kingdom and the other knights that Governor was leading."

"I lost my daddy just like the princesses." Blake looked up at Beth, "Does that mean he was a king too?"

"Yes it does." Beth smiled and kissed her head. "Well while the fighting happened everyone got separated and they had to run from the kingdom not knowing where everyone else was, but Princess Beth had escaped with Daryl the knight right after he took down a strong and very mean dragon. They ran and ran and Daryl had kept Princess Beth safe just as King Herschel had asked him to before King Herschel was gone." Blake yawned and Beth laid down with her, "Well while Princess Beth and Daryl were running he taught Princess Beth how to take care of herself so she wouldn't get hurt, and Princess Beth started to fall in love with the handsome knight." Beth smiled weakly knowing it was true she had fallen for Daryl but hadn't realized it until she had been running from the men that took her and she had gotten to think about it. She hoped she would get to tell Daryl this one day, but she knew the odds weren't exactly on her side.

"Did Princess Beth and Daryl live happily ever after?" Blake whispers closing her eyes and drifting to sleep.

"They sure did." Beth said to the now sleeping child and she felt tears slide down her cheek.

Ok, so I got two chapters done (YAY!), and felt like after the wait I made you all sit through for the last chapter that it was only fair to give you both of them now instead of waiting to give you this one. Hopefully this pace of writing will keep up and I will be able to give you more chapters a lot faster then I was. Feel free to leave me a review to keep me motivated, I love seeing your thoughts on how I am doing.