Author's Note: This was written in response to a prompt on TWD kinkmeme: What is the one thing they DON'T miss about the way the world used to be? It's just something small and it's the first time I've ever written anything for Andrea's character but I really hope you lovely readers enjoy it. xo.
Natural Noise.
When she thinks about it, Andrea realizes that she doesn't miss the noise. When the world had been moving smoothly, she hadn't minded all the ruckus that had come with living in the city; all the sounds of traffic and millions of people living side by side. In only a few short years, she'd grown accustomed to it.
It was only once all that noise was taken away that she realized just how beautiful nature's sparse sounds were. She hadn't been able to sleep that first night, tucked beside Amy in the small bunk in the back of Dale's RV. Without all the honking horns and thump of music through the wall of her apartment, the world seemed far too silent and far too large. She knew that it was odd that it was the lack of noise that made her feel so small but combined with the seemingly impossible events that had occurred that day, she supposed that it wasn't really about being small so much as it was being insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, she knew that her and Amy meant nothing to the world; without them, the birds and creatures would carry on by themselves.
Indeed, even as she adjusted her legs so that they weren't so cramped, Andrea realized that the birds were already continuing to sing somewhere outside the RV, completely unaware of any of the horrors her and Amy had barely escaped only hours before. It was a beautiful sound and only when she let herself get lost in it did she finally fall asleep.
By the time the group had migrated to Hershel's farm, she'd forgotten what it was like to wake up to sirens outside her window, couldn't remember the aggravation of a person on the bus blasting music in their headphones. Instead, she'd become accustomed to a whole new set of noises; whether it was the hoot of an owl late at night, the tell tale snapping of a twig or the dripping of morning dew onto the roof of her tent. But even though she could identify all of these perfectly, Andrea didn't consider them to be noise. They were simply the signs that the world was returning to its natural state: a state that didn't include humans and manmade machines in the equation.
She wasn't sure if it was a state she was supposed to enjoy, but she certainly liked the world a lot more with fewer humans and less noise.