Hello everyone, I'm sorry for not updating this sooner.
Especially with Halloween and all, but I haven't exactly been updating or writing much of anything lately due to family issues, stress, and my wedding anniversary which was on Halloween.
So without further ado, here is the next chapter.
(********************************************************************************************************************************)
Several days later-
Lisa was sitting in a large tree a little ways from the house and everyone else. Exactly where she had been ever since she had finished her talk a little over four days ago. Her eyes staring blankly ahead, out across the fields. Seeing and yet not seeing as her mind replayed every moment.
It had been humiliating.
Giving the people the dirty little details of her 'breeding' process and how the walkers put in the room with her had gone into a frenzy and ripped each other apart just to reach her and mount her like she were some animal in season. And more than once had to be excused as she would catch a look of disgust from one of the people in the room and suddenly feel the need to vomit.
However since she wasn't done speaking, she always had to return. And the first time she did, she caught Hershel and the girls huddled together just outside of the dining room... The scent of their tears making her wish that she had never had to say anything at all as she stood there for a moment in silence, wanting more than anything for her adopted family to turn and look at her and tell her that everything would be fine even after this.
But none of them ever did. So she had silently returned to her chair in the dining room and hollowly finished going over everything after what happened when she was bred.
Her attack on the people holding her prisoner, killing a few and unleashing them on the unsuspecting people of the base while she went through it and systematically erased all traces of herself and their experiments on her and taking back her blood, and other things and stuffing it all in a backpack with some military rations and water and escaping into the night.
She spoke of how she walked, day and night, hoping to return home and find at least one or two people had escaped the slaughter aside from her. But knew that if they had- the military had likely experimented on them and killed them by that point.
She spoke of how the first few weeks (she said weeks because she got turned around a time or two by accident) on the road were difficult for her due to her age.
She told them that she was still technically in shock about being bred and had suffered a great and terrible trauma due to which she steered clear of any other humans and at one point had befriended a little squirrel that she had named Ribbit and had spoke often to the little critter until one day Ribbit got eaten by a hawk. And while she had stood under the tree the large bird had made it's home in, eating her friend, she had come to realize something important.
The sight of her friend's blood made her feel funny.
Her stomach cramped like she was hungry, but when she tried eating some of her rations- she threw up violently and was unable to eat for several days. She began to run a high fever later that day and collapsed in the woods where she lay drifting in and out of consciousness for about three days before finally, something peculiar had happened.
A rabbit was eating some grass just a few yards from her and suddenly she managed to force herself awake and grabbed it and while she hated what she was about to do, began eating it alive. The sweet taste of it's blood somehow making her feel better.
Afterwards, her fever had broke and she had realized that she was more like walkers than even she suspected. She did hunger like they did, however, she sated that hunger by different means so that she would never attack a human.
And even though she told Rick and his people this, she doubted any of them believed her.
Eventually though the talk ended and she asked if anyone had questions for her. The only real question, hadn't really been a question but more of a frightened/spiteful remark meant to hurt her. And hurt her, it had as Ricks wife had stared her down just like Crazy Eyes was doing and spat out, "Why didn't you kill yourself?"
To which Lisa had given the woman a sadistic smirk and slowly pushed her chair back away from the table and walked over to the woman and had stopped in front of her and lifted a hand to her hair and used it to push the pale strands back to show an old scar from a series of gunshot wounds to her skull.
And as the woman and Rick and Hottie got a good gander of the small cluster of scars from bullet wounds and she muttered only so loud so that they could hear her, "Why indeed." After which she had swept out of the room and the house like her nickname sake, a ghost.
After which she had taken to spending a great deal of her time alternating between running through the woods, hunting, and taking up her place in the massive tree out in the yard, a good distance from the house, on her favorite limb.
Where she spent more time watching anything and everything. After all there wasn't much else she could do now in the way of socializing now that everyone knew her sorted past and was taking great pains to steer clear of her.
Well, everyone but Rick, Maggie, Hershel and Hottie of course.
Hershel and Maggie for the obvious reasons- they thought of her as family and that obviously didn't hadn't changed since they didn't fault her for what had happened to her as a child. While Rick and Mr. Hottie were a little harder for her to figure out.
But every time she spaced out, whatever was occupying her mind was interrupted by Rick yelling up at her to come down. And while Mr. Hottie said nothing, she always felt his eyes on her. Regardless of what she was doing, those pretty eyes of his just seemed to burn into her.
Sending shivers of...something down her spine as she glanced down at the two men to find them standing directly under her tree limb with their heads tilted back on their shoulders.
(******************************************************************************************************************)
Daryl stared up at the limb that the waif had claimed since the other night and narrowed his eyes slightly at the hurt he could practically feel radiating from the young woman as Rick continued to try and coax her down.
And despite knowing that she was probably going to ignore Ricks attempts- Especially after the second pow-wow everyone had had about whether or not they should stay, Daryl remained quiet knowing that his gut instinct about the girl was right on the mark.
And as such, that made her one of them now, and no matter how much some of the others couldn't stand it- they didn't abandon their own.
