⊱ 01 ~ ❝ wishing stone ❞ ⊰
〖 pre-season one, episode one 〗

Nobody was quite prepared ⎯⎯ nor willing to explain the extramundane complexity of human beings losing sanity and going cannibalistic to a little girl.

She had only seen and heard bits and pieces of panicked discussion and morbid faces resembling the everyday person. No amount of accidental eavesdropping on information was a sufficient enough warning for her to see what she would.

In the very beginning, the Holloway family quickly did what most families were attempting ⎯⎯ they ran. Most of Mrs. Holloway's friends and family lived in the city, and while the Holloway parents tried their best to shield their children from the traumatic sights of calamity ⎯⎯ they saw it all anyway, perhaps too late.

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Small bare feet tip-toed across the sandy dirty mixture of earth at the very bottom of the quarry. Gravel-covered hands picked and chose between rocks and stones, stuffing the ones that were pretty enough in a red jacket's pockets.

Down in the quarry, she felt safest. Walls of stone tower up into the sky into a tall barrier. A surrounding perimeter no dead could climb over, or survive the fall from. No matter how safe she thought she was on her own, she still knew Dale was up in camp, perched on the roof of his RV. He kept an eye on everyone, and would certainly be glancing down at her periodically.

The Holloway family lived remotely, around the woods ⎯⎯ right by a river, where the girl spent most of her time ⎯⎯ by the water or in the trees.

It wasn't crazy for her to be roaming alone, it was instinctive at that point in her life to crave the solitude of nature.

She frequently wandered off down to the quarry. There was a narrow path that twisted around to the main drive and up to the camp, and it was the walk she had taken almost every day since she'd gotten there ⎯⎯ she felt better alone, looking at the rocks, bugs, frogs, and fish.

There were already dozens of rocks she had found just today in her pockets, but the sun was starting to go down and her time was limiting. Eventually, she'd be told to return to camp, where she could be watched.

While considering going up then, one specific rock catches the girl's sight, an especially beautiful one. Like all the other rocks down in the quarry, it was mostly light grey, but a pale grey line encircled diagonally across the faintly heart-shaped rock. The line wrapped around it signified it was a wishing stone, one of her favorites. Her mother's favorite.

A stone she was always taught to hold onto because it was good luck.

"Clementine!"

The loud shout of her name reverberated a flinch through her limbs and the stone slipped from her fingertips. At the same time, a hand grasped her shoulder, forcing her to look up at the voice rather than search for the rock.

"I've been calling you." His eyebrows wrinkled together showing something and yet nothing, all at the same time. A look that was less abnormal to see as the days went on. Lately, his face always seemed to be stuck in a permanent look of despondency casting down at her. "Come on, dinner is cookin'."

He took her hand in his, fully enveloping it and leading her away from the edge of the water to her sneakers that were just a couple of feet away. She shoved her bare feet inside and then both of them took off back to the camp, up that narrow path.

The whole trek up, Clementine took multiple peaks over her shoulder, scanning the shore at the bottom in a futile hope that she may be able to spot the dropped rock. But from that distance, she couldn't begin to extinguish where she was even standing.

She wanted it back. So badly she considered yanking her hand out of her father's and running back. But she was hungry.

Everyone in camp was starving; nobody had eaten much more than scrawny squirrels and wild mushrooms. Even worse, Clementine hated mushrooms, with a passion. The squirrel meat wasn't bad in her opinion, but it did nothing to fill her up when there were more people in camp than meat on the bones. Plus, if she thought about it too much, it made her queasy to eat the tiny creatures.

Both Clementine and her father reach the center of the camp. Everyone seemed to be in deep discussion about varying things. The Harrison sisters laughed over the rigged cooking pot, Amy stirring it. Lori hung laundry on a fishing line with clothing pins, watching her son, Carl, play with a toy car. Dale was in deep conversation with Glenn and Morales.

"Leaving bright and early tomorrow." Daryl Dixon proclaimed to his brother, Merle Dixon. "Saw some deer tracks on my way back. I'm gon' catch us some tail."

The sound of it caused Clementine's mouth to water, and she was unknowingly staring at the two brothers, daydreaming about her stomach feeling full. A smile formed as the corners of her lips turned up, happy at the thought of good food.

"What-ya lookin' at lil lady," Merle cocked his head, flashing his cigarette-stained teeth at her in a shit-eating grin. "Like the sound of eatin' Bambi?"

And then it was gone. The thought of it no longer sounded good, and Merle knew exactly what he was doing when the words left his mouth. Her eyebrows scrunched closely together and the corners of her lips curled down in saddened disgust. All of which provoked a chuckle from the man, taking joy in having crushed her hope of a proper dinner.

His much quieter, self-isolating brother only stared. Daryl never had much to say, so it didn't surprise her at all that all he did was just watch the encounter.

Words danced on her tongue, preparing a lengthy insult for Merle Dixon, but her father grabbed her shoulder, spinning her away from the Dixon brothers, and pulling her along with him. "Keep walking."

Around a small campfire, people began to gather, and paper plates were passed around with small portions of food. Most of them take their food elsewhere, to their tents or vehicles they'd been sleeping in. But Clem and her father took a seat next to Dale, and Amy passed the girl a plate.

A small, but daunting portion of mushrooms sat in a pile on her place. Next to it, the squirrel, chopped into pieces and no longer recognizable as anything more than chunks of meat.

Dale decided to help pass out the plates with the Harrison girls, handing one to Clementine's father, saying, "Here you go, Jim." While doing so, he noticed the distinguished sour look on the girl's face. She was clearly battling a mental war over the mushrooms. "Somethin' wrong with your mushrooms, darling?" He asked, crouching down to her height and his bushy white eyebrows raising, pushing the wrinkles in his forehead deeper.

"I don't like them..." She mumbled, using a plastic spoon to shuffle the pieces around.

In their household, Clementine was known by all her family members for having an aversion to change ⎯⎯ especially with food. She had an even worse predilection for the things she was used to.

Even as a baby she'd hated trying new things. New food, clothes, stuffed animals, parks, friends, visitors, and was incredibly distraught at the age of two when her father came home with a new haircut.

So Jim, her father, was used to it. He pointed his own spoon at her plate in emphasis. "You gotta eat what you can. We don't have enough food for picky eating."

He was right. Clementine knew that and continued to stare at the mushrooms distastefully. If she stared hard enough, maybe they'd just poof into her stomach... So she didn't have to bear the process of chewing or tasting it.

It was the texture of it that wholeheartedly ruined the earthly creation. If she had to describe the taste, not much would come to mind, but the consistency reminded her of an apple slice that had gone bad and all mushy. Uncooked mushrooms were just as bad ⎯⎯ resembling what she imagined biting into styrofoam would feel like. She'd seen it more as a toxic waste than an edible substance.

Dale grabbed his plate and spoon, scooping up a piece of mushroom and squirrel. "Try eating it together. At the same time, so you just taste the meat." He suggested, spooning his own mixture into his mouth. "See? Delicious."

It didn't help much ⎯⎯ to be told it was delicious. But what did help was looking at the cooking pot, and seeing it now empty. Everyone had some. Some could only take them so far, though. It scared her deeply to consider the depth of not having enough food.

What if they all starved? How long can you survive without food?

She didn't want to die from something so stupid as being childish and not eating food she didn't like. Everyone else was eating it just fine, so whatever was making it a big deal in her mind made her feel like a baby. So, she did as Dale suggested, rather begrudgingly and forcing down a gag in the process, but she did it.

The texture was only halfway better ⎯⎯ it actually may have been better if she had just forced herself to eat the mushroom alone because it being mixed together put a lump in her throat. But the taste, it was good, tolerable at least, and by the time she ate all of it she wished she had just grown up and eaten it sooner.

Dale waited for the verdict, but she just nodded less than contently. She wasn't satisfied, but nonetheless, he smiled softly at her, proud she at least did it.

• ───────────────── •

Late at night, when the sun was nowhere to be seen and the only light filtered through the tent mesh from the moon. It was the time that Clementine felt the most stressed out. Not when dead people were looming around every corner. Not even when everyone was yelling or talking about running out of food.

The quiet was when everything weighed heavily on her shoulders. A boulder sat on top of her, carrying the worst of the past, present, and future horrors. Plaguing the ⎯⎯ supposed-to-be ⎯⎯ placid moments.

Midnight was nearing and as if there was a schedule to be on, everyone who hadn't already, shuffled to their tents or vehicles. Clementine and her father took inhabitation in a tent Dale lent them. Simply out of courtesy for Jim having a child and nothing but a duffle bag and clothes on their back.

Jim had already gotten under one of the cheaply made fleece blankets Glenn brought back from one of his trips into the city. It had been a while since Clementine had sat down and talked to her father for an extended period of time. He never seemed to want to, leaving it as an ambivalent situation for Clementine.

She took a seat on her sleeping bag, tucking her legs in her shirt and staring at her father's back. "Daddy?"

Not a response came to her. Just more suffocating silence compressing her lungs into nothing. She pressed her lips together, rolling them in between her teeth and biting down.

Tears threatened brimming on her eyelids ⎯⎯ but she forcefully shoved them away with her fists, smearing them into her skin and sucking in a deep breath. She didn't want to cry. So much more was worth crying over, and she refused to settle for something as pathetic as not being spoken to.

He'd shut down ever since⎯⎯ Demarcating his space as his own and marked to not be infiltrated by anyone, not even his daughter who had suffered the same losses as him. A selcouth attitude he had never demonstrated before the sudden doomsday. Finding everything to be rather insipid.

Contrastively, Clementine maintained her acacy ⎯⎯ not losing her personality the way her father slowly was.

She leaned back onto the sleeping bag and rolled facing away from her father ⎯⎯ without a word, Jim clicked the flashlight in the center of the tent off. Silently signifying there was to be no more talking.

Clementine was thankfully tired anyway and quickly fell into a haunted sleep that would have her awakening in a panicked sweat. After dusk, nightmares were the only thing in the depths of her mind.

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〈〈 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 〉〉

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Hope you liked it <3

This is an original chapter and pretty much just to introduce my baby girl before getting into the "meat and potatoes". <3

I post edits for this story on tiktok!

Fanfic Editing Account: thinn.skinned.wp