my tears ricochet

Chapter Ninety Three

𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕀 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕪 𝕙𝕒𝕥𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕥𝕤, 𝕓𝕦𝕥 𝕀 𝕜𝕖𝕖𝕡 𝕞𝕒𝕡𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖 𝕀 𝕡𝕦𝕥 '𝕖𝕞

ℝ𝕖𝕡𝕦𝕥𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕖𝕕𝕖𝕤 𝕞𝕖, 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕪 𝕥𝕠𝕝𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕀'𝕞 𝕔𝕣𝕒𝕫𝕪.

-- 𝔼𝕟𝕕𝕘𝕒𝕞𝕖 - 𝕋𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 𝕊𝕨𝕚𝕗𝕥

Maggie was practically unavoidable as Ivy tried circling her to recover the supplies that Enid and Beth had dropped off for her. For two nights she camped out at the abandoned cottage and forced Ivy to double back in order to escape the woman's notice.

But the third day Maggie finally relented and abandoned her temporary post.

Ivy had nervously investigated the fence line for any trick and ducked along the edge of an overgrown garden to check beneath the bench for the bag. She felt the uncanny sense that someone was watching her from out of sight but her paranoia felt endless in general so she snagged the bag and quickly darted away, moving from the property into the woods where she had better coverage.

The bag was lighter than it usually was. She tossed the strap over her shoulder properly and let it bounce against the rifle slung there, darting from woods to a paved stretch of the road before circling around and picking up a vague outline of a path.

The Saviours were getting better at pushing her out from where she wanted to go. Twice they had nearly crossed paths by sheer luck, men combing the woods like gnats, roads humming with activity. They were starting to station camps on the higher regions she wanted to move through and it made her travels clunkier, more awkward as she straddled the balance of invisibility and leaving a record.

It was harder to take shots at Saviours. But Ivy had learned the appeal of becoming an inconvenience. If Negan was going to limit her ability to move, Ivy would do the same. She left blockades of walker bodies across the roads to prevent the convoys from sweeping through, marking the map up with temporary lines of death.

Ivy was spitefully leaving those blockades up everywhere they had been stopped the night Abraham died. She couldn't forget that midnight voyage into the darkness, hurtling along Negan's carefully plotted spectacle.

The path took her to a small pond on the edge of a farm and Ivy drifted along the edge. The soft mud made her boots sink slightly and she lined her path north until the ground evened out. Afterwards she doubled back on those careful prints and took a new direction towards a ridge of rock that broke up out of the ground. It was harder to leave much of a trail behind with the stones and she kept going, pursuing a vague thread until she found her temporary campsite.

It wasn't much of anything but the large tree was a slight comfort to rest her back against. Ivy rubbed her hand against a twisted tree root as she settled her breathing out. Every minute felt like a new risk. She didn't know how far the Saviours had cut into the woods and her territory was shifting beyond what she fully knew.

A campsite could become a grave. She couldn't put faith in a clearing or stretch of road. Nothing was safe anymore.

Her hands fumbled for the zipper of the bag as she drew it open slowly. A mini box of stale cereal was stacked on top and she drew it out before examining the rest in order - a granola bar that reminded her of the kind Daryl always stashed in his pockets, dried cranberries, and a bottle of Advil. A note had been folded neatly at the bottom of the bag and it wasn't familiar to her the way Beth or Enid's writing was.

Maggie's blockier print taunted her.

Ivy debated crumpling it up and discarding it before smothering that instinct entirely. They were going to have to shift the drop off location again for another place since Maggie ferreted the current place out.