Invincible Ones [A Walking Dead Story]

42- Elapsed In Time

"Nat, you're so slow!"

"Well, it's kind of hard to shimmy up a tree. WHICH, by the way, could TOTALLY BE DEAD AND DECAYING AND COULD CRUSH US BY ITS FALL." He had shouted. His voice was kind of pitchy, yet on the precipice of being a post-puberty tone.

"Then I'll just jump onto the hay loft!"

"Again, there's some unstable roof where this tree has punched a HOLE THROUGH by its slow, gradual growth."

"Again, I'll just jump."

"From how many feet up from the good, gracious ground?" Nat fired back, still hugging the gray, coarse tree trunk with his arms and legs, not yet even three feet above the ground.

"I read how to land correctly--either roll-land or this other strategy where you put one foot out in front and then bring down the other...the former is probably better and my knees and less prone to injury, though..."

Nat grasped a leafless branch with his right hand, then shifted his left hand next to it. He heaved himself over and was hugging the thick branch instead of the trunk. "Great. Great. But I don't know how to do that, Aviva!"

"Get good, Nat," Aviva said after a smug chortle. Though Nat couldn't see her, his eyes trained on the next sturdy branch that Aviva had climbed onto, he could hear the smirk on her face. "Good thing you're so scrawny. If you were heavier than me, you'd pose more of a risk than me. Plus, it's not dead."

Nat clenched his teeth, grabbing for the branch, pulling himself onto it and sitting upright on it, straddling the branch between his legs, his arms tingling from the exercise. He shook them out. He realized, to his disdain, that they did look scrawny. But the thickness of his winter coat hid it.

"What is it then, if it's not dead?" Nat tested. "Undead?"

"It's early spring, dummy."

"I know that, dummy." Nat took in a deep breath, then proceeded to the next branch. He looked up, seeing the little girl with hair of the darkest of brown in a dark violet puffy winter coat sitting on one of the topmost branches, her legs swinging with hyper energy.

"Yeah, well, last autumn there were leaves on it. So it's living. It was really pretty in the fall light, to be honest." Aviva said, almost wistfully. Nat sympathized with her wish for some color to finally retake the trees. Everything looked so dead and dull and boring without the leaves to accentuate the environment.

It is no doubt that Spring is a nuisance of a season that is less than not necessary. Nat had thought. It's winter with an illusion, with up-and-down temperatures. First, it's 60 degrees then it's 20, then it's storming with tornado warnings, then you wake up two days later and it's snowing lightly. Don't get me started on the worthless tradition of groundhog day.

Nat bit his lip. "Please don't say the word fall right now..." Nat whined, getting closer to the top of the tree.

"For Pete's sake, Nat, you're not going to fall," Aviva assured him.

"I just told you not to say that word!"

"Fine, you're not going to plummet to your death."

"Curse your unnervingly vast range of vocabulary." That made Nat's best friend laugh, so Nat, in turn, smiled, climbing higher and higher. Talking with Aviva, Nat found, distracted him from the height. Of course, that thought alone made him aware of the distance between him and the ground all over again. But fortunately, Aviva was still talking. Nat clung to her commentary.