CHAPTER SEVEN
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀try. because this is a simple storm.

⠀After all these years, Isiah started to lose his faith in any God; somehow, he still believed he was there — just not for Isiah himself. He would have to find someone else because God had his priorities on something else, rather than the disabled young man.

⠀He was angry. He felt betrayed. And he also felt foolish, and blind. He should have known that his prayers never counted as conversations.

⠀Things would make him question his loss of faith, including the collection of bottled water displaying themselves in front of the group.

⠀His mouth felt immensely more dry as he watched the liquid steadily swirl. And that gave him a clue that whoever put them there, wasn't long gone.

⠀He lifted his view, looking into the trees. But every shadow, and dip in the earth made him think that someone was there — for all time. He rubbed away the sweat in his eyes, his vision blurred before Daryl made his way through the brush, almost making Isiah step back in shock.

⠀His right leg lifted to move backwards, but that action made him stumble. He hissed, his skull tightening when cursed words nearly decided to break forth.

⠀Everyone looked to him, including his sister, who's expression hadn't changed. Rick rose his hand, and Daryl clenched his fist.

⠀Isiah gave away his pain but held his mouth tightly. Don't touch me, his eyes said.

⠀Stay away... I don't need it.

⠀The lonely august born boy kept his shackles invisible as he had done for years, and this new world wasn't going to change it. Nothing would go back to the way it was, and all they could hang onto was their beliefs and horrifying weaknesses.

⠀Instead of inquiring on Isiah's pain, gave the news to Daryl. Rick offered him the piece of paper they'd all observed individually.

⠀"From a friend," it said, in black curved capitals. Even by the state of the paper, someone was out there, and they had everything.

⠀Daryl tossed the paper downwards.

⠀"What else are we gonna do?" Isiah looked to his left, to Tara who steadily bounced on her feet, gun readily placed in her arms. The boy looked away, tired of this.

⠀He wanted to just... he wanted the day to be over. And these questions with no possible answer strung the hours and daylight onwards.

⠀"Not this," Rick assured, looking towards the trees. "We don't know who left it."

⠀The mute simply watched the struggle. The debate on this stranger's intentions displayed in mere silence. He wasn't going to give a glance of suggestion. He didn't want to be possibly responsible for a future consequence.

⠀Eugene puffed out his chest, and Isiah scratched his beard as he anticipated the long, complicated words, but all-round nonsensical sentences to come from his mouth. If only he had the energy to shut someone up. "If that's a trap, we already happen to be in it. And I, for one, would like to think it is indeed from a friend."

⠀Isiah didn't know where he stood on the situation on whether or not to trust strangers. Even the people closest to you can do things without reason, or direction. He wasn't very sure if someone would be devious enough to waste this allotment of water just to poison a competition they haven't even met.

⠀Another part of his mind screamed that he was thirsty. Drink the water, it said. It will feel okay.

⠀Carol spoke up next, with her distrusting view. "What if it isn't? They put something in it."

⠀Even with such a view that could sway him, Eugene ignored it and almost lunged for one of the bottles. Isiah imagined that like the rest of them, the starving and dehydrated conscience was getting louder as the seconds ticked by.

⠀Rosita went to grab him. "Eugene." The man ignored her and started to twist the cap of the bottle, and Isiah's eyes grew wide. He was inherently begging and yearning for it to be untrue — for someone to be kind. His faith in God was always more potent than that of people... maybe that was his own mistake.

⠀This holy grace was something made by a person, not a deity. Yet the blessing could be full of poison on an even bigger mistake.

⠀He didn't hear how Eugene tried to defend himself, but he did see the taller and much more intimidating Abraham throw his hands up and strike the bottle away from Eugene's hand. And yes, they had heard of Eugene's lies, and why exactly the former sergeant was so close to the man with a mullet. It seemed Abraham Ford couldn't help his affinity to squash stupid decisions.

⠀The young boy watched as the water spilt down Eugene's chin, and he subconsciously licked his lips, even as the plastic bottle rolled over the concrete, and the liquid sizzled over its heated surface.

⠀There was a very audible tension, and of sighs.

⠀Rick stood his ground, his voice husky and dry. "We can't." His jaw drew slack, and Isiah noted how it made him look like he was giving up despite what he had just said.

⠀Before anyone else had, he craned his neck upward. A tingling chill crawling up his spine as cracks, and bellows echoed across the sky. Clouds moved in to their position, and the air that was just stagnant began to flow with a breeze, and a cooling spray of rain.

⠀Light at first, Isiah let it soak his hair and beard. He wound his hands in his shirt, pulling the hems away from his skin and letting the water drip down the back of his shirt. The lonely man dipped his head down, watching a river flow its way from the ends of his hair. It stuck to his forehead, and he let his mouth open slightly to make his throat no longer tire.

⠀Sounds of splinters still made their way towards them, and through a dark curtain, he watched the rest of the group bask in their lucky splendour. Rick gathered bottles and bowls to infer what may not last. But Maggie wasn't moved by the event, and father Gabriel started to weep to their God that he was sorry.

⠀Isiah, surprisingly, didn't see this as a sign. He saw this as some form of stupid, fucking luck. And it was slightly humorous to him. He held in any sort of shout towards his God, to yell out that he was right. God did not do a thing. This was a simple storm.

⠀And his thoughts were met with a roar of thunder, a splash of light. The electricity hung in the air, raising the hairs on his arms. Isiah brought his hands up to them, rubbing furiously over the long sleeves that now hung heavily on his protruding bones.

⠀Judith seemed to speak for him, as he looked through the hair falling in his eyes, he saw Carl kindly placing his father's hat over her face. He heard her cry, sobbing as the sounds of the sky above got louder and louder.

⠀This was when Isiah pushed himself out of his analytical mind, and towards a reality where the wind started to pick up, and the rain began to stab him. He knew then; they needed to find cover, no matter how much the group appreciated the sudden downpour.

⠀Someone started to speak, but the man couldn't hear a word. He was too preoccupied with observing which way the clouds were moving. He tried to decipher how many torrential waves were heading their way, but it seemed endless as he could only look so far as the horizon.

⠀"There's a barn!" He heard Daryl say, and it wasn't long before everyone had gathered the bottles and bowls, to make a quick move to this unknown place. Isiah was the last to leave the road, as he looked at the unstable ground between the trees with some trepidation.

⠀Leaning heavily on his makeshift crutch, he followed closely behind Glenn. His brother-in-law kept stealing glances back to him, and Isiah noticed it every single time.

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⠀Arriving there, Isiah kept to the back wall of the barn. The odour that seemed to rise from the soil nearly made him gag. Bringing both of his hands together, wringing his bony fingers together, he brought them to cover his nose and mouth. Blowing lightly on them, he detested his antisocial state as he watched the small embers over the other side of the barn.

⠀He wondered, ever, if he was a good man. If staying from eyes, and avoiding conversations with the only family he had left was innately good. The state of his unused vocal cords was being called into question as he watched, every second, as Maggie tried not to give up just as he wasn't trying hard enough.

⠀Isiah had already given up, exactly when he knew God wasn't there when Beth died. When his father died, why would he stand there, and watch it happen? Just let it happen?

⠀He wondered maybe, that was how he was slowly decaying himself — just watching it happen. There was no one more hopeful than his younger sister, and his father... and they wouldn't just wait and let it happen. He had memories of his father running the length of their farm to give him his inhaler when he was twelve, and of Beth checking every night in the prison whether or not he had it on hand.

⠀He had the chance to do something at the hospital, to give back all the love he had been given. But unlike the better members of the Greene family, he had just stood there and watched. No matter what happened to him... he shouldn't have made it an excuse.

⠀Beth hadn't used her bruised and stitched up face as an excuse to stop fighting for her freedom. Somehow, it had only made her stronger. And while, physically, Isiah used to be the one to protect her, it seemed she had surpassed that on more levels than just being able to hit someone harder.

⠀"This isn't the world."

⠀Isiah hadn't been paying attention to anyone, in particular, keeping to his wall like everyone else had seemed to do except for a select few who chose to sit around a measly fire. But Michonne's statement, in response to a cynical comment, had caught his attention. Suddenly feeling sucked into that conversation, Isiah's worldview worm holed.

⠀He didn't take note of what else was said, but he listened like how you listened to adverts on television. Taking nothing in but... you were still there. Everything else disappeared, and it was just you and some cheesy telemarketer trying to flog off useless vacuum machines.

⠀Something was said about being dead now so that we could live later on. You are wading through this bullshit until you come out at the end alive. A man was going to war and wishing himself a restful peace.

⠀At that time, Isiah decided that conversation wasn't something good for him to listen in on. After thinking about death for most of the day, maybe it was a form of self-care that he shut that conversation out.

⠀He was sitting there, with no one else. Umbrella to his left, and a bottle of water to his right; the last few material things he had left. Isiah knew that he was realising slowly that, that was all he was. The boy with no voice. The cripple. A man with a thirst for faith — the only thing being able to quench it being actions he had yet to take.

⠀Isiah decided then and there that he would practically force the words from his lungs, all the way out until his tongue hurt. He would try because simple words could have saved his sister.

⠀He would try and force himself through the pain in his body because a simple movement could do something good in this world.

⠀He would quench his own thirst for faith... because his God would not be there for him.

⠀In the small light of the barn, Isiah looked upon the people he was in company with. The vagabonds and strangers.

⠀Most of them did not rely on a man in the sky for strength; they did that all on their own. His sister didn't use God to wade through the grief as a way to stay afloat. The water was not to his left because of some strange miracle.

⠀The rain was just rain. The storm was just a storm. Strength was just strength. Faith in himself would give him more deliverance than sending out a message and foolishly waiting for some sort of boost in confidence.

⠀Isiah was going to stop his own decay by sheer will. Because trying was the least he could do.

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⠀As the cacophony of loud cracks threatened to break open their temporary home like an egg, Isiah's eyes flew open. He didn't remember falling asleep — only felt it in his ribs from the stress sewed through them.

⠀Under the precedence of ache, the man's body strained upwards, as he observed the barn doors shuddering open in front of him. It was blinking backwards and forwards, like a mouth.

⠀The first to lunge for them was Daryl, pressing his palms heartily into the rotting, and soaked wood. Shoes dipping into the mud below, practically being swept off his feet by the wind and slick surface beneath him.

⠀Isiah, with his newfound faith in himself, gripped the fabric of his trousers. A loose string becoming tangled within his fingers, as he pulled fiercely against the stiffness of his bones.

⠀His elbows dug into the sludge as he turned onto his side, using whatever energy he left in himself to push just as hard as Daryl was.

⠀The strong scent of the dripping clouds made his nostrils flare, as the sounds of the others leaping to help the one at the door filled the air, scrambling with their quickest pace possible, escaping to the fissure of this sacred space.

⠀Gripping the clay, letting his nails dig deep into it, the young man's arms shook as he lifted his body upwards. His muscles screamed, and his heart pounded against every nerve in his body. It was as if the organ was trying to wound him from the inside. But in response, his teeth grated; his cheeks flushed; his legs moved against whatever inside him was telling him to stop.

⠀Because, yes, the door's could probably be held if he didn't partake. The others would struggle, and they would cry out for their strength, not to waver. Whatever was scarifying the doors to get in would not succeed.

⠀They did not need Isiah.

⠀Yet he bent his knees, and he blinked away the water that spilt from his scalp. A remnant of the continuous leak from the ceiling above. He got up, and he stood. Not for long as he threw everything into moving his legs quickly to join the others who fought.

⠀His body pressed against Glenn, he pushed the bones of his chest forwards. He bent his head down and gripped whatever he could to balance himself.

⠀Isiah wondered on the line between exhaustion and sheer will.

⠀That was all he needed to do this. To help. To not watch. To do something with all that he observed. To mould it between his hands like he thought only his God could do. To try.

⠀"This isn't the world. This is an image. It's bent scenery. Paint that reeks of poison. Whatever was used to make it did not matter. God did not place us where we are now to rot, and he did not place us here to grow. God did what he did, and he watched. He built this painting for us to observe. For us to lumber past it time and time again. He made a looking glass for himself and us. Whatever way you walked, it was always going to be there to haunt us. But those means to move past that painting are your own; they do not belong to God. This isn't the world. It is your own. You can either suffer and fall; breathe it in and crumble; silence your cries... or you can try. Because this is a simple storm."

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note ⛈

*insert an awkard picture of me where i am trying to smile and be sorry that isiah got no updates for nearly three years with for reason at all as to why my bby boi got this treatment from me therefore in the picture my eye might be twitching in emotional pain and guilt bc i had three quarters of the chapter already written for idk how long (and i admittedly favour my other child marley therefore mOre guilt washes over me therefore i might be crying in the picture)* :)

words : 2719
2020 / 16 / 05
edited ✓