Chapter Text
Water. There’s water everywhere today, soaking into her clothes, plastering her hair to her face. Obscuring the tracks of the deer that she’s been tracking for the while, while she resolutely ignores the grumbling and rumbling from her midsection. After a bit more time, it becomes obvious to the hunter that nothing will be caught unless it wanders into her sight. With a sigh, the hunter turns and begins the journey back to her camp, and the prospect of some dry clothes. A rustle in the bushes to her left has her wheeling with an arrow knocked, eyes wide.
“ Chon yu bilaik” ?, she asks, in a voice rusty with disuse. She cringes at hearing her own voice, having grown used to her silence. She used to talk to herself when she first came to these woods, just ahead of those that pursued her. That eventually stopped when her conversation began to scare her. She spoke with that girl at the trading post…what was her name? Niylah, that was it. But that was….a quick calculation and the hunter realized that it has been 2 weeks since she had seen or spoken to a single human person. Another rustle in the bushes has her taking two steps back, prepared for anything to come charging out at her. “ Ai don as yu prom op!! Ai nou na as yu op nodotaim!!” There is no answer.
The bushes behind her rustle, and the hunter back up further down the path, trying to keep both sides of the path in her field of vision. Suddenly, the hunter hears the giggling of a child from one side, followed a rustle of bushes closer to where she is standing. Looking carefully, the hunter can see a childs face hidden in the foliage. This face is horrifically burned, oozing sores cover its forehead, and one of its eyes is covered in a white film. These injuries don’t seem to hinder it at all, as it smiles, opens its mouth and begins to giggle. The bushes on the other side rustle, and a hand, equally burned and disfigured, inches out of the bushes. The hunters nerve breaks, and she turns and flees.
She arrives at her campsite sweating, shaken, panting like she just ran ten miles instead of one. Seeing the sparse but well ordered camp helps calm her mind. Rationally, she knows, knows, that there is no way for the dead to attack her. “The dead are gone, and the living are hungry”, a voice whispers in her mind. But that doesn’t stop her from fearfully scanning the trees, expecting a charred corpse to step out and lunge at her. The wind rustles, water falling on her head from the trees above, but nothing else appears. When nothing moves that is out of the ordinary, she rubs her eyes, convinced that that she was daydreaming. She takes a deep breath, and trudges in a different direction, hoping to hunt down something, anything, so she can stay longer out here in the wilds. Away from others, and away from her past. Here, none of the animals care what she’s done to survive. They are trying to survive, just like her.
Two hours has netted her one squirrel, and she skins and cleans it in front of a small fire. She sets aside the pelt and tail, debating what she should trade itr for. Cutting up the meat, she adds it to the small pot that hangs over the fire, along with some wild greens that she found growing near her camp. Stirring the bubbling stew, she sits back under her lean to, and closes her eyes for a moment. Her eyes snap open, something just doesn’t feel right to her. Her hand inches to the short knife on her hip, and she looks warily around her little camp. Nothing appears out of the ordinary, and she couldn’t have been resting long since the stew hasn’t boiled yet. She is still looking around, when the smell assails her nose, one that she recognizes immediately. Burned flesh, clotted blood...a scent that features in her worst nightmares and sometimes chases her into the waking world. The bushes in front of her rustle, and a form steps out. A childs voice rings out a cheerful greeting. “Hi, Clarke!!!”
Clarke recoils as the child-like figure skips across clearing, humming an old song that Clarke recognizes as 'Ring around the Rosey’. The little girl, and Clarke recognizes her as Emily, plops to the ground with the utterance of, “Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down ” . Blisters that opened festoon her face,and strips of skin are missing from her arms, but seem to cause no pain. She looks at Clarke clutching the knife, and she giggles, covering her mouth with a burned and bloody hand. “Oh silly, you know that's not going to hurt me. You can't hurt me anymore, you killed me already.”
Clarke releases the hilt of the knife, only to use that hand to cover her mouth. Tears streaming down her face, she starts rocking back and forth. If there was physically anyone else there with ears to hear, they would have heard Clarke muttering “It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t me. it wasn’t my fault.” The litany continued until Emily raised her hand. Clarke screams and pushes back with her legs, ending up on her butt while raising her hands in front of her face. After a minute, Clarkes hands drop and she looks fearfully across the fire, to see Emily calmly brushing her hair.
“Silly billy, if we wanted you dead we would have done it already!! There are lots of us here, you know, and we were all very very mad at you. But we're not mad anymore, Clarke. You remember us, you remember our names. You looked at our faces as you stepped over our bodies when you left Mount Weather. Well, WE are looking at YOU, and we want our revenge. And we’re gonna have it, Clarke. Jus drein jus daun .” The sheer impossibility of a dead girls ghost speaking a language that she could never have even heard doesn’t even enter into Clarkes mind. After all, when you’re confronted by the ghost of a kid you murdered 3 months ago, the term ‘impossible’ tends to lose all meaning.
“But….but it wasnt my fault!!!! I tried to stop him, I did!! It wasn’t my fault, he didn’t leave me any other choice.” At this point, Clarke is hysterically gasping for breath, eyes rolling around, looking for an escape route. Anything, to get her away from this walking reminder of the horror that she performed. When the little girl starts giggling again, Clarke is taken aback.
“You’re so silly, Clarke!!! We don’t want to kill you. We want you to kill the Commander. She’s the reason that you killed us, and you're going to help us. ”
Chon yu bilaik = Who are you?
Ai don as yu prom op!! Ai nou na as yu op nodotaim = I asked you a question!!! I won’t ask you again!!
Jus drein jus daun = Blood must have blood