It's been too long ! (Real life & writer's block). I know it feels so good to get back to posting something. The time frame of this story is winter between season 3 and 4. We never got to see what they do in the winter when the walkers are presumably torpid with cold and the focus is on surviving the cold and hunger of winter without the benefit of stores. How do they pass the time without technology? How do non humans see the walkers? I know I have an odd style and I am interested in unusual things. YEP!

As usual please review I get very few and it means the world to me. Thanks are due to those who do take the time to read this weird little story. Yatta Yatta not owned by me, owned by Kirkman and AMC. I just let my imagination run rampant in the same place that Merle likes to hang out and heckle people (his take on people watching). OH yeah Merle and Skya both like to cuss and small smut alert this time.

Enjoy!

Lefty

Tortuga

Skya looks around the group finishing with dinner; beginning the most challenging part of the day; the biting cold of the night. At night there was increased quiet in which peoples' thoughts stalk them like a vicious cat; sneaking up unawares and the lashing out with a paw, disturbing their already tenuous piece of mind. To complete the image Skya noted that the prison population was warming themselves together resembling several litters of puppies all piled in a heap for warmth.

The group now gathered most evenings near the makeshift fireplaces to huddle up and be warm, basking in the glow of each other while sharing body heat and humanity. Some split off to play cards and others enjoyed games, while most sat and listened to the stories and philosophical discussions.

The more restless ones spent time making things, fixing others, and mending clothing. There was a never ending parade of work to be done around the prison to keep 20+ people fed, clothed, alive and not stinking to high heaven. It also took teamwork and ingenuity to keep the mechanical support system for the prison and the vehicles running effectively.

It was very common for the younger men to be working together fixing spare parts under the watchful gaze of Daryl or Merle. Skya smirked to herself as she considered dredging up an old story or making a new one from scratch. Merle was sitting next to Liam at the chessboard watching him challenge Carl and Rick. He was snorting icy vapor of frustration as he watched Daryl try to teach Zach how to clean a firearm without dropping pieces on the floor to collect dust bunnies in its newly oiled parts.

"Godammit numbnuts how the fuck did the Governor even let you out by yerself if ya cain't even tell yer left from right. Ya done spilt oil over the whole freaking thing."

The toddler Emma was peeking out of the lap of Elise McManus daughter of Alice the librarian as they sat listening to stories.

"Numbnuts!" she crowed with a delighted smile. The prison residents all whipped their heads around in shock as Emma showed off her burgeoning verbal skills and simultaneously demonstrated the dubious effects of the Dixon lexicon as Merle snorted and coughed with laughter over at the chessboard.

"That's a girl after my heart; ya warm my soul "lil sweetums".

Skya watched as several games starting up Michonne and Sasha played a game of Rummy with Glen and Maggie. The latter was chuckling into her hand with Michonne rolling her eyes toward Shasha at the complete lack of a Poker face. Maggie of course didn't care what others thought with the notable exception of Glenn and her father.

Glenn heckled the pretty young farm girl,

"The more you wait the less I think you have anything except mischievous thoughts and a cute little nose.

Maggie's eyes glinted as she saw through the obvious ploy at distraction and her proud feminist side figuratively cracked its knuckles for a pleasant challenge."

"If you think I'm so desperate for your approval that I will let you win because you have a nice ass, think again, Yankee boy." With that she licked Glen's cheek trying to distract him further.

Michonne bent her face and nodded into her dreds knowing that she was perceptive enough and witty enough from her background as a paralegal to not allow the young lovers to win. However she had already decided to amuse herself and to lead them on while she honed her skills at manipulation. Still getting used to living in close proximity with so many; a blush rose to her dark cheeks, uncomfortable with such blatant PDA.

Sasha, grumbled

"Come on Maggie all the walkers will stop stinking before you finally make your move".

Maggie glared at her with a saucy smile.

"Dream on. You're just trying to get me distracted watch and learn y'all. Try that sequence 2-3-4- and oh look here hearts AND diamonds" Glenn observing the interaction chuckled,

"All that sweetness and she has brains too. I am a lucky lucky man"

"Not so fast pizza boy" Michonne lays down a meld of 6 cards and then they notice that she only has one card left. It's always best to hit them before you see them coming.

"GOTCHA. HA" she bellows the loudest noise anyone has ever heard her make.

Rick and Merle are shadowing Carl and Liam to help them with strategy, enjoying the for once friendly competition.

"Ya want to do that boy?" Merle rasped "Ya better rethink that pawn, friendly junior over there might look like a hilljack but there's a brain in there just like the old man. Ya'll never see it comin'.

Rick looked up swaying gently as he bounced his leg clicking his boot heel slightly on the floor. Merle smirked to himself as he thought about stuffing said boots up the fine officer's ass when he paces on a sleepless night.

"Yeah yeah redneck, not sure that you'll get away with making jokes about my son. You best be careful and WHO do YOU think you are referring to as an old man, you've got 15 years on me if it's a day"

Rick gets up and stretches groaning as the soft clicks and pops become audible then settles back down on the rickety bench next to his son.

"Shit man and you're calling me old when you sound like yer bones are cracking like eggshells"

"Shaddup Merle" Rick softly grunts, "Focus on teaching Liam to win. He needs all the help he can get".

"That's right Carl you think it through make sure you protect that king".

Rick Michonne and Glen were the resident card sharks. Merle could be counted on a game of Poker or chess, while the others preferred rummy. Several of the older ladies would play Parcheesi or Yahtzee. Liam and Carl would frequently play Chess with Rick and Merle watching and effectively participating as the kids' partners, enjoying the indirect challenge of the other.

Daryl would most often be whittling crossbow bolts, his eyes glittering in the direction of the chess board or checkers board, his analytical nature causing him to express his opinions in huffs and snorts as the players made moves that he didn't approve though it was not in his nature to interfere directly. They would note that the deeply set blue eyes glittered more intently from under the fringe of his unwashed bangs.

Skya spoke up, with boredom wearing on her in the growing shadows. She straightened up her shoulders feeling a twinge at the base of her shoulder blade along her healing broken arm.

"I want you to challenge me. I want someone to give me a sentence. Just one sentence and I will make you a story with that one sentence."

Tonight it's Skya's turn for lack of any other interested participants. She sees the residents of Woodbury (Alice Mc Manus the librarian) She raises an eyebrow at Skya.

"You sure you're up to going up against an old biddy librarian girl?"

Skya smirked knowing very well that she was up to the challenge having a vast font of knowledge and a creative, curious mind. She knew herself to be one with unending supply of curiosity and was fascinated with most things, ideas and people. She suffered from the fault of excessive enthusiasm and always being in search of the next new thing. Part of this was the residual of her traumatic brain injury following being shot while she was relaxing in central park on a glorious spring day.

Most people had more of a problem of embracing change, but Skya had more difficulty remaining consistent. This was the interesting thing about her career. She had always embraced change; whether it was zoological research, or analyzing blood samples or solving peoples' shortcomings through the appropriate application of therapy. All of these paths insisted on strength of will (some might call it stubbornness) and an intensely creative spirit. She also was gifted with an excellent memory and an enthusiasm for all things out of the ordinary. The result was being a bullshit aficionado, who can lead an audience with her words, a talent that has entertained her kids and friends over the years.

"I think I can rise to the challenge, after all it was I who asked for it."

The kind old librarian was frumpy looking but her bland face hid a razor wit and a love of the inappropriate. The personality quirks often undermined the role she was forced to play on the job, but many a townsperson in Woodbury harbored a new found respect for her when they found her alone in the library, reading soft porn graphic novels and listening to thrash metal in her native German tongue.

"Very well let's see what you make of this - He woke smelling like shit under the woodpile".

". . . and go!"

Skya's mind went through a kaleidoscope of ideas twining and separating and finally grasping an idea more close to home than she originally considered, musing how a thought pattern can take a life of its own. She spiraled down to a host of senses spiking her olfactory and visual centers and she focused on her memory of a pair of eyes in a beloved face that she hasn't gazed on in more than a year.

She stretched her arms wincing as the healing left radius settled into place in her healing arm. Cracking her back as her muscles pulled at her scar on her right lower back. Skya silently groaned as she felt her damaged bones arthritically crunching into alignment happy that Merle didn't hear the pops and feel the grinding of her bones. He would have saved it for later and would have given her no end of crap about it as if he didn't give her enough about stupidly falling on the run to the nursing home and fracturing her left (dominant) arm.

She cleared her thoughts exhaling as she centered herself turning to her audience angling her deaf side away from the others. She narrowed her focus to play her story through her mind's eye. She was sure that the owner of the sweet little face was still alive. She mentally crawled into his house with him and smelled the freshness of the air, hearing the odd sounds as she watched him wake, stretching his limbs and his consciousness calling him forth as surely as the bright warm sun was a beacon to his instincts. Skya's attention refocused hundreds of miles away and she could almost smell the huge lake less than a mile from her house, the grape leaves just unfurling and the strawberries ripening. She thought of a spring day 3 months from now and began her story.

She spoke . . .

"He woke with the spring from his muddy nest under the woodpile in a composted garden that smelled a little too much like shit. He was hungry from his long deep sleep his recently reconnected blood supply shunting input to his empty and shriveled stomach. He saw the light of the sun bathing him in tender light. He gaped and greedily accepted oxygen as he began the onerous task of digging his way out of the garden brush pile, cracking the dirt of his hibernation hole.

He smelled the air noting the pervading odor of rot more cloying than usual, his simple reptilian brain aware the change but not filing it as an important detail. He reappeared from an opening in the pile of brush over his nest; his stumpy legs and strong feet stretching his cold muscles driving him forward into the light. He paused looking at his surroundings smelling again the increased rot, an unusual odor for spring. He heard very little of interest, but if he were of a more astute intellectual species he would have paused with the crushing silence, punctuated with an odd moaning and groaning as if in pain.

He heard a moan getting louder and pulled his head and his limbs back into his safe zone, freezing as he did with the jointed lid slamming shut for added safety, his red eyes squeezing shut with an annoyed hiss escaping his pointed nose. A footstep lands near him shaking the ground, and another and another until a multitude of feet so similar to his two legged creatures but so categorically dissimilar in odor, touch and movement. Waiting is implanted deep within his nature. He is patient as he is stubborn.

"What kinda story is this Sweet Nips? Ya gonna make us guess what tha critter is? I think yer talkin' bout a damn turtle. They're only good for eatin' and eggs, dumb as a rock and ugly as sin!"

Mrs.' McManus responded in kind to the irascible older redneck brother.

"Why Mr. Dixon while all things as ugly as sin seems to be your comfort zone, I think Skya might know more about reptiles native to Ohio than you do. You are maybe not so familiar with the northern eastern box turtle with red and orange patterns on its shell, or maybe the spotted turtle with beautiful yellow spots all over their shells, looking like a field of dandelions. Besides you just had your turn at a story a few nights ago. While I like trading dirty jokes with you as much as the next person, I find it refreshing to hear a voice that is not yours for once."

She nods to Skya and winks at Merle while the others chuckle, as Merle snorts and walks away from the chess game heading upstairs where he can hear but not be observed in Skya's cell.

"Do continue girl . . . we are all listening"

Skya then gets up, her strong sturdy frame flickering in the light of the fire as she poked the coals as she thought. "

"Okay I'm on track again. We were Merlerupted when the hero of the story was closing his door against the walkers. And Merle was right he is a turtle but not ugly. He is an eastern box turtle and very beautiful. Nor is he as dumb as you would think. Yes most definitely simple but he does know his humans even if it might only be because of treats. Still I miss him, the kiddos loved him too. Anyway back to the story . . ."

"Hours passed before the odd smelly groaning two legged wandered away from his yard. He opened his door waited and smelled the fresh green grass and the growing scents. Out popped his nose followed by his red beady eyes common with all the males of his species. He blinks in the spring light of mid morning the warmth bathing the scutes of the dorsal shell. He ambles slowly about on weak legs stiff from the long winter sleep.

If he were a more inquisitive species he would notice the thick silence pervading over the world. There was no hum of technology connecting the frenetic business of the strange two legged creatures. He didn't notice that the garden was oddly unkempt. His human loved to fuss with the green leafy things. He wasn't intelligent enough to wonder where she went and where the small clumsy two leggeds who seemed to gather around her. There were no ankles to nip at and no warm hands lifting him to peer inquisitively into his red beady little eyes. There were not delicious things magically deposited out of the cold humming thing in the middle of the warm bright room. They used to carry him inside for visits, newly awakened in the spring, placing him on paper, giving him treats, touching his brightly patterned dorsal shell as he used to munch contentedly.

He knew that the messy garden still supplied juicy red fruits that he sank his beaklike jaw through; painting his little face like garish lipstick that sometimes his two legged thing liked to wear. His shrunken stomach felt satiated as he sat on a warm rock in his garden. His core temperature rose in the sun now that he wasn't sitting in the thick smelly mud. His inquisitive little nose picked up a warm blooded scent nearby in the brush. Out hopped a small brown rabbit wiggling its inquisitive nose as the turtle gorged himself on the strawberry feast. They had in the past both been dinner guests in the human's yard, her children used to point excitedly and watch the rabbit and the box turtle grazing together as day embraced dusk.

If one of the human's spirits, were in the garden today she would notice that the yard was trampled with many feet and that there was a lone walker caught in the fence reaching and pulling at his clothes but unable to think of how to get himself free. His stringy hair was hiding his rotten nose and blackened teeth. He wore, designer clothing, that might have been appropriate for a tourist to the vineyards of Ohio. He finally pulls himself free from the tangled fence, his rotten shirt giving way to his enthusiastic pulling, he face plants in the mud grunting as he unexpectedly kissed the earth but took no more note of it than the turtle took notice of his smell. He ambled away uneventfully as his instincts pulled him away from the quiet yard to follow the herd of his brother and sister dead amblers.

The rabbits mouth explodes with sweetness as she bites into another slightly overripe strawberry; the lives of the 6 kits inside of her safe for another day. She faces outward her shivering brown back near the safety of the large brush pile, her babies inside of her dreaming deeply under the beat of her heart, twitching and stretching as they experimented with moving their tiny muscles. They didn't know it but they have about a week to twitch until they are born during a tumultuous rainstorm their mother thankfully will move her nest under the abandoned shed of the missing humans.

The turtle had been lucky a year ago when the virus first stealthily appeared. If he hadn't been hibernating he might have been trapped indoors, like so many of the beloved animals in the wake of the virus. The human's first noticed the virus when so many got sick so quickly. In the house three doors down from the turtle's garden an all too common tragedy unfolded as the turtle slept, deep inside the brush pile.

The man came home from work and may have felt a little off, played with his kids before going to bed early. He stayed home the next day as a mild virus turned into a full blown respiratory distress that later hospitalized him. Then his wife started getting a tickle in the back of her throat. The two little girls were running a low grade fever and stayed home from school but thankfully the baby was fine. The mother and daughters took a nap together and the toddler died in her sleep only to come back and start gnawing on both her older sister and her mother. The mother having been bitten and watching her older daughter's die tried to call the neighbor to come and get the baby before it was too late. Luckily the elderly woman across the street was still fine and came over to check on the woman.

She had heard the baby crying alone in the playpen outside before the mother turned and began feasting on the baby. The horror was plain on the neighbor lady's face as she watched the mother who had finally turned feasting on the daughter's entrails before turning and disemboweling their beloved labradoodle, the blood staining her beautiful sandy coat crimson. The cat watched and hissed from under the couch as the walkers feasted. Finally the two legged monstrosities were able to bump their way outside to create chaos elsewhere. The turtle was luckier than the lizard inside the house; she was trapped in her beautifully appointed tank. The lights dimming as the power grids stopped shedding light on the devastating bloodbath of the first days of the outbreak. The lizard being a desert animal lasted 5 days without water, dying of thirst trapped as the human family turned on each other and the baby, having been left out in the yard was rescued by a neighbor.

If a sentient human had been present in the turtle's yard they would have watched in hiding as the herd passed through trampling the new grape vines slowly ripening in the fertile soil on the shores of Lake Erie. The winter had been unusually cold with temperatures well below freezing. The rotting shambling husks were weaker this spring than last with more pieces missing and their numbers declining. Most of the north had been abandoned with a few hardy groups remaining living in hand to mouth existence, more wary than the rabbit. The hunters have been knocked off of the food pyramid as apex predator, now starting their precarious existence as the newest prey species. Homo Sapiens Familiaris gave way to Homo Sapiens Mortis as the top of the food chain.

The turtle being a quiet little animal munched on peacefully unaware of the dramatic shift of the world in the kaleidoscope of scents and simple thoughts. He continued his feast blandly watching as his friend, the pregnant rabbit, hops back to the shelter of the brush pile. Later he ambled to the lengthening shadows in the sun: returning into the brush pile again as the nearing groans heralded the progress of the herd bumping their way through suburbia on the banks of Lake Erie.

THaaats all folks"

Skya looked into her daughter's face again musing how lucky she had been to be on vacation when the virus hit, and to have been indoors with a migraine when the first herd swept through taking her husband and in-laws in its tidal pull. If she had been home she would have likely been at work and dealt with multitudes of dying old ladies in the nursing home she worked. She would have taken her kids to school or to daycare, and if she would have tried to leave she would have been trapped on 90 westbound to Cleveland along with hundreds of other cars. Yes indeed either she would have died at work, or maybe her kids would have come home bit and caused the worst of scenarios as they would have died. Either way. Being the mother grizzly that she is Skya would have died protecting her kids.

"Seriously Skya you gave the stinking things a name? I like you bunches sweetie but your brain is warped"

Michonne's eyes sparkled as she teased Skya. She had enjoyed the short story odd as it was, however disturbing seen from the eyes of an abandoned pet, waiting for his owner even if he didn't realize that he was missing her.

What she considered disturbing as Skya blushed and smirked is the turn of the world in a way that she hadn't yet stopped to consider. Yes indeed there is a new species roaming the land causing the destruction of all recognizable human existence. Now that society has fallen it has been replaced by tribes and gangs and clans. So far the only groups that the prison tribe has met have either been as shy as the rabbit in the story or led by a bloodthirsty psychopath.

"Well not everyone thinks like a scientist, you wish you were that cool" Skya replies as Rick and Michonne (who had taken over for Merle) shake their heads in silent amusement as they shadow the chess game of the young teens."

Mrs. Mac the erstwhile Woodbury librarian sits silently with her head cocked like a curious mother dog regarding a wayward puppy.

"Well girl that was the last thing that I would have considered you being able to come up with. It's interesting about how the cold affects these monsters. I wonder how far they have to degrade before the things lose the ability to move and how long it will take before humanity rebounds."

Hershel considers the interesting points that Skya raised in her story. He can see that before being medical she definitely was a research scientist.

"Let me see here. Obviously the virus gave chemistry a kick in ways that science does not consider as possible. Muscles can't contract without life, if the monsters rot then they are not going through the chemical processes that are required for muscle contraction or for binding of proteins on a cellular level. The stimulation of nerves and therefore the reaction to noise or fire or scent of human beings in should be impossible. But without a team of scientists we may never know what that would be. We can see that their bodies wear down from damage and weather but that does not stop them from being hazardous to the humans in their path"

The discussion drones on as Skya guides her kids up to their room, sleepy from the early darkness and the overly technical discussion from the old veterinarian and the librarian, their eyes shining with an attraction that only the others notice. As she tucks her children in she feels distracted by feelings she had buried for a year, she can almost smell the early spring of her long lost home. She hears the seabirds from Lake Erie and feels the beach sand under her feet as she searches for drift glass with her kids.

She watches her kids sleep the light from the downstairs fire flickering on their closed eyes making their freckled faces glow. She closes the door protectively as she turns to the cell that she recently began sharing with Merle. He began sleeping in her bed several weeks earlier keep him warm during his recent bout of pneumonia. Now however she doesn't want to admit to herself and him that he is again healthy, and she is the one who needs the comfort of his warmth during the cold nights, as she is stalked by heartbreaking dreams.

Skya's POV

I wake up from the most improbable of dreams. Experiencing the horde of walkers conflagrating on my yard just as my wonderful Box turtle that we called Tortuga or "Tuga" gradually is released from his hibernation. I would have dug him up a month ago and brought him inside but I dreamt of early summer at home, the strawberries just ripening the grape leaves just beginning to grow. My Turtle blinking his little red eyes and dirt dropping off his beautiful patterned shell drying in the sun as he painted his face in strawberries, the juice making him look as some industrious little girl applied lipstick to the lipless critter.

I sit there in the cool morning gooseflesh creeping up my back my arms shivering as I choke down sobs and shake off the mourning for my old life the home, the people, the pets that I will never see again.

"What's doing juicy? Why ya sniffling like a prissy little girl?"

"I dreamt of my turtle hibernating in my strawberry patch. I used to love watching him eat the ripe berries from my garden.

That gets a snort from the filthy minded Merle

"Sweetnips I would love to hibernate in yer strawberry patch, but I thought ya were a brown girl."

That gets a slap from me and a very pleased chuckle from him finally getting me to react to his crude but spirited humor.

"Gotcha sweetness" go back to sleep ya silly little freak unless ya want to treat me to some of yer tasty berries"

I rolled over on top of him bearing my chest with my red berry like nipples conveniently parked in front of his scruffy smirking face, inviting him to bury himself in my strawberry patch.

"I happen to have saved two berries just for you . . ." I gasp as he pulls me toward him snaking his stump around my back leaving his hand free to do justice to my ripening chest.