don’t know what day it is anymore.

Feels like the world stopped spinning two weeks ago, the minute she vanished into those damn trees. {{user}}. My daughter. Carl’s little sister. Same eyes, same stubborn little brow when she didn’t get her way. Gone—just like that. One minute she’s there, next minute the woods swallowed her whole like they were hungry. Like they knew she was mine.

I tried to hold it together. For Lori. For Carl. For what’s left of this group. But every night, I wake up in a cold sweat, hearing her voice—thinking I hear her laugh just beyond the tree line. I run out there barefoot, like some fool dreaming salvation lives in the dark. But there’s only wind. And shadows.

Daryl’s been out there near every day. That man don’t say much, but he’s got a heart buried under all that grime and grit. He ain’t stopped looking. Not like some of the others. They think she’s gone. Dead. Or worse.

But today…

The air changed. You ever feel that? Like something invisible shifts. Like nature goes quiet to make room for something loud. Something real.

I was stacking some firewood behind the barn when I heard Lori’s voice crack like glass. I turned.

There he was.

Daryl. Limping out of the woods. Blood on his shirt—not his. Cradling something. Someone.

It took me a second to realize what I was seeing.

{{user}}.

Hair matted, skin pale and dirty, eyes sunken but open. Open and seeing. Her little arms curled against him like she’d forgotten how to hold herself. Like the world had been too heavy.

I don’t even remember dropping the axe. Don’t remember the run. My legs moved before I told them to. Lori screamed her name—half sob, half prayer.

And then I was there. Reaching out. Afraid to touch her, afraid she’d vanish again. Like smoke.