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ELLIE SAT WITH her knees tucked up to her chest, the pleasant breeze parading on her face as she sat with her face overlooking the sun. It had been almost two weeks since they had ventured off in an effort to find their sister, to no avail. Solely relying on scavenging through empty stores had all they had managed to do, ensuring Coda always went fed. But even so, living would become difficult to bear.
Ellie booted the dirt with her feet, feeling shame creeping up her backbone from not having washed in almost two weeks. Leg hair prickled at her legs, and hair became knotted with dirt
"If we head south, we'll find the heart of the woods, and we can probably start going a different route into the city," Luke recited, holding the gargantuan map up, concealing the entirety of his face, "What do you think?"
Ellie nodded at him, feeling almost defeated that they hadn't discovered anything spectacular or lifechanging in the two weeks that they had been touring. Ellie had become unhappy with the constant moving; of the questions from Coda; the uncertainty that they faced daily. The routine was so vastly different from her past life, that she hadn't felt like herself at all.
"Are you even listening to me, Ellie?"
Ellie thought back to the last juncture in time she had seen her little sister alive. She had pledged her a competitive game of bowling the subsequent weekend when Ellie had her time off work, but the the world insisted on disaster. It wasn't often that Ellie managed to see her little sister after Coda's birth, and her heart ached with guilt at her realisation that she should have spent more time with her.
"Mom, where's my dad?"
The three words that had never been inquired before snapped Ellie back into reality, her eyes widening with shock at the question. For several moments, she glanced up at her brother, the two mirroring one another's reaction, "What?"
"Don't I have a dad like everyone else?"
"Yes, of course... he's most likely with his brother," Ellie answered nonchalantly, clearing her throat with awkwardness, "We might seem him, we might not."
"Well, I think I'd like to," the girl retorted, shrugging her shoulders as she coloured in a drawing she had been making with crayons, "Don't you? If he's my dad?"
Ellie shrugged back and stood to her feet, awkwardly muttering, "I think maybe we should get going."
"Mom?"
Ellie turned to her young daughter and sighed, "I did want to, once. But he's not good for us, Co. We've managed just fine for six years, haven't we? I don't even know how we would, anyway."
Coda nodded slowly, followed by a loud sigh at her mother's dismissiveness, "I just wanted to have a dad. Lu is not my dad."
"I wish I could explain it to you, but maybe when you're older," Ellie mumbled, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment.
