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Natalie is staring at nothing, the horror of the day having dawned on her hours ago. Javi-she can still smell him, the charred skin and flesh wafting from the smoke from the fireplace. She can hear his begging gasps. Feel the coldness of his skin.
“The wilderness chose who to feed us.” Nat can’t even bring herself to roll her eyes now. To scoff. “And it’s chosen who to lead us…”
“Natalie.”
Nat finally looks up, broken from her guilt by the sound of her own voice. The girls all turn to face her, their gray and black and white faces flickering in front of her. She opens her mouth, to protest, deny. Nothing escapes.
Lottie approaches her, her lanky body standing over her. The girl’s face is still swollen from where Shauna’s fists connected. Deep darkness around her eyes.
“How else do we explain what happened out there?”
Nat wanted to yell.
It happened because I let it happen. It happened because i didn’t want to die. It happened because I am a selfish creature.
She doesn’t say anything, she just watches as Lottie finally stops her weak shuffling just before the chair she was sitting in. The layers of her clothes create shadows that meld into the rest of the black and whites that surround her vision.
“Natalie…” she wants to scream. To run. Instead she freezes, like a deer with a rifle pointed at it.
Lottie doesn’t continue, but in her scraped and freezing hands she takes Natalie’s, the taller girl gently rubs her thumb. It’s a soothing gesture, more comfort than she deserves.
Nat shifts her gaze, looking at Lottie's pitch black eyes as she brings Natalie’s hand toward cracked lips.
Natalie only continues to stare. In confusion. In pure shock. She can’t move. And then she flinches. Unbidden.
It’s bright.
When you spend a life in black and white, you don’t realize how completely fucking dull it is. And when the space around you lights up, changes to the variety you can only dream of, it is blinding.
The fire place, it burns. It looks how heat should look. A deep, painful colour. The floor is-she can’t describe it. Natalie is so overwhelmed by the shift in her perception that she has yet to consider what that means.
Natalie knew Travis wasn’t her soulmate. She knew that kissing him would mean dissatisfaction. She knew. After every kiss she’d shared with a boy has left both wanting more.
Sometimes it’s easier to fill that wanting. With sex, with drugs.
But it’s a want. So deep, so intrinsic, that she hadn’t known. She hadn’t known what it would be like to finally feed it.
She stares, as Lottie steps back, lips leaving the back of her hand and pulling Nat to standing. It’s Taissa next.
She can’t even pay attention to the awkward handshake. She only stares after her soulmate.
Lottie falls back into the shadows, but the colours that mare her face are still visible. A deep one surrounds an eye, sort of like the night sky out the window.
She wants to name these colours. But she can’t. Not when Melissa is taking off her pale, bright and out of place hat and bowing to her.
Gen follows, and Robin after her. Van grabs Natalie’s hand, the one Lottie just kissed, the one Lottie changed her life with, and pressed it to her cheek, where the colour of scarring isn’t a deep grey, but a deeper colour of her skin- More fleshy than the freckles that dot her face.
Misty bows, and Nat laughs, even seeing how intensely Misty looks at her.
-
Nat knows what fire looks like. It’s horrifying, the same colour as Van’s hair. That’s not what scary about it.
It’s the way it devours. The way it overtakes.
The cabin. In all it’s gross prettiness, it is overwhelmed by the colour of fire.
Lottie cackles.
Natalie stares at the colour of death itself. Knows they have to be doomed.
Lottie should call this an omen. The wilderness burns their shelter the first night of Natalie’s reign.
She doesn’t.
-
By the time the snow melts Natalie has listed her priorities ten times over.
She and Travis don’t so much as fall apart as much as they simply…part.
They both blame her for Javi. Or at least Natalie blames herself, and Travis never corrected her.
She never told him about Lottie. She hasn’t even told Lottie about Lottie.
First it was to not hurt Travis, and then it was waiting for Lottie to be able to stand on her own for more than five minutes at a time, and then she had to be a leader.
It just…slipped away.
Until one night. Their new shelters half finished, and a miracle rabbit roasting on the fire. Natalie kept watch, she was worried about the flames somehow burning their new homes again.
She sat, watching Lottie sleep fifteen feet away. She was peaceful. Quiet. Her face just barely escaping her curled form. She wore one of Laura Lee’s flower speckled dresses. Hugging herself like a teddy bear.
Natalie has watched her most nights.
Van settles beside her.
“Do you want to sleep? I can watch for a while.” Her friend says. Nat only shakes her head. Van wants to push. She can tell. Nat is grateful that she doesn’t.
“She had a nightmare almost every night in the cabin.” Natalie says. “It’s why she was always up for Travis and I to go hunting. She hasn’t had a single one since it burnt down.”
Natalie turns her head to see Van watching her with curious eyes.
“Is that why you aren’t sleeping?”
“What?”
“If she has a nightmare.” Van clarifies. “You want to be there when she wakes up.”
Natalie turned her eyes away quickly. Suddenly the night sky seemed very interesting. It’s the first full moon for the month and it’s a pale colour. Almost like the dandelions they’ve seen poking through the earth now that it was warm.
“Has the moon always been so bright?” She says, trying to change the subject. Natalie hears Van make a sound and fuck.
“Wha-when?” Van coughs through her surprise. She gathers herself. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
She should have remembered. Van could see in colour. Natalie isn’t supposed to. Such a small slip up. But Van is observant. It’s a fucking curse.
“Nothing.” Nat tries. “It’s like just-a lighter white right now isn’t it?”
“Since when are you a bad liar?”
Nat groans, pulls her knees up to protect her face, curling in her sitting position.
“It’s yellow, by the way.” Van says. “Like sunflowers and popcorn.”
Nat peeks her head out.
“When I first kissed Tai, we were still in Wiskayok.” Van has a calm sort of smile. “Easier to put names to it, if you have a library and the internet.”
“Thanks.” Nat says. Quiet.
“When?” Van says after a few minutes of silence.
“The night the cabin burned.” It does feel nice to tell the truth. Van thinks for a minute. Thinks hard, diving into her memory bank.
“Wait-so Lottie? When did you-what?” Van says far too fucking loudly. Nat slaps a hand over her mouth, and ignores the proceeding lick.
“Tell the whole fucking country why don’t you?” Nat hisses, she sees Lottie stir but the girl stays asleep.
“Then why aren’t you two like, fucking or something?” Van looks purely confused.
“She doesn’t know.” Nat mutters.
“How does she not-”
“She kissed my hand, remember?” Nat sighs. “She kissed my hand, I didn’t kiss her. She still…”
Nat doesn’t need to finish.
“God.” Van curses. “You haven’t even told her?”
Nat shakes her head, gaze leaving and falling back on the rise and fall of Lottie’s chest.
“Her eyes.” Nat continues. “What do you call that?”
“Brown.” Van replies. Letting her divert the conversation. Natalie nods.
-
Natalie never thought she’d meet her soulmate.
Her parents weren’t soulmates. She knows they only ever saw in black and white.
It’s not uncommon. To not meet them. To never know who they are. To never see a colour not monochrome.
You don’t go around kissing random people.
The custom of kissing the hand of another-it’s a sort of way to put your trust in someone. You risk, you let them do what they will with whatever information. It was fancy, for prince and princesses and knights.
It fell through the cracks at some point in history. It’s considered overly dramatic now. You only see it in Disney movies and stupid rom-coms.
That’s what soulmates were. Something for Disney movies and stupid rom-coms.
By the time she kissed Travis she had pretty much given up hope. There was a part of her, a childish part, that clung to that hope with every guy she kissed.
She had decided she didn’t want a soulmate. A soulmate would lead to marriage. It didn’t feel like a choice to her.
She didn’t want marriage. She never saw her living out her life with anyone.
Until she did. Until Lottie kissed her fucking hand. Natalie had begun taking marriage a little more seriously, it was ridiculous. It was annoying, and time consuming. It got her to places like this, sitting in the animal pen with Akilah, holding a rabbit, because it’s the closest she can get to Lottie and Travis’s little drug clearing without actually leaving camp.
Nat had never felt so stupid. Akliah smiled kindly.
“Peter’s soft isn’t he?” She breaks the silence. Nat can’t hear Lottie anyway, so she stops trying.
She hums. “He is. Thanks, Akilah, for letting me hold him.”
“You can do it whenever you want! Seriously. It really helps ground me.” She sits beside Natalie. “Like bound to reality. When I…get too hopeful I guess it reminds me of where I am, and to be grateful about what we have here. What we built.”
“Hope is good too, you know.” Nat tells her.
Akilah raises an eyebrow. “You’ve changed your tune since winter.” When Nat looked at her, confused. “What happened to the false hope bullshit?”
“Fuck, you heard that?” Nat reddened, embarrassed.
“Natalie that cabin was not all that big, we were all in the same room. Everyone heard everything.” Akilah was funny, dry humor and obvious but gentle digs. Nat realizes then, that if Allie’s leg hadn’t broken, none of varsity would probably have ever talked to her. The youngest of them, sometimes she forgot that, but she was only fifteen…maybe sixteen now.
Natalie hears an echo of laughter. She turns her head towards it, trying to figure out if it was Lottie or Travis.
Akilah follows her gaze.
“I don’t think they ever do anything.” She says, like a reassurance. “It mostly just seems to be getting high and talking to the trees.”
Nat scoffs, holds Peter closer.
“I wasn’t worried.” She tells her, Akilah gives her a pointed look. “I’m serious!”
Akilah says nothing. Nat huffs, lets Peter go and stalks off to her hut, ignoring Mari and Shauna’s current argument.
-
Nat takes watch most nights, still.
She doesn’t need to. The wolves stay away now, they don’t care to bother them. But she still does, she’s nothing if not a creature of habit.
Staring into the fire, she only moves her head when it gets brighter, and Lottie goes to Travis’s hammock. She watches as the tall girl wakes him up, and Nat stands as Travis slumps out of his sleep.
“I’m going with you today.” She announces. Travis is greatly surprised by this, even if she can’t meet his eyes, even after all this time. Lottie, on the other hand, blinks slow and smiles.
“I think that’s a great idea.” Travis goes to protest, but loses his words once Lottie starts walking toward the clearing.
Nat and Travis stand a few feet away from each other while Lottie makes the tea.
When Lottie hands Nat the cup, she returns to all those cold mornings.
“Did you put your blood in it this time.” She jokes. Lottie’s still grinning, its a bit unnerving, but…no, she can’t finish that thought.
“Would you like there to be?”
Nat studies her, realizes that it’s a joke, and chuckles dryly. She drinks, then hands the cup over to Travis.
She doesn’t pay attention to him much, they both avoid looking at each other. Nat watches Lottie move to sit at the foot of a tree, humming softly. Nat starts to feel the effects almost immediately, the tree Lottie’s beneath moves and breathes with Natalie, the foliage is brighter, and Lottie-
Lottie.
She looks angelic, sitting there. Or like, the dryads from Greek myths. Long legs, deep dark eyes.
She’s…beautiful. She always is, but now she’s glowing.
Nat sits in front of her, cross legged like a child.
“Shit this feels good.” She murmurs. Her face feels weird, her voice is muffled. But then Lottie laughs, and it’s like a choir.
“Dude, you are so high.” She’s smiling, smiling like she used to smile, back when she smiled.
That word feels weird in her head now.
Nat grins, head lolling to the side a bit. “I am so high.”
She feels Travis flop down beside her, she realizes then, that he looks like Lottie. Just a bit. If his face was rounder, cheeks softer, hair longer…maybe.
“Do you ever…wonder how weird it is?” He starts.
“How weird what is?” Lottie asks. Travis shrugs.
“Colours.” He finishes. “Like, what does blue look like?”
It looks, soft, sometimes. Nat thinks. It looks cold, but not harsh. Like when you go swimming, and you think it’s freezing. But in a way that you know it’ll get warmer.
“Dunno.” Nat says instead, looking at Lottie still.
She starts drumming her fingers along her leg, humming along with Lottie.
“Dreams.” Nat eventually realizes. Lottie’s gaze flicks to her. “Fuck, I haven’t heard that…in a while.”
“You know it?” Lottie asks. Nat scoffs.
“It’s fucking Stevie Nicks of course I do.” She lays down, but turns, lays her head down in a surprised Lottie’s lap.
“Nat?” There’s a hesitant smile in her voice.
“Shut up.” She closes her eyes. “I like to…feel. When I feel like this.”
“Right.” Lottie’s hand lightly moves to her hair.
Travis is…somewhere. She can hear his feet, stomping, pacing, muttering.
Lottie starts humming again. Nat does it along with her. She’s not exactly tired. She shuts her eyes, until she feels a restlessness in her bones.
She sits up, moves to sit beside Lottie now. She thinks if she looks at those deep eyes any longer she’ll drown.
The sky is so bright. The sun shifting and waving, like she can see every little explosion on it’s surface.
“Do you miss Laura Lee?” Nat asks, absently. Then regrets it, when Lottie stiffens.
“Yeah.” She breathes. “A lot. But also, I forget her, sometimes. I forget small parts, the shape of her eyes, or the paleness of her hair. And sometimes I wish I could have seen more of her.”
“Like, naked?” Jesus, shut the fuck up, Natalie.
But Lottie chokes on a laugh, so it’s not the worst. “Not like that. Like, in colour. Like what Travis said. What does blue look like?”
“Oh.” Nat nods. “You know, you could ask Van.”
Lottie looks at her, confused. Nat thinks this is the most lucid she’s seen her in a long time.
“Like, Van is really good at describing colours, and people.” Nat clarifies. “She and Tai, soulmates.”
Nat finds words beginning to escape, she makes a crossed finger gesture, to show what she meant.
Lottie nods.
“I think my soulmate is dead.” Lottie blurts, and Nat feels her stomach sink. It swoops, like a diving eagle, buries itself so deep. The earth might keep it together.
“I think mine’s alive.” Nat replies. Selfishly, she doesn’t want to hear Lottie talk about that. “I think I’ve met them. I think they’re…around. Maybe you just haven’t kissed the right person yet.”
Nat’s heart again, from deep in the ground, begins to beat harshly, making a pounding, drumming rhythm.
Lottie makes a sound. She can’t place it. It’s so full of doubt.
“Maybe.” She finally says.
-
She doesn’t get high with them again, near the end, she started hearing murmurs. Voices so gone she’d almost forgotten what they sounded like. A cheerful rasp, another like a lullaby, or a prayer. Then the smallest, but loudest.
“Tell her.” Said the prayer.
“You know, it could be your only chance. Trust me.” Said the rasp.
“Don’t keep punishing yourself.” Said the small one.
“For me.”
“You’ll regret it.”
“You regret too much.”
The voices were too much, and then she woke up, head on Lottie’s shoulder. It was a bad fucking end to her trip, hearing ghosts in the trees.
Nat let Lottie take Travis, almost every morning, to the clearing. Sick in her stomach. Sick of thinking about them.
And then Mari runs away.
This is what happens when she takes a break, this is what happens when she’s selfish. Shauna pushes Mari face into the dirt for the crime of winning and being a sore winner. Tai told her this would happen. She lets Mari go, puts Shauna on house arrest.
Three days pass.
In those three days, Nat ignores her jealousy, and her selfishness. She pushes desire away and throws herself into trying to do better. She ignores the red and blue marks on Lottie’s neck from Travis, according to Van. She ignores the screams, that have started from the clearing.
She ignores until she can’t, when Mari is stumbling through the bushes back to camp, limping all the way.
Nat didn’t forget about Coach. He was on the back burner, she trusted him to stay out of the way, trusted that he’d leave them alone, now that he was scared of him.
But here he goes, holding Mari of all people hostage for days. He’s eating bats now, according to her. In a cave. Nat knows the one, remembers it from her mapping. Mari leads them right to him, carrying an equivalent of torches and pitchforks.
The witches on a hunt.
They get separated, they find him, or rather, he comes out helping Akilah Van and Shauna. They’d inhaled some fumes, clearly. Nat hates herself when she points her gun at him, but she needs to be the leader.
They make a makeshift jail cell out of the animal pen, until they can decide what to do with him.
They decide on a trial. Tai with her mock trial experience and Misty with her whole…intensity. She hopes the blonde wins. She doesn’t want to kill him. She knows it will be her, Shauna’s staring at her, and she knows that it will be her who has to kill him.
It’s almost the most insane thing yet. They get dressed up, they’re playing fucking pretend with a man’s life. But this is the only thing that will help him.
She hates the whole thing, she hates how Misty fumbles, hates how Tai draws out the answers she needs. And then it’s time for their jury to decide.
They vote maybe a hundred times. Going around and around until-
“This is bullshit. He fucking left us to die, he burnt down the cabin, he was supposed to be an adult and he abandoned us.” Shauna shouts, the fury of hell on her side. Nat flinches away from her angry gaze, and waits in silence. “Fucking, vote.”
She watches as Shauna raises her hand, then Melissa, Tai and Van. Then they wait for one more. Lottie isn’t paying attention, looking away. Like she’s looking for something. An answer in the trees. She slowly, raises her hand.
Nat feels her heart. Feels it so tightly wound in her chest. Travis raises his hand, and then Akilah. Gen looks at Melissa, raising her hand.
Ben has been sentenced to death. Nat hasn’t felt so defeated in her life. So betrayed.
-
Nat sits on a log beside Ben, back in the animal pen, and schemes.
She needs to save him.
She isn’t sure where Akilah is, probably somewhere with Lottie. She’s seen the three of them now, go off in the mornings. Lottie moves silently now. And Nat doesn’t pay much attention now, she’s still hurt, angry.
They aren’t talking, her and Ben, instead she draws in the dirt, waiting, watching.
Lottie comes through the trees first, followed by a worried looking Akilah, and a stumbling Travis. Nat tries to catch her eye, but Lottie has this…cloudy look on her face, frowning, resting. The circles under her eyes are deeper.
She isn’t sleeping again.
“Why are you staring at her this time?” Ben breaks their unspoken vow of silence.
“Nothing.”
“Seriously, I’m about to die, give a man some gossip in his last moments.” He tries to joke. Nat glares at him.
“You’re not dying.” She snaps.
“Yes, I am, Natalie.” He sighs. “One way or another, I’ll be dead before the end of the week.”
His gaze is settled on Shauna by the butchering table. Nat bites the insides of her cheeks.
“Stop that.” He says.
“What?”
“Punishing yourself.” He tells her. “It doesn’t help anyone.”
Nat grows uncomfortable. “I thought Lottie would be on my side.”
“Why?” Ben asks her.
“She made me leader.” Kissed her hand, proved to be her soulmate, showed her all the colours. There’s dried blood on Ben’s head. In his hair. “That should count for something, shouldn’t it?”
Ben looked at her, laughed a little.
“Now what?” She rolls her eyes.
“Nothing, just, it’s not the first time she’s nominated you for leader.”
“What the fuck does that even mean, coach?” Nat is growing impatient, annoyed.
“She told me to try to convince Bill to make you captain.” He tells her, Nat doesn’t believe him. “She made a pretty good case too.”
“Why did she do that?” Nat can’t fathom, for the life of her, why Lottie would do that.
Ben shrugs as best he can. “Probably because she has a crush on you.” Nat’s neck almost snaps with how fast she turns her head. Ben laughs at her, quietly.
“You’re making fun of me.” Nat squints at him. “You are on death row and you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not. Natalie I’m serious, she had it bad for you. You think Tai and Van were the only thing I picked up on? I was closeted, not stupid.” He scoffs.
“There’s no way.” Nat shakes her head.
“She asked about you every time you missed practice, it was kind of cute when you guys were freshman, but then it got annoying when she would leave after and try to drag your ass to practice.” Nat does remember her doing that once or twice, convincing her to go, with promises of Jackie tripping, or Tai making a mistake.
“That doesn’t mean anything. That doesn’t mean she still does.” Nat mutters. Ben shrugs.
He lays back down in the dirt, and Nat watches Lottie stare at a piece of bark, sitting by the fire.
-
Nat feels a sense of relief when Tai pulls the queen, and then feels guilty. She doesn’t wish her role on anyone else, she shouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Misty cooks him a fish that Gen caught. Ben’s last meal.
Nat knows he won’t eat it. And she was right, when she comes to bring him to his execution, bag thrown over his head.
Tai had been practicing for most of the day. Nat hopes it’s quick.
Lottie and Akilah are missing, Travis with them presumably.
They push Ben to his knees, then duck out of the way.
“No.” He shouts. “No, if you’re going to kill me take the bag off, you cowards.”
It’s so familiar, so familiar to what she said that day.
“Do it.” She says, half hearted, exhausted. Shauna tries to protest, but still lets Melissa go and take it off.
Tai lines up her shot, Nat turns away, trying not to cry.
The sound of her taking the shot is interrupted by someone yelling Lottie’s name. Nat looks up to find a still alive Ben, tackled out of the way by Lottie. He’s scared, panting and wide eyed.
“He stays alive.” Lottie says. “You can’t kill him, not if we want to survive.”
Shauna’s glaring at her, but Nat is studying her, trying to figure out where this switch came from. Akilah stands nervously to the side.
“Okay,” Nat finally says. “Take him back. We’ll figure out what to do with him.”
-
They meet around the campfire, the usual group, along with Shauna and Melissa.
“We need to make sure he doesn’t run.” Shauna says, that sadistic glint in her eyes that she’s developed.
“If he does he won’t go far.” Nat replies dryly.
Shauna sneers at her. “He’s tried to kill us once before, we need to make sure he doesn’t do it again.”
“And how are we going to do that, Shauna. You going to beat him until he can’t stand on his own?” Nat snarls at her. Shauna stands up to get in her face.
“Maybe I will.” Shauna replies. “Why not go two for two.”
Nat clenches a fist, pulls it back, and socks Shauna in the jaw.
“You fucking bitch.” Shauna growls, animalistic pose as she braces to attack. She shoves Nat back, she stumbles, but doesn’t fall just yet.
“Fuck you, Shauna.” Nat replies with a shove of her own. “You know what your problem is? You don’t know how to fucking stop. Not when you’re rough on the field, not when you’re playing tag, not when you’re fucking you’re best friends boyf-”
Shauna punches her, a hard blow to her stomach, she coughs, tries to catch the breath knocked out of her.
“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.” Shauna shoves her again.
“You could have stopped punching Lottie at any point.” Nat’s voice is raspy. “Didn’t have to use her as a fucking punching bag.”
“She offered.” Shauna tries weakly. Nat rolls her eyes.
“You’re about to cross the line, Shipman, stop while you still can.” Nat turns around to leave.
Nat feels someone push her from behind, of course it’s Shauna. It’s Shauna who flips her around, climbs on top of her, pinning her down with one hand the other holding a fucking rock.
Nat can’t help but laugh.
“What’s fucking funny about this?” Shauna demands, fury in her eyes.
“Nothing, just…are you really going to kill me with a rock? Like fucking Cain and Abel?” Nat snorts. “I know you’re pretentious, but this is ridiculous.”
Shauna grows redder.
“You’re proving Jackie’s point, by the way.” Nat knows this will get her killed, knows she’s pushing buttons bright red and labeled Danger DO NOT TOUCH . Nat spits in Shauna’s face anyway. “You’re just jealous.”
“Natalie, what the fuck are you doing?” Tai demands. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Stay out of this Taissa.” Shauna shouts. “I’m not jealous.”
She turns back to Natalie, grinning through her anger. “Maybe I just want to see how you bleed.”
Nat studies her, that sentence a little too telling. She smiles.
“What?” Shauna demands.
“Nothing.” Nat says. “But who was it? Jeff or Jack-”
Shauna screams, guttural and furious goes to bring the rock down. Nat waits for it, but it doesn’t come, Lottie is standing above them, holding Shauna’s arm with a strength Nat didn’t know she had.
“Stop.” Lottie tells her. “You don’t want this.”
Shauna, surprisingly, does.
“Nat. What are we doing with coach?” Lottie asks, a near wild look in her eyes.
Nat looks around. “Misty.” Misty looks up. “You and…Akilah will take first watch. We’ll alternate, we need people watching for wolves and bears anyway. Then Lottie and Akilah can figure out what that…vision meant.”
Nat tries to keep the disdain out of her voice.
“This is bullshit.” Shauna says. “He tried to kill us.”
“We need him.” Lottie replies.
Shauna storms away.
“Okay guys,” Nat turns around. “It’s been a long day, go get some sleep, who wants to take over after these two?”
No one raises their hand, except for a meek Melissa.
“Obviously no.” Nat says to her, she lowers it.
“I can, Nat.” Gen says.
Nat nods. They disperse, and Nat sighs in relief.
-
It’s getting colder, fall is coming.
“Isn’t Canadian thanksgiving earlier than ours?” Mari says one day, bored and making fish stew.
“Yeah.” Melissa says. “Second weekend of October.”
They turn to look at her, confused.
“My dad’s family is from Saskatchewan.” She explains, a little embarrassed. “We visit every year.”
“That’s soon, isn’t it?” Akilah says, she grabs one of her books, Nat remembers that she kept a calendar. Was keeping track of the days.
“This week.” Lottie says absently. “We should have a celebration.”
Natalie wants to argue, it’s too close to when they had Doomcoming. But another part of her knows that morale is really low. The Juniors are looking at her for direction, and she can’t say no.
“Sure. Do whatever you want for it.”
“Nat.” Lottie says. “You should catch a deer for our feast.”
She turns back to Lottie. “What?”
“Hm?” As if she hadn’t said anything at all.
-
They have three days for their Canadian Thanksgiving, and they have been making decorations in between chores all week. Shauna wants nothing to do with this, but agreed with some prodding from Melissa that she would help the butchering.
Nat hasn’t gone hunting in forever, but Gen told her where to find them, and is checking the fishing nets today so Nat can use the gun.
She treks along, following droppings and tracks hoping to see something. She looks up, sees stormclouds and knows she has maybe two hours to get what she wants and get back.
She doesn’t want to rush this, has a bad feeling. She turns around and heads back.
“Natalie.” Lottie announces her presence, then frowns. “No deer.”
“No, it’s about to rain, we need cover.”
Then its a rush to protect everything they need and duck down into their huts. Nat makes sure Ben is safe with Misty and far from Shauna before ducking into her own. Lottie is there.
“Travis has mine.” She explains. “He’s mad at me.”
She looks so small, fragile, curled up like she does.
“Okay.”
“Will there be thunder?” She asks Nat.
“Shouldn’t you know the answer to that, fortune cookie.” Nat shouldn’t be annoyed with her. But she is.
Lottie says nothing. Nat can’t see her face clearly in the darkness. Rain pounds heavily on the ground outside her hut. She wishes she could see Lottie, could tell what was happening in her deep brown eyes. She can see her tensing, bracing for a sort of impact.
Natalie huffs, ignoring her and curling up to keep warm under her blanket. They protected the ground of the hut as best they could, but there was no guarantee the dirt would stay dry. Times like this, she longed for a dry bed. A solid floor would suffice even. Something to lay on comfortably. She hates how used to dirt she’s getting.
She doesn’t know when her eyes closed, or when her breathing evened into sleep. She doesn’t register how deeply she was asleep until a loud crack of thunder wakes her up. She bolts upright, the sound sounding too much like a gun in her dreams.
Then lightning illuminates the hut and Natalie almost scares when it reveals someone staring at her in the darkness.
“Fuck!” She shouts, then realizes its just Lottie. “Shit, sorry, I forgot you were here.”
Lottie still doesn’t say anything, which is starting to freak Nat out.
“Lottie?” Nat says into the darkness, but her words get drowned out by the thunder, she watches Lottie flinch. “Jesus, you really hate thunder.”
She just nods. Then speaks, finally, her voice is raspy, unused.
“Can I lay beside you?” She sounds so quiet. Nat’s breath hitches in her throat. She nods.
“Yeah. Sure. C’mere.” Nat holds out part of her blanket, like she would’ve done in another time, in another life.
Lottie slides in beside her, and Nat notices her shivering, hard. Wordlessly, the taller girl clings to Nat, like she’ll leave if she doesn’t. Nat has to force her heart to calm.
“It was like this when my dad left.” Lottie tells her, voice shaking. Nat knew that Lottie’s parents weren’t together, that she didn’t see her dad a lot. “He called me crazy. Said that he didn’t want to-to deal with it.”
Nat doesn’t ask, just lets Lottie talk and hold tightly to her waist.
“It was a storm, I was supposed to be asleep.” She continues. “I felt alone. I feel abandoned, still.”
Nat slides her hand to rest on Lottie’s side, letting herself move beneath Lottie’s sweater, rubbing her thumb against bare skin. She waits for Lottie to continue, but she doesn’t speak. Eventually the tall girls breathing even’s out. Nat watches her in her sleep. She wants to move her face, kiss that scar above her eyes, and she would finally understand. Finally know.
She doesn’t. Instead, she rests her head down and sleeps.
-
When the rain finally stops it’s the day of Thanksgiving. Lottie is smiling, excited. She looks at Nat, asking with her eyes.
Nat nods, huffs a little as she gets ready for her hunt.
“Lot.” She says before she takes off with the gun. “Can you make sure to keep an eye on Shauna? At least until I get back.”
Lottie nods, looks over to where Shauna is glaring at Nat.
“I can, yeah.” She looks back to Natalie, giving her a soft smile. “Stay safe.”
Nat tracks back her steps from before the rain, as she gets closer to the valley where she knows the herds are, she hears that screeching.
It’s not as loud as that night, when they had their solstice celebration, but it was loud enough.
She winces, and keeps moving.
Sometimes she thinks she hears people this far out. It’s like when you hallucinate water during a drought. Most often, Nat ignores it. Like now, hearing cracks of twigs far enough away. If she wasn’t tuned to hear the slightest noise she probably wouldn’t notice otherwise.
Eventually she finds one, tracks it down away from the rest of it’s herd. It’s a stag, not just a deer. His big proud antlers protruding from his head as he leans down to drink from a river.
She pulls the gun out, aims, quietly, careful to keep herself light. She hears another heavy footfall, a scramble of rocks in the distance. The stag looks up, and before he can bolt, she shoots. It’s dead in moments. She moves closer, knows he’s big enough that they can indulge tonight. She runs her hand over his tan hide, ignoring the blood oozing from the bullet hole.
Natalie gets herself under him, and slings him over her back. He’ll be heavy, but she has time to take breaks.
She’s trekking back, taking a shorter route now that she only has to head straight back. A third of the way back and almost an hour late she knows she needs to rest. There’s some cleaner water up a hill, it’ll be tough to get to, but it’ll be worth it.
When Nat gets there she slumps down, filling her empty flask to drink from, guarding her kill from bugs and other animals the smell might attract.
Then she hears it again, walking.
But there’s something else this time. Voices.
“Hey Kodi!” A woman yells North west of where she is. “Watch out for streams…”
It trails off as her voice gets quieter again.
Nat scrambles, gun out in case it’s danger, heart pounding in case it’s
rescue
.
She sees it. Bright blue and pink. Clothes.
They get closer, weaving through the outcropping, until a man with sandy hair and decked out in camo holds up a hand to stop the woman and yet another man.
The camo guy looks around, searching, similar to how Nat does during a hunt.
“What now?” The other man sighs. The woman looks at him, gives him a look, and he moves to argue, but the first man shushes him.
He has a crossbow, that he takes off his shoulder, stepping carefully closer he points it.
“Who’s there?” He demands.
“Great now he’s gone actually crazy.” The other man says, clearly annoyed. It gives Nat pause, hesitant to reveal herself yet. Maybe he was a murderer, maybe he was there to kill her. The woman hits the brown haired man.
“Stop it Edwin.” She scolds him. He scowls, though not intimidating.
“I know you’re there, come out and I won’t shoot.” The first man says now. Nat chews her cheek, deliberating, before moving from laying to kneeling, arms up.
The woman gasps, and the brown haired man looks surprised. Camo doesn’t move.
“Throw me your gun.” He demands.
Nat flinches. “No.” Her voice wavers, however.
The woman steps forward now, Edwin tries to stop her but she ignores him, grabs the arm holding the crossbow to lower it.
“Sweetie, you can keep the gun, okay.” Camo goes to protest, but he doesn’t get a word in. “I’m Hannah, that’s Kodi, and the nervous one is Edwin. Who are you?”
“Nat.” She gets out, lowering her hands slowly, watching Kodi. “Natalie.”
“Why do you need the gun, Natalie.” The woman asks.
Nat hesitates. Then; “Hunting. I have to hunt, I need the gun so my friends and I can eat.”
“Oh honey, there are more of you?”
Nat’s hope is finally gone. They aren’t here to rescue them, they probably stopped looking months ago. Maybe even a year ago. They must’ve given up after a month.
She nods.
“Can you come down?”
“No, not until she drops the gun.” Kodi says, lifting the crossbow again.
“She’s a child.” Hannah snaps. Her big eyes glaring at the man.
“You believe the hunting bullshit?”
“Look at her! She’s starved, what else would she be doing with it?” Hannah argues. Nat wants the crossbow away, wants the threat of death gone.
She scrambles back, towards her stag. Kodi shouts.
“Just-give me a minute, my gun is away I swear.” Natalie grabs her kill, hefting him back over her shoulders and standing to come back down the outcropping of rocks. She displays him, like a prize, like a trophy. The woman steps back in surprise, before smiling. Edwin steps back, scared. Kodi ducks out of the way of an antler.
“You killed that?” Hannah asks, in awe.
“Yeah.” She tells her, not able to hide the pride escaping her. “We’re…we wanted to have Thanksgiving.”
She’s a little embarrassed saying it. But Hannah looks so kind, and interested. It’s been so long since she’s seen anyone else, and the wonder of that hasn’t worn off yet.
“That sounds so nice.” She sounds genuine.
Nat blushes a little, turning her head down. “I need to-I need to get back to our camp, they’re waiting for me.”
“Can we come with you?” Hannah asks. Nat hesitates, as Kodi tenses. Hannah seems to sense Natalie’s hesitance, and continues. “We have our own rations, we can offer. And tomorrow I’m sure Kodiak can help you all leave, he’s guiding us back. He knows his way around.”
The other man, Nat notices, is messing with a compass.
“Those don’t work here.” She tells him. He looks up. “There’s shit in the water, or something. You can come back with me, but one wrong move and-”
Kodiak scoffs. “Are you threatening us?”
Nat sneers. “I’m warning you. I won’t shoot you, I can’t say the same for some of the others.”
Edwin looks thoroughly scared.
“We’re burning sunlight.” Nat says, and turns around, starting back on the way of the camp.
After Nat’s second break, Hannah tries to get Kodi to help with the deer, but he’s too busy holding a crossbow to her back to do so. Edwin offers, eventually, and makes it about twenty feet before putting it down, complaining about his back.
It’s slower. As kind as Hannah is, she’s not seasoned like Natalie is, and walks slowly. They reach back way too late, as it’s already sunfall.
They get closer, and as they are coming up on the camp, smoke rising from their bonfire, she hears Ben scream.
Nat freezes. First fearing for Ben’s life, then for Lottie’s. She drops the deer and runs, Kodi yelling after her. She makes it there first, finding Ben in the jail still.
It’s not Shauna with the knife in her hand, though she is there, standing over a bloody and shaking Melissa. Nat pushes her back.
“What the fuck did you do?” She yells, and Shauna’s coming, rushing to her defence.
“He needed to be punished.” She says darkly. Shauna sneers at her. “He can’t get away with everything. Just be glad I didn’t kill him.”
Nat moves to speak again, but hears someone call from the treeline.
“Natalie!” Hannah calls.
Shauna whips her head towards the sound, then back at Nat.
“What-”
“I can’t-fuck-” Nat has to go, has to make sure no one else does something insane, she can hear Lottie and the other girls whooping by the fire. Tai and Van must have heard the scream, they came to investigate. “Make sure this psycho doesn’t fucking kill him, I have to- is Lottie-”
“Lottie’s…” Van says, eyes wide. “Lottie’s bloody, again, but she’s not dead. She’s standing.”
“Was it Shauna?” Nat feels anger rise. But Van shakes her head.
“What took you so long?” Van asks, Tai is still standing back.
“I found-I found someone who can get us out.” Nat breaths, anxious. Van’s eyes widen, a glimmer of hope, of excitement.
“Holy shit.” Van says. “Holy shit!”
“Yeah, and I have to go- go get them before someone does something fucking stupid.” Nat is saying. She sees Shauna out of the corner of her eye, reaching for the knife in Melissa’s hand. Natalie tenses-
“No!” Lottie’s scream echoes through the trees, freezing Shauna.
The whooping stops suddenly. They all look towards the fire, silhouettes surround it, staring off into the woods.
Then someone has an axe. Lottie.
She’s holding it above her head, aiming for a man. Edwin. It’s Edwin, with his huge back pack and stupid hat, who falls to his knees with an axe lodged in the back of his head.
Hannah screams, Kodi grabs her arm and pulls her to run. Shauna and Melissa run towards them, Nat beside them.
Kodiak does as expected, when rushed by murderous teenage girls, and raises his bow.
There’s a thwip sound, and then nothing.
Nat looks, and sees Melissa fall, arrow lodged into her chest.
Nat doesn’t have time for this. Doesn’t watch the drama unfolding behind her, just skids to her knees beside Lottie, grabbing her hands away from Edwin, urging the taller girl to look at her.
Lottie moves her head, hesitant and jerky, to look at her. Her hands are shaking and covered in dark red blood. Her pupils are blown large, when she looks at Nat, reflecting the fire.
“Lottie…” Nat’s voice comes out shaky. “Fuck, Lottie, what did you do?”
Lottie looks at her, expression filled with a morbid and innocent confusion. “You were late.”
“Lottie, you killed him.”
“You don’t understand, Nat, it’s what It wanted.”
“Lottie!” Nat grabs her face, forcing her to meet her eyes. “Lottie please, I need you to fucking think, for one minute, please.”
Lottie frowns.
“Don’t you hear it?” She asks. Nat shakes her head, breathing heavily into relative silence. Lottie’s bloody hands cover Natalie’s. “It’s here Nat. It’s home.”
Nat wants to lean into Lottie touch, wants to scream at her, wants to demand answers. She wants to shake her, to make her wake up from this dream. But there’s nothing she can do. So she just sits, horrified, until Van pulls her away.
“We have to find your people before Shauna does.” Van tells her, and Nat nods, standing on unsteady legs.
-
They find them.
Shauna showed an ounce of self restraint with Hannah once she found her, and instead of killing her, she tied her up. Van and Nat crashed into them as Shauna was pulling Hannah to her feet. Nat thanks her, and is ignored in response. No snarky “My queen.” Just a cold glare.
They follow the sounds of Melissa’s pained screams back to camp, finding Mari and Robin beside her, arrow unlodged from her shoulder. She’s pale, sweaty and almost feverish when she meets Shauna’s indifferent gaze.
Natalie searches for Lottie in the early morning sun, and when her eyes land on the taller girl its…it shakes her.
She looks different than she just one night ago, curled up in Nat’s hut, shaking. She looks feral. Face covered in dirt, and blood. Nat’s eyes wander down, to where that man laid, face first into the dirt. She flinches, taking in gorge in the back of it. Lottie had split his skull open, and from the clumps of matted blood in his hair…she’d been-
Nat can’t think about it right now.
Lottie herself is trying to shrink, seemingly. Though it’s always been hard for her to do so, her height made her visible. Her eyes down cast, looking already like a scolded animal.
“Go tie her up to one of the seat.” Natalie sighs to Shauna, then makes her way over to Lottie.
“They-they were going to ruin everything Nat.” Lottie mumbles. Nat looks up at her, hard, searching. She hasn’t been looking enough.
“Do you know what blood looks like?” Is all Nat replies with. The other girl just frowns, confused about what Nat is asking her.
“No? I-why?” Lottie asks.
“It’s…sharp. It’s harsh.” Nat starts to explain. “It looks like screaming. Not yelling, screaming. It’s dark too, darker than you would think.”
Nat reaches up, as if to rub some of it away, but it just smears further. Lottie’s eyes widen.
“You can see it?” Lottie whispers, amazed. “I knew It chose-”
“Lottie.” Nat interrupts firmly. “This isn’t about It. This isn’t about anything. This is a chance. We have a chance. I have hope again.”
“But- what if it’s a lie? What if it isn’t real?” Lottie is mumbling, her usual raving mad tone.
“Let me hope that it is.” Nat begs. “Please Lottie.”
Lottie licks her lips anxiously, smearing some blood further. She goes silent. Nods.
-
Shauna has Hannah tied up to a chair, and all the girls are surrounding her, pelting her with questions. Nat can pick out some in the rush of voices as she pushes her way to the front.
“What day is it?”
“Are they still looking for us?”
“Can you get us out?”
“Can you get help?”
“Where are we, huh?”
“Did Mulder and Scully get together?!”
“Everyone, shut up!” Nat shouts, and they fall quiet. “Let her answer.”
Hannah’s eyes drift over each of them. Looking terrified.
Nat gets down closer, hoping her familiar face will calm her.
“I-um.” The woman takes a breath, then continues, addressing all of them. “It’s October 15th. I don’t know, I’m sorry. If-if Kodiak’s still with us, probably. No. I don’t know, somewhere in Alberta I think? And um, no.”
The girls back off slightly, in varying degrees of satisfaction.
“What are people saying about us back home?” Shauna asks next.
Hannah just stares, then answers, voice wavering with sympathy. “Who are you?”
The dread that fills the silence between the girls is almost visible. It’s tense, a harsh, world shattering reality.
They all forgot about us.
Nat knew she would be forgotten, she always knew it. There was nothing she would be known for, she’d be a passing thought. But for some of these girls, for Tai, for Shauna, they never could fathom being forgotten.
Natalie answers her. “We, um, we were a soccer team from Wiskayok, New Jersey. Our plane crashed, and-”
“Oh my god.” Hannah gasps. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “I remember that. It was all over the news.”
“Is anyone still searching for us?” Taissa has her arms crossed, she probably would look intimidating, but not to Natalie at least. Natalie sees the scared girl she still is underneath all of it.
“I-I-I don’t know.” Hannah stutters. “They searched for months, but-”
Melissa scoffs, some of the girls stare in disbelief, in dread.
“Fuck.” Van’s voice, in a rare instance, falters. “We’ve been out here a long time.”
“Wait you’re saying that people just-just gave up?” Shauna exclaims, angry and incredulous. “Our friends? Our families?”
“I really don’t know.” Hannah rushes to reply.
“But you can get us home, right?” Natalie feels her voice start to crack, she holds on. She can’t cry. Not yet. Not when home is so close. Not when help is so close. They can’t stay here longer, they’re starving. It’s getting colder. And Lottie-
Lottie needs to get out of here.
“I don’t even know where I am right now.” Hannah admits.
“You don’t seem to know a lot of things.”
Hannah’s eyes meet Shauna’s. “Are you like, the captain of the team?”
Nat hears Melissa scoff, sees Shauna turn her head to glare.
“I thought it was Nat, since she was out there and hunting-but-” Hannah continues. It’s Nat’s turn to scoff.
“She’s not the captain.” Nat stands back up, head up.
“Neither are you.” Shauna’s head whips around.
“Yeah, cause she’s fucking dead!” Nat shouts, eyes hard when they meet Shauna’s feral gaze.
“You really don’t know when to fucking shut-”
“Guys!” Tai interrupts. “Stop.”
They both back off, letting the fight between them simmer.
-
Akilah and Travis return in the afternoon, Kodiak’s crossbow pointed at the man’s back.
They decide to take all their weapons, tie them up in the pen with Ben. Misty’s there, wrapping his leg. Nat can hear her making small talk with the older woman.
Hannah told them that Kodiak could get them out. That he could lead them back to civilization. It was relief. But Lottie had withdrawn further.
So Nat follows her to the lake.
Lottie ignores her, stripping her furs, before going to wash the blood off her face. Nat sits at the bank, watching her do it. She cleans like it’s a ritual.
Lottie starts stripping the rest of her clothes off, and Nat averts her eyes, until she hears a bit of splashing. When she looks back up the girl is topless and waist deep, the faint movement of the lake lapping at the shoreline.
“What does the water look like?” Lottie asks, eventually. It’s at least five minutes since she waded into the water. She doesn’t turn around to address Nat yet.
I could show you. Nat thinks. I could help you see.
But Nat is also selfish. She isn’t ready, isn’t ready for Lottie to know this about her. To know who fate pushed her to.
So instead she answers with words, not with a soft kiss. “It’s…clear. Reflective. The lake is dark, but in the river you can see the rocks. It’s cold, but gentle.”
“You’re good at that.” Lottie says after a minute, voice gentle. Nat hums a reply.
Natalie knew she’d have to tell her, soon. Right now, she watched Edwin’s blood be lapped up into the depths of the water, it still gripped her. The memory of Lottie staring, confused and innocent and covered with a man’s blood.
Once she could reconcile that Lottie, that one who was deep in some sort of delusion, with the one who calmly stood in front of her, sounding like she was on the verge of tears, she could tell her.
Lottie stays still, sucks in several deep and sharp breaths. Nat picks at the rocks beneath her hands, until the tall girl turns around, eyes red and raw.
She looks vulnerable, she looks small. She’s not that holy figure she’d been in the winter. Nat had always known what she was. She knew that Lottie was just a scared girl, starving like the rest of them.
Desperate and hungry.
Bending under the weight of expectation.
Lottie looks animal, she looks terrified, she looks lonely.
She looks like the girl who rocked back and forth, hugging her knees to soothe herself. She looks like thee girl Nat held during a thunderstorm, like the lonely kid she had been in Wiskayok. She looks like the clouds, promising rain, promising a sad day.
Lottie, through everything, looks human.
Natalie realizes she might never see who Lottie once was. But that Lottie, the one who wore pink skirts and gold watches, wasn’t her soulmate.
Hers was the bloody girl, hopeful even while beaten, that the powers that be had a plan.
And while this Lottie wasn’t her just yet, Nat could see that ghost. She saw her.
Nat of Wiskayok would never get the chance to meet her soulmate. Charlotte of Wiskayok would never meet hers.
Natalie of the Wilderness, has met hers. Has met her in this prophet like figure standing bare in front of her.
Lottie of the Wilderness could meet hers.
Not yet.
Soon.
-
Natalie packs up camp with the rest of the girls, grabbing their necessities, packing rations with Misty. She sits by Ben, now out of the animal pen, and helps Akilah make him a sled.
They were going to carry him in shifts, just like that third day here, when they went to the lake.
It was midday when they had everything ready, they would make it five miles before sundown. Natalie could feel the excitement. There was tension, between Tai and Van, between Melissa and Shauna. The drama couldn’t even keep Nat’s hopes down, couldn’t put a damper on the afternoon.
Bags on their back, sled situated, and water gathered, they crowded around a tied up Kodiak.
Nat and Travis raise their weapons, aimed in threat.
“Alright.” Nat turns to her team. Her friends. “Everybody listen up.” She turns back to their guide, gun raised. “We’re trusting you to get us out of here, safely. And I think you know that we will kill you if you try any stupid shit.”
“Yeah.” Kodiak says, sounding annoyed. “It’s very clear.”
Nat looks at Hannah expectantly.
“We won’t try anything.” The woman assures her. “We want to go home, too.”
Nat looks at Travis, satisfied with their answers. Then a grin breaks across her face as she looks at her team.
“Let’s fucking do this!” She shouts, the girls cheer in response. “Let’s fucking go!”
Nat meets Lottie’s eyes, takes in her downcast expression, and falters.
The tall girl drops her small leather bag at her feet. “I’m staying.”
No.
“Yeah, cute joke Lot.” Van says, her frustration showing through the sarcasm.
“I’m not joking.” She mumbles. Her eyes are staring at her feet.
The team explodes.
“What?”
“Is she fucking crazy?”
“She actually might be insane.”
“Why?”
Nat stares at her, sees her lip tremble, body shake. She’s picking at her nails, arms down at her sides. She shoulders her bag and walks towards her, like one might approach a hurt animal.
“Lottie, look.” When Lottie’s eyes don’t move, she repeats herself. “Lottie, I know it’s a lot. It’s fucking scary, going back.”
Lottie looks at her, so Natalie continues. “I think we all kind of gave up on it happening, but this very real.”
Lottie shakes her head, sucking in her lips.
“This is rescue.” Nat can hear herself starting to beg now. “I mean, Lottie, this is home.”
Lottie’s head shakes, once, violent. Her brows pinch together, the scar on her forehead a crescent. She looks angry, like Natalie isn’t understanding her.
“That’s not home, Nat.” Her voice hardens, face clear, unburdened by anxiety. It makes her words almost sound cruel. “What home do you have to go back to?”
Almost.
Lottie looks momentarily guilty, but her resolve is hardening. Nat averts her eyes.
“I can’t go back.” Nat meets her eyes again when she hears her whispering. The sadness, the fear, the loneliness. It’s all back. Lottie’s trying not to cry. She’s searching, looking for the right words. “If I go back…nothing will be…well.”
She emphasizes the end of her sentence with a harsh blink. Lottie is still going, choking down a sob, twitchy and hurried.
“I wont be well.” The words seem to tumble out of her. “I won’t be me. The me that was made out here.”
Nat looks away. The tall girls gaze is intense on her.
“And that unwellness that I feel, I feel it so deeply in my bones.” She says it like a secret. Like a horrible truth. Then, begging; “We’re safer here.”
Nat moves closer, grabs her arms so tightly.
“Lottie.” She begs. “Lottie please. I’m not leaving without you.”
“Then don’t-”
“But I am leaving, Lot.” She finishes. “Maybe I don’t have a fucking home to go back to. Not in the way that Tai does, or Shauna. But I have a home. Safety. That’s my home.”
“What about me?” Lottie’s voice breaks. “Nat I don’t have anything.”
Nat feels a rush of anger, of frustration. Her grip tightens on Lottie’s arms, then she moves to grab onto her cheeks. “Lottie, look at me.”
Lottie doesn’t. Eyes closed. Nat grabs harder. Repeats herself, harsher. “Lottie, fucking look at me.”
The girl opens her eyes again, looking down at Nat, looking like she wants to run. Her breath is fast. Panting.
Nat isn’t sure why she does it.
Maybe because she doesn’t want to lie anymore. Maybe because she wants Lottie to fucking see. Maybe because she needs her to understand.
Needs her to know why Nat has to leave, why she has to get home, safely. Because they can’t live out here any longer.
Maybe it’s instinct. A primal, deep, urge that pushes her to lean up, to hold Lottie’s head and bring it down to her. Maybe if she brings her closer she’ll bring Lottie back to earth.
Maybe it’s because she’s selfish.
Maybe it doesn’t matter why.
The why doesn’t matter when her lips connect to Lottie’s. When she pushes them together, the girl letting out a surprised noise through tight lips.
What she does know is how right it feels. How right it feels when Lottie loosens in her grasp, when she leans into the kiss on her own. It feels like her soul is reaching for something it’s finally found, grasping the thing its been looking for since she’d been born. It feels like a firework and comfort.
Lottie pulls away, confused. “What-Why did-” Her own gasp cuts her off. Lottie’s hands grab onto Nat. Eyes swimming over her.
Natalie chews her lip, missing where Lottie had just been.
“It’s-how-what?”
“Lottie.” Nat interrupts the girls questions. “You have to come home.”
She sees the hesitance in those deep brown eyes.
She doesn’t answer, not the question Natalie asked her.
“Your eyes are beautiful.” Lottie breathes.
“Please.” Nat begs her, she’ll get down on her knees right now. Lottie knows she would, has to know she will. If thats what it takes.
“Okay.” She nods. “Okay.”
“I won’t let you be lonely.” Natalie reassures. “I promise. When you aren’t well, you won’t be lonely.”
Lottie moves to speak. But only nods.
They leave, like that. Lottie is silent. Amazed and shocked.
She clings to Nat like she’ll never see her again if she lets her go.
Nat lets her.