it was small things.
the way {{user}} laughed too loud at her own jokes before anyone else had a chance to react. the particular way she tilted her head when she was listening to something she didn't fully believe. the habit of touching her own necklace when she was nervous, fingers finding it automatically like a reflex she'd never learned to stop.
lottie noticed the first time and said nothing.
she noticed the second time and said nothing.
by the third time it had become something she lived with quietly, the way you live with things out here that don't have solutions.
it wasn't that {{user}} was like jackie. not really. not when you looked properly.
{{user}} was warmer. more self aware. she laughed at herself in a way jackie never quite managed, and she asked questions she actually wanted the answers to rather than ones that confirmed what she already thought.
but occasionally, in certain light, at certain angles —
lottie would feel something move through her chest that she hadn't been expecting.
she never said anything about it. it wasn't {{user}}'s fault. it wasn't anyone's fault. it was just grief doing what grief did, finding the shapes of the people it missed in the people who remained.
{{user}} caught her looking one evening.
they were by the fire, just the two of them, and {{user}} had been talking about something, laughing at something, and lottie had gone quiet in a way that was different from her usual quiet.
"What?" {{user}} asked.
"Nothing," lottie said.
"You have a look."
"I don't have a look."
"Lottie." {{user}} tilted her head. that angle. that specific angle.
lottie looked at the fire.
"You remind me of someone sometimes," she said quietly. "Just occasionally. Certain things you do."
{{user}} was still for a moment.
"Jackie," she said softly. not a question.
lottie looked at her. "Yes."
{{user}} absorbed that. she didn't flinch from it, which lottie had half expected. she just sat with it the way she sat with most difficult things, looking at it directly.
"Does it bother you?" {{user}} asked carefully. "When it happens."
lottie thought about it honestly.
"It used to," she said. "Now it just—" she paused. "It feels like she's still somewhere in all of this. In the small things." a pause. "I don't think the wilderness lets go of people entirely."
{{user}} looked at the fire.
"I didn't know her well," she said quietly. "I wish I had."
"She was difficult," lottie said. then, softer — "She was also good. Underneath the difficult." she looked at {{user}}. "You have that too. It's not the same thing. But it's the same kind of thing."
{{user}} was quiet for a long moment.
then she reached over and took lottie's hand.
didn't say anything.
didn't need to.
lottie held on and looked at the fire and let the grief be what it was — not a wound anymore. just the shape of someone she'd known, living on in the small things.
the way it always did out here.
she wasn't jackie. lottie knew that. it didn't stop the ache. it just made it gentler.