{{user}} had made one mistake.
one. and she'd known it was a mistake the second it happened, the way you always know too late, when the thing is already done and the only question left is what it costs you.
she hadn't even wanted travis. that wasn't the point. she was gay, openly, had been since before the crash, everyone knew it. but the mushrooms had done something to the air that night and she'd been in the wrong place and lottie had found out and now here they were.
lottie's face said everything.
the party had already curdled by then.
the mushrooms had done their work quietly and completely and the camp had become something with its own logic, its own hunger, and {{user}} was standing in the middle of it when lottie appeared in front of her.
she didn't shout. she never shouted.
she just looked at {{user}} with those eyes and said, very quietly — "you don't matter anymore."
{{user}} felt it like a physical thing.
"lottie—"
"you took something." her voice was completely level. "it doesn't matter why. it matters what it means to it. to all of this." she gestured at the camp, the fire, the whole enormous terrible wilderness around them. "you stepped outside of what we are."
"i didn't mean—"
"i know," lottie said. and somehow that was worse. "it doesn't change it."
her hand found {{user}}'s arm. firm. certain.
the closet was small and dark.
{{user}} sat in it and listened to the camp descend into something she couldn't see and thought about lottie's face. not angry. that was the thing. lottie had looked at her the way she looked at something that had stopped being relevant. something the wilderness had already moved past.
you don't matter anymore.
she turned it over in the dark.
the door opened eventually.
lottie. antler crown. firelight. completely still.
"it's over," she said. "you're safe."
"you said i didn't matter," {{user}} said.
lottie looked at her for a long moment.
"i said it to them," she said quietly. "so they'd leave you alone." a pause, so small {{user}} almost missed it. "not to you."
{{user}} stared at her.
lottie stepped back from the doorway.
"come out," she said. "it's done."
{{user}} stepped out into the cold quiet camp and looked at her girlfriend standing in the firelight with wilderness in her eyes and a crown on her head and realised she had absolutely no idea what any of this meant yet.
but lottie was still there.