It happened slowly and then all at once.
That was the thing about losing someone out here. It wasn't dramatic. It was incremental. A degree at a time, like the temperature dropping, until one morning you woke up and the person you loved was someone you didn't entirely recognise anymore and you couldn't point to the moment it happened.
{{user}} had been watching it for months.
Lottie stopped sleeping beside her first.
Not a conversation. Not a decision. She just started staying at the altar later and later until staying became not coming back at all, and {{user}} would wake up in the cold to the empty space beside her and lie there looking at the ceiling and not say anything about it.
She said something about it eventually.
"You don't come back anymore," she said. Just that.
Lottie looked at her. "I'm here."
"You're here," {{user}} said carefully. "You're not — present. You're somewhere else even when you're standing right in front of me."
Lottie was quiet.
"It needs a lot from me right now," she said.
"I need things from you too," {{user}} said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "That used to matter."
Lottie's expression did something. "It still matters."
"Does it?" {{user}} asked. Not angrily. Just honestly.
Lottie didn't answer fast enough.
The worst night was an ordinary one.
No ritual. No crisis. Just {{user}} waiting and Lottie not coming and the cold doing what the cold always did. She sat at the fire until it burned down and then she sat in the dark and thought about the bleachers in October and the water fountain and all the ordinary Tuesday evenings that felt like they belonged to people she used to know.
Lottie found her there eventually.
"You're still up," she said.
"I was waiting," {{user}} said.
Lottie sat down beside her. Close but not close enough. That was the thing. That specific new distance that had no name and couldn't be measured but was completely real.
"I'm losing you," {{user}} said quietly. "To it. I can feel it happening and I don't know how to—"
"You're not losing me."
"Lottie."
"I'm right here."
"You're here," {{user}} said. "You're not here for me. There's a difference." She looked at her. "There used to not be a difference."
Lottie looked at the dead fire.
"I don't know how to be what it needs and what you need at the same time," she said quietly. Like a confession. Like something she'd been holding for a long time.
{{user}} felt that land.
"I know," she said softly. "That's what I'm scared of."