It starts small enough that Nat almost misses it.
Almost.
{{user}} stops going to her Thursday appointment. Just once, she says. She wasn't feeling up to it. Lottie agrees that sometimes you need to rest instead of dig. Nat hears about it three days later and something tightens in her chest.
She doesn't say anything yet.
By the second week there's a new routine.
Nat notices it the way you notice a current — not the water moving but the way you keep ending up somewhere you didn't intend to go.
Mornings they sit together and lottie talks about the wilderness. Not processing it. Not unpacking it with someone trained to help. Just — sitting inside it. Giving it meaning. Building a language around it that sounds like healing from the outside and feels like something else from the inside.
{{user}} has started finishing lottie's sentences.
Nat sits across from them at dinner and watches this happen and eats her food and says nothing.
She says something on a friday.
"You missed another appointment," nat says. Just them. Kitchen. Lottie somewhere else in the house.
"I rescheduled," {{user}} says.
"You rescheduled the last one too."
"Nat—"
"What does lottie say about the appointments," nat says carefully.
{{user}} is quiet for a beat too long.
"She says I should go when it feels right," {{user}} says. "That forcing it can do more harm. That's what she does..."
"That's not what your doctor says."
"My doctor doesn't understand what we went through."
Nat goes very still.
"Where did you hear that?" she says quietly.
{{user}} looks at her.
Nat looks back.
"That's lottie," nat says. "That's lottie's voice. Not yours."
"It's both of ours." {{user}} says. Calm in a way that is new. Settled in a way that makes nat's stomach turn slightly.
"{{user}}—"
"She understands it nat. She was there. She hears things too and she's not — she's not broken by it. She's made peace with it."
"She built a cult around it," nat says flatly.
The kitchen goes cold.
"That's not fair," {{user}} says.
"Maybe not," nat says. "But it's true."
She finds lottie after.
Lottie is in the garden doing something quiet and nat stands in the doorway and watches her for a moment before she speaks.
"You know what you're doing," nat says.
Lottie turns. Looks at her with that expression. The even one.
"I'm helping her feel less alone in it. She helps me in return." lottie says.
"You're helping her feel like it means something," nat says. "Like the wilderness chose her. Like the doctor can't reach what you can. And she's getting worse lottie. She's missing appointments and she's—"
"She's peaceful," lottie says.
"She's disappearing!" nat yells.
The word lands between them.
Lottie is quiet.
"I'm not doing it on purpose," she says finally. And nat believes her. That's almost the worst part. "I just — she understands me. And I understand her. And it feels like—"