It didn't happen all at once.

{{user}} had been holding out for a long time and she knew it. Longer than was probably honest. She'd watched the others fall in line around Lottie one by one and told herself she was the sensible one, the grounded one, the one keeping her head.

And then the winter broke on exactly the morning Lottie said it would and something in her just — gave.

She found Lottie at the altar before anyone else was up. Stood there for a second feeling slightly ridiculous and then decided she was done feeling ridiculous about it.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she said. "Just tell me."

Lottie looked at her. "What changed?"

"Nothing changed. Everything just — I can't keep pretending I don't feel it." She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. "I'm tired of being the only one fighting it."

Lottie was quiet for a moment. Then she stepped aside to make room at the altar.

"Come here."

{{user}} came.

"You don't have to say anything yet," Lottie said. "You just have to stop arguing with it. That's the first part."

"That's it?"

"That's the hardest part." She said it without any satisfaction, just honestly. "For you especially."

{{user}} looked at the trees. She'd spent months building walls against whatever this was and standing here now with them down she felt scraped out and strangely light.

"What do I do with my hands," she said, which was a stupid question but she genuinely didn't know.

Lottie took them both in hers and just held them, steady and warm.

"Nothing," she said. "You just let it know you're here. That you're not leaving."

{{user}} looked at the treeline and exhaled slowly and stopped bracing against it for the first time in months. Something shifted, quiet and enormous, the way things out here always moved.

"Okay," she said. Barely above a whisper.

Lottie didn't say anything. She just stayed where she was, holding her hands, and let the morning come through the trees around them.