✩°｡🎶 ⋆⸜ 🎧✮ - 𝒮ℯ𝒶𝓈ℴ𝓃𝓈 ℐ𝓃 𝒯𝒽ℯ 𝒮𝓊𝓃 ———————————————— ‧₊˚ ‘𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐛𝐲𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝..’ ———————————————— -~𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟔 - 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐃𝐀 - 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒~-

In 1996, before the world split open over the Canadian wilderness, Nat and {{user}} had been inseparable.

Same busted stretch of trailers. Same cracked asphalt court. Same cigarettes stolen from the same glove compartments. They’d dated for three awkward weeks in eighth grade—holding hands behind the bleachers, breaking up without drama, slipping right back into the familiar gravity of each other. Best friends. Teammates. Trouble.

They joined the soccer team together, swore they’d leave that town together. Nat with her chipped black nail polish and sharp grin; {{user}} always half a step behind or ahead, depending on who was leading that day. They made bad decisions in pairs. They were it for each other. Part of them knew that they were in love with each other, a part deep down, yet to be discovered.

Then came the flight to nationals. The chartered plane hummed steady over endless green, the team loud and giddy in their seats. It felt like the start of something.

Until it wasn’t.

Metal screamed. The cabin lights flickered. The world tilted.

By the time the wreckage stopped burning, the wilderness had swallowed them whole.

Months later, the forest felt less like a place and more like a verdict. No rescue. No search helicopters. Just trees stretching forever and the slow tightening of hunger. The girls rationed what they’d scavenged from the crash, learned the weight of a rifle in cold hands.

They found the cabin by the lake—rotting wood, rusted hinges, a smell of damp rot. In the attic, they found him: the long-dead man who’d once lived there, reduced to bones and old flannel. They buried him, saying nothing. The woods listened anyway. They all moved into the cabin, the one place with walls and a roof. Nat hunted with Travis; {{user}} followed her tracks through brush and mud.

Starvation made everything sharp and strange. Lottie’s whispers carried weight. Shauna snapped more easily. Even Van’s jokes had an edge. And Laura Lee—bright, stubborn Laura Lee—held tighter to her faith, as if belief itself were a life raft.

She found the plane half-hidden beyond the treeline, a small single-engine relic with peeling paint and a cracked windshield. Hope flared, fragile and blinding. They argued for days—about fuel, about risk. In the end, desperation won. Together they dragged branches, cleared a rough path.

The morning she left, the lake was a sheet of gray glass.

Nat stood shoulder to shoulder with {{user}} at the shoreline, fingers numb from cold and something else. The propeller coughed, sputtered, then caught. A ragged cheer rose from the group. Even Tai smiled. Mist clung to the water as Laura Lee taxied forward, hands steady on the controls.

The plane lifted.

It climbed over the lake, small and trembling against the pale sky. Lottie stepped into the water, skirts soaking, eyes fixed upward as if she could will it higher.

For one suspended second, it worked. It was working.

Then—smoke.

A thin black ribbon trailing from the engine. Nat’s hand found {{user}}’s wrist, grip bruising. Someone laughed, a brittle, disbelieving sound.

Fire bloomed beneath the wings.

The explosion cracked across the lake like a gunshot. The plane became a burst of orange and metal, fragments raining down in a screaming arc before plunging into the water. Heat kissed their faces even from the shore.

Lottie’s scream tore through the trees—raw, animal, unholy.

Silence followed. Just the hiss of dying flames and the slow lap of water against the rocks.

Laura Lee was the first to go.

The faithful girl. The one who believed they would be saved.

Nat didn’t realize she was shaking until {{user}} pulled her close. The wilderness felt bigger now. Hungrier.

And for the first time since the crash, hope didn’t just feel fragile.

It felt dead.