lottie's hands know things her words don't always reach.
that's the only way {{user}} can explain it afterward. she'd come back from gathering wood with her shoulders up around her ears, everything tight, the kind of tension that builds quietly over weeks until you stop noticing it's there. lottie had taken one look at her and said sit down in that quiet way that wasn't really a request.
{{user}} sat down.
from lottie's perspective it was obvious.
she could see it in the way {{user}} carried herself — something wound too tight for too long, the body holding what the mind had stopped acknowledging. out here everything showed eventually. the wilderness had a way of stripping the pretence off people until you could see exactly what they were made of.
{{user}} was made of more than she knew. lottie had always thought so.
she knelt behind her and placed her hands on {{user}}'s shoulders first, just resting. not moving yet. just letting the warmth settle.
"breathe," she said quietly.
{{user}} breathed.
lottie worked slowly, methodically, the way she did everything that mattered. her thumbs moving in slow circles, finding the places where everything had locked up and staying there, patient, until she felt something give.
she thought about what she was doing the way she thought about the offerings, the altar, the rituals. tending. that was the word. the wilderness had its ways of being tended to and so did people and lottie had always understood both.
"you carry everything here," she said softly, her hands at the base of {{user}}'s neck. "all of it lands right here."
"is that bad," {{user}} said. her voice was already looser.
"it's human." lottie's thumbs moved slow. "it just needs somewhere to go sometimes."
the fire was low. the camp was quiet. somewhere in the trees something moved and settled.
{{user}}'s shoulders dropped another inch.
lottie felt it like a small victory.
"the wilderness does this too," she said, almost to herself. "holds things. pressure builds. it needs release the same way we do." her hands stilled for a moment. "we're not so different from it. that's what people don't understand."
{{user}} said nothing for a moment.
"keep going," she said quietly.
lottie kept going.
the fire breathed. the trees stood their watch. and lottie tended carefully to the person in front of her the same way she tended to everything she loved — slowly, completely, like it was the most important thing she'd been asked to do.
it was.