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Natalie stares into the flickering flames of the fire, unsure of how she ended up in this position. After helping Lottie warm up from her imminent icy death, they’d migrated back into the main room. It was late now, the fire being the sole source of light in the room. Everyone else had long since fallen asleep, besides herself and Lottie, who has her head resting on Natalie’s lap.
Reflecting on it now, the competition had been stupid. And the shame of losing the moose was still a small sting. Not that any of that mattered. Lottie had almost died. The eerie similarity to the way Jackie died not lost on Natalie. That’s probably how she ended up like this, actually. Her hand combing through Lottie’s still slightly frosty hair, staring at the flames dancing just in front of her. The remnants of her guilt leading to a stilted attempt at comfort.
“I was shoplifting,” Lottie whispers, voice slightly hoarse and broken from the cold. Her face was still coloured slightly pink, but her shivers gradually subsiding.
Natalie blinks away from her thoughts and looks down at Lottie, to see her staring back up at her. “Huh?”
“When…” for a moment Lottie trails off, her nose scrunching up the way it does when she’s fighting with herself. Nat remembers it from when Lottie would debate whether she wanted to engage in gossip, or the few times she’d call someone out on their shit, back when stuff like that mattered. “When I was out there, I imagined I was shoplifting.”
The image of that makes Nat laugh, and she shakes her head. “Even in death, Lottie Matthews can’t resist a five-finger discount,” she jokes, grinning down at Lottie, who’s laughing now too. Her fingers resume their fidgeting in Lottie’s hair, and Nat can’t ignore the way she leans in the touch slightly. “Who would have thought?”
They fall into silence after their laughter fades. Lottie lets out a content sigh, her eyes slipping closed. For a long while Natalie assumes she’s already fallen asleep, and is thinking about how she’s going to manage to slip away without waking her, when she speaks again.
“Laura Lee was there,” her voice remains a whisper. Nat thinks it might have more to do with the subject matter of their conversation than concern about waking the others. “I… I kinda forgot how much I miss her. How much it… hurts. Too focused on surviving I guess—but that, it brought it all back again.”
For a moment Natalie isn’t sure what to say. Feelings and comfort have never been her strong suit. Hell, words have never been her strong suit. She could tell how close Lottie and Laura Lee were—remembers how distant Lottie had been in the first days following the plane explosion. Silently, she wonders how much of the prophet-hood being thrusted onto Lottie right now is due to the influence Laura Lee had on her. And she also wonders whether it’s all bad or not.
“She’d be proud of you,” is what she decides on. It must surprise Lottie, because she opens her eyes, sending Natalie a curious, yet still sleepy, look. “I may not, you know, agree with all this prophet and visions shit, but Laura Lee would be proud of you.”
“You think?”
“I know,” Nat promises, and she shifts her hand down from Lottie’s head to her hand clutching the blanket wrapped around her blanket. She intertwines their hands, squeezing once.
Lottie turns slightly, leaning closer so her cheek presses against the fabric of Nat’s shirt. “She was the only one of them who doesn’t— didn’t, look at me like I knew all the answers. You know?” She sighs, and it sounds so exhausted and fragile it makes Nat’s heart ache a little. “She encouraged me, but never pushed me. They all expect so much. Laura Lee expected nothing, and she gave me everything she had.”
That resonates with Natalie in a way she can’t rationalize in her own mind. She wonders how much their survival out here depends on giving—how much depends on relying on others. The pressure of everyone looking to her and Travis for food is a lot, that’s for sure. The pressure Lottie feels must be similar, except she doesn’t have the luxury of being able to go out and do something about it.
Today’s competition proved that.
“Well, I know it’s not the same or anything, but I don’t expect anything from you either,” she says, and Natalie finds that she means it. If there’s anyone out here she relies on, expects better from, it’s herself. The pity parties she tends to throw for herself are evidence enough of that. “To me, you’re just Lottie Matthews. The strange, yet comfortingly kind, rich girl who loves stealing clothes from TJ Maxx. So, if you ever feel like they’re being too much, which they basically always are, come to me. I’ll bring you head down from the clouds and back to Earth.”
Lottie smiles, blinking up at her. “Thank you. Not just for this, but for everything. Without you we’d be dead—the others might not see that, but I do right now,” Lottie says, and this time she squeezes Nat’s hand. “If I ever… forget that, you should, like, slap me.”
“Oh, I’d gladly slap you,” she responds with a grin, which to Lottie lightly hits her knee, but she laughs too. Another moment of silence elopes, and Nat watches as Lottie yawns. “Get some sleep, you’ve been through a lot today.”
“Okay,” Lottie agrees, but as Natalie shifts to move away she grapes onto her shirt, pulling her back. “Wait, don’t…” her nose scrunches again, unsure if she should say what she wants to say or not. She seems to decide she should. “Can you stay?”
The quiet desperation in her voice mirrors her shuddering words earlier, and Natalie can’t find it in her to decline. “Sure,” she says, reaching for her own blanket. She pulls it over the both of them, awkwardly shifting so Lottie’s head now rests on her stomach as they lay in front of the fire. “Just don’t hog all the blankets, deal?”
“Deal,” Lottie mutters, shuffling closer. Likely to savor the warmth, Nat justifies to herself. “Sleep well, Nat.”
“Night, Lottie.”
And if something between them changed that night—well, Natalie will blame it on the frostbite.