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Candle sparks became twitching fireflies as Lottie fell.
They flickered softly, casting a warm glow on the concrete before snuffing out one by one and leaving her to plunge through the void alone. The darkness rippled and pooled, dripping like raindrops on the spindly strands of a spiderweb. Lottie allowed herself to crumple in its embrace, suppressing a shiver when the cold seeped into her bones, the slow bloom of blood staining fabric. She blinked and saw the blurry outline of her dress, barely more than a plume of smoke. Clouds of bubbles left her mouth when she screamed.
She was a teenage girl again, floating in the unknown between death and rebirth. It was almost peaceful, to be completely untethered.
Two strong arms took hold of her shoulder and hauled her out of the water.
She broke the surface gasping and coughing for air, eyes burning in the light. The spots in her vision took on the shape of a ghost.
Laura Lee wore a white dress identical to Lottie’s, her blonde hair glowing gold in the sun that framed her head like a halo. Like she was an angel come to drag Lottie from the depths of her own undoing.
”Don’t be afraid,” She said, but Lottie trembled at the sound of her voice. It echoed over the lake, painfully real as it always was in her memories.
”Come,” Laura Lee smiled, offering a hand. “We should get warm.”
Lottie took it, fingers burning as they twined with Laura’s. The water pulled against her, ripples shattering the glassy surface as they walked. Her dress was bone dry by the time they waded onto the shore of their wilderness.
Barely visible through the trees stood a plane, old and rusted and achingly familiar, ensnared by vines like a bird in a net.
“I can fly,” said Laura Lee. “I can get us out of here.”
“Where is here?” Lottie asked.
“You know where we are.”
She did. This lake and these trees and this dirt formed her entire world. They had taken root in her mind and grew until there was nothing behind her eyes but a tangle of thorns. They were the parasite that controlled her every waking thought, manifesting in the flash of antlers over her reflection, the skeletal branches of her fingers. Leaves crunched under her feet as she followed Laura Lee’s determined march toward the plane.
”Why do we have to leave?” Lottie asked breathlessly.
“I think you know that, too.”
Lottie shook her head. “I can’t leave. This is where I belong.”
Laura Lee didn’t answer. She simply opened the door of the plane and crawled into the cockpit, patting the copilot seat beside her. The cross at her neck glinted.
Lottie clambered into the plane, folding her legs awkwardly beneath her. She stared at the girl who had haunted her ever since she had burst in the sky like a firework. An ill-fated distress flare, a cry for help to a god who didn’t listen. A girl whose faith couldn’t save her.
Laura leaned over Lottie and pulled the door shut, pausing momentarily to hover, their faces much too close. Lottie watched the world burn through her eyes, flames blooming and dying in less than a second. She blinked and Laura Lee had pulled away, carefully maneuvering the incomprehensible collection of toggles and buttons on the dashboard. Under her fingers, the plane’s engine sputtered to life and the propeller began to rotate in slow, clicking circles.
Soon it was beating faster and the plane jolted forward and rolled toward the lake. The forest was roaring a deafening chorus. Leaves shuddered and crickets screamed and undergrowth rustled with secrets and it was the sound of starvation, of emptiness between decaying ribs.
The vines ensnaring the plane withered away as if they had been scorched, shrinking back into the earth. The plane lifted off the ground.
“Where are we going?” Lottie asked.
Laura Lee simply smiled her beautiful smile, one that hadn’t changed even when Lottie’s mind was distorted with cold and hunger.
“Stop,” Lottie whispered. “No, I want to go back.”
“We have to leave,” Laura Lee said gently.
“But I can’t.”
“You will.”
”You don’t understand,” Lottie pleaded. “We are the wilderness. How can we leave it behind?”
“What if we aren’t?”
”Then what are we?” She snapped. “What are we without It?”
What am I without you?
The words went unspoken, but they thrummed between them, louder than the plane’s faulty engine or the buzzing of a hive. Laura Lee was life and light and everything that made plants stretch to the sky, made roots twist deep underground. So long as the wilderness didn’t let her escape its shore, Lottie could never lose her.
“Let me go back,” Lottie begged. “Just let me go back.” She rattled the door, beating the window with her fists, pressing every button and switch she could reach. The plane flew on, steadier than it had ever been.
“You know we can’t.” Laura Lee’s face was full of the hope that had been her demise. “We’re going to save them this time.”
“But it won’t save me,” Lottie dug her nails into Laura’s arms as she tried to pry her away from the control panel. “I can never be safe there.”
“Maybe that’s where we went wrong.”
The plane was gaining height, the whir of the propeller drowning out Lottie’s sobs.
Window panes shuddered against the buffeting air, the tiny Cessna faltering with every shift in the currents. It was not meant for this flight, yet for all its wavering, it moved ever onward and gave no indication that it might have once fallen in a shower of scrap metal and sparks.
The lake faded from view amidst tufts of cloud. Higher and higher they climbed until they were swallowed by white, a glaring artificial glow that was too similar to the fluorescents in a hospital. For all Lottie knew, they could be falling. There was no direction, no up or down, no wilderness or civilization.
There was only her and Laura Lee and the unknown.