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They’re on the banks of the lake, Lottie’s head in Laura Lee’s lap. Both of them lying on their backs, toes sprawled out into the steady lap of the freshwater.
Laura Lee feels so sweet like that, the cool of the water kissing her feet, her toes digging light divots into the gravel, the rocks. When they first came out here, all of the Yellowjackets, on the day they found the cabin, the rocks and shells and debris, they hurt her feet. She’d had good callouses from soccer, but still, they were all soft then. Soft undersides of their feet, the skin untested.
Now, though, everything is thick on her like armor. She thinks about Joan of Arc in her glittering metal. She thinks about that one bible study she went to, that priest with this funny eager look in his face as he talked, who said some people think Adam and Eve, in the Garden, were robed in keratin, in the stuff of fingernails, bright and flexible and hard and strong and glittering and beautiful. And that’s how she feels now, with Lottie. Enjoying the hard press of shells into their feet.
She knows Lottie’s enjoying it too. Because Lottie digs her feet even further into the sand than Laura Lee does — Lottie shoves her whole foot below into the silt, so the earth covers her feet, like it’s swallowing her up.
In the week before school started, the team went for a beach day — Jackie organized it. Said they needed to bond. Which Laura Lee thought was so nice. To make purposeful space for it. Laura Lee loves when someone does kind things on purpose. And loves when people do kind things on accident too, definitely. But that’s another story.
But anyway, a beach day. And she sat on a faded stripey towel with Lottie, and they were both reading. Laura Lee, her favorite book on saints. Lottie, this pulpy pink paperback with lines down the spine and girls with strange eyes on the cover. Their shoulders almost touched as they chased the moving shadow under Lottie’s beach umbrella.
And Lottie did the same thing then, pressing as much of her legs as she could into the damp sand. Molding it around her, to the shape of her calves. Then sliding her leg out, so the shape stuck. And then she’d smash the crest of sand to bits, like crumbly cookie dough, and remake the whole thing again. Like a little ritual.
And clumps of dark sand were left stuck to Lottie’s legs — to her shin bones with the little pink scrapes fading back into skin. To the calf muscles. Laura Lee remembers blushing, then. She wasn’t sure why. But something about Lottie’s calf muscles — and they were the kind you could tell were strong, even when her legs were just folded up casual — made her mouth water.
Laura Lee knows why now. Doesn’t make her blush any less, though.
She watches Lottie. Lottie’s head on Laura Lee’s lap. Lottie’s body nestled alongside Laura Lee’s like a sidecar, one arm wrapped, loose but possessive, across Laura Lee’s legs. The whole thing makes Laura Lee’s body go pink and flushed and dizzying. But so calm too.
Looking at Lottie is just like that. Like going to church.
She watches Lottie dig her heels and her ankles and the low border of her shinbones into the soil again, slowly, to push all the sharp things so they can make room for her, among them.
“You’re like a gopher,” Laura Lee mumbles, a hand smoothed over the top of Lottie’s hair, soft waves bumping up against her palm.
Lottie frowns, but in that way where she’s not mad. Tilts her eyes up at Laura Lee. “You trying to pick a fight, babe?”
Laura Lee’s still not used to being called that — to being called anything, by Lottie — but also yes she is. That’s like going to church too.
“I mean that you burrow,” Laura Lee explains. “Into the earth. Like, you’re always trying to get swallowed up by it.”
“Hmm,” Lottie mumbles. Her eyes go back to the lake. She’s thinking. Laura Lee loves to watch her think. Loves to watch things move under the furrow of her brow, and know something’s sprinkling up to the surface, percolating. Likes that she can see it, all the unseen things in Lottie. Not see what they are, exactly. But know that they’re there.
The depths of her, you know?
Laura Lee could think about Lottie’s depths for years on end, she thinks. And then she blushes again, to prove her own point.
Laura Lee thrums her fingers light against Lottie’s forehead. She loves Lottie’s forehead. “Earth to Lottie? Is there a Charlotte Matthews in the building?”
The shadow that was over Lottie’s features fades. She flips over, so her chin’s on Laura Lee’s stomach. Her arms are folded flat just above it. Almost skimming the bottom of Laura Lee’s chest, but not quite.
Laura Lee’s mouth waters again.
“Isn’t that a Bible thing?” Lottie asks. “People getting swallowed up by the earth?”
Her eyes are bright and attentive. Like the night sky glittering. Laura Lee knows that, when she tells her, Lottie will really be listening. And then it’s like, jeepers, is nothing about Lottie ever not gonna make her mouth water? Not that she’s complaining. It’s just, you know, interesting. Not to sound like a broken record, but again, it’s like church. It’s like getting blessed. Smoke passing over you, and the hum of voices, and the sky vaulting over the ceiling, and light turning the windows into something so much more than stained glass, for how bright they are, like they’re leaping out of the walls, the colors covering you, liquid, like you’re encased in one of those technicolor Jell-O molds. Suspended like a happy strawberry in the saturated squelch of it all.
Laura Lee allows her hand to come to Lottie’s cheek. Runs her thumb over Lottie’s temple. Lottie tilts into Laura Lee’s touch like a cat. So Laura Lee keeps on doing it.
“Usually it’s as a punishment,” Laura Lee explains. “In the Old Testament, during Exodus? That’s probably the most famous example. The Israelites had sinned. Erected a false god.”
Lottie gets a twinge on her face. Laura Lee raises an eyebrow.
“ Erected,” Lottie explains, corners of her cheeks pinching up.
Laura Lee rolls her eyes. She never used to roll her eyes before. Seemed rude. But with Lottie, it’s not that. It’s a dance they do, to steps they know.
“You are so immature,” Laura Lee says.
“You’re the one who brought erections into this.”
Laura Lee feels her whole face flush hot. “I — I did not . There were no — I didn’t mention at all — I mean not everyone’s mind goes there and—”
“Babe,” Lottie says. “Just fuc— Messing with you.”
“You don’t have to not say cuss words around me? I know it’s part of how you talk. It doesn’t make me mad.”
“It’s not about that. I just wanna like— I like doing what you do, you know? I like, you know, being on your wavelength.”
Laura Lee beams so hard it feels like her cheeks can’t take it.
“And I know it doesn’t make you mad,” Lottie says. “‘Cause I mean, nothing makes you mad.”
“Well, no. Not true!” Laura Lee says. It comes out more emphatic than she meant to. She’s not sure why.
“Okay, short of your piano teacher and that time with the seance? Literally I’ve never seen you even get angry about anything.”
“I wasn’t angry at the seance,” Laura Lee says. She tilts her head back up to the sky, tries to hold back her frown. She’s not sure why. She’s just not sure why suddenly everything feels weird and cloudy in her.
“You threw a Bible at me?” Lottie says. Her voice is still all jokey. It all makes Laura Lee twinge inside, just a little. Like, trying to wrench a swimsuit off your wet body and the fabric keeps rolling into itself, just a little, but it still stings against your skin.
Laura Lee swallows. “I wasn’t angry. I was … I was scared, Lottie, there’s a difference.”
“Okay,” Lottie flattens her palm against Laura Lee’s stomach, and picks up her head. And Now Laura Lee can feel the warmth of Lottie’s skin right against her own, in the gap between buttons at the waist of her dress. “But that kinda just proves my point, doesn’t it? You being a not-mad person.”
Laura Lee still feels this bubble of tension under her mouth, but she can’t tell where it’s supposed to go. She swallows it down, feels the bump of saliva enter her throat and stick there, like peanut butter.
“I guess so,” she says.
Lottie scooches up, so she’s laying next to Laura Lee now, in the sand. Her face is level with Laura Lee’s eyes. And the closeness of her body makes Laura Lee light up inside, Christmas tree–style.
“Um,” Lottie says, seeming to register the tightened mood. “So, anyway, you were saying, about Exodus? I really wanna hear.”
Laura Lee exhales. Soaks up the fullness of Lottie’s eyes on her for a second. Lottie’s lips pursed in her direction. No one else gets to do this with Lottie, she knows. Not like, some mwahaha she’s all mine thing. Lottie doesn’t belong to her — Laura Lee knows that. People don’t work like that.
But! Nobody else has this with Lottie, that’s the fact of it, because no one else would know where to start. And, she guesses, no one knows where to start with herself either.
‘Cause this place that opens up between them? It’s theirs. They made it. This feeling that happens when they look at each other. That cropped up for the first time here in the woods, like it was under the surface, waiting to bloom. Like a root in the wintertime, waiting for the weather to turn bright. And isn’t that bonkers and beautiful?
So, Laura Lee starts talking, and she knows Lottie’s really listening.
“Well,” Laura Lee says. “The Israelites are in the desert, right?”
Lottie nods, hums an mmhm. “Because of … Egypt?”
“Yeah, exactly. They were slaves in Egypt. And fled, across the Red Sea. It— the water parted for them, because God commanded it to.”
The lake behind them sloshes and licks their feet.
“And they were headed like, home, you know? Except they had to stop first. To receive the Ten Commandments and the Bible and all of that. So they’re all waiting at the foot of the mountain. And Moses has been, um, up there for so long. And people start to get really worried. They don’t know if he’s ever going to come back. And their tiredness got the better of them, and they sinned.”
“You mean when they —“ Lottie pauses. Laura Lee feels her breath exhaling a swallowed laugh into her neck. “ Put up that calf thing?”
“Yes, when they put it up.”
Lottie pulls in close, and her eyelashes tickle. “You know that’s not like, less dirty right? Put it up?”
Laura Lee thinks about it hard. “How?”
Lottie picks her head up just enough to give Laura Lee a look. “You know, like he put it up her?”
Laura Lee shrieks a shocked little laugh. “That is not a phrase. No one says that! … Do people say that?”
“I mean, they could?”
“You’re the worst, Lottie.”
“Uh huh.” Lottie smiles a soft kiss into Laura Lee’s shoulder.
“So, right, they make the Golden Calf. Melt down all their gold jewelry, to make an idol. And God saw, and was furious. That they would worship something false. And so, he opened up the earth. Like a big mouth. It sucks them all down, everyone who’d sinned. Or, mostly.”
Laura Lee feels Lottie swallow nothing again.
“Mostly?”
“Well, not Aaron— Moses’ brother? Their priest. The one who actually made it.”
“How come?” Lottie’s voice is dark and tiny, how it gets. You’d never know she was so tall, when she talks like this.
Laura Lee nestles her closer.
“Well,” Laura Lee says. “He was punished, in a sense. Later. He never got to enter the Promised Land either, just like Moses. And he lost his sons. And he had to see all those people? People he loved? Get eaten up by the earth. And also…”
She trails off. This doesn’t feel fun anymore, and she’s not sure why. But the air around them is tightened, like a loose thread you’re trying to yank out of a shirt by pulling it taut.
“Also?” Lottie says. Her voice is so intent now. Dark again, but in the tall way.
“Well, he was already set to, you know, be the High Priest.”
“I get it,” Lottie’s throat scratches. “God still needed him. Had to use him up first.”
Laura Lee puts her hand — the one not pinned to the ground by the gentle pressure of Lottie’s neck, but the free one— on Lottie’s cheek. Kisses her hairline. It feels so holy, every time she gets to kiss any part of Lottie. “Sweetie, no. No, its because Aaron was — was holy. Had goodness to do, still. God forgave him.”
“Not enough,” Lottie says. “He still died out there in the desert, right?”
“Well—“ Laura Lee has nothing to refute that with. “Yes, he did.”
“Did he go to heaven?” Lottie murmurs. “Aaron?”
“He’s there right now,” Laura Lee says.
“Hmm,” Lottie says. “Do you think if we wave, he’ll see us?”
“Worth a shot!” Laura Lee agrees.
So Lottie rolls off of Laura Lee’s side, so they’re both on their backs again. Staring up at the sky. Their hands joined between them, and their free hands making these big waves up to the sky. It reminds Laura Lee of when they first crashed. And some of the younger girls kept waving their big arms up to the sky, like they were doing the breaststroke, but on dry land, standing up. All of them waving manic to the sky, their throats going hoarse, screaming someone! anyone! save us!
Until someone, maybe Van or Natalie or Travis? She can’t remember? Screamed stop. Screamed there’s no one up there.
But this isn’t like that. This, they’re laughing. Waving their big arms to the heavens.
Lottie screams, “ Hi, Aaron!”
Laura Lee follows it up with, “ We hope you’re having a really nice day!”
They make a few more big circles with their wrists to the sky — Laura Lee feels a little like Michelangelo. Lying on his back with his arms up to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And then their arms get tired, and they drop them down. Laura Lee’s arm draped over Lottie. Lottie’s arm draped over Laura Lee.
They lay like that for a while. Twined up and breathing together and the shimmering sun making soft waves of warmth over their tangled bodies.
And then Lottie says: “I don’t think it was right. That they got swallowed.”
“The Lord often seems severe. He works in mysterious ways.”
“But it isn’t mysterious,” Lottie says, and she sounds so serious. Laura Lee tightens up at that. Tries to listen to Lottie so close, so she can leave room. For whatever it is that’s pushing hard against her throat. Making her sound so dire, like that.
Laura Lee wants to get it right. All the hours they spend together. Listening to each other. She wants to do all of the listening just right.
“If it’s not mysterious, then what is it?”
“It’s obvious,” Lottie intones. “I mean, you said it before. They were just scared. They just — they got spit out, middle of nowhere and — and I bet it made sense to them. I bet it was just nothing for miles, and they missed cows, and they missed solid things, and they thought — they just wanted something that made sense , and felt right. They didn’t know any better.”
“But they did,” Laura Lee says. Softly and deliberately. “God told them to wait.”
“Well how’s God supposed to get it? I mean God knows everything. Has all these answers and — and they were just people. All, like, abandoned and alone and they can never go back to what they were, and they don’t know what the thing they’re going to is either — like it’s supposed to be home or all promised or whatever? But its never even been real before, and — and all they have is wilderness, and, and the one guy who’s supposed to know what’s happening is just gone? And how are they supposed to know that he’s coming back? I mean he could be dead at the top of the mountain, and they … so it’s just not fair. It’s not fair for God to say just to trust Him. ‘Cause God’s never been exhausted and scared and alone in the middle of nowhere. And, and maybe the calf made more sense than that, than some guy who doesn’t even know what it’s like for them. Something, something solid when nothing was and maybe Aaron knew that, maybe it was right, and…”
Laura Lee holds in all her breath. Lets it out in a thin stream of air through patted lips. “Lottie?”
“I’ve just been having weird dreams lately.”
Laura Lee grips Lottie’s waist tight. “What kind of dreams?”
Lottie’s eyes flick to her for a moment, and then back to the sky. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they mean. Light. Fire, and, and light.”
“Like at your baptism?”
Lottie nods, a tiny movement.
“The whole sky. Bursting. On the sky and the earth. And um, other stuff too. Animals that were— and also red. Lots of kinds of red. And you were…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
Laura Lee’s heart skids, knowing she was in the dream. That, whatever Lottie’s a part of? Laura Lee has a place to play in all of it.
That maybe, too, they’re destined. If lying here on the ground together — it’s supposedly a sin, but it stopped feeling like that weeks ago. Or, the urge is still there. To recoil. But it gets quieter and fainter — like those ‘80s songs that just trail off into nothing at the end — every time Lottie’s hands are on her.
And if she’s in Lottie’s visions? Lottie’s dreams? Well maybe it’s a part of the plan. The space they’re making together. Laura Lee’s not sure how it could be. Nothing she’s ever been taught says that it could.
But God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He? And so couldn’t this be holy? Couldn’t this be right?
The uncertainty, the possibility, at least, is enough to let her push down the voice that’s calling her a sinner. Is enough to let her keep clutching onto Lottie in sweet embrace.
Laura Lee comes back to herself. Remembers what got her on this train of thought.
“That’s God’s light, Lottie.”
Lottie exhales against her, soothed. “You always have all the answers.”
Laura Lee’s chest tightens. “I don’t though.”
“Yeah, babe, you do,” Lottie says. “I mean this, this thing inside me? The — it’s like this big scary tangle. But then, I talk to you. And it’s like you connect a sewing needle to the end. And pull and pull, until the whole thing tops being a mess. And it all feels clear.”
Laura Lee, her voice tentative, though she’s not sure why, says: “I’m not that. I’m only a person.”
Lottie says, “I didn’t mean to say you weren’t.”
But she says it really quick, in this way that makes Laura Lee worry she didn’t really hear her.
Laura Lee says, “At the end of the day, aren’t we all just people in the desert?”
“I don’t want you to be in the desert though,” Lottie says. “Because I am. And like, if I’m in the desert, and you’re in the desert then, uh, what’s that line? Then who’s driving this bus?”
She chuckles a little, forced, at the joke. Laura Lee gives a soft laugh back, because she knows Lottie needs it. But she still feels all wriggly inside.
“I just meant,” Laura Lee says. “That we all only know what we know. Like what you said.”
“So, what do you know?” Lottie says. “About — the thing. In me. It.”
“Just that it’s connected to something bigger. Something that understands how it all fits, so we don’t have to. We just have to trust.”
“That’s the problem, though,” Lottie says. Her face is close to Laura Lee’s now. Their breath shared. Their lips almost skimming. “I don’t know how to trust something that big. I — I only know how to trust you.”
Laura Lee’s insides go twinkly and flushed and bright white burn like sunburst.
She doesn’t know what to do with that feeling — with the words that made it — except to close the space between them.
Lottie leans into the kiss, hungry and humming and like she’s drinking Laura Lee up. Laura Lee’s whole body tingles and fizzes like cherry Coke.
They do that for hours. Just kiss each other.
Until the sun dips low, and they have to gather up and fill the buckets that they were here for to begin with, and lug drinking water back to the cabin, before the dark takes over the whole sky.
***
Lottie can’t work it out. Why Laura Lee wouldn’t want to be told, wouldn’t want to admit, wouldn’t agree — that she has all the answers. Like, Laura Lee’s the best person Lottie’s ever heard of. Much less gotten to know. Much less gotten to know like this.
And wouldn’t she want to know it?
That the way Laura Lee knows the world to be? Is the best the world's ever been. Because she's the best of it. Better than all of them, by miles.
Lottie thinks it would just make her feel warm inside. If she could feel it, what a big and bright and perfect shape she makes, in Lottie's eyes.
***
The sky exploded with Laura Lee in it and the ground froze over with Jackie iced inside it. And now everyone looks at Lottie like she has answers for any of it.
She thinks to herself, you kill one bear and turn its heart into an altar and all of the sudden everyone wants something from you. She doesn’t say it out loud, because there’s no point. No one to tell jokes to anymore.
The girls still joke, don’t get her wrong. Just not with her.
Her, they only ask things. Tug on her sleeves like children at apron strings.
*
“So, that bear, like, I mean that was so cool when you killed it and obviously we’re all so grateful and like, basking in your total glow right now I mean you were like Xena or something but um, bears are really big and all but they don’t last forever so I was wondering if you knew when maybe some more food might, like, come to our laps? Or, ooh, do we have to do another, y’know,” Misty leans in conspiratorially across the dinner table for no reason, because everybody knows about the altar. “ Sacrifice? Like with the bear heart? Another ritual? Because I am so down obviously I just like — like if you have information? You know, from your dreams ? Well, I am basically your right hand man, so, you know. ”
*
“Hey, Lot?” Van says as they haul firewood. “Any word on like, our immanent death or survival? Uh, no pressure? Except for the obvious pressure. But um. Yeah. Any visions, you just, fill me in. Like, I’m here to talk. If you need someone to talk to. I mean, busy schedule, you know I got lots of classes this semester and I’m going to the movies tonight and tomorrow I’m getting pizza with Tai? But like, any other time.”
And her eyes twinkle a little, and Lottie wishes she could smile back.
*
“Not that I believe in any of this,” Tai tells her as they boil rags. “But, I am really hungry. So, do you think we won’t be? Soon?”
Lottie just blinks up at her. Swallows.
“If I know anything, I’ll tell you all.”
“Right,” Tai says. The sound on the T is sharp. They don’t talk again, for the rest of the time it takes to do the task.
*
Natalie nudges her in the cold morning. They’re pressed up against each other, in the big mass of blankets they all sleep in now, for body heat.
“Lot, you good?” she asks. Her hair’s gone all rat’s nest from sleeping.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Lottie says.
She’s terrible, to be clear. Her dreams were bloody and shivery and in them Laura Lee’s throat turned into the sky and the sky went red and it ate her down to the bloody guts and when she woke up — ten minutes ago, has been staring at the ceiling since then, shivering — she just got struck by the knowledge again. That she’s gone. That she’ll be gone forever.
“You were kinda spasmy last night? And, last time I remember you sleeping like that, it was one of those dreams.”
For a second, Lottie’s whole body softens. That someone could tell. That the nightmares have been wracking her.
But then the whole cabin perks up, all the girls poking their heads up out of the piles of blankets.
“One of what?” Mari says, sitting bolt upright all sudden, waking Akilah in the process.
“You know,” Nat says, inclining her head. They all do that now. When they talk about Lottie’s thing. Lower their voices, like they’re trying to talk in italics. She repeats it: “One of those dreams.”
Lottie stands to full height. The girls near her who are still sleeping shift their weight. It’s just to accommodate the movement. But Lottie can’t think of anything except for mice skittering away from a cat.
She walks out onto the back porch. It’s fucking freezing. But no one wants anything from her, out here.
*
She’s on the back porch again. Watching the snow get gusted up into white little swarms.
She’s thinking about Laura Lee.
They used to sit, on the front porch, when it was warm. After what passed for breakfast — and God, Lottie would kill for that now, all those rabbits and deer and berries. Huh. There’s a bloody little joke somewhere in there.
But anyway, they’d hunker together. Her and Laura Lee. Against the clapboards of the house. And Lottie would talk about what she’d dreamt, where she went, and they’d parse it out together. Like couples waking up on Sunday morning, to do the crossword.
Back then, the knowing was gauzy. Draped over her in ribbons.
And she craved so much for it to be something else. Something solid. Something other than fuzzed up feelings scratching out the inside of her throat like a small animal stuck between the walls of a house.
Now, she knows the bear meat is almost gone.
She knows Laura Lee was the one who gave it to them.
She knows Laura Lee hasn’t got anything left to give.
She knows that, when it runs out, soon, they’ll need to find meat another way.
She doesn’t know what the way is yet. But she knows she will know it. When it’s time. When the thing inside her says so.
She’s getting used to the feel of that. The way her veins tighten. ‘Cause it comes in sharp now, the knowing does. Seashells breaking against her calloused feet. Glass crashing shards over her eyelids.
Like at the window, smashing her forehead into the pane, to give it blood, it wanted blood.
Like at Doomcoming, when her legs needed to give chase.
Like at the altar. Laying down the bear’s heart. Saying words, not because she chose them, but because it wants them. It wants what her tongue can make. Her tongue’s only an organ, after all. Only meat and blood. Same as the heart she’s laying in the snow, the one staining her wrists down to the sleeves.
She wonders if she could have chosen not to. Not to say the words. She wonders if her mouth is hers anymore.
Her mouth used to be Laura Lee’s. That was the first time anything had ever made sense inside her, when her mouth was Laura Lee’s.
Last time too.
The back door creaks open behind her.
It’s Shauna. She’s showing more, these days.
“Lottie?”
“What do you need?”
“Nothing,” Shauna says. “I just wanted to — check on you.”
“Oh,” Lottie says. She sets her jaw. Stares out at the snow again. “Why?”
“Well, I was thinking about Laura Lee.”
Lottie’s whole body tightens like a violin string, and then relaxes, like a bow moving across it, to make a note.
“Me too,” Lottie says. “ Jinx .”
Laura Lee would have laughed at that. Shauna just stares at the ground.
“Okay, well, I was wondering if — do you dream about her?”
“Every night.”
Lottie’s not going to cry. She’s not. She decides that right now.
“I dream about Jackie every night too.”
“Hmm,” Lottie says, because there’s nothing else to say to that.
She wonders if, if she did cry, if that would be alright. Shauna probably wouldn’t mention it to anyone.
“And, I was wondering if — do you ever dream about Jackie?”
Lottie’s throat squeezes in a little. Right. That’s what this is.
She turns around, so she’s looking at Shauna in the eye. Shauna shifts back, a little. Lottie wonders if people will just always do that, from now on, when she looks at them. She doesn’t remember when it started, but she can barely remember when it didn’t happen.
“I’m not that,” Lottie says. “I’m not some — some thing that’s just gonna give you answers. I’m only a person. Same as all of you.”
Shauna looks down at the ground, like she’s in trouble.
She says, so quick “I know that.”
Lottie knows she can’t really mean it. Wraps her arms around her sides, to mime bracing against the cold. Even though she can’t really feel it, these days. “Go inside, Shauna.”
Shauna does. No argument.
Lottie stares at the whitened sky for so long. Stares at the forest under it.
Eventually, just leaves the cabin steps, walks off into the woods.
She spends a lot of time wandering the forest these days. Touching the ancient pines.
She comes across this one, after long, that she always seems to find herself walking to, if she doesn't pay attention. Her feet taking her there without meaning to. It's somewhere between the house and the lake.
This one that got struck with lightning. Ages ago now. And the outside is intact, from one side, but then you creep around the trunk, and see. See how the middle of it is spilling out. A seam of char, running up from the soil, like a long, dark mouth.
It just got too big to exist, she guesses. Got hollowed out for it. Punishment.
But she looks at the tree, and she thinks: you used to have roots, didn’t you? Like, ones that worked. Roots that drew life up into you without even trying.
She looks up, and thinks: well, okay, didn’t you used to be in the world?