They called it Blotnatt — The Night of Spilling.
Once a year, when the sun dipped low enough to kiss the mountain's brow but never fully set, the people of Løvlund gathered beneath the pine ridge and gave themselves to the land. It wasn't performative. It wasn't pagan revivalism. It was remembrance — of body, of blood, of pleasure. A spilling not of sacrifice, but of inhibition.
"You don't have to come," Ida had said that morning, her fingers grazing the hem of Astrid's skirt. "But if you do, don't come clothed in fear."
Astrid hadn't answered. She simply nodded, unsure whether her body was ready — but certain that her longing was.
The glade was already humming by dusk.
Tapered candles lined the forest path, casting flickering trails along the trunks. Women wore flower crowns and nothing else. Men adorned their chests with painted ash, many of them kneeling in stillness as others passed.
No one spoke loudly. No laughter. Just rustling cloth, breath, heartbeat, the soft wet sound of mouths meeting. It was a world on the edge of stillness — but thick with promise.
Astrid stood at the edge of the clearing, her body bare beneath her linen shawl. Her skin buzzed, every nerve alight not with fear, but with anticipation. Her nipples peaked in the cool air, not from cold but from awareness. She didn't try to cover them. She didn't need to.
Ase found her first, brushing a touch to her lower back.
"You look like your grandmother," she whispered. "She danced here too. But she never stayed past the second summer."
Astrid turned, startled. "Why not?"
"She feared joy might undo her."
As twilight bled into eternal dusk, a bell rang once — low and deep, like a throat cleared for song.
That was the signal.
The bodies began to move.
Not in chaos. Not in orgy. But in communion. Pairs formed. Then trios. Then clusters. Hands tangled. Lips met skin. Someone began to hum, and others joined, the sound wordless, like an ancient lullaby passed from mouth to mouth. The music was not outside the body — it was the body.
Astrid stood in the center of it, unmoving. Watching.
Then Mattis approached.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. His hair pulled back, chest daubed in crimson clay. He moved like a man who had loved many, not from conquest, but from reverence. His wife, Elin, walked beside him — soft-bellied, graceful, with thighs dappled by age and labor. Her smile was easy.
They didn't touch Astrid.
Not yet.
Mattis knelt first, hands on his knees, eyes lowered. Elin stepped behind Astrid, resting her chin lightly on her shoulder.
"She's new," Elin whispered. "Let her choose."
Mattis looked up at Astrid with eyes not hungry, but waiting.
Astrid reached for his shoulder.
That was enough.
The kiss was slow.
Mattis's mouth tasted of juniper and salt. His beard brushed her cheek with rough affection. His hands found her waist, then paused. Waiting again. When she pressed her hips forward, only then did his fingers slide down to her thighs, coaxing.
Elin circled them, her fingers grazing both their spines like a conductor guiding tension into crescendo.
Astrid's breath caught when Elin cupped her breast from behind, tongue trailing along the back of her ear.
"Let them teach you," something inside her said. "Let yourself be read like scripture."
Mattis never pushed.
He kissed. He whispered. He stroked.
He lay her down on a bed of moss, slow and reverent, as Elin knelt between Astrid's knees, her mouth hot and open against the inside of one trembling thigh.
Astrid moaned — low, real, a sound that startled even herself. She hadn't moaned like that in years. Maybe never. Her body arched. Her hand found Mattis's. Elin's fingers were inside her before she even realized, curling upward in slow, sacred rhythm.
And the fjord — though distant — listened.
Every gasp Astrid gave was carried on the breath of the trees.
When she came, it wasn't with violence. It was surrender — a long, shivering bloom that rolled through her like thunder moving through a valley.
No shame.No apology.No closing of her thighs afterward.
She simply lay there, naked and seen, breath trembling, and watched the clouds drift through pink light overhead.
Afterwards, Elin curled beside her. Mattis remained at her feet, massaging her calves with slow, thankful hands.
Astrid whispered, "Do you do this… with everyone?"
Elin laughed softly, her lips brushing her shoulder. "Not everyone. Only those who are still waking."
Mattis nodded. "The body isn't a thing to own here. It's a thing to share."
Astrid didn't cry. But she felt it inside — that ache, that familiar London loneliness she had carried like a birthmark.
Here, it was melting.
Spilling.
The second bell rang deep into the night, signaling silence.
All movement ceased.
The couples and clusters remained tangled, some still moving gently in rhythm, others still, breathing, holding.
Ase's voice echoed through the trees, calm and clear:
"Once a year, the veil thins. The body remembers what the mind forgets. Lust is not sin here. Lust is the oldest prayer."
And under the halo of never-dark sky, Astrid bowed her head — not in shame, but in thanks.