They called it the Flytstue — the floating room.
It wasn't marked on any map.
Just a squat timber sauna anchored offshore, tethered to a silver chain of buoys, drifting quietly where the fjord widened. Astrid had seen it from the ridge before, a speck of smoke and shadow, never knowing it was alive.
That night, she was invited.
The message came wrapped in linen, tucked under her door: "The water waits. Midnight. Come bare." It was unsigned, written in the same slow brushwork she'd seen etched into Ida's back in charcoal weeks ago.
She arrived shivering, not from cold, but from knowing.
Knowing she would not leave the same.
The canoe that met her at the cove held three people: Kari, the teenage girl with wine-dark hair and a mouth like secrets; Mattis, his chest broad and unreadable; and Leif, the carpenter, the one who had taught her how to moan without words in a toolshed full of pine shavings and tongue-slick silence.
None of them spoke.
She stepped in. The water kissed her ankles like an oath.
The Flytstue was already lit when they arrived.
Steam pulsed through the air like a living breath, curling from the chimney into the black night. A single lantern glowed low near the door, its light golden and moving.
Inside — heat. Wet wood. Citrus. The scent of salt and something deeper, flesh maybe, or time.
They entered naked.
No towels. No shame.
The room was womb-warm, wrapped in cedar slats and woven mats, the benches layered in soft hides that stuck slightly to sweating thighs. There were eight others already inside — men and women, limbs loose and gleaming, faces flushed. The heat was not oppressive. It was seductive.
Astrid sat beside Leif, knees touching.
Across from her, Ida leaned back, one arm draped around Ase, whose face wore the calm of someone who'd seen generations unravel and mend again.
No one reached.
No one groped.
They simply sat.
Breathing. Sweating. Existing.
After the second ladle of water sizzled on the rocks, the ritual began.
Kari leaned forward first. "Say something you've never told another mouth," she whispered.
Mattis nodded. "No lies. No deflection."
Each person took their turn.
A married man confessed to wanting to be used — not loved, not cherished, just taken.
A woman said she'd once pleasured herself during her husband's funeral, grief and hunger a braided rope she could not undo.
Another said they had been silent for three years before arriving in Løvlund. "Here," they whispered, "I began speaking again. But only when I'm naked."
The heat deepened.
So did the moans.
Small, involuntary sighs slipped from mouths. Not from touch, but from truth.
The room didn't steam.
It throbbed.
Astrid was last.
She hadn't planned to speak.
But silence, here, was louder than words.
She leaned forward, elbows on damp knees, lips parted.
"I've only ever wanted to be loved without being explained."
Her voice cracked.
She did not cry.
Not when Leif's fingers gently found hers. Not when Ida's eyes met hers across the haze and did not blink.
Not even when Ase, serene and ancient, said simply:
"You are."
Later, outside on the dock, they cooled their bodies in the fjord.
Naked, breathing, moon-washed.
No one left first.
Astrid stood at the edge, water dripping from her breasts, hair curling down her spine, and whispered into the still night:
"I don't miss London."
Someone behind her whispered back:
"It never knew how to keep you anyway."
And the fjord, as always, remembered.