The fjord was still.
Still like breath held under a lover's tongue.Still like the moment before thunder splits sky.
Astrid stood at its edge, barefoot, bare-shouldered, bare-hearted.The red ribbon fluttered in her hand — no longer tied, no longer a secret. Just silk, wet from her wrist and from Linna's mouth.
Behind her, the village lay quiet.
Ahead, the fjord shimmered like memory.
And between the two: choice.
The morning after the sauna, Astrid had awoken alone — but not untouched.Her hips carried the ghost of Linna's thighs. Her lips tingled from every "everywhere."
And her mouth… her mouth remembered how Linna moaned her name not like a word, but like permission.
She poured coffee slowly, steam swirling in shafts of sun through the kitchen window. The air smelled like baked rye and dew.
Then: a knock.
She opened the door to find Mattis.
Wearing nothing but linen trousers and a smile.
"You weren't at the bakery," he said.
"No," she said. "I was… resting."
He looked at her for a long time. Then handed her something.
A tin box. Inside: flat stones, each painted with a different rune.
She lifted one. Sowilo. Sun.
"For protection?" she asked.
"For surrender," he said. "You're glowing, Astrid."
She held his gaze. "You told me once… you'd offer me your wife."
"I did."
"And your heart?"
Mattis's throat bobbed. "That… comes slower."
"Good," she said, and closed the door gently.
Later that day, Astrid went walking.
Down the moss path behind Ida's greenhouse. Past the berry vines Kari had braided into a circle two summers ago. To the hill above the fjord where the Widow Åse used to watch her lovers leave and never grieve.
She climbed until the village disappeared. Until the only sound was wind combing through pines.
Linna was there.
Leaning against the trunk of a birch, arms crossed.The red ribbon tied around her throat now, like a dare.
Astrid stared. "You're following me."
"No," Linna said. "You're drawing me."
Astrid walked closer. Her chest pounded. Her tongue thick with want.
"I don't know how to be in this place anymore without needing."
"Then need," Linna said. "That's what this place is for."
They stood in silence.
Then Astrid touched Linna's collarbone. Brushed the ribbon.
"I want," she whispered.
Linna pulled it loose. The silk slipped to the moss.
"I know."
They didn't fuck.
They became.
Astrid was on her back first, moss wet against her spine, Linna's hair brushing her thighs like wind. Then she was on top, lips pressed to the hollow beneath Linna's jaw, tracing sweat with her tongue.
They moved like they were singing.
Not a duet — a chant.
A prayer neither of them had spoken since childhood.
Linna bit her lower lip. Astrid cupped her cheek.
"I want to keep you," Astrid said. "But I don't know how to do that without caging you."
Linna opened her eyes. "Then don't keep me. Just remember me."
And Astrid kissed her like a promise.
That night, as Astrid floated in the fjord's cold heart, she thought of every moan she'd given.Every name whispered into her skin.Every gaze that stripped her with reverence, not hunger.
The water lapped at her breasts. The stars hung like watchers.
She whispered to the sky:
"Keep me."
And the fjord — alive and ancient — answered not with words…
…but with warmth.
A ripple that slid between her thighs like a lover's memory.
And in that moment, Astrid knew:
This place would never let her leave.
Because she was no longer visitor.
She was moan.She was steam.She was silk and sweat and sacred ache.
She was Løvlund.