They said the fjord was alive — that it remembered every moan ever echoed off its mirrored skin.
Astrid Hammar didn't believe in myths, not since childhood. And yet, when she stepped out of the rusted ferry and felt the cool wind of Løvlund press against her cheeks like a slow exhale, she couldn't shake the feeling that something here had been waiting for her.
The village was smaller than she remembered. Or maybe she had just grown so large with grief that nothing could contain her anymore. Her grandmother's name — Inga Hammar — was still etched into the wooden mailbox outside the weather-worn cottage, half-buried in lupines. The door groaned open like a reluctant secret.
Inside, the house smelled of birchwood and memory. No photographs. Just silence. Her suitcase thudded against the floorboards, and for a long moment, Astrid stood there, uncertain whether she'd come to bury something or unearth it.
There had been no funeral.
Just a letter, folded with clean precision: "Come, Astrid. The house is yours now." Signed in her grandmother's barely-there hand. No cause of death. No explanation. And so she came — not for closure, but for escape.
The first night was dreamless, save for the sound of the water. It lapped against the shore like breath against skin — slow, rhythmic, intimate. She left the windows open. The cold was bracing, but she wanted to hear the fjord whisper. Even if it said nothing.
The next morning, she met Ida.
Astrid was walking back from the village co-op, a canvas bag heavy with bread and cloudberries, when she spotted her — sunburned cheeks, hair tied in a mess of copper curls, wearing nothing but a loose cotton dress that clung to her thighs in the damp heat.
She was pruning tomatoes in the greenhouse just beyond the Hammar cottage, the sweat visible between her shoulder blades.
"Du er Astrid?" she called without looking up.
"Yes," Astrid said, caught off guard. "I… how did you—?"
"We all knew you were coming." Ida looked up then. Her eyes were the kind that didn't blink when they stared. "Your mormor said you would."
Astrid blinked. "She told you?"
Ida smiled, and it was the kind of smile that curled at the corner of the mouth, like it held back stories best told in private. "She told everyone."
By the third day, the heat broke. A warm rain swept in from the west, and Astrid sat on the porch, bare-legged, sipping coffee that tasted like earth and smoke. The village moved slowly, like it didn't know time the way cities did.
People walked naked from the sauna to the lake, towels slung around their necks, skin glistening, laughter light and unhurried. No one stared. No one averted their gaze.
It unsettled her. Or perhaps it stirred her — that might've been closer to the truth.
Astrid wasn't a prude. London had its own flavor of sin — crowded clubs, fast sex, loneliness disguised as connection. But this was different. This wasn't spectacle. It was ritual.
She asked Ida about it over lingonberry wine that evening.
"Why doesn't anyone care?" Astrid asked. "About… being seen?"
Ida tilted her head. "We care. We just don't fear it."
Astrid said nothing. The silence between them thickened like syrup. Rain tapped against the greenhouse glass.
Then Ida leaned closer, her voice dropping like a stone into a still pond. "You've never been touched without being watched, have you?"
Astrid's breath hitched.
"I don't mean eyes on you," Ida continued, soft. "I mean really seen. Your pleasure. Your ache. The way you open. The way you close."
Astrid didn't answer. Couldn't.
Ida leaned back, letting the moment dissolve. "You'll see. We don't hide here."
That night, Astrid dreamed of breath on the back of her neck and bodies rising from the fjord like spirits. In the dream, she wasn't afraid. She was naked too, standing among them, her mouth open to the stars.
When she woke, her nightgown was damp with sweat. Her thighs ached with memory.
Outside, the moon was low, and the fjord shimmered like spilled silver. A single figure stood waist-deep in the water, arms raised, hair streaming down her back like ink.
Ida.
Astrid didn't know why she walked down to the shoreline barefoot. Didn't know why she stepped into the water, dress clinging, breath shallow. Ida turned when she approached, but said nothing.
Moonlight carved her curves with quiet devotion.
And Astrid — cold, breathless, shivering — reached for her hand.
They said the fjord was alive. That it remembered every moan ever echoed off its surface.
That night, Astrid's first was born into the water — silent, soft, and sacred.
And the fjord, ever-listening, did not forget.