By late summer, the light no longer lingered.
Twilight came quickly now, like a lover who knew your body already — no need for introduction, no pause for modesty. The golden haze that used to bathe Løvlund in slow sunsets now dipped fast into navy, and the village responded not with sadness… but with desire.
Because darkness here was not a closing.
It was a calling.
Astrid had started sleeping with her windows open.
Not for breeze — for sound.
She'd learned to listen.To the breathless giggle of teenagers sneaking into each other's arms behind the bakery.To the gasp of someone parting water at the fjord's edge.To Ida's low, lulling moans that rose like a song every Thursday after sunset.
Astrid never interrupted.
She just listened.
Until one night, she didn't.
Linna was gone.
No note. No goodbye.Just a whisper from Kari, who said she'd seen her board the 5:10 ferry with a backpack and no shoes.
"She does that," Kari said, with a shrug only a nineteen-year-old born into open love could give. "She always comes back. But only when she's missed properly."
Astrid didn't cry.
Not that day. Not the next.
But she did stop writing.
The cottage stayed silent.
Until Mattis knocked.
He carried a bowl of cream and a bottle of honey wine.
Astrid answered the door in a thin cotton robe, her eyes glassy, her voice husked from disuse.
"I'm not good at being left," she said.
Mattis didn't answer.
He simply stepped inside, sat at her table, and poured two glasses.
They didn't toast.
They just drank.
Then he dipped his finger into the cream and touched it to her lip.
"Taste that," he said.
She did.
"You forget," he whispered, "that you still belong to us. Even without her."
Astrid blinked.
And nodded.
That night, in front of the fire, they shared the kind of intimacy that had nothing to do with thrust or ache — and everything to do with permission.
Mattis unwrapped her like he was reading a letter.She kissed his fingers, not his mouth.He massaged her shoulders with lavender oil Ida had made last autumn.And when she finally opened her legs for him — it wasn't with urgency.
It was with trust.
He kissed the inside of her thigh. Pressed his face against the soft of her belly. Slid a hand beneath her and simply held her while her hips began to weep.
And when Astrid came — slow, open, full — she did not moan Linna's name.
She whispered:
"Yes."
To the air.
To the man.
To the firelight on the wall.
To the place that never stopped asking her if she was ready.
In the days that followed, she returned to her pages.
Her sentences grew longer. Bolder. Filled with the kind of hunger that didn't beg — it invited.
She wrote about women who never needed permission.About men who wept while they worshipped.About touch that healed shame.
She wrote, and she lived.
And the village kept giving.
The Widow Åse brought her a new tea made of arctic thyme and dried rose hips. "For grounding," she said. "So you don't float too far when someone kisses you too well."
Kari showed up one afternoon with Emil in tow, both sunburned and glowing, asking if Astrid wanted to "watch them for inspiration."
She laughed and declined.
But they left her a velvet pouch of sea glass.
That night, Ida came.
Carrying a jar of preserved strawberries and a need in her eyes that didn't match the sweetness of the gift.
They didn't speak much.
Just sat on the sofa, legs touching, breath mingling.
And when Ida finally asked, voice low and halting:
"Can I kiss you again?"
Astrid answered with only her lips.
They undressed slowly. Carefully.
Not like strangers. Not like lovers.Like women who had each lost and found something in the other.
Astrid traced the curve of Ida's belly. Kissed the line of her cesarean scar. Bit gently into her breast until Ida arched, groaned, and whispered "More, please" in Norwegian.
Astrid gave her everything.
When they lay tangled in a pile of wool blankets and sticky limbs, Ida laughed softly.
"Do you know what Åse said to me once?" she murmured.
"What?"
"That this place doesn't ask you who you love. It asks: How will you love next?"
Astrid smiled.
And whispered:
"Yes."