The morning came as if no midnight had happened.
Sunlight streamed through the cottage windows, golden and guiltless, illuminating dust motes and half-finished tea. But Astrid woke with the salt of moans still on her lips.
The blanket still smelled like lakewater.
And her body — her body knew.
Her thighs trembled when she stood. Her nipples tingled like they'd been kissed all night. And her breath... her breath came shallow every time she remembered the whisper: "You moan like your grandmother."
She barely made it to the kitchen before she saw the note.
Ida's handwriting, careful and floral:
Meet me. The greenhouse. Noon.Don't lie to me.
The greenhouse was thick with jasmine and confrontation.
Ida stood between tomato vines, arms crossed, her linen dress already clinging to her sweat-damp skin. Her hair was pinned, her expression was not.
Astrid stepped in quietly.
Ida didn't move. "You were seen."
Astrid blinked. "By who?"
"By the water. On the jetty. With… her."
Astrid said nothing.
Ida's voice broke. "Astrid, do you know what it means?"
"I don't even know if it was real," she whispered. "She… said she wasn't real. That she was what the fjord remembers."
Ida nodded slowly. "Then it was her."
There was a bench beside the cucumbers.
They sat together on it, knees touching.
The scent of hot earth and pollen filled the air. Bees hovered lazily. A soft hum of irrigation pulsed behind them.
Ida spoke first. "Siv was never a person. Or she was. Once. But she became… more."
"She was with my grandmother," Astrid said. "Wasn't she."
"Yes." Ida looked down at her lap. "And now she's with you."
Astrid touched her own wrist, as if to check for possession. "It felt like... a claiming."
"It is a claiming," Ida said gently. "She only chooses women who can carry the memory forward."
"Memory of what?"
Ida turned to her. "Of pleasure without permission. Of love without cages. Of the body as sacred, not secret."
Astrid swallowed. "But why me?"
Ida didn't answer.
She kissed her instead.
It was not a polite kiss.Not a lover's kiss.Not a flirtation.
It was panic and longing and jealousy laced with desire to be included.
Ida kissed Astrid as if trying to reclaim what the fjord had taken. Her mouth was urgent, her hands clumsy — one on Astrid's hip, the other gripping her nape.
Astrid moaned — quietly — but didn't close her eyes.
She saw the truth in Ida's face: She had wanted to be chosen. All her life, perhaps. And now the woman she first kissed had been claimed by someone older than time.
They broke apart.
Ida's eyes brimmed. "Do you still want me?"
Astrid cupped her cheek. "Yes. But not only you."
Ida exhaled like a woman breaking.
Then she stood, slowly undoing the buttons of her dress.
"Then let me be part of her story," she whispered. "Just this once."
They made love in the greenhouse.
Among the zucchini.Among the thyme.
Sweat and soil and sunlight on their skin. Ida knelt between Astrid's thighs, tongue slow, reverent. Astrid cried out — not for Siv, but for herself — and when she came, it felt like it was Ida who was being released.
They lay together after, in the dirt.
Silent. Sticky. Entangled.
Ida's voice was soft. "They'll start talking now."
Astrid turned. "Who?"
"The elders. Ase. Marit. Even Mattis." A bitter smile. "You've awakened something, Astrid. Something old."
Astrid stared at the greenhouse ceiling. "I didn't ask to."
Ida turned to her, brushing hair from her cheek. "Neither did your grandmother."
That evening, Astrid went to the village bathhouse.
Steam thick as fog. Laughter in corners. Skin against skin in casual, sacred choreography.
She entered naked.
She left naked-er.
And as she stepped out into the cool night air, wrapped in nothing but her own wetness and breath, she heard it:
A voice behind her, not quite whispering.
"The fjord never forgets who she tastes."
She turned.
No one was there.
But a trail of wet footprints led toward the woods.