It began with a numbness in her fingers.
The morning after she wrote her answer to Margit, Astrid woke with her left hand tingling, the pinkie and ring finger refusing to bend properly. As if her own body had grown wary of what it had offered.
By noon, the sensation had faded — but something else lingered:
A pulse in her spine.
A quiet throb behind her ribs.
Not pain. Not illness.
Omen.
The red book remained warm, even when closed. Its cover smelled faintly of ash now, though she had kept it from the fire. And when she touched the pages, her fingertips came away slightly damp.
Not ink.
Salt.
The fjord was in the paper.
And it was watching.
She walked to the marketplace, hoping for distraction — but was met by Ida, standing near the bread stand, holding a bouquet of sea lavender.
Ida looked radiant in her rough blue tunic, wind-swept and wind-born, like a woman born of tides. But her expression was unreadable.
"I heard about Margit," she said.
Astrid nodded. "She came to warn me."
"She came to remind you," Ida corrected. "That we do not exist for the page. We exist for each other."
Astrid swallowed. "I know."
Ida stepped closer.
"Then remove me."
The words hit like frostbite.
Astrid blinked. "What?"
"I want to be erased from your book."
Astrid felt her throat tighten. "But… your kiss in the greenhouse. The tomatoes. Your hips in my—"
"All still real," Ida interrupted softly. "But they were mine, too. And I no longer give them to your pages."
Astrid felt heat rise. From guilt. From grief. From defiance.
"You don't want to be remembered?"
"I don't want to be interpreted."
The silence between them cracked.
Then Ida stepped closer. Her voice dropped:
"But I want to be touched. Still. Just not written."
Astrid felt something in her spine break free.
"Tonight," she whispered. "No ink. No red book. Just skin."
Ida nodded once.
And handed her the sea lavender.
That night, they met in the old bathhouse — a circular stone room, warmed from below by geothermal heat, the water mineral-rich and velvet-thick.
Candles floated across the surface.
Their clothes fell in silence.
They didn't kiss.
They bathed.
Astrid soaped Ida's shoulders slowly, her hands reverent, her gaze low. When Ida turned, breasts glistening, eyes glassy with tenderness, Astrid whispered:
"Tell me where not to go."
Ida took her wrist. Moved it to her ribs.Lower.Then stopped — just at the crest of her pubic bone.
"Nowhere you'll remember," she said.
Astrid nodded.
And kissed her sternum.
What followed wasn't sex.
It was ceremony.
They breathed into each other's mouths. Held each other's thighs. Astrid placed her tongue in the crook of Ida's knee like a vow.
When Ida finally came — soft, whimpering, arching in silence — Astrid looked away.
Not from shame.
From respect.
Later, back at her cottage, Astrid unwrapped the sea lavender.
Pressed it into a blank page of the red book.
But didn't write.
Instead, she closed the book gently.
And whispered:
"This page is yours. And I will never open it again."
That night, for the first time in weeks, she dreamt of London.
Not the city.
The version of herself that once lived there.
Typing in cafés. Wearing shame like a scarf.
Tightened. Silent.
She awoke sweaty, unsettled.
And yet—relieved.
Because she realized:
She wasn't just writing the village.
She was rewriting herself.
And that required forgetting as much as remembering.