The sun never fully set.
It hovered — like a voyeur — just above the fjord, bleeding gold into every crevice of Løvlund. The villagers moved like spirits through the haze of eternal dusk: bare feet, bare shoulders, eyes lit from inside.
This was the Binding.
And tonight, every story would either cement, or unravel.
Astrid stood at the altar stone — the slab of driftwood laid across the rocks like an open page. She wore nothing but a garland of fjord flowers, and the red book, tied to her back with silk ribbon, as if she were carrying her own spine.
She would not write tonight.
Tonight, the fjord would write through her.
The villagers began to approach in pairs.
Some obvious:
Leif and Ragna, their hands calloused from the same wood.
Kari and Isak, despite Emil's absence — or because of it.
Some surprising:
Ida and Margit, walking together without shame.
Åse and a woman no one recognized — tall, ageless, wearing nothing but river stones in her hair.
Each pair stood before Astrid, touched each other's faces, then turned to the fjord.
The water, somehow, responded — with mist, with warmth, with recognition.
Then came Elinor.
Alone.
She walked slowly. Deliberately.
No garland.No offering.Only herself.
She stood before Astrid, eyes full of unspoken thunder.
"I stand without a partner," she said.
Astrid replied calmly, "Then the fjord will choose one for you."
Elinor didn't flinch.
"I know."
A hush fell over the village.
Astrid turned toward the water.
"Fjord," she said, voice carrying into the golden stillness,"you who remember the first moan,the first betrayal,the first longing still unanswered —choose for her."
The water rippled.
Then stilled.
Then—
A footstep.
Soft. Slow.
Astrid turned.
Leif.
He stepped beside Elinor.
Did not look at Astrid.Only took Elinor's hand.
And the fjord warmed.
Astrid said nothing.
But the red book pulsed behind her.
Now it was her turn.
The final pair.
The leader must bind last — to affirm she, too, was part of the body she guided.
She turned.
And Ida stepped forward.
Bare. Glowing. Eyes gentle, but resolute.
"I don't want to be remembered," she said, voice like smoke."But I want to remember this. With you."
Astrid stepped toward her.
They touched.Forehead to forehead.Belly to belly.
And the red book fell from Astrid's back onto the altar stone.
The fjord shuddered.
From the water came light — not firelight, but something older.
A glow that painted every body gold. Every curve, every scar, every wet strand of hair.
And then came the voice.
Low. Feminine. Wordless.
A moan.
Not of pleasure.Not of pain.
But of arrival.
In that moment, everyone saw it.
Not in the sky.
Not on the page.
But inside their own bodies:
The memory of every touch that had ever made them real.
And they wept.
Astrid kissed Ida. Once. Deeply.
Then turned, picked up the red book…
…to find it blank.
Every word she had written.
Every drawing.Every entry.
Gone.
But at the center of the first page:
"Now you are written."
The Binding was complete.
But Astrid understood now—
That was only the beginning.