The fjord never slept.
It held the heat of bodies long cooled.The salt of moans long dissolved.The imprint of thighs and mouths and sweat — not forgotten, only folded into its depths.
Astrid stood at the edge of the jetty, the wooden slats wet under her bare feet. Midnight had come without darkness — the sky hung silver, low and breathless, the moon pulling the fjord into glass.
She had come alone.
No towel. No coat. Nothing but skin and pulse and a thin shimmer of fear beneath her collarbone.
She held the note in her palm. Read it again. "Don't wear anything."
So she hadn't.
She stepped to the edge of the jetty and waited.
The silence wasn't empty. It hummed — low, deep, like the inhale before a mouth opens on your neck.
Then the water stirred.
A figure rose from the shallows, slow and silent. Not emerging — arriving.
Female.
Tall.
Wrapped in strands of lakeweed like silk. Her body glowed with droplets, her nipples tight, her mouth full and closed. She climbed the ladder with a grace that didn't splash. And when she stood at the top, her eyes met Astrid's without blinking.
No introduction. No explanation. Just this:
"You found her drawings."
Astrid's throat dried. "Yes."
The woman stepped forward. "Then you already know me."
She kissed Astrid without warning.
Not gently. Not rudely. But inevitably — as if it was a kiss years overdue.
Astrid gasped into it, her arms not yet ready, her legs trembling. The woman pressed their bodies together, skin on skin, the wetness from the fjord soaking into Astrid's thighs. A thigh slid between her own. Fingers slid up her spine, threading into her hair.
The moan that rose from Astrid was immediate, urgent. She hadn't kissed like this. Not even with Ida. This wasn't sweetness. This was claiming.
The woman pulled back only long enough to whisper:
"Siv isn't a name. She's a hunger."
Astrid's knees buckled.
They moved to the dock, laid out on a fur-lined blanket that hadn't been there earlier.
The woman straddled Astrid, her dark curls hanging forward like a veil. She kissed down Astrid's chest, her tongue slow, methodical. When she reached a nipple, she sucked hard, and Astrid arched, her back slamming against wood, a cry flying out of her throat so high and sharp it startled a bird into flight from the reeds.
And the woman — Siv, or something like her — smiled.
"You moan like your grandmother."
Astrid froze.
The woman kissed her navel.
"She gasped like that when I touched her here—"A finger slid down."—and here."Two fingers inside. Deep. Without prelude. Without apology.
Astrid sobbed once, not from pain — from recognition.
From the certainty that this was not the first time her bloodline had yielded to this exact pressure. That Inga's hips had rocked like this. That her thighs had opened like this. That her mouth, too, had said yes through broken, breathless syllables.
And now, so did Astrid.
The orgasm came too fast.Too loud.Too much.
She cried out, her voice splitting the air. The woman didn't flinch — she just held her down and whispered, "More. You're not done yet."
And Astrid wasn't.
She came again.
And again.
And when it was over, she lay slick with sweat and lakewater, her thighs open, her chest heaving. The woman lay beside her, quiet, one arm folded behind her head, watching the moon ripple across the surface.
Astrid turned to her. "Who are you?"
The woman didn't look at her. "You already know."
"But… how are you—"
"Siv isn't a woman," she said softly. "She's a memory that wears skin."
Astrid blinked. "You're saying you're not real?"
"I'm saying I am what the fjord remembers most."
The woman stood, her breasts silhouetted against the glow of water.
Then she walked to the edge, stepped off the dock—
And vanished into the water without a splash.
Astrid sat there long after, legs pulled to her chest, hair dripping down her back. The sky never darkened. The silence never returned. Something now pulsed in her blood.
A rhythm older than fear.
Older than shame.
When she returned to the cottage, she opened the sketchbook again.
And this time, she turned to the final page.
There, written in her grandmother's script:
*"I never drew her right. She could not be captured — only borrowed.
She came to me in water.
She will come to you, too."*
Astrid closed the book with trembling fingers.
And somewhere outside, the fjord exhaled.