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Chapter 38 - The Sacred and the Salt

The days shortened further, and with them came the shift everyone in Løvlund both feared and adored.

Blotnatt was coming.

They said the festival was older than the village itself. A time when bodies were offered to cold water and warm hands, when guilt was not only discarded — it was exorcised. Once a year, the village stood naked beneath firelight and frost and remembered: they belonged to no one and everything, all at once.

For Astrid, it meant one thing: she was no longer new.

She was expected now — welcomed, yes, but also watched.

Eyes followed her differently. Smiles lingered longer.

There was no jealousy here, no possession — but there was something deeper.

Curiosity.Invitation.

"Will you take the plunge this year?" asked Emil one evening, cheeks flushed as he chopped wood shirtless behind the sauna.

Astrid wiped sweat from her neck. "What plunge?"

He grinned.

"You'll see."

By the time the festival came, the sky had turned to polished slate.

Every rooftop wore a coat of frost. The fjord steamed with breath. And at night, the forest glowed with torches — not to keep away the dark, but to worship it.

Ida came to Astrid's door with a cloak of moss green and a bottle of arctic gin.

"This is what my mother wore for her first Blotnatt," she whispered, eyes glittering. "It's warm enough to keep you alive, but not warm enough to keep you from wanting more."

Astrid put it on.No bra.No underwear.Only skin. Only intention.

The gathering was deep in the woods, at the old stone circle. A space used for no purpose but pleasure.

The village arrived in silence — barefoot, breath visible, bodies draped in fur and linen and nothing at all.

The air smelled of pine, wine, sweat, and something feral.

Astrid stood beside Ida, hand tucked into hers.

And then Åse stepped forward, wrapped in raven feathers, hair braided with bones and winterberries. Her voice was low and clear:

"Tonight, we return to what we were before shame.Before mirrors.Before doors and locks.Tonight, you are not a name.You are not a role.You are not even a body.You are hunger.You are offering.You are flame."

And then the clothes came off.

No ceremony.

Just skin, unwrapped like a truth.

Astrid had never seen anything more beautiful — or more terrifying.

Old men with sagging bellies, women with thick thighs and birth-scarred hips, young couples with trembling hands, and wrinkled lovers who kissed like the world was ending.

All of them naked. All of them free.

Ida turned to her, voice barely a breath:"Are you ready?"

Astrid nodded.

The cloak dropped.

The cold kissed every inch of her.

And the village exhaled.

What followed was not an orgy.

It was not spectacle.

It was a ceremony of longing.

There were no rules — only rhythms.Couples touched slowly. Others watched.Hands were offered without demand.Lips brushed cheeks, then chests, then inner thighs.And the fire never stopped roaring.

Astrid found herself pulled gently toward a ring of warm bodies.

Leif was there, eyes half-lidded, fingers stroking the curve of someone's back.

Kari knelt beside Emil, both of them slick with oil, laughing between gasps.

And Ida — oh, Ida — kissed Astrid's shoulder like she was marking a prayer.

Then came the plunge.

One by one, they walked into the ice-fed fjord.

Naked.Open.Shivering with something beyond cold.

Astrid stood at the edge, Ida behind her, lips at her ear.

"You must go alone," she said.

"Why?"

"So the fjord can hear your own cry."

She stepped forward.

The water gripped her ankles first — sharp as knives, clean as new breath.Then her thighs.Then her chest.And finally, she let go.

Sank.

And screamed underwater — not in pain.

In release.

When she surfaced, her body was on fire.

Not from heat.From awakening.

The entire village was watching.

No one clapped.

But Åse smiled.

And in the silence, Astrid heard it —

— the fjord's echo.

Her moan, returned to her.

Like memory.

That night, back in the cottage, Ida didn't touch her with hunger.

She touched her with awe.

Their kiss was slow.

Their thighs slid together like silk drawn over salt.

And when Astrid came again — this time softer, deeper, like her bones had learned to weep — she whispered only:

"Thank you."

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