There were two kinds of men in Løvlund.
Those who took nothing without being asked.
And those who waited like stones in the stream — patient, smooth, slowly shaped by the passing current of female desire.
Astrid had begun to notice them again.
Not as distractions.
As possibilities.
After Blotnatt, the village moved like lovers after climax — languid, satisfied, a little raw. Bodies returned to work, fields were tilled, children laughed louder, and the sauna filled once more with mixed breath.
Linna had gone again. Not with drama, not with words. Just a kiss at the window, a curl of smoke from her pipe, and a whisper:"I'll return when the next part of you is ready."
Astrid didn't ache.
Not this time.
Because now, she didn't just belong to Linna or Ida or any one woman.
She belonged to the rhythm.
And the rhythm was changing again.
The first man she noticed was Leif.
Not the way she had before.
This time, she saw the weariness behind his strength — the loneliness tucked into his silences, the way he built furniture like he was too scared to ask for comfort with words.
He came to her cottage to repair a warped window.
Astrid watched him from the doorway, arms crossed, hair loose down her back.
"You're not here just for the window," she said.
He looked up slowly. Said nothing.
Then, finally: "No."
They didn't kiss that day.But Astrid invited him to dinner.Fresh trout. Buttered greens. Dandelion wine.
They ate slowly.
When he reached for her wrist at the end of the meal, he didn't pull.
He just rested his fingers against her pulse.
And she whispered:
"Not tonight."
The second man was Mattis.
The widower with the dimpled grin and the strange habit of letting his dog lick honey off his fingers in the town square.
He caught her coming out of Åse's one afternoon, cheeks flushed, red book in hand.
"What are you writing?" he asked, cocking his head.
Astrid smiled. "Stories your wife might've liked."
Mattis chuckled. "She'd have liked you."
There was sadness in the way he said it. But also invitation.
They met again by the fjord.
This time, Astrid brought two towels. Two flasks of elderberry brandy. And no notebook.
They stripped down in silence.
Waded into the cold.
He didn't reach for her. Didn't leer.
Just stood there, his chest rising slowly with the water, and said:
"I think some women carry their own weather."
Astrid stepped closer."Stormy weather?"
He shook his head.
"Summer. But the kind that never ends."
She kissed him then.
Soft.Unexpected.
And when his hands met her waist, they shook.
Not with greed.
With grace.
They made love on the grass, wrapped in the scent of wet pine and rising dusk. It was not wild, not primal — it was human.
She guided his hand.
She whispered when to stop, when to go deeper.
And when she came, it wasn't a scream.
It was a long, trembling sigh that made him close his eyes.
That night, she wrote in the red book:
"The men here do not demand. They await. And when you let them in, they don't own — they echo."
"I moaned with a man today. And it didn't take anything away. It added another key to the instrument inside me."
Later, back in the sauna, naked between Kari and Ida, Astrid was asked a question by one of the older women, Freya:
"You still writing all this down?"
Astrid sipped birch tea and nodded.
"What's the title now?" Freya asked.
Astrid looked up. Smiled.
And said:
"The Moans That Made Me."