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Ensi jerked her chin in a stiff acknowledgment at a neighbor’s wave. She’d pay her proper social dues later, when she felt more like tea and conversation and less like disarticulating a troll or two.
Being a mage, an elder and a mother of two strapping sons who had been quick enough to move out had its advantages, and one was that she was a mistress of her own door-latch, with her own garden and sauna, and Ensi was beyond ready to shut that door on the whole world. As the town fell behind, she forced herself to breathe in deep, and release that breath slowly. Anger, when uncontrolled, was a disadvantage.
The scouting trip had gone badly. First they had nearly lost Ilmari to a stupid mistake—there had been a spot of thin ice supporting a log, and he’d splashed right through and into a nest of water-trolls—then, after she’d struck out on her own along a tricky swamp crossing, she’d found half the sign-posts had been washed away in the heavy summer rains. She’d spent so much time putting up replacements she’d come home late, tired, and with a fresh beast bite gained when exhaustion had made her careless.
On top of that, quarantine alone had been boring.
She rounded the lane and steamed ahead, and was nearly all the way across the overgrown lawn before she noticed Hilja sitting on the porch, a warm woolly scarf wrapped around your shoulder and a basket beside her. “There you are.”
“Hilja. I’m not in the mood.”
Hilja pushed herself up and dusted off her skirts. “Nonsense. I’ve set the sauna to warm up already. Now you can stop your growling and unlock your door so I can get the fire going. I brought apple-jam, sausages and rolls.”
Ensi got in one more scowl, but she did unlock the door. Hilja made those sausages herself, mixed with flour in some arcane method that made them firm and salty, and her mouth was already salivating.
Dust had settled on the book-case and the side-table. Hilja popped into Ensi’s kitchen for a towel and wiped off the dining table before setting her basket on the long bench. “I cleaned before I left,” Ensi grumbled.
“I know, dear. Now go on and bring us some fresh water.”
Going through the motions of pumping up a bucket of water did help the tension begin to fall off Ensi’s shoulders. She could use a nice sauna, she thought, and some food in her growling belly.
“You came back early,” said Ensi as she set the bucket on the kitchen floor. “I didn’t see you on the quarantine island.”
“I never left,” answered Hilja. “Tapsa took my usual route. My daughter graduated last week.”
“Ah.” Ensi had missed both her sons’ graduations.
The bread and jam filled her belly, and tasted sublime after the dry grub and fish they'd had at the quarantine. Hilja filled two glasses of fresh water and mixed it with one of her powders to make a crunchy sort of blueberry juice. Ensi still had some bottles of beer down in the cellar, and they took a pair with them with them to the sauna.
Fragrant smoke billowed high from the sauna chimney. The familiar creaking of the door’s hinges, the woven carpet, the sun-faded curtains in the changing room’s window—Ensi really was home at last. She peeled off layers of crusty clothes with relish, and soon the blast of heat swallowed them up.
Ensi sat back and let go a hot breath of air as Hilja threw a ladle of water on the heated stones. That sizzle, and that steam, likened to the breath of life. The metal plate rattled on the stones, Hilja’s sausages cooking in the steam.
“Was it a bad trip?” Hilja asked eventually, with Ensi’s head pillowed on her lap, the long strands of her wet hair sticking to her thighs.
“Ehh.”
They were all bad. Scouts like the two of them went out there, again and again, and faced what had become of the world’s creatures, ghosts from a past Ensi’s parents had remembered, children died decades ago and still suffering. (She had found one trapped between two boulders, begging her for help.) Out there, you forgot how to be human, how to be alive, instead of a husk waiting to become spirit. Like a hot stone waiting for water. But Hilja knew that. That’s why she was here.
The corners of her mouth tugged up. Hilja’s profile in the dark of the room, the slanted light from the small window and the low sun, painted a picture in her memory, one that matched up with countless other nights. They hadn’t always been this close, but it felt like a kind of an always. “Thanks for coming,” she managed, and Hilja, bless her soul, just nodded and picked up the ladle again.
The beer was still cellar-cool when Ensi drained half of hers in a few gulps. Maybe it was her own steaming skin that made it prickle so pleasantly.
Back to the sauna. Soapy water trickled down the drain hole as Ensi scrubbed the sweat and dirt off. The rustle of dried leaves as Hilja unhooked the vasta from the changing room wall, and the whack and sting as the birch leaves beat their skins pink. They talked about the village, the upcoming harvest, the new houses being built along the roads, about techniques for laying foundations into the rock that lay just below the layer of dirt on their island.
The fall evening was dimming into night by the time they settled by the fire with their popping crispy sausages and another bottle each. Ensi, wrapped in a fresh change of pajamas, snuggled up under Hilja's arm with a satisfied grunt.
"Feel better?"
"Hrmph!"
"You're welcome."
They ate in silence for a while, listening to the crackling song of the logs, the wind rising outside. "Gods, that's good," Ensi sighed at last, lazily reaching up to push her wooden plate on the mantelpiece. Hilja was running her fingers through her still drying hair, untangling the strands where they fell.
"It's still with you," Hilja said quietly.
Ensi shifted. She couldn't tell her otherwise. She'd be reliving the past weeks in her dreams again. "Not for long. Not if you stay."
"You want to--?"
"Yes," Ensi rushed to interrupt. "If you wouldn't mind."
Hilja's grasp tightened on her hair. That tug sent a jolt of pleasurable anticipation through Ensi. Suddenly she didn't feel half sleepy anymore. "Of course I wouldn't." Hilja's voice had turned low, husky even beyond its familiar touch of rasp. "I missed you, you brat."
Their teeth clashed in that first rough kiss. Ensi turned that into a nip, just to get Hilja to pull her hair again, harder this time. She yanked it back, exposing Ensi’s neck for a retaliatory bite.
This wasn’t how they always made love. It was just for when the job had stuck in their guts and would keep rotting there if they didn’t chase it out. But it was a familiar dance by now, the same song with different lyrics and key changes.
Hilja picked fire up from the crate with a rolled up wood shaving and used it to light a candle. She bore it on its holder to the small bedroom just off the main room and set it on the side-table. The curtains had been drawn before Ensi left, to keep that bleaching summer sunlight off her patchwork duvet. A faint sweet smell filled the room as the candle wax began to melt, and Ensi inhaled it, part of their ritual. She slipped out of her bathrobe, folded it in two neat movements and placed it on a chair. She ran a hand down her own body, this vehicle she relied on, scars and wrinkles all. “How do you want me?”
“Face down, dear.” Hilja kept her robe on.
Ensi lay down on the narrow twin bed and held out her wrists above her head. The bed creaked as Hilja sat on the edge, and she could hear the snap and clack as she unwound one of the belts that had hung in her closet. It went neatly around and through her wrists, pulled tight and buckled. There was a lean, hungry wolf in Ensi, ready to come out and fight, but she kept it down, let this happen.
Hilja ran a hand down her bony back, still red and sensitive from the vasta's work, and the heat and sting of the sauna. “You’re going to be good, aren’t you, girl?”
“Hmph.”
Hilja slapped her bottom, hard. “You’re going to be good, and no arguments.”
“Ugh.”
“Well, that attitude needs adjusting.” The light shifted, and Ensi tensed in anticipation. The first drop of wax sent her muscles spasming in surprise all the same.
The pain flashed and disappeared as the wax quickly cooled, but it was followed directly by another. She squirmed, a little of the pain, and a little of the heat pooling in the bottom of her belly in anticipation of pleasure. She banged her shackled fists on the bedpost and groaned as a drip of wax lashed across her sensitive back and bit into her buttocks, but she didn’t ask Hilja to stop. Her hips rose and undulated. It was pathetic, the way her body begged, like a dog in heat, but the want, the need to be touched was rising.
Hilja pushed her hips firmly back down and set the candle back on the bedside table. “Will you be good, you insufferable brat?”
“Yes!” Ensi barked. “In the name of the gods, I will. Please, I need more.”
“All in good time. Be patient.”
A shift of the mattress, a rustle, a door opening and closing. The belt would come next, Ensi realized, and squeezed her hands into fists. She knew which one—a second one from her closet, a narrow one with the leather buckle and a mean braided end.
The first lash broke the crust of dry wax on her bottom, the next few obliterated it. Ensi took it, only raising herself to her elbows and knees as her muscles contracted under the assault. Her skin felt hot, her body no longer her own, and her ears had begun to buzz.
It was working.
When the assault ceased, long after she had lost track of time, and the belt was slung on the bedpost, she fell exhausted onto the covers. She barely noted the scrape of a lid on a container. She jerked as she felt a touch of cool, moist fingers. “Open your legs, lift your hips, and then stay still.”
Ensi hastened to obey this time, and let out a choked sound of pleasure as Hilja’s wet fingers slipped inside her cunt, magic sparkling on each digit. It was an irony of age that while pleasure still flowed, the proof of it was scarcer. But there was no resisting them this way, with that slick oil smoothing their way. Her pussy closed tight around those fingers, pulsed, wanting more, wanted movement, wanted her orgasm coaxed out from deep within her. She pushed her hips back, claiming more of that penetration, and got a slap on her battered bottom for her trouble.
“You know what they teach us all as children,” Hilja muttered. “Practice that now. Still and silent.”
Ensi froze in place.
After a moment, she began to shiver, but she stayed quiet and motionless all the same. Hilja’s hand rubbed soothing circles on the small of her back. “Good, you’re doing good.”
Ensi could feel her withdraw her fingers and panicked, until that touch returned almost immediately, now with two fingers inside her and a third gently resting against her clit. She gritted her teeth and pressed her tongue up against the top of her mouth to keep from making a sound.
“Shh.” And then Hilja begun to move her hand, still pressing Ensi in place. On the third stroke, it was as if a dam broke in Ensi’s mind, and the waters rushed in to fill he chattering mind, drown her thoughts into blissful nothing. She felt the rub of the rough cover under her cheek, her knees, and this other pleasure began to unwind itself smoothly from her center.
“You will do as you are told from now on?”
Ensi nodded meekly. “Yes, darling.”
She regretted that the next moment as the fingers left her. The next thing she felt was Hilja’s slick hands on her back, rubbing cooling ointment on her skin. She sank into the bed, nerveless and loose like yarn pooled at the bottom of a basket. The chimney stones were still emanating their heat, juxtaposing with the cold.
She did not resist as Hilja spread her legs open, or when she slipped a carved wooden toy inside her. She knew that toy, a crow with its wings spread, and egg between its claws. She’d laughed out loud to see it sitting innocuously on Hilja’s mantelpiece, as if it hadn’t been wetted inside Ensi time and again. “Keep it there,” Hilja instructed as she unbuckled the belt that had tied Ensi’s wrists together. “Turn around. Do I need to tie your hands behind your back?”
“No, darling.”
“Good. On the floor.” Her tone was stern, but she handed Ensi a pillow to put under her knees. She spread her own legs and flicked her robe aside. Even in the low light Ensi could just make out the dark ginger hair between her legs, against the white of her belly. “Let’s see if you still remember how to do this.”
Ensi shuffled forward. Hilja reached out to run her fingers through her hair, then gathered it up into a knot at the back of her head, with a little encouraging push forward. Ensi licked her lips and plunged in, drinking in that smell of clean, warm cunt, the salt on her tongue-tip. She licked her open, perhaps with more enthusiasm than finesse, and got a tug on her hair for the infraction. Gods knew she loved that tug, like an invitation to a fight, only the fight had been lost already.
“Focus,” Hilja reminded her, and so she did. Slow, long licks. A sinuous tease with the tip of her tongue until she found Hilja’s clit under its hood, and heard her hiss, felt her tensing. Ensi rocked her hips lightly, pressing into that toy. She could come like this easily, her face full of Hilja, fucking herself on that raven’s egg. Fire raced up and down her spine, from the top of her skull to her cunt and back again. She was aflame with it, with its terror and ecstasy.
Hilja yanked her head back. Her chest was heaving under the half-undone robe, her hair a messy halo. Her left leg had found itself cast over Ensi’s thin shoulder, locking her head into the embrace of her legs. “Fucking hell. H-how are you doing down there?”
Ensi nearly sobbed with lust. “Please fuck me. I need it.”
“Do you think you deserve it?”
“No...”
Hilja petted her hair, gentle now. “Then work a little harder first. And don’t you dare get off before I say so.”
Ensi got back into it. Her world was focused on this one point: Make Hilja happy, make her come. She wrote spells on her flesh, sang a wordless song into her, brought her thumb in to help her, caressed her inside and out, and all the time her sharp tongue worked, until Hilja slumped back on her elbows, groaning and pushing up into her face. Ensi lapped faster, relentless, until she tasted first one burst of salty gush, then another. She pushed up from the floor, spider-like, and kept lapping, Hilja’s legs locked around the back of her neck, until Hilja stopped her with a gentle touch on her wet chin.
Hilja ran an arm over her face, caught her breath for a moment, then held a hand out to Ensi, pulled her up on the bed. Ensi ended up on her back, Hilja’s hand between her legs, Hilja’s mouth on hers, gentle and mild, light enough to make her want to scream. But Hilja took hold of that raven and moved it, pushed it, rolled it exactly the way she knew Ensi liked it, and she opened up to it, to the white light of surrender. “Now,” Hilja whispered just as she reached the edge, and tumbled, tumbled over round stones rolling down a hill, like thunder rolled down the length of the sky.
The candle went out, leaving them alone with the darkness, and the sound of their breathing. Outside, a rain had begun to fall. It drummed on the windowpane and cooled down the chimney-stones above.
“All good now?” asked Hilja after a while, yawning.
“Yes.” Ensi buried her face into Hilja’s shoulder, and then, with some effort, grunted, “Thank you.”
At least until the next time.