HAVN

By the time the boat reached the dock, the light had shifted in that particular way it does in the north—where it’s never quite day but not entirely night either, just an endless in-between, as though the world itself is holding its breath and hasn’t decided yet whether to descend into shadow or offer another hour of clarity. I hadn’t spoken for most of the crossing, though the captain had offered coffee from a thermos at one point and I’d taken it, mostly for something warm to hold. The air had been still on the water, and the silence between us hadn’t asked for anything more.

There wasn’t much of a harbour to speak of—just a small inlet edged with worn wooden beams, the kind that darken to near-black in the cold, slick with years of salt and sleet. Beyond it, a narrow path curved upwards, disappearing into a cluster of dark-roofed buildings that seemed to emerge directly from the rock rather than having been built on it. Lights glowed behind thick-paned windows. Not many. Just enough to suggest someone was home.

I didn’t come here looking for anything. I wouldn’t have known how to name it even if I had. It wasn’t rest, exactly. Nor solitude, though I had grown tired of people speaking to me as though I were always on the verge of breaking, or worse, in need of correction. What I wanted—what I think I had begun to ache for without fully realising—was somewhere I didn’t have to be useful. Somewhere the air didn’t expect me to fill it.

I made my way up the path slowly, the cold biting at my heels through the worn leather of my boots. The snow was light, barely there, but it clung to the edges of my coat all the same, softening the shape of my shoulders as I walked. At the top of the hill was a wooden building set slightly apart from the others, its windows lit with the kind of glow that suggests warmth without insisting on welcome. There was no sign, no indication of what it was or whether I should enter, but the door was slightly ajar and there was something about the slant of the roof that reminded me of hands cupped around a flame.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of pine smoke and something faintly sweet—dried orange, perhaps, or cloves baked into bread. A stove hummed in the corner, its body wide and rusted, the kind of thing that had been keeping people warm long before electricity arrived, and would likely go on doing so long after it left. There were no other guests that I could see, only a tall woman behind the counter, her grey hair braided down her back, who looked up as I entered and gave a nod so slight I almost missed it. She didn’t ask my name, or where I’d come from, or what had brought me here. She only gestured toward a table near the fire and turned back to her work.

It took me longer than it should have to sit. I hadn’t realised how much of myself I’d been holding up, how accustomed I’d become to shaping my body around other people’s expectations—to sitting straight and alert, to keeping my hands folded, to keeping still. Here, in the hush of this warm room, the absence of scrutiny felt almost unnerving, like walking into a church and finding it empty. I sat anyway. And exhaled for what felt like the first time in weeks.

No one tells you how exhausting it is to disappear slowly.

How each small compromise of your voice—each laugh that’s toned down, each truth swallowed for the sake of being liked—accumulates over time, until you wake one morning and realise you’ve become a version of yourself that no longer fits, not because you’ve outgrown it, but because it was never yours to begin with. And yet you wear it, every day. You wear it so well that even the people closest to you don’t notice the weight.

But the body notices. It always does.

And now, here, sitting by this fire with my coat unbuttoned and my feet tucked under the chair, I could feel that weight beginning to shift—not lifting, not yet, but loosening. As though something deep within me had recognised the silence in this place and trusted it enough to begin unfurling, without needing to explain why.

I hadn’t come for answers. But I felt, suddenly, that I might be able to hear myself again.

Not loudly. Not clearly. But enough.