1. Clinging to rocks
"Are you there? Hello?"
"Yes, sweetness. I'm here. I'm right here. Can't you see me?"
"No. It's too dark."
"It doesn't matter. I see you perfectly. That's what matters. Damn, sweet thing, you look just perfect. So elegant, so sweet, so sexy."
"You're just saying that..."
"Ha, like you don't know it. Like you don't love it. But as you wish, play coy, I don't care, it doesn't change a thing. I'm here, and I see every little detail. You are on display, sweetness. So come on, give a good show. You will give a good show, won't you?"
"Yes. I'll do my best."
"That's all I ask for. Let's get to it. You're almost all skin tonight. I like that. Let's complete the picture. The panties, you don't need them. Take them off. I want you naked, right now."
"Like...this?"
"Is there any other 'naked' than just that one? Perfect. You are gorgeous, sweetness. Now, don't keep me waiting. This is your show. So show me."
"Show you what?"
"Show me what you like. Show me how you want it."
-----
At the east Skagerrak coastline, west of Sweden and south of Norway, the busy intersection between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, the Atlantic lures in the distance, but far off enough to make this vast bay feel like a universe of it's own. Land meets the sea, not with wide stretched playas or majestic hills, but with ragged granite cliffs, ravine bedrock shores, twisted bizarre by ancient volcanic mayhem and polished agreeable by not as ancient ice ages. Gulls and ferns rule the air in a cacophony of white wings, and astute, cold darkness rules the world below the glittering surface.
Here is where you don't come for cheap sangrias and bad beach pickup lines. It's where you don't work the tan or flash the pre bikini season achievements in sweat and tears from the gym. It's where you don't come home from with fuzzy memories and the STD of your choice. It's where you go when all that is said and done, and it's wearing you out. Another kind of bliss, that of quiet mornings and autumn storms, and small harbours built for both.
Here is where things wash up, when the world is done with them.
Things washed ashore were picked up by Trine. Sometimes. If they happened upon her small stretch of shoreline and if they glittered or were bent in curious shapes that caught her eye. Of course, she always picked up the litter, bleached shampoo bottles, beer cans, oil spill lumps, broken glass, assorted plastic junk and so on. But that's just because she loved the rock and the sea, and wanted her little patch of it clean. She threw those uninvited intruders in black plastic bags and put it on the litter ferry to mainland on Tuesdays. Boring straight planks and beams were also left to their fate. They would dry and turn to dust or dirt in their own pace anyway. She sometimes hammered in a rusty nail so that curious gulls wouldn't hurt themselves on them, but her own interests were in the more peculiar finds. Pretty little rocks polished smooth by ages of waves and sand, driftwood roots shaped like animals, faces or other things and rare objects of more human origin. Shoes, clothes, books or what's left of them after weeks in the sea, anything out of the ordinary that the waves would bring. Some driftwood is for keeps.
With moss green rubber boots, army slacks and an oversized wool grey jumper, Trine blended right into the landscape. This is a landscape of distances, and she wilfully kept to herself and her patch of land as much as she could. But up close there was no escaping a distinct beauty. Her hair in salty disarray framed a face that even though it tried very hard not to, would capture a glance and make it grow into an adoring stare as sure as the rock she stood on. Her strong limbs bore the mark of youth and dedication, and her curves the full form of woman, although she made no effort to display it. Her voice was as clear as crystal and as rich as the ocean, but she used it rarely. There were not many here to speak to. But if you were lucky, and stood in the right direction, the wind might have carried a soft, melodic humming your way.
Now, Trine was no pariah, just a tired soul who lived too fast, and drifted ashore here at the right time in her life to embrace the silence. She woke up one morning, where she couldn't even remember anymore, and realized that she was only years past twenty, and feeling old, run to the end of the rope, worse for wear. Too many bad calls and too much high ambition had left her bitten and bruised from a world that takes more than it gives, and to live for the next high, the next ecstasy, the next adrenaline ignited orgasm in the bed or backseat of whoever thrilled her the most, was not a cheap way to live. And now it had drained her to the point of exhaustion. When you try to burn that brightly, you never get what you give. And eventually there's nothing left to sacrifice.
She left the clamour and headed for the only haven she knew, her grandfather's old summer cabin on a secluded island in the Skagerrak peninsula. He'd passed away and left her the lot a year earlier, but she had been to busy getting high on life, substances and sex to notice. He'd left her a quiet life in a tiny peninsula surrounding a small fishing harbour, a place where time had stood still for decades. A handful of vacationing families populated the island in the summer and absolute solitude reigned from September to Easter. The perfect antithesis of the fast-lane world she'd clung to since she first broke off from her over-bearing parents at sixteen. Parties with friends her father would never approve of, concerts, clubs and beer to begin with. And later, through fairytale coincidences and shameless ambition, she ascended into a metropolis high life, jet set travels and white lines in exchange for trophy sex and ever increasing debaucheries. Being young, pretty and believing there's nothing to lose makes it easy to be seduced by glamour zine ideals.
There was none of that here. So Trine traded shining like a nova for shining like a candle. It was just meant as a temporary respite, a place to sit through a hangover she'd postponed since her late teens. A week, a month maybe. Her latest sugar daddy had had a standing invitation for her to his London Docklands condo, king size bed and liquor cabinet. But June turned into July, which turned into autumn and winter and another June before she gave leaving a second thought. And now she just didn't want to. Where she once collected broken hearts and heroin stained kisses, she now collected rocks and wood, where she had stared into the strobes of dance floors, she now stared into the pulse of breaking waves. She'd gradually grown to realise that there would never be enough life to experience everything, so she would always miss out. Experiencing the little things were just as valuable as experiencing the big things, and little things didn't rub her sore in the process.
She missed men though. Or rather, what men could do with her body, and what they could do with her mind through her body, that otherworldly sensation that ran though her very being when intense physical pleasure clashed with the sharp thrill of breaking a lifetime of taught taboos. A loss of control and care, the balance on a knife's edge between carefree and careless. The total exposure to hungry eyes, the touching, the licking, the pulling and pushing. Hands on sweaty skin, rough meat sliding over sensation nexuses, delicious pleasure jolts from a wet tongue flicking her nipple, the intense taste of cum shot into her mouth from a jerking gland at her lips, the frantic rhythm of a determined lover, and the certain knowledge that she was at the mercy of someone else and that she couldn't possible will herself to stop until she was over the edge and another spine shaking climax has exploded from her loins.
That was the one drug she couldn't get out of her system. She'd managed to sweat out the booze and the cocaine before they took over her soul completely and went from bad habit to hard addiction. Other assorted pills were just as easy to kick. Trine never even knew their name, so all she could do was throw up and hallucinate for a week until her body adjusted to the new deal. But sex, that was primal. It was a part of her body, not shit she had added to it. She told herself that she was over it, that she was beyond physical pleasure and that no good could come from looking for it. And she almost had herself convinced.
Until the sun set and the night came, and she found herself tossing and turning, unable to drift off into sleep. Lonely, uneasy and restless she flipped a too warm pillow over and over and battled sticky sheets, fighting the urge to do what she knew she would eventually. With a grunt she kicked off the sheets, sat up on the bed and pulled the t-shirt she slept in, or had intended to sleep in, over her head. She leaned back on stretched arms, took a deep breath and felt the air move gently around her naked chest. A line of pale moonlight from the window was draped over the front of her panties and down along a thigh, as if indicating the direction it wanted them to go. They would. She'd be naked in the dark, she'd be wet, warm and delirious, moaning to the walls, crying for release, bucking her hips out at nothing and rubbing herself harder and harder. Soon enough she would. She closed her eyes and lay back on the mattress. The dream took over.
She woke up almost every morning naked, curled up on the side with ruffled hair, sticky fingers and a sheen of sweat all over that made her shiver in the chilly November air that seeped in through window frames and floorboards during the night. The sheets and shirt lay crumbled in a pile by the bed and her panties would either hang around an ankle or be kicked off too. It was a defeat every time. Not because she had any objections about touching herself. It felt good, got the job done, and was nobody's business but her own. It made her sleep like a baby too, and the mess the morning after was a minor nuisance. She just didn't want to depend on it so fucking badly.
