It had only been a joke. A trigger to see if Eira would fume and slap her. A fucking joke, but all jokes are grounded in something. Eira’s dad was hot. Her parents had Eira when they were young, like twenty-ish or so. He could be no older than forty, Anita figured.

But now, being railed by Pierre? After Jean Michelle? They were in their fifties, French, and didn’t speak a word English. The kind of men who could be hot for each other, but needed a break, a change, something to spice shit up. Leathered like Halford, stupidly hung, and they knew it—intentional in every way they fucked her.

Spread wide, Jean Michelle holding her just like that, open, boots pointing stubbornly against the tent roof. The smell of leather, the belt buckle digging into her back, Jean Michelle’s stubble scratching her calf. Pierre railed her cunt like it was supposed to spill over by herself.

That sound? Sloshing? Was that even a word?

The slap of skin against skin was familiar. The sting when he tried to bottom out in her.

She felt bottomless. Could Eira’s dad find her bottom?

She had no idea what condom was in French, but they whispered something about preserving, and wrapped themselves up like it was part of some rehearsed ritual. Habit.

She knew oui—s’il vous plaît.

They understood fuck.

Fuck me. I’m cumming.

They understood the language of a girl whimpering, breathing shallow, the way her eyes agreed to their suggestions.

Yeah. It was a joke then. But now, if she closed her eyes, she could feel Eira’s dad’s sweat dripping on her face.

It didn’t turn confusing until they wanted to share her, almost as she was ready to cum again. Almost as she was riding the edge, catching the surf, eying the wave, Pierre pulled out.

“Ouff,” she gasped. Or something else equally stupid.

Then Jean Michelle shifted, sat across her face, and pulled her legs up, one hairy ball each side of her nose. Half-hard again, dripping on her neck. She licked, only catching shaft.

Was Pierre eating her out?

Fucking brilliant.

Sucked her sore clit, split her with his tongue, fucked her hole with it.

Fuck.

Lower? How? Why?

Shit. No. Not there?

Lapped at her tight hole.

She shuddered, said something muffled into Michelle’s balls.

She’d heard Tommie ask for it, Eira admit to it, but never the voice in her head that begged for it. And Pierre seemed to understand. As good as Anita fucked, there was still one virgin hole left in her.

If I like it, I’ll let Eira’s dad do me there, she thought.

She thought she was gasping at her own filth, but sucked in a hairy ball instead.

Pierre was sucking her now. Her ass. Wet, greedy. Shamless.

Yeah, she admitted. I’m about to get double-railed, and telling them non seems too cowardly.

Jean Michelle liked having his balls sucked, but enjoyed his cock sucked better. He just pulled his balls off her face, adjusted, and pushed his fat cock in her mouth. Anita was greedy, but not picky. Mouth-fucked with a finger up her ass, clit pulled and teased.

And not being able to do anything but drool and slobber around the stretch.

⛧   \m/   ⛧

Eira found herself walking aimlessly, only grounded in reality through a hand that felt strangely comforting in hers. She glanced at Tommie, but she seemed lost in a different current, a different drift. There was something—

Quiet.

About Tommie. It seemed foreign at first, then only beautiful.

Tommie broke the silence. Just a sigh. A little too deep to mean mischief.

“I thought it was teenage contempt,” she said. “Your mother?”

Eira didn’t answer. Didn’t want to.

“I thought I, what I did to my parents—I can’t outgrow that, but I thought…”

Eira stopped. It was her turn to sigh.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” she finally said.

“Sounds like you really should. Babe.”             

Eira felt that stupid rage again. The one she didn’t need with Tommie. The one she wanted to reserve for her mother.

She barked out a laugh that wasn’t a laugh.

Felt the press of eighteen years in her stomach. Against her ribs. Tommie squeezing her hand and not saying anything, only those eyes, made it worse.

“Fuck!” she screamed. As if that would make it go away.

And then the words spilled. Low at first. Almost a viper hissing in the grass.

“You want me to tell you? How nothing fucking Eira does is good enough? Where do you want me to start? Where, Tommie? My mother telling me my tits are too big? At my cousin’s confirmation? Right there at the party? With my aunt, my uncle, and her sister’s perfect twins watching? I was sixteen, Tommie!”

“She didn’t?!”

“No, she didn’t say it, Tommie. Not like that. She pulled me aside—didn’t even whisper, just smiled that smile that makes everything sound polite. Then she tried to smooth me down. Said, you know, there are dresses for girls like me. Supportive ones. Ones that flatten. Because god forbid someone sees the shape of my body.”

The fume came. Not aimed at Tommie—just at the world.

“How about high school? You think Eira got a free ride because her mom was a principal at a different school? Did your mom ever call your teacher to complain about your grades? Said they were too high? What kind of cunt does that?”

Tommie gripped her hand tighter.

“Good thing Eira has a pretty face, right, Tommie? Her brain’s not gonna land her a decent fucking job, but her face might get her out of Nordstrand, right? Straight up to Holmenkollen, right? Right?”

“Eira…” Tommie tried, but there was too much noise now.

“You know,” a little milder now, “I used to bake. For Mother’s Day. Her birthdays.”

She stopped. Tommie was confused. Because that lone tear down Eira’s cheek was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She’d get it tattooed on her tit as soon as it healed.

“She didn’t even say my baking was awful, Tommie. She just didn’t touch it. Told me how pretty I was, then told me to go play outside.”

Tommie wished a sharp tongue and a dumb-assed joke would fix something.

“You’re brilliant,” she said. “I mean, college-brilliant, even.”

Eira seemed stuck somewhere, some kind of memory Tommie couldn’t reach.

“You know,” Eira said. “I lost my virginity because of her.”

She screamed. Not at Tommie—still the world. No words. Just anger.

“I just got tired of hearing her go fucking on and on about girls like me. Girls like you, she’d say. Then something about teenage pregnancy. Something about the cashier at Kiwi. Something about putting it out there. Something about how fucking disappointing my daughterhood was to her.”

No more screams. Just two girls looking at each other.

“So, I got drunk for the first time. Fucked for the first time. Did you know I did it twice with two different guys my first time, Tommie? One fucking the other one’s cum deeper in me? And do you know how I felt after?”

She kissed Tommie then. As if asking forgiveness for something she’d never done.

“It felt like it wasn’t mine. Like it didn’t belong to me. Like my mother sold me off on disappointment alone.”

She let go of Tommie’s hand, unwrapped the studded leather wristband she’d worn since her seventeenth birthday. An ugly scar, a little over a year old. It broke Tommie.

“They said you went on holiday,” she cried.

“Yeah,” Eira said. “Mom would.”

“Is that why you returned late? For senior year?”

Eira didn’t answer.

“You know what the bitch is? The real bitch?”

How was Tommie to know?

“Dad. I think he’s stayed this long because of me. Because Mom would fuck him over if he left, and fight for custody. Not for me, but to fucking spite him. To win something. How fucked up is that, Tommie?”

She kissed her girlfriend again.

“But I’m eighteen now. I can move out. Live with my girlfriend.”

And then, everything slid off her. The anger. The pain. The secret she’d carried alone for a year. Like she’d told her story, and stood naked in the end credits of a film too harsh to ever be made.

But scarred enough to ask.

“If she’ll have me,” she said. Maybe still believing she was too dumb for love.

⛧   \m/   ⛧

Anita woke to the slow drizzle of rain against the tent canvas. She found herself spread over Pierre, his morning-cock rubbing against her cunt like it wanted something. Like it was asking politely. She’d fallen asleep like that, just after Jean Michelle had fucked her ass. Against Pierre’s cock in her cunt.

It had hurt like fuck and fire.

But she was made of fuck and fire. Now.

Apparently.

Which is why she let herself slide onto Pierre’s cock and just let it fill the stupid void in her that never seemed to get enough.

Pierre jolted, but didn’t wake, so she let her hips do the work, as stealthily and quietly as her muffled giggles allowed.

Cum-burglar, she thought. First raw cock. First time risking it, welcoming it, wanting it.

She felt him twitch. Fucking felt his release, and had to bite her knuckles. She knew she was being stupid.

But still she managed to slide off him without waking him, find her shit, and sneak off into the rain. Didn’t even think about getting dressed before she could crouch in the mud a few tents away.

Still, she waited. Just to feel what cum felt like inside her.

She let a finger inside and felt wet in a different way, and it wasn’t hers.

Her boots.

EU 38.5. She’d read it somewhere; the average Norwegian female wears size 38.5. Weighed 68 kg, the same as her. Blonde and beautiful is just the echo of Scandinavia, posted on the front of travel brochures on some stupid mountain top overlooking a fjord.

Eira was blonde, 1.78 meters, and would look good on glossy paper. Anita was 1.67 meters tall, a brunette, and wore a 85B cup.

Average. Average. Average.

Nordstrand wasn’t poor, not spectacular. Respectable. Middle-class. Their house was a three-and-a-half-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom. Her dad worked as a teacher, and her mother worked in the administration at the same school. They left every morning in the gray Volvo V60. Returned in the afternoon. Together. Dinner was at six. Always six.

Straight down the middle of average.

Anita had felt average her whole life. Tagging along behind Eira, never seen, never heard. Never noticed. Not unpopular, just invisible.

My ass, she thought. The one thing they notice about me is when I’m already fading into the background.

She knew why she’d burst open. Why she’d become a whore. Because she needed to believe her cunt was anything but average. It was greedy. Never enough. Because average girls don’t get worshipped. Whores do.

“Anita Akselsen,” she whispered. “You’re such a dirty little slut.”

Then it dawned on her. Rain. Mud. Final day of Wacken.

She ran back to their tent, mud splashing, tits bare, and just holding her skirt and top in front of her as if anyone watching her would mistake her for anything but naked and fresh-fucked.

She expected to find them tangled and intertwined, bodies pressed against each other, and to smell their scent. And at first, she thought she was right.

Then, Eira’s head on Tommie’s shoulder. Against that black Slayer T. Tommie holding her, not like she loved her, but as if she protected her. Both girls half-dressed, like she’d left them in the pit of Metallica. Eira’s eyeliner just black streaks on her cheeks.

Then, the missing wristband.

The scar.

She crouched inside. Didn’t speak. Didn’t breathe loud. Just wiped her cunt with her top. Not because she suddenly regressed into yester-week-Anita, but because it felt wrong. Wrong to carry someone’s cum between her legs while looking at that scar. While Eira lay there, head against Tommie like it belonged there, and the scar making it clear how easily this moment could’ve never been.

The whole tent felt like something private. Sacred. Painful.

She wanted to wrap herself in a blanket and cry. But they hadn’t packed fucking blankets.

Eira found her like that—hugging her knees, mud streaked down her thighs, wrapped in sleep so deep Anita didn’t notice her slip out into the rain.

⛧   \m/   ⛧

She came back later, dragged fresh mud with her into the tent, but held something as obnoxious as fresh-fried chicken, three bottles of water, and no leather bracelet on her wrist.

She needed to talk about it now. While they were all sober. Before the night ended, morning came, and Wacken turned into a memory or dream they could deny.

“Yeah,” she said. “I slit my wrist. That was my birthday present to myself. Bled stupidly. Panicked.”

She twisted her wrist, bent her hand backward, as if a different angle or a different light would somehow make it different.

“Girls my age don’t want to die.”

Tommie took her arm, pulled her in with greasy fingers and breadcrumbs, traced the scar for the first time.

“You could get it covered,” she said. “Get a tattoo?”

Eira stared at her arm. Her wrist. Scratched that spot above her left tit as if an itch somewhere else made the scar fade.

“I’ve kept it covered so long, you know? Like it’s something to be ashamed of.”

She looked at Tommie.

Anita.

“I think I should keep it. As is, only…wear it.”

“Wear it?” Anita asked.

Eira repeated the tale she’d offered Tommie the night before. No tears this time, no drama. Just reading her story from a book she’d lived inside herself for so long. Too long.

“So, I’ll wear it. When I tell her I’m moving out. When I tell her I love Tommie. I’ll rub it in her face if she comes to our wedding.”

And then, cynically cold. Precise.

“I want you to fuck my dad’s brains out, Anita. Fuck him stupid, if you have to. But wait until he’s decided to move out, when she’ll go to her sister’s so she can pretend it was he who failed. Then fuck the shit out of that house, and leave everything behind.”

Tommie decided not to speak. Anita couldn’t.

They ate chicken.

“It’s raining,” Eira finally said. “We’ve got the mud. Alice Cooper, Testament. Five Finger Death Punch and Ghost. There’s beer.”

They waited for the then.

“Then. Iron fucking Maiden.”

“So…beers?” Anita asked, already trying to unfold her skirt as she reached for the pocket.

“Maxed my card,” Eira said.

Tommie laughed, “Yeah. Same.”

“Don’t worry,” Anita said, cocky. “I got—”

She blinked. Fished again.

“Shit. Shit. I must’ve dropped it.”

They all laughed now.

“This is it,” Tommie exhaled. “We’ve found our Wacken moment.”

Eira fished out her phone. Pressed the icon with the pink heart.

Waited.

“Yeah. No, everything’s fine, Dad.”

“Best time ever,” she continued.

“Just…yeah. Yeah, I know she would. I’ll deal with it when I get home, okay?”

A pause. Something said.

“No, Dad. She doesn’t. Never did. But it’s okay. Just…I need a favor?”

She laughed then.

“Why do you always think it’s about money, Dad?”

Another laugh.

“Well, truth is…yeah. I’m broke. We all are.”

Tommie had never seen Eira smile so bright. So relaxed. A smile that didn’t ask for anything, hint at manipulation, or demand attention. Just a girl talking to her dad.

“Really? You’re the best, Dad!”

Then,

“Wait.”

She looked away from Tommie. From Anita. But didn’t lower her voice.

“I love you, Dad.”

⛧   \m/   ⛧

They didn’t drink to get stupid. Didn’t need to get horny. They just ducked into the crowded tents to get out of the worst rainfall. They flirted with guys, whispered to girls. Kissed a brunette to taste the pin in her lip.

But most of all, they watched the bands. Let Alice Cooper be beheaded. School’s Out, they screamed. I’m Eighteen resonated, but these girls knew what they wanted. Ghost was funny, but so, so stupid.

Testament felt real.

But when the lights faded, and UFO’s Doctor, Doctor filled the PA with anticipation, the muddied field turned Chapel. No, a fucking Cathedral.

The girls had lived Iron Maiden at the Spectrum in Oslo, the fucking gymnasium at Fornebu. The fortress in Bergen. But in the drizzle of Wacken, it was gospel.

Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wrathchild, Two Minutes to Midnight. The Trooper.

“I can die now,” Anita yelled.

“Can you believe Bruce is pushing seventy?” Tommie answered.

Eira didn’t care. Just locked on the white bass with the West Ham emblem.

“Steve,” she muttered.

They danced a war dance to The Clansman. When they joined in on the repetitive chorus, screaming fucking Freedom, they believed it.

They let Rime of the Ancient Mariner be haunting. But when the rain started again during the intro to Fear of the Dark, eighty thousand hummed along, the crowd surging — it was too much.

Iron Maiden.

Then the tease of silence.

Hallowed be thy Name. Wasted Years. The Number of the fucking beast.

And when eighty thousand tired, wet, and emptied headbangers hummed Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, it felt solemn. Like a burial, and not even the fireworks could drown it out

They kissed. All three of them.

Tommie stretched. Pulled her shirt off.

“One more thing,” she smiled, losing her Slayer shirt forever.

“Mud diving?” Anita asked.

Tommie was already diving. Gone.

Anita followed.

Eira?

She rubbed her chest. A spot above her left tit.

⛧   \m/   ⛧

They returned to their tent sometime in the morning. Only to pick up their duffels, mostly empty now. They were covered in mud.

Even Eira.

The field looked wrecked. Battle-worn and bombed, even as the sun lit a rainbow across it.

There was a steady stream of cars pouring out of the field. A white van with mattresses and an RV stacked with Swedish boys who were a little more men than when they arrived, a little more scared. A Spanish convoy of tent trailers and wine that tasted like berries. A bus headed for Bergen, still talking about that slut from Oslo who had pissed their tent full.

A matted, black van with a huge black tent folded neatly for next year.

No one offered them a glance in the endless line for the showers, mud caking on their tits.

Tommie glanced at the plastic film on Eira’s tit, sealing what was underneath.

“You did?” she asked.

Eira didn’t answer. Regretted the mud-fuck slightly. Because of course, it had turned into that. And now, she wasn’t sure how much was in her and how much was on her. Of anything.

Anita didn’t offer it a second thought. Just wondered how to stop. This version of her wouldn’t fit inside their Nordstrand townhouse. Not their neighborhood. Not the bars in Oslo.

Eira’s dad.

The water was cold. Rinsing, but not cleaning.

They looked stupid on the shuttle bus, dressed in clean Maiden shirts. Wrinkled pants. Muddied boots.

A silent train ride to Kiel. A ferry departure at two. A panicked hustle for tickets, until Eira remembered it was all on her phone. A power bank she’d forgotten to return.

There was a sense of resentment about their boots as they boarded. Something quiet about how they found their cabin.

Anita showered. Again. Smelled like soap and shampoo when she stepped back into the cabin.

“Do I look different?” she asked, spreading her legs. Not vulgar or rubbing. Just asking.

“Tired, perhaps,” Tommie answered. “Changed? For sure. But not there, Anita.”

She rubbed her temple.

“It’s really just up here.”

Anita sighed.

“Yeah. Tired. Exhausted.”

She sighed again.

“And still, I’m going to get dressed now. Grab a beer. And somewhere between Kattegatt and the Oslofjord…”

Third sigh.

“It’s just bound to happen. Right?”

She fell silent.

⛧   \m/   ⛧

Tommie and Eira dozed. First, in their own bunks. Then, together. Whispering. Laughing. Trying to forget shit, trying to remember what mattered.

Tommie kissed her again. Then again. And unwrapped her from her tee. She stopped at the plastic film on Eira's left tit, just pressed under enough bra to leave her curious.

Last night, they'd been covered in mud. Mud, piss, and cum. And Tommie hadn’t even noticed the covered-up ink.

"You did?" Tommie echoed from that morning.

Eira smiled. Smiled like she was pregnant and had been waiting for the right moment to tell the father — the kind of smile that carries a gift you can’t give twice.

"Can I see?"

Eira didn't answer, but let Tommie unwrap her. Bra first, then the gauze tape. Then the careful removal of the film.

A black heart.

A black heart with barbed wire edges.

A black heart with barbed wire edges and a red, flaming T.

Tommie bawled. Ugly cried.

"Told you," Eira whispered. "I love you."

⛧   \m/   ⛧

Anita returned as they zipped up their bags. They hugged her without asking any questions.

Eira’s dad waited for them as they stepped onto the docks, only delayed by a curious customs officer. When the girls’ pockets were empty, and their bags held nothing but toothpaste and shampoo, two half-empty condom packs, and an empty bottle of sun lotion, she threatened them with a full cavity search.

Her supervisor took one look at the girls.

“Wacken,” she muttered, and let them pass.

Eira hugged her dad. Held him longer than he expected.

“Tommie!” he said when the redhead didn’t spit or fume or mock his blue shirt.

Their banter had always been friendly. Eira’s dad had always liked Tommie, since the day she laughed at Eira’s mother’s porcelain figurines in their hallway.

Eira smiled.

She didn’t present Anita so much as nudged her forward. Let her play coy. Acted like she didn’t notice her dad’s friendliness.

“I’m moving out, Dad,” she said once they were on the road. “Today.”

“Eira…” he started.

“You should, too. Not today. Soon. Get laid. Be happy.”

“Christ, Eira!”

“No. For real, Dad. Someone told me she thought you’re hot. Ew, right? But still.”

He stayed quiet, eyes on the road.

“It’s okay. I’m rooming with Tommie. She’s my girlfriend. I can’t wait to tell Mom.”

Tommie sighed.

Two months later, when the pins in her tits had healed properly and her period had skipped twice, as she looked at the two lines on the stick she’d just pissed on, she sighed again.

Something had stuck. Possibly from the black tent, the night she’d tried to remember and forget in the same breath.

Can you breastfeed with pins in your nipples?

Eighteen and mother, she thought.

Tommie had always been reckless. Maybe always stupid. But she never tried to escape consequences. Even if it meant facing them alone. Even if Eira would leave her.

She dialed her girlfriend, stuck at the library. Something about midterms and economics.

“Hey, Tommie!” she answered.

“I’m sorry,” Tommie choked out.

Silence.

“Yeah. If you’re breaking up with me…not like this, okay?”

“What? No!” Tommie sobbed. “You’re breaking up with me.”

Eira laughed. Too hard for the library.

“Did you take something, Tommie? You promised— That’s the dumbest thing—”

“I’m pregnant.”

The silence felt stretched. Long. Like a desert day. A scrape. Maybe her chair. Something in the background, a muffled, whispered sorry. Excuse me.

A door clicking?

“Okay.”

That felt worse. Then came the sigh. Long enough for Tommie to wish for an Eira eruption.

The only thing worse than Eira’s scolding was her silence.

Finally, she spoke. Not yelling. Not screaming. Not judging.

“So,” she said. “Who’s the mother?”

“What?” Tommie blinked. Not even confused. Drained and empty.

“We’re having a baby,” her girlfriend said, “It’s not fucking ideal, not with midterms and living with your mother, and strapped for cash, and my parents’ divorce and exams coming up and shit. But hey. We’re pregnant. She’d better have your hair.”

“Eira…”

“Shut up, Tommie. Just…” She whispered now. “Get naked. Put on your boots. Wait for me. I hear fucking pregnant is wild.”

⛧   \m/   ⛧

They moved in that winter. A rented flat two stops from the Uni library. Paint-stained walls, second-hand furniture. Posters of bands they’d both seen live, and one Eira swore she would never go to again. A corner shelf for baby books Tommie hadn’t opened yet. A kitchen too small for anything but take-out.

Or take-in, as Anita called it when she dropped in on Fridays with pre-packed food for a week. Sometimes on a Tuesday. Sometimes she stayed for a week.

Sometimes Tommie would do her. Eat her out, while Eira watched. If Tommie had been horny before the pregnancy, this was just stupid.

They didn’t party, and Tommie kept her promise to stay clean. They only picked up cock when they needed it. Sometimes they shared, other times they used the spare bedroom — while that was still an option. The more pregnant Tommie got, the wilder it was.

“Shit. What time is it?” Anita asked, not bothering to close her legs.

Eira glanced at the time. Hadn’t had time to put her books away.

“Eight-thirty,” she said. “Why?”

“Fuck,” Anita muttered. “I’m supposed to meet your dad in half an hour. At the Plaza.”

Eira closed her books now.

“Still fucking him, Anita? Really? Fuck.”

Anita giggled.

“I tried to quit him. After the first time in your mother’s bed. But fucking someone else after—”

She stopped smiling.

“Felt hollow. Fuck, Eira. He’s a great fuck.”

Eira held her ears.

“I don’t want to—”

“He makes me cum—like complete, you know. Not chasing. Just…wow. I don’t know. Like he found my bottom?”

Her next words were hesitant to come out. Checked Eira twice first.

“He asked me to move in. Is that fucked up?”

Eira laughed.

“I’m not calling you Mom!”

The day Tommie gave birth, it rained. Not drizzle. Not storm. Just rain. Hard, clean, unstoppable. Eira kissed her through every contraction. Bit her once. Tommie screamed that she hated her. Screamed that she loved her more.

The baby came out small, angry, alive, and a little ugly. Red curls. The nurse asked for a name.

“Wacken,” Eira said.

“No,” Tommie warned, eyes wide, breathless. “No, we are not naming our daughter Wacken.”

They laughed, cried, forgot who cut the cord.

And when the midwives scoffed at the blonde, like she was just the friend meant to wait in the hall, the nurses patted the mother and told her how brave she was. Then they told Tommie she had to get rid of the pins in her tits.

Eira just said no.

Because she wasn’t a neglected daughter, a burnt-out student, or a victim of gender bigotry. She was first and foremost a mother. She had been pregnant with Tommie, and she’d tried to catch each kick and heartbeat. She’d slept with one eye open and her hand on Tommie’s tummy.

And she’d seen her doctor. Insisted on the hormones.

So when the fucking nurses treated Tommie like a mother and Eira like an appendix, she lifted their baby, gentle as fuck, and ignored them while she lifted her shirt and freed her boob.

And when the baby latched, Eira knew she was hers. Just as much as Tommie’s. Theirs.

She didn’t notice how the room stopped around her. The nurse who gasped, the one whose hand covered her mouth.

She saw Tommie, though. Brave, yes.

But proud and crying.

“You’re…leaking, Eira!”

Yes, Eira had carried this baby alongside Tommie. Not in her belly, but in her rage. In her silence. In every second of pain they shared and never named.

And now, when the baby drank from her—when their daughter drank from her—there was nothing left to argue.

Not with the nurses, not with the midwives. Not with her mother. Not with love.

They went home with a baby, two duffels of borrowed clothes, a phone call from Tommie’s dad. A visit from her mother, promising her townhouse was theirs. Every bit as confused as they were on that first day at Wacken. Eira’s dad drove, Anita rode shotgun. In the back? Family.

And maybe they weren’t fixed. Not healed. But they weren’t hiding anymore.

None of it.

Eira kissed their daughter, then nestled her in her crib. Draped the Slayer blanket over her.  

Then, Tommie.

Sitting on the couch with her cup of tea, legs pulled up, blanket half-assed around her.

“You’re supposed to glow,” Eira said.

“A baby came out of my cunt,” Tommie whispered.

Eira wasn’t sure how to read it.

“Our baby,” she said. “Ours.”

“What?”

Tommie’s confusion was real.

“She’s ours. You don’t get to—”

“Eira. No, don’t be stupid. I want another one.”

Eira didn’t know what to say, so, “Fuck.”

“What?” Tommie asked.

“Just…”

Tommie grinned.

“You want to fuck me, don’t you?”

Eira wore her scar bare-armed that summer. Tommie pierced her nose. Anita dyed her hair black, then blond, then back again.

No one asked how it ended.

Because it didn’t. It just kept going. Louder. Sharper. Sweeter.

Like feedback after a perfect set.

And come August?

Wacken.