“Raw clarity”

The corridor hums with residual electricity from the old lightning, my mouth bitter with champagne and vanished certainty. I close the door behind me, press my forehead against burnished wood, and let the distance from the bar settle into my bones.

Karim’s words pursue me: Zürich. Hasna waiting. Something bigger than any of us.

My phone trembles in my hand. The world outside is all storm and glassy quiet, but inside I am resolved, wound tight with spinning doubts.

I scroll to Hasna’s number, thumb hovering, mouth suddenly dry. The phone rings and rings.

Finally, her voice—windy, breathless, too far away.

“Elena?”

I steady myself. “Hasna, I need answers. Karim appeared at the hotel and said I have to leave with him. Now. He said you’d explain. Tell me this isn’t some wild errand.”

Her reply comes taut, threaded with urgency. “He’s right. Things shifted tonight. The man Tarmo was meant to meet is not who we thought. Greater forces are turning, and too many eyes are on you. You’re both targets now. There isn’t time for riddles—trust Karim and come to Zürich. I’ll tell you more here.”

“Sandi—has something happened?” My questions pile up, brittle as glass.

Hasna’s breath catches. “Sandi is at risk, but unexpectedly prepared. Someone’s been hunting—her, you, any loose thread. You must move fast and keep your questions for Zürich. Avoid open channels, not even me… not always.”

I want to demand more, but the line stretches thin, fraying. “Am I in personal danger? Is Tarmo—” I hesitate. “An enemy or a casualty?”

A pause, the longest yet. For a heartbeat, I hear only static—wind or the whine of fate.

“Elena, trust what you see, not what you’re told. I’ll explain everything in Zürich,” Hasna finally whispers. “Be safe. See you soon.”

The call drops. I stare at my phone, knuckles bone-white, lungs suddenly starved of air.

I dial the next number almost without thinking. Mrs. H picks up after two rings, crisp as ever, velvet over steel.

“Elena, a bit late to be awake, aren’t you?” she greets me, as if this were routine.

“Mrs. H, don’t play coy,” I snap, voice strained. “Hasna says Zürich is the only safe place, Karim is here in person, and everything feels wrong. What am I missing? What’s so dangerous that you’re trusting my life to riddles and messengers?”

The kind of hush that only happens when someone is thinking three moves ahead.

“Zürich is safe—for now. I agreed with Hasna on that. Things in Tartu have… accelerated. The network is tightening. You’ve seen wisps, but there’s real fire now. Tarmo is not blameless, but he should have seen it coming. He has enough informants. I suppose he was less focused than usual… You’re at the heart of a much larger web.”

“Should I tell him? Warn him? Or is he another hand moving the strings?”

Mrs. H hesitates—a subtle inhale, a tell. “Warn him if your gut says so. But don’t trust anyone’s motives blindly, including his. Or mine.”

I let the silence stretch, deciding whether to leap or run.

“When and how do you plan to bring me to Zürich?” I finally ask. “With Karim, immediately?”

“He will get you there safely. Pack only what you need. Avoid questions. Your wits are your last insurance, Elena. Use them. I’ll be waiting.”

Her voice is gentle as dusk falling, but the message is iron.

When the line clicks dead, I sit back on the rumpled bedspread, searching the blur of city lights for patterns. My mind spins with new coordinates—loyalty, danger, the sharp edge of necessary intuition. It’s not fear pulsing in my veins now, but clarity. I won’t be coerced. I want answers—real, raw, and mine.

I check my bag, steady my breathing, and prepare to move before the past or the city can catch up. The curtain might not rise for me again, but I swear to myself: I’ll tear off just enough to glimpse what lies on the other side.

---

The Rethink

To hell with action until I think for myself. Alone in my room, I toss my phone onto the nightstand—a live grenade among empty glasses and hastily compiled notes. The urge to race down corridors, to pack, to obey someone else’s sense of urgency—no. Not yet. My heart hammers against my ribs; clarity demands calm.

I strip off velvet and the clinging residues of the evening, step beneath the punishing hiss of the shower, and let water drum static over my skull. Soap, heat, the sharp bite of near-cold at the end. I scrub the champagne from my mouth and clear the bubbles from my head, washing away all the voices except my own.

The routine helps. Step by step, I pattern my breathing through small rituals—the shimmer of Hasna’s shard still there against my throat, stubborn as conviction, the familiar tangle of my hair, the touch of towel and breath on clean skin. Thought returns, crisp and vital: What am I missing? Am I pawn, observer, or player? Who decides when puppets move, when they stop?

Zürich—or nowhere—but on my own terms.

“Well, I’ve never been part of the Muppet routine, so I’m not starting the strings-and-hands dance at this point in my life. I huff, thinking of Cookie Monster’s chaos and Kermit’s earnest desperation, of Statler and Waldorf heckling from their balcony perch. Or maybe I’m Miss Piggy—so in love, and so daft, I can’t see the set is on fire.”

Sometimes dark humour is all that stands between sanity and the abyss.

I stop dead as I step back into my room, towel clutched to my chest, unprepared for the intruder.

Steam threads through the air as I step—damp, reborn—back into my room, expecting only clutter and solitude. Instead: Tarmo. He’s there, composed in the armchair beneath the lamplight, hands folded, gaze following condensation down the window before fixing on me. No invitation. No warning.

I almost ask how he got in, but Tarmo’s never needed keys—or permission.

I wrap myself in a robe, the intimacy awkward, static rising under my skin. I should be startled, maybe even furious. Instead, I’m hyperaware: of his presence, of the pulse in my neck, of relief so unwelcome I almost flinch from it.

He waits. The silence stretches between us, drawn taut by everything unsaid—the only soundtrack the whisper of city rain and my heart struggling to recalibrate.

When he finally speaks, his voice is low, carved with fatigue and something that might almost be resignation.
“Are you running away, or just washing off the theatre?”

I match his gaze, refusing to blink. “Neither. Just thinking for myself. Besides, it’s time someone did.”

A flicker of a smile passes across his lips—ambiguous, edged, almost mournful.

The city outside holds its breath. I let myself settle on the edge of the bed, not rushing, not demanding, not retreating. The distance between us is all that’s left of certainty.

“Well, Tarmo.” My voice is weary, edged with challenge. “If you’re here to give me answers for once, now’s your chance.” The rest hangs unspoken—otherwise, leave.

He exhales, and the world hushes.

He studies me, eyes steady—not quite soft, not quite hard. “I could say you need to trust me,” he says, voice vibrating with fatigue and promise, “but I know you won’t. Not yet.”

I let the silence fill the room, refusing to nod or look away.

“You want the truth?” he asks. “Not the whole web, maybe, but something real. But first, you have to decide if you want to stay, Elena. With me. Even now.”

He stands—slow, deliberate—crossing the room until he’s there, heat radiating from him, the air between us crackling as old caution and calculation finally fall away. “I’m tired of pretending I don’t want you here. No more theatre. No more lies. Just this.”

He stops in front of me, tall and solid, the lamplight flickering, making his presence loom larger than the room itself. He doesn’t need to ask; it’s clear in the slow, essential tension snapping between us.

His hands find the knot at my waist and untie it, the robe loosening, cold air sweeping across my skin. My pulse leaps at the loss of its shield, but I don’t flinch—I lean into the cold, into his certainty, complicit as he urges me gently, insistently, back onto the bed.

No ceremony, no performance; only the direct current of desire as he kneels and parts my legs, his gaze never leaving mine. I feel the air shift across places kept secret all evening, and in him, I sense the unspoken: that wherever he looked, he always saw straight through velvet and pretence to the naked truth I carried.

He lowers his mouth—no preamble, no words—only hunger, deliberate, methodical, never looking away except to close his eyes in bone-deep focus. I yield, choosing, letting him find what he’s sensed in silence: undoing days of caution, each tension in my body unspooling under his insistence.

When at last he draws every last shuddered breath from me—no mercy in his rhythm, only the determined undoing of doubt—he lifts his head, mouth shining, and meets my gaze with a promise so heated it feels feverish.

He undresses slowly, every fold of clothing discarded with steady intention, never dropping my eyes. Each aftershock in my body is marked, measured, claimed by the intensity of his stare.

Naked, he joins me. He takes my knee, pushes it aside, and enters me without haste, filling me, pinning me, holding my gaze so fully the room narrows to nothing but this charged strip of contact—mouths hovering, breath moving heavy between us, my body pinned and possessed yet wholly awake and willing beneath him.

No script. No forgiveness—only the deliberate, controlled rhythm of his thrusts, deepening with every breath. His hands brace at either side of my head, holding the space around me, the sound of the city barely making it through. Each movement is a question and an answer: are you here? Will you stay? My arms remain open, the last of my secrets dissolving between skin and the tidal hush of gasping, surrender, and demand.

With every surge, every gaze, every element of patience and tension turns to skin. Here, there is nothing left to orchestrate or hide—nothing but Elena, moving by her own choice, taking and being taken in mutual ruin and renewal.

I don’t close my eyes. I want to see him—shoulders taut, jaw clenched, a tension running just below his mastery. He mutters my name—not a question, not a plea, but something elemental, resonating through his chest into mine as if it could only ever belong here.—Odin? For a blink, my brain ricochets: Did he just invoke Norse gods? Am I his Valkyrie, ferried off on a tide of sweat and madness? 

His rhythm slips its leash, hips snapping, civility abandoned in favour of hunger. I let it go, let myself unravel beneath him—raw, alive—every nerve shining with anticipation as the world crashes back in, myth and reality blurred by pleasure.

He bends, lips grazing my shoulder before biting the crook of my neck. I gasp, arching helplessly against him, the world distilling to that knife-edge where pain and pleasure blur, indistinguishable. His palm tightens on my thigh, spreading me wider, driving deeper.

My climax fans out through me—a rolling, consuming heat, limbs tense and straining beneath his weight. I cry out, sensation peaking, scattering my thoughts to white noise. Only then does he let go, control breaking as his hips jerk in time with mine, breath gone ragged, the slick heat of sweat blooming in the hollow between our bodies.

Afterwards, only the pulse of blood and silence fills the room.

He gathers me into his arms, the movement unhesitating and tender—skin burning, breath slowing, his hand broad and steady over my shoulder, making room for nothing but closeness. For a few stunned heartbeats, I let myself rest, face pressed to the scar low on his chest, the unmade bed and city lights a blur beyond frost-softened glass.

But as seconds pass, the reality of it—the blunt press of his body, the illusion of impossible safety, my heart racing against his—seeps in. I’d braced for hunger, for danger, for a night stretched tight with secrets and risk; I hadn’t braced for this—this tidal contentment, this shattering comfort. In his arms, warmth stripped me down to the marrow, and for the first time in years, I could breathe all the way in.

It unsettles me—how good it feels, how breakable I become curled against him, how raw tenderness can leave me more exposed than desire did. When I try to pull away, to reassemble those old distances, his hand only presses firmer against the small of my back, as if to wordlessly insist: for now, I’m allowed to stay.

I whisper, half-admitting to the hush, “I wasn’t expecting this.”

He just holds me tighter, as if he’s read every question in my eyes and, for once, chooses to answer with silence.

And somewhere between our heartbeats and the city’s blurred lights, my mind snaps back to itself:
What the fresh hell did I get myself into now?

---

Author’s Note

Let’s be honest: sex has never been about subtlety. Not in myth, not in modernity, and certainly not in these pages. The gods seduced swans and mortals; we seduce with emojis or, in rare fits of optimism, poetry. Either way, someone ends up nude and bewildered.

In ancient sagas, sex explained the seasons, started wars, and birthed monsters. Today, it mostly triggers existential dread and the urge to redecorate. Love is still sold as salvation or doom, and mythology lingers in every awkward undressing—no matter how many times you’ve read Ovid, nobody ever feels quite like Artemis in a hotel robe.

We reach for meaning, chanting each other’s names as if that will conjure immortality, or at least distract from bad lighting and self-doubt. If your lover mutters “Odin” in the dark, don’t be alarmed: you, too, can be a Valkyrie—assuming you like your orgasms with a side of apotheosis and battlefield cleanup.

Here’s the truest legend I know: Behind every supposed “divine union” is a nervous animal with history’s entire library whispering nonsense in their ear. The rest is just shower steam and stories we invent to keep from admitting that love, like myth, is both dazzlingly significant and entirely absurd.

So, next time the ritual finds you—body tangled, mind spiralling, heart half-heroic, half-terrified—remember: the gods are watching, rolling their eyes, and rooting for anyone who can laugh about it after.

I.Ph.

May myths and Muppets make you smile, and mischief manageable.