Be Happy Track

It was one of those days that felt borrowed from somewhere else. Like the weather had made a clerical error and sent a slice of mid-May into March. The air was clean but warm, the sun not yet strong enough to scorch, just enough to pull shadows from the trees in thin, gentle outlines.

Elin sat on a park bench in Himmelstalund, Norrköping, the old one near the river path where moss grew along the legs like it had chosen to stay. Her legs bounced rhythmically, back and forth, as if her body couldn't quite contain the lightness pooling inside her. The leftover dampness from last night's rain had already evaporated from the grass, leaving only the faintest glisten on the darker earth. Birds threaded sharp notes through the air, and somewhere nearby, a cyclist called out and then was gone.

Next to her, Linn leaned back with the kind of exhale that came from somewhere older than the lungs. Her shoulders weren't rigid. Her hands weren't clenched. For once, she wasn't calculating.

She turned slightly toward Elin and smiled. Not performative, not guarded. Just... soft.

"Where have you been all my life?" she asked, voice light, like it didn't want to press too hard on the moment in case it broke.

Elin laughed, quick and quiet. Her head tilted toward the sky before answering, "I don't know. Where have you been?"

It wasn't flirtation. Not entirely. It was something deeper. Stranger. Like they'd walked through countless versions of their lives and only just now, on a sun-washed bench in a quiet park, had their timelines finally remembered how to meet.

For Elin, it felt like waking inside someone else's dream and realizing it fit her better than her own. There was no tension. No strain. Just the uncanny, impossible ease of recognition. A rhythm she didn't need to learn because she had always known it.

She didn't understand it. But she trusted it.

And Linn, who had spent so long folding herself into precision, into containment, was unraveling in all the right ways. She was still herself: exact, perceptive, built like a fortress of logic. But now there was a crack in the stone. Not a break. A door. She let herself lean into the warmth. Let herself make small jokes. Nudged her knee gently against Elin's without pulling back. Let herself be seen.

The sky overhead was an uninterrupted blue, impossibly high. No clouds, no threat. As if the rain had never happened. As if everything in the world had quietly agreed to let this one hour be unbroken.

Meanwhile, Trine sat in 14A on a flight descending toward Oslo. She had the window shade open, but her eyes were closed.

Her mind wasn't in the plane. It was moving backward, methodically, through years she had locked away. Not trauma, exactly. Not memory. Just... things that would never be spoken aloud. Thoughts that didn't fit the world's shapes. Thoughts that weren't wrong, but weren't safe either. There were things Trine would never say to another living person. Not because she was ashamed, but because language itself had too many holes to carry them.

She breathed slowly. One count in. Three counts out.

And then... there they were.

Two women. Clear as dreamlight. Not memory. Not vision. Just presence.

Linn. Elin.

She saw them not where they were, but as they were. On the park bench, caught in sunlight, leaning slightly toward each other like mirror images leaning into the glass.

She noted it, quietly, precisely.

They are meeting for the first time.

And neither of them knows how.

There was no trace of introduction. No before. No lead-in.

Just this moment, dropped whole into the stream of their lives like a photograph found in someone else's album.

Trine frowned. Her mind adjusted. Categorized.

Even from this altitude, she could see the threads forming.

These two are already familiar.

But their timelines do not match.

And even she, methodical, practiced, endlessly analytical, could not determine the origin point.