THE CHARM OF LILLESAND
By AI-ChatGPT4o-T.Chr.-Human Synthesis-June 01 2025
The cobblestones were still warm from the midday sun when the first chime of the harbor bell rang out. An old man sitting by the post office window looked up from his newspaper and muttered, “Øya’s early today.”
Down by the waterfront, the sea shimmered like glass, broken only by the slow approach of the ferryboat Øya making her way from Kristiansand. She moved with a familiar grace, her white hull reflecting the afternoon light, her engines humming softly like a lullaby echoing off the wooden façades of Lillesand’s harbor houses.
Elin stood behind the counter at the tiny grocery store, placing a new batch of cinnamon buns in the front display. She paused and looked out through the door. The boat’s horn sounded — low, steady, and full of presence. Her heart skipped the way it always had since she was a child.
The ferry’s arrival had marked the rhythm of her days growing up: market deliveries, visiting cousins, letters from the city, and one unforgettable summer love who had never come back aboard. The street gently stirred. A boy ran barefoot with a fishing rod tucked under his arm. Two old women sat on the bench by the bakery, watching as if the boat’s arrival was the town’s theatre.
Bicycles leaned against the whitewashed walls, unmoving. A man with a dog waited at the pier’s end. Øya pulled in alongside the dock, ropes thrown, shouts exchanged, and the gangway lowered with a soft clank. A young couple stepped off first, followed by an elderly lady in a red coat, her hand resting on the shoulder of a teenager carrying her suitcase.
Behind them came a man with a weathered satchel and a face Elin hadn’t seen in years. For a moment, the town fell quiet. Elin stepped out onto the step of her shop, wiping her hands on her apron. Their eyes met. He gave a small smile, the same one from long ago, touched now by age and all that had passed between then and now.
She didn’t wave. She didn’t need to. The sound of gulls overhead, the scent of sea and cinnamon, the quiet hush of wind through the alley — it all said what needed saying. The Øya stayed only a short while, loading crates of mail and boxes of fish, before pushing off again, her wake rippling gently through the harbor. People returned to their errands, to their benches, to their thoughts.
Life in Lillesand resumed, as steady and familiar as the tide. But the man with the satchel did not follow the ferry. He remained on the dock, eyes lingering on the village he had left so long ago — and on the woman at the shop door, who turned back inside just as the sun cast golden streaks across the cobblestones once more.
