Page 121 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“There was one. Once. She tried. But not to join with the land. She gave blood, but not herself. She wanted to hold power, not share it. She wanted to command it. And the desert doesn’t take orders. It took her instead.”
He paused again.
“And she wasn’t you.”
Nora’s breath hitched.
“It wasn’t a love story,” he added quickly. “I didn’t… feel her. Not like I feel you.”
She looked at him then.
His glow was faint now, curling under his skin like smoke. But his eyes—god, his eyes—were wide and human and hurting.
She reached for his hand.
“I thought maybe…” He swallowed hard. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen at all. That the land had changed its mind. That I’d been made just to watch it die slower.”
“And then you came.”
His eyes flicked to hers.
“You laughed in the wind,” he said. “You yelled at the dirt. You walked barefoot into a sacred site with a stone in your hand and asked the desert if it wanted to fight.”
She snorted.
“Not very ritualistic of me.”
“No,” he said. “But it was real. And it was yours. And I felt it. Every word. Every time you touched the land and didn’t flinch.”
Silence settled between them again, deep and full.
Nora reached for him. He came willingly, folding into her space like he’d always been meant to fit there. She pressed her forehead to his.
“I didn’t expect to stay,” she whispered. “I came here to clean out a house and escape a life I wasn’t sure belonged to me anymore.”
He nodded.
“You stayed anyway.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
She exhaled.
“Because the land doesn’t just need a guardian,” she said. “It needs someone to understand it. To feel it. And I do.”
She looked at him, soft and sure.
“But it wasn’t just the land.”
He stilled.
“You’re what made it feel alive again.”
He closed his eyes.
And when he opened them again, the silence was different.
