Page 122 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
This wasn’t the quiet of fear, or grief, or distance.
It was the silence that comes after being seen.
“I think the desert chose you a long time ago,” he said. “When you lived here before.”
“I just took my sweet time catching up?”
“Something like that.”
She leaned into his touch, closed her eyes.
“Are you the only one?” Nora asked.
He was quiet a long time.
Then, “No.”
She looked at him.
His gaze had gone distant, like he was seeing through her, into memory.
“Every wild place had its Guardian,” he said. “Swamps. Forests. Canyons. Glacial peaks. They all had watchers once. Most still do. But they go quiet without someone to remember them.”
“And someone like me…”
He nodded.
“They call you back. Before the wild goes still forever.”
She ran her hand down his chest, thoughtful. “So I’m not the only weird girl… who likes to fuck nature spirits?”
That made him laugh again.
“You’re the only one who could make the desert bloom.”
The sun had dropped low enough that the sky bled softly across the horizon, amber at the edges, purple curling underneath like a bruise. The world looked painted. Still. Sacred.
Nora stood on the porch, barefoot, wrapped in one of her grandfather’s old flannel shirts, sleeves too long and hem brushing her thighs. The wind tugged gently at her hair. The silence was thick with warmth.
Behind her, Asher lingered just inside the doorway. Watching. Waiting. His presence was a pulse against the back of her spine.
She stepped down into the sand.
The dirt gave a little under her feet, like it remembered her weight.
She walked slowly, past the patch of dirt where the cholla grew, past the ghost of the rusted swing set, out toward the edge of the wash. The basin stretched wide in front of her, cracked and blooming in equal measure. The Hollow glowed faintly in the distance, the ruins of the Watcher slumped but softened by wildflowers.
She stopped at the boundary where her grandfather’s land ended and the wild began.
She knelt, slowly.
Pressed her palm flat to the earth.
It hummed beneath her skin, low and deep. It felt awake.
She didn’t speak right away.
When she did, her voice was steady. Quiet. A little rough.
