Page 124 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“You can twist it,” she offered. “It’s not a rattlesnake.”
He stared at it like it was an ancient trap. “Why does it hiss?”
“Because it’s old. Like most of the things in this house.”
“Will you hiss when you’re old?”
“Already do.”
That got a half-smile out of him, small and slow, like a muscle he was still learning to use. He turned the tap. The pipes groaned. The faucet spit. He recoiled, and Nora laughed so hard she nearly fell against the wall.
“Congratulations,” Nora said, wiping tears from her eyes. “You’ve defeated indoor plumbing.”
Later, when he crouched at the edge of the garden and watched a hummingbird without blinking for a full three minutes, she fell in love with him all over again.
There was peace now. But not stasis.
The land still moved beneath them, softly and subtly. Flowers bloomed in strange places. Cracks in the steps, the center of her old boots, the windowsill where she’d set down her tea. Rain swept through their yard but never reached town. Coyotes watched from the ridge but didn’t come closer. The wind curled through the chimes she had forgotten she hung. The house creaked differently now.
Her body hummed with it. The desert remembered her.
She slept deeply now, wrapped in Asher’s arms or sprawled across him like a sun-warmed cat. He let her. He never pulled away.
And when she woke, she cooked.
That morning, she cracked eight eggs into a bowl and stirred them with cream. Diced tomatoes. Garlic. Toasted thick slices of bread. There was something sacred in the sizzle of oil in cast iron, in the way Asher leaned against the counter behind her, arms crossed, watching her like it was a ritual. The scent of cooking filled the space like a memory she hadn’t known she missed.
She plated breakfast and set two forks on the table. She didn’t say “come eat.” She didn’t have to.
Asher slid into the chair across from her and picked up his fork with both hands, like the act of eating something she made was still holy.
Nora watched him chew, watched the way his eyes fluttered shut when he swallowed. She found herself smiling again, the kind that started deep and didn’t need to be seen.
Her veins still glowed faintly. She noticed it most in the morning, when the sunlight hit her skin at a slant and made her wrists shimmer like water.
Asher still changed, his bark morphing slowly into something softer, like human skin. The land was still changing them, but not violently now. More like tide and sediment. Slow, inevitable, sacred.
After breakfast, she cleaned the pans while he stacked firewood by the porch. She hummed as she worked. The sound of someone who didn’t need to rush.
The mattress on the floor wasn’t meant to be permanent.
Just something she’d dragged into the back room during the heat wave, when the front of the house got too hot and the desert air needed to be let in through every screen, every door. It was thin. Lumpy. Smelled like sage and old stories. She loved it.
Asher was already there when she wandered in, shirtless, sprawled on his back with one knee bent, one arm behind his head. His chest rose and fell slowly, his eyes half-lidded but open. He looked like he’d been waiting without urgency, like he would’ve laid there all day if she hadn’t come looking.
She stepped into the room, her tank top loose against her bare skin, soft cotton brushing her nipples as she moved. She’d showered, but only barely. There was still dirt on the arches of her feet. A smudge of ash on her elbow.
He looked at her like she was still glowing.
“You’re staring,” she said, easing down beside him.
“You always say that,” he murmured.
“Because you always are.”
He didn’t argue.
She stretched out beside him, cheek against his shoulder, one hand splayed across his chest. The beat of him moved under her palm like a tide, low and steady. She traced the line where bark met flesh, her fingers catching in the roughness, then smoothing down over the curve of his ribs.
