Page 126 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
She wasn’t writing a thesis anymore.
She was writing a testament.
It started like this:
There are places where the wild waits.
Not hidden. Not dormant. Just quiet.
Waiting for someone to come back barefoot.
To bleed. To bloom.
She didn’t call it nonfiction. Didn’t even call it research. It was a collection of half-memories, sensory data, and strange poetry that her department chair would probably have called “a psychotic break.”
She called it true.
She saved the file under a fake name. She wasn’t hiding. The truth just didn’t need her name on it. If it worked, it would grow like a fungus. Whispered. Shared. Posted on Reddit under a burner account.
Do not look directly at the horizon after midnight.
If you hear the wind stop, don’t stop with it.
Leave offerings. Or leave.
Nora stretched her legs and leaned back in the chair.
Inside, she could hear Asher humming.
He’d picked up the habit from her, humming little nothing melodies while he boiled water, sorted rocks, stared out windows. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed background noise until he became hers.
Hers.
She still wasn’t used to thinking that way. But the mark at her neck still pulsed when he touched her. And the desert still bloomed when she screamed.
So maybe she’d earned it.
She was about to go inside to refill her mug, maybe coax him into a second shower, when the crunch of tires on gravel made her freeze. It wasn’t the postal truck, or a lost hiker.
She stood slowly, brushing her palms against her thighs, and watched as a familiar cherry red Lincoln rolled to a stop just past the shade line.
The driver’s door creaked open. Gloria stepped out in a billow of perfume and attitude, her sunhat tilted dramatically and a shoebox tucked under one arm.
“You didn’t think I’d mind my business forever, did you?” she called.
Nora grinned. “I figured you’d been claimed by the diner grease gods.”
“Almost. But they said I could keep my soul if I brought you this.”
She lifted the box.
Nora’s stomach did a somersault.
“What is it?”
Gloria didn’t answer. Just handed it over.
The lid had been taped shut. Old masking tape, yellowed and curling.
