Page 130 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“If you’re hearing this, then you stayed. I knew you would.”
She exhaled.
“This place doesn’t keep people. It lets them root, but only if they’re willing. If they give more than they take.”
There was a pause. The sound of him clearing his throat. A cough.
“It was always going to be you, little bloom. I only kept the door ajar. You were always going to walk through it. I justwanted it to be your choice, to let you live enough before the land called you home.”
A long pause.
“The truth’s not in the journals. It’s under your feet. Inside your blood. You’ll feel it when the wind changes.”
The tape crackled.
Something in his voice cracked too, softened.
“Now it’s your turn to blossom.”
The tape hissed again.
“You’ll know what to do. The land remembers. The blood does too.”
Nora pressed her hand to her chest. The mark on her neck thrummed beneath her palm.
Another pause.
Then, softer than anything he’d ever said to her in life:
“She’s the bloom.
He’s the storm.
Together, they root.
I love you, Nora.”
The tape clicked. Stopped.
And that was it.
A tear ran down Nora’s cheek as she sat there, barefoot on the kitchen floor, the morning light draping across her thighs, the smell of creosote and memories hanging thick in the air.
Something in her had ached to hear that voice again.
And now, having heard it, the words, the knowing in them, the love braided through every quiet pause, she felt like something inside her had finally been named.
It was closure, and also permission.
To stop doubting. To step forward. To become who he always knew she would become.
She rose slowly.
She was ready.
The desert wasn’t calling.
It was waiting.
