Page 136 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Nora didn’t put on her clothes. She didn’t need them.
The air wrapped around her like silk. The ground didn’t hurt her feet anymore. Asher walked beside her, quiet, shirt slung over his shoulder, his hand brushing hers every few steps like he couldn’t stand to lose contact for long.
When the house came into view, it looked different. Clusters of cactus flowers bloomed along the edges of the porch. The Joshua trees had curled inward slightly, like guardians bowing their heads. A desert hare sat in the middle of the walkway,unafraid. Quail chirped softly from the fencepost. A bobcat napped in the shade of the rain barrel.
The desert had left its blessing.
And they belonged to it now.
***
Later that day, Nora sat at her desk, damp hair curling against her shoulders, sunlight warming her through the open window. Asher was napping on the porch, snoring softly.
She opened her journal, flipped to a clean page, and wrote:
We did not tame the land.
We fed it.
And it bloomed.
She didn’t submit her thesis. She didn’t return her advisor’s calls. She didn’t explain a single thing to anyone. She just kept writing.
Sometimes, Opal came by to drop off herbs and occasionally stayed for dinner. She never asked questions. Just smiled and said the land looked better these days.
And no one went to Hollow Wash anymore.
Not without leaving something behind.
One night, a week after the bloom, Gloria showed up unannounced.
No knock, just the slow creak on the porch and a muttered “Don’t shoot, I come bearing cheese.”
She had a small brown paper bag, a bottle of wine, and her usual expression of dry amusement. Nora met her at the door in cutoff shorts and an old tank, her braid half undone, a smear of ash still on her wrist from whatever she'd been drawing on the floor.
“You look like a woman who either just hexed a senator or finished very loud sex.”
“Both,” Nora said, stepping aside. “Welcome to the temple.”
Gloria whistled low, eyeing the way vines had started creeping along the porch columns. “Place smells like sage, wet dirt, and the kind of trouble I would've chased at twenty.”
“I recommend it at thirty-six, too.”
They sat on the porch, the three of them, legs up on the railing, sipping wine while watching the sun drop behind the red horizon. Cicadas buzzed in the still air.
Gloria leaned back in her chair, watching a hawk circle high above the Joshua trees. She didn’t speak for a long time. Just looked at Nora, then at Asher, then out at the stars.
Finally, she said, “He’d be proud.”
Nora’s throat tightened. “He wasn’t big on pride.”
“No,” Gloria agreed. “But he believed in legacy. You’re the one that bloomed, baby. He always said the land would choose someone like you.”
“And Asher?”
Gloria tilted her head, smiling softly at Asher. “He was the storm. But even storms want to rest, eventually.”
She looked out across the yard. The flowers hadn’t stopped blooming. The air still shimmered. The land remembered.
