Page 137 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“My mother used to say the desert doesn’t keep things unless they’re useful,” Gloria said. “But I think she was wrong.”
“Oh?”
“I think the desert keeps what it loves.”
Nora swallowed. That landed somewhere deep.
Then Gloria pulled something small from her pocket; an old silver ring with a pale desert agate set in the center. Rough. Weather-worn. Familiar.
“This was your grandmother’s,” she said, placing it on the armrest between them. “She gave it to me, said one day it would come back to the bloom.”
Nora picked up, turning it over in her palm. “You kept it?”
“Didn’t feel right to wear it. Didn’t feel right to lose it.”
She looked over.
“Feels right now.”
Nora slipped it onto her finger. It fit. Not just her hand. Her.
She spun the ring on her finger, imagining her grandmother wearing it. Her grandmother never stepped into the desert fully. But maybe that was the point. She stayed in the world long enough to leave a trail. And Nora had followed it.
As they sipped their wine, no one said much. The desert didn’t need narration anymore. It just was.
Later, Asher found her in the kitchen, barefoot, scribbling symbols and drawings on the wall with charcoal. Her tank top was damp with sweat, her braid messy and full of flower petals from who-knew-where.
He pressed up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Are we a fairytale now?” he murmured.
She laughed.
“No,” she said.
Then turned in his arms, kissed him slow, and pulled him toward the bedroom.
“We’re the part that comes after.”
That night, she lay in bed beside Asher, the window open to the sound of wind and blooming things. His hand found her waist like it always would.
The desert never stopped blooming.
And neither did she.
She was no longer just Nora.
She was the one who stayed.
And the land bloomed with her.
And this time, the desert kept what it loved.
EPILOGUE: THE HOUSE THAT BLOOMED
THE DESERT HAD begun to soften.
Not in its edges or heat. That still scorched and whispered and thrummed like a living thing. But in how it met the tiny stucco house Nora and Asher called home. The vines that had once withered in the sun now bloomed in stubborn bursts, tangled with night-blooming jasmine and prickly pear, reaching up like they wanted to touch the stars.
