Page 37 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
CHAPTER 10
THE MORNING ARRIVED slowly. Pale light filtered through the curtains and landed on the bed in soft slices. The house felt hollow again, emptied of Lauren’s energy and Miso’s tiny paws. Nora could still smell the sunscreen and incense clinging faintly to the guest sheets, but the laughter had faded.
She didn’t move for a long time. Just lay still, staring at the ceiling, letting the quiet crawl into her chest.
There were no texts. No calls. No looming deadlines to pretend to care about.
Just heat, and the ache that hadn’t left her body since he touched her in the dark.
She rose slowly, legs stiff, ribs tight. Her bare feet padded across the floor, cool against the tile. The obsidian stone rested on the dresser where she’d left it. She picked it up without thinking, thumb rubbing the smooth edge. It didn’t pulse. It didn’t glow. But it felt warm, like it remembered her.
Like it remembered him.
She moved through the house like someone waiting to be interrupted. Brushed her teeth. Made coffee. Opened a window and let the dry air in. The map lay on the table, curled at the corners. Its red thread traced a path that didn’t make sense on any modern topography, but it made sense to her. In a way that bypassed logic entirely.
She should’ve started walking hours ago. But something held her back.
She found herself standing in the hallway without remembering crossing the room. Her hand was on the doorknobto her old bedroom, now a room full of tapes and journals and crazy maps. She’d barely touched this room. It still smelled like old books and dust. She stepped inside.
She let herself stand in the room quietly for a moment, and then picked up a small leather-bound journal on the crowded desk. It had no date, no title. Just the worn texture of use.
She sat on the edge of the desk chair and opened it.
The desert doesn’t want obedience.
He’s not bound. He’s waiting.
The bloom has to open on its own.
Nora closed the book. Her heart thudded slow and deep in her chest.
Nora didn’t fully know what it meant, but the word bloom caught in her chest like a thorn. Not soft or pretty, not something to pluck.
Something that happens when you stop trying to control it.
She looked down at her own hands. Calloused, ink-stained, human. She didn’t feel like a bloom. She felt like a woman trying not to fall apart.
Her hand drifted unconsciously to her thigh. To the place where his fingers had ghosted across her in the dream, and tingled again when she saw him on the edge of the yard. The mark was gone, but the feeling remained, a phantom burn that pulsed low and hot in her belly.
She closed the journal and stood. Grabbed the map. The knife she found in her grandfather’s sock drawer. The water canteen. A slim flashlight, her notebook, the obsidian.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said, closing the door behind her and walking toward the horizon.
The red thread on the map vibrated in her memory like a line drawn under her skin.
She didn’t know what bloom meant. Not yet. But something inside her was already leaning toward the sun.
And when the wind shifted, brushing her cheek like a fingertip, she didn’t flinch.
She followed it.
The desert wasn’t hot yet, but it was getting there. That slow build of heat that made everything feel slightly unreal, like the landscape was melting at the edges and might reveal something else if you looked at it too long.
Nora kept her feet light on the dirt. Her backpack thumped gently with every step. The map was folded and stuffed in her back pocket, the thread burned into her memory anyway. It pulled at her like a low, magnetic hum.
The trail didn’t look like a trail. Just patches of earth slightly less unfriendly than the ones around them. The hills in the distance glimmered as if breathing.
“This is stupid,” she muttered. “Absolutely batshit. Hiking into cryptid country like I’m starring in a found footage documentary.”
