Page 65 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
She’d ripped that page out and burned it in the sink.
The house didn’t care.
Neither did the stone on the table.
It had gone dull. Cold. Dead weight in her palm, like a phone you keep checking for messages you know aren’t coming.
But that morning, something finally shifted.
She’d whispered his name in her sleep.
Not like a plea. Like a truth.
The kind that echoes louder than a scream.
It was early. The light was slanted and pale, barely bright enough to give shape to the ridges outside. Nora sat cross-legged on the porch with a mug of coffee cooling in her hand and sweat already clinging to the back of her neck. Her nightshirt stuck to her thighs. She hadn’t really slept. Just drifted, skin crawling with a feeling she couldn’t shake.
She stared out at the desert, eyes unfocused.
Then the wind shifted.
She set her mug down, standing slowly.
The stone on the table pulsed once.
And she exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for weeks.
She stood barefoot in the doorway and let the moment stretch.
The wind moved again. Her hair fluttered back from her neck. Goosebumps lifted along her arms.
Something behind her shifted. A breath. Slow. Intentional. She turned. He was inside.
No flash of light. No crumbling wall. No mystic flare of sand spiraling into form.
He was just there.
In the house. In the fucking hallway, like he’d walked in and never left.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
But the silence broke anyway.
She stepped back.
He stepped forward.
One pace. Measured. Heavy.
He looked… different.
Not smaller. Not softer. Still vast. Still shadow-wrapped. Still other.
But something in his face was changed.
Like absence had carved lines into him that hadn’t been there before. Like he’d missed her.
And that thought, that this creature made of ancient bark and hunger had been out there somewhere missing her, made something hot and stupid bloom in her throat.
