Page 79 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
As it brewed, she tried to journal.
Two sentences in, she froze.
The words on the page didn’t feel like hers. Her handwriting looked different. Slanted. Like someone had taken her voice and rotated it slightly on its axis.
She stared at the ink bleeding into paper.
She was changed.
Not metaphorically.
Something fundamental had shifted.
She closed the notebook.
Pressed a hand to the mark on her thigh.
Still warm. Still humming.
She was halfway to the sink when something outside caught her eye. A movement through the dusty glass. Just wind, she told herself. Just desert distortion. Just—
A knock at the door.
Nora froze.
She moved to the window and peeked out.
And swore under her breath.
It was Eli.
She hadn’t thought about him in days. And now here he was.
Fresh-shaved, wearing that same soft-buttoned concern he always wore when he thought she needed “grounding.”
The coffee finished with a sputter and hiss.
Nora didn’t move, didn’t answer the door.
But he knocked again.
And again.
And she knew this wasn’t going away.
The past had come to check in.
And Nora wasn’t sure which one of them would recognize the other.
The knock came again, sharper this time.
Nora opened the door with a mug of coffee in one hand and the bite on her neck in full view.
Eli blinked at her.
He was in jeans and a button-down rolled at the sleeves, sunglasses perched carefully in the collar like he was modeling “Concerned Ex-Boyfriend, Desert Edition” for a J.Crew catalog. He looked hydrated, well-rested, vaguely paternal, and already annoyed.
She looked… not like herself.
