Page 83 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
She touched it.
And felt her pulse there.
Her own. But not just hers.
She blinked.
Her irises looked darker. Like something had dropped behind them. A curtain pulled back.
She stepped back from the mirror and went outside. No shoes. No hesitation.
The desert didn’t welcome her.
It didn’t resist her either.
It simply knew her now.
And she knew it.
She walked barefoot to the edge of the wash, the wind catching her hair and brushing against her thighs like a hand that had been here before. There were no flowers blooming this time. No winds howling. Just silence, and dust, and the crackle of cicadas in the brush.
She knelt beside a flat rock and ran her hands over its surface. Warm. Dry. Familiar.
And then she whispered, “I sent him away.”
She waited.
The air didn’t answer.
She lowered her head, forehead pressed to the stone.
The stone was warm. The wind shifted against her cheek like a breath, like a blessing. She stayed there, kneeling in the dirt, letting the silence settle over her.
“I choose you,” she whispered.
But nothing whispered back.
Eventually, she stood. Brushed herself off. Walked back to the house in bare feet.
Inside, the obsidian stone sat still on the table. Not doing anything at all.
She made coffee. Drank it too fast. Tried to write. The words didn’t come.
The quiet wasn’t peace. It was a vacuum.
She didn’t want mystery. She wanted something real to hold onto.
She didn’t remember deciding to go to the diner.
One minute she was pacing the kitchen, still buzzing with heat and aftershock. The next, she was pushing open the glass door to the place that always smelled like burnt toast and yesterday’s gossip.
Nora slid into her booth near the back, where the morning sun couldn’t glare directly into her soul.
Gloria spotted her immediately. She wiped her hands on her apron, came over with a half-full pot, and raised an eyebrow like Nora had already said something suspicious.
“You’re up early,” Gloria said. “Or still not sleeping?”
Nora stared at the table for a second, then nodded. “One of those.”
