Page 85 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“This isn’t comfort,” Gloria said. “It’s choice. One most folks never make.”
***
That night, Nora couldn’t sleep. Not because the wind was loud or the heat was unbearable, but because everything felt... expectant.
The flowers on her porch were half-wilted.
The air tasted metallic.
When she touched the mark on her neck, it throbbed like it had its own pulse. Like something inside her was keeping time with something outside her. And neither of them wanted to wait.
She opened her grandfather’s journal again and found pages she hadn’t noticed before. Or maybe she had, but they read differently now.
I’ve felt it watching. The land. The silence.
There’s a place near the ridge where nothing grows. No birdsong. No wind. I went there today and stood too long. The ground pulsed beneath me, not welcome. Not warning. Just… knowing.
Opal says the desert doesn’t punish. It remembers.
Someone else stood there once. A woman. Long before me.
The Bloom must choose, yes. But she must also be met.
This one wasn’t.
She gave herself too early. Or too alone.
The Guardian was not ready. Or not whole.
And the land held the memory like a scar.
Nora stared at the page, breath shallow. It didn’t feel like prophecy. It felt like grief. Like her grandfather had found a ghost and didn’t know what to do with it.
There had been another. Not a myth. A woman.
Not met. Not remembered by name.
But the desert knew her.
And it did not forget.
CHAPTER 18
THE SUN WAS already climbing by the time Nora peeled herself off the bed and poured water over her face. Her throat was dry, her limbs heavy, and the bite on her neck was pulsing again, soft and rhythmic like the world's laziest alarm clock. It didn’t hurt, but somehow it made her feel watched.
She wandered barefoot to the kitchen, grabbing the journal she’d left open the night before. This one was leather-bound and swollen at the seams, water-damaged, stuffed with bits of dried plant matter and ribbon markers that no longer marked anything. The entries were in her grandfather’s neat hand, but the ink wavered in places, like even he had flinched while writing some of it.
Nora set her mug down, took a breath, and started flipping pages.
Most were observations. Solar cycles. Hiker disappearances. The usual local lore cataloging. But then she found something buried between two meteor charts and a coyote skull drawing.
The Bloom must choose. The land does not take. It only calls.
Her brow furrowed. She turned the page.
The Guardian remains until she walks unshod into the wash. Until she bleeds willingly. Until she blooms.
A shiver climbed up her spine.
