Page 88 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
“You’re not dying,” Opal said softly. “You’re becoming. But nothing comes without sacrifice.”
“What kind of sacrifice?”
Opal looked at her, steady and unblinking.
“That’s not for me to say.”
Nora left the shop with the sun pressed hard against her shoulders and about four hundred unanswered questions chewing through the back of her skull like termites.
The desert looked different now.
It was still all brittle sage and bleached gravel and that one half-mummified coyote carcass she'd passed every damn time she drove into town, but it felt as if every rock and shadow was watching her now. Not just because they recognized her, but because they were waiting to see what she’d do next.
Waiting to see if she’d run.
Or bloom.
She cranked the A/C in the SUV, but it didn’t help. The heat wasn’t coming from outside anymore.
She couldn’t stop replaying Opal’s words.
"You’re not dying. You’re becoming."
It sounded poetic, sure. Cosmic, even. But what did it actually mean? That she was going to wake up one morning and her blood would taste like cactus nectar and moonlight? That she’d sprout bark? Speak in riddles? Lose the ability to file taxes?
She didn’t want to be someone else.
Except… maybe she already was.
She had let him inside her. Dream and body and breath. She’d given him more than just access; she’d given him invitation. She had begged, moaned, arched into him like he was something holy. And maybe he was.
Or maybe she’d just been very, very dickmatized by a myth.
Nora snorted aloud in the empty cab of the car.
“Yeah, real academic.”
She passed the saloon again, shuttered tight like it had never been open. Like it was waiting for someone who wasn’t her. Or maybe someone she was still in the process of becoming.
The steering wheel was hot under her palms. The seatbelt tugged too tight across her chest. Everything felt close. Pressed in. Like the desert wasn’t trying to scare her anymore. It was trying to fit itself inside her.
She got home and left the car running while she stood in the driveway, staring out at the horizon.
The Joshua trees swayed a little too slowly. The sky looked like it had been painted on in watercolor and left in the sun to bleach out. The wind was soft. Curious.
Nora reached into her pocket and pulled out the dormant obsidian. Today it felt heavy in the way secrets were heavy. She turned it over once, twice. Then pressed it against the bite on her neck.
The skin there buzzed like a tuning fork.
“Okay,” she whispered. “So now what?”
The wind didn’t answer, but her body did.
A flush, low in her belly, like recognition.
She closed her eyes, heart ticking hard against her ribs. She thought she’d cry. But instead, she laughed again. Quieter this time. Like at a joke she didn’t quite understand yet.
She didn’t feel powerful. She felt cracked open.
