Page 31 of Beneath the Desert Bloom (Of Beasts and Bloom #1)

THE FRONT STEPS were still warm from the sun.

That was the first thing Nora noticed. Not the silence. Not the bloom petals still caught in her hair. Not even the ache in her body that said she’d been split open and filled with light.

Just… the porch.

Same cracked concrete. Same desert-pink tile just inside the door. Same beat-up wooden frame around the screen that had needed replacing since she was twelve.

The world hadn’t changed.

She had.

They stood side by side at the threshold, dust-streaked and barefoot, marked in places no soap would ever clean. Asher hadn’t spoken since they left the Hollow. He walked like he wasn’t used to being allowed this far into ordinary space. Like the house might reject him if he breathed too loud.

She reached for the door.

It stuck a little at the bottom. It always did.

She stepped inside first.

The air was cooler, still carrying the faint scent of burnt creosote and sage and sun-drenched wood. The curtains billowed gently at the open window in the kitchen. Her grandfather’s boots still sat by the back door. A mug was on the counter, full of old coffee and dust.

Everything looked exactly as she left it.

Which made it feel wrong.

Asher hesitated in the doorway, one foot inside, one still planted on the sunbaked step. He filled the frame like a shadow caught between worlds, too big, too wild, too silent for a space this small.

She turned toward him, one brow arched. “You planning on haunting me from the porch?”

His mouth twitched.

He stepped inside.

The house didn’t flinch. The walls didn’t creak. The ceiling didn’t fall.

Something in Nora’s chest unclenched.

She walked slowly into the front room, trailing her fingertips along the top of the side table. Dust clung to her fingers. She looked down and saw faint gold on her skin, mixing with the ash. Light curled in her palm like a secret.

The journals were still where she left them.

But the one on top was open.

She hadn’t opened it.

The page was blank, except for a single line:

You made it.

She exhaled.

Behind her, Asher’s hand brushed the doorframe. She could feel his presence before he said anything. It poured into the room like shadow and heat.

She turned toward him. “How long have you known?”

He blinked. “About…?”

She tilted her head. “The ritual. The Bloom. Me.”

He looked at her for a long time before answering.

And when he did, his voice was lower than the wind. “Long enough to know not to hope.”

They sat on the floor.

Not because there weren’t chairs. Not because they were too tired to stand.

But because there was something about this moment that didn’t belong at a table.

Something raw and warm and animal. Nora’s back leaned against the wall, her knees drawn up, one arm slung loosely across them.

Asher knelt across from her, silent for a long time, hands resting palms-up on his thighs like he was waiting for permission from something older than either of them.

Outside, the wind pressed softly against the walls of the house, listening.

She watched him.

He was trying to start.

She could feel it. The slow, awful knowledge that once you say something aloud, it lives forever.

“You don’t have to,” she said gently. “Not if it hurts.”

He shook his head once. “It already hurts. But not saying it… hurts worse.”

He exhaled.

“I was a man,” he said, voice shaky. “Once. A long time ago. Not a Guardian. Not sacred. Just… a man.”

He looked up at her then, eyes shining, not with glow but something wet.

“My people were already leaving. Or dying. Or becoming something they didn’t recognize. I had nothing left. Not even a reason to keep breathing.”

“The land was already dying by then. Men were cutting into it with grids and fences and stakes. Lines in the sand to tell it who it belonged to.”

“Settlers,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Expansion. Industry. Whatever word makes it easier to explain. They weren’t listening. The land tried to cry out. No one heard it.”

He paused. His breath caught.

“But I did.”

She watched his throat work, saw the memory settle into his shoulders.

“It called me,” he said. “And I said yes.”

She didn’t speak. Just listened. Let him break open slowly.

“I thought I was offering my life,” he continued. “A sacrifice. But it wasn’t death the land wanted. It was shape. It needed a body. A protector. A witness. A weapon. And I…”

He laughed, short and hoarse.

“I was empty enough to let it fill me.”

His fingers flexed. His bark creaked.

“I burned for days. My bones broke and never knit right again. My voice was taken. My name. My face. But I became what it needed. And I waited.”

She leaned forward slightly.

“For the Bloom.”

He nodded.

“There was one. Once. She tried. But not to join with the land. She gave blood, but not herself. She wanted to hold power, not share it. She wanted to command it. And the desert doesn’t take orders. It took her instead.”

He paused again.

“And she wasn’t you.”

Nora’s breath hitched.

“It wasn’t a love story,” he added quickly. “I didn’t… feel her. Not like I feel you.”

She looked at him then.

His glow was faint now, curling under his skin like smoke. But his eyes—god, his eyes—were wide and human and hurting.

She reached for his hand.

“I thought maybe…” He swallowed hard. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen at all. That the land had changed its mind. That I’d been made just to watch it die slower.”

“And then you came.”

His eyes flicked to hers.

“You laughed in the wind,” he said. “You yelled at the dirt. You walked barefoot into a sacred site with a stone in your hand and asked the desert if it wanted to fight.”

She snorted.

“Not very ritualistic of me.”

“No,” he said. “But it was real. And it was yours. And I felt it. Every word. Every time you touched the land and didn’t flinch.”

Silence settled between them again, deep and full.

Nora reached for him. He came willingly, folding into her space like he’d always been meant to fit there. She pressed her forehead to his.

“I didn’t expect to stay,” she whispered. “I came here to clean out a house and escape a life I wasn’t sure belonged to me anymore.”

He nodded.

“You stayed anyway.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

She exhaled.

“Because the land doesn’t just need a guardian,” she said. “It needs someone to understand it. To feel it. And I do.”

She looked at him, soft and sure.

“But it wasn’t just the land.”

He stilled.

“You’re what made it feel alive again.”

He closed his eyes.

And when he opened them again, the silence was different.

This wasn’t the quiet of fear, or grief, or distance.

It was the silence that comes after being seen.

“I think the desert chose you a long time ago,” he said. “When you lived here before.”

“I just took my sweet time catching up?”

“Something like that.”

She leaned into his touch, closed her eyes.

“Are you the only one?” Nora asked.

He was quiet a long time.

Then, “No.”

She looked at him.

His gaze had gone distant, like he was seeing through her, into memory.

“Every wild place had its Guardian,” he said. “Swamps. Forests. Canyons. Glacial peaks. They all had watchers once. Most still do. But they go quiet without someone to remember them.”

“And someone like me…”

He nodded.

“They call you back. Before the wild goes still forever.”

She ran her hand down his chest, thoughtful. “So I’m not the only weird girl… who likes to fuck nature spirits?”

That made him laugh again.

“You’re the only one who could make the desert bloom.”

The sun had dropped low enough that the sky bled softly across the horizon, amber at the edges, purple curling underneath like a bruise. The world looked painted. Still. Sacred.

Nora stood on the porch, barefoot, wrapped in one of her grandfather’s old flannel shirts, sleeves too long and hem brushing her thighs. The wind tugged gently at her hair. The silence was thick with warmth.

Behind her, Asher lingered just inside the doorway. Watching. Waiting. His presence was a pulse against the back of her spine.

She stepped down into the sand.

The dirt gave a little under her feet, like it remembered her weight.

She walked slowly, past the patch of dirt where the cholla grew, past the ghost of the rusted swing set, out toward the edge of the wash.

The basin stretched wide in front of her, cracked and blooming in equal measure.

The Hollow glowed faintly in the distance, the ruins of the Watcher slumped but softened by wildflowers.

She stopped at the boundary where her grandfather’s land ended and the wild began.

She knelt, slowly.

Pressed her palm flat to the earth.

It hummed beneath her skin, low and deep. It felt awake.

She didn’t speak right away.

When she did, her voice was steady. Quiet. A little rough.

“I thought I came here to end something,” she said. “But this place, this land, this… you…it doesn’t want endings.”

She looked toward the horizon, the sun almost gone now, the sky gold and violet and full of breath.

“I think I’m supposed to put roots down here. Or maybe just let the old ones grow back through me. And I think I might be having a sacred identity crisis.”

She stood.

“They don’t talk about this part in fieldwork seminars,” she murmured. “The bit where you climax so hard you turn into a myth.”

She turned toward the house.

Asher had stepped outside, barefoot like her, bare-chested, dusted in shadow. The air shimmered faintly around him, but the fire in his body had quieted. He looked more human now. And not.

He crossed to her without speaking.

Stopped beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, slow and careful, palm settling on her upper arm. His touch was warm. Solid. Sacred.

She leaned into him.

“I think this place wants us,” she murmured. “But only if we stay on its terms.”

Asher looked out over the hollow.

“So we stay,” he said.

She nodded.

Her voice came quiet, half exhale, half vow.

“Then this is where I’ll bloom.”

He pressed his lips to her temple, soft and reverent. “And I’ll guard it.”

Her chest ached in the best way.

“I’m still going to need coffee,” she warned. “Even if I’m a demigod now.”

Asher stepped back and looked at her. “What will you do now?”

Nora looked to the horizon, where the sky shimmered with heat and possibility.

“I’ll write,” she said. “Not the thesis. That’s toast. I’ll write something true. For the ones who listen. For the ones who remember.”