Something eased, almost imperceptibly, between them. They would not pretend. They would begin with truth.
Inside, Jimena found shelves lined with jars and bundles of drying plants. Chamomile. Willow. Comfrey. Names her grandmother had whispered over her shoulder in a garden that smelled of orange blossom. Her hands moved by memory, sorting, tying, labeling in neat script. When Tlacael returned and saw her work, his attention sharpened.
“My grandmother taught me,” she said, cheeks warming. “It wasn’t considered a suitable hobby for a lady. But I loved it.”
He nodded. “The desert has its own pharmacy. Some of it I do not know.”
“Perhaps we can learn from each other,” she offered.
That was the first agreement they forged without paperwork. It would not be the last.
The Desert’s School: Purpose, Confidence, Healing
Days found their rhythm. Tlacael tended to fields, repaired tools, and consulted with nearby families. Jimena swept, cooked, and reorganized the little kitchen until it worked like a heartbeat. Mornings they harvested from the scrub—yarrow, prickly pear, sage. Afternoons they simmered poultices and tinctures, filling the home with the clean scent of plants releasing their gifts.
Hands brushed over mortars. Words grew easier. Stories arrived in fragments. Tlacael spoke of a wife he had lost years before, a grief that had taught him how to endure. Jimena spoke of growing up in rooms crowded with opinion and thin on affection, the way a girl learns to take up less and less space until she fears she might vanish.
“You are not invisible here,” he said simply. “Not to me.”
Word spread across the mesas: a healer lived in the adobe house. Mothers came carrying feverish children. A ranch hand arrived with a gash that refused to close. A grandmother limped up the path with aching joints. Some came wary, uncertain of this woman with a soft voice and a firm hand; most left relieved, a little astonished, telling friends what they had seen.
