Zia Sunroot's Arc

Chapter 5 of 17

Zia returns to the oasis boundary the next morning. The cloth sits where she left it, folded beside the flask. She picks it up and spreads it across her palm. The coordinates stitch a path across the fabric in dark thread. She traces them with her fingertip, and the numbers pull at something buried in her memory. She walks back to her pavilion and unrolls the map beside the coordinates. The numbers lead to a settlement called Riella, but that name means nothing to her. She focuses on the surrounding marks—wells, trade routes, a cluster of smaller camps. Then she sees it: a set of broken arches drawn in faded ink at the edge of the map, marked with a symbol she knows. The monument stood near her childhood home before the water ran dry and everyone left. She hasn't thought of that place in years. The coordinates don't just point to Riella. They point to the land she walked away from. Her hands go numb. The stranger isn't just from somewhere distant. They're from the place she abandoned. She looks at the pressed flowers again—prickly pear blossoms, the kind that grew wild near the monument. She remembers climbing those arches as a child, pressing her palms against the cool stone while her mother sold fruit at the market pavilion below. The stranger would have walked past those same ruins to reach her. They would have seen what she left behind. Zia folds the cloth and places it back in the flask. She screws the cap tight and carries it to the boundary, setting it beside the watering trough. She will not go to Riella. She cannot face what remains of that place or the person who still lives there. But she will leave the flask where the stranger can find it. She will let them know she saw the coordinates, that she understood, and that she is choosing to stay here. The recognition has already cut through her. Now she has to decide what to do with the wound.