XI. Nico's Return

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He woke with the sun on his face. 

 

No room. 

No walls. 

 

Just sky—soft, unassuming. 

 

The desert stretched around him, vast and colorless, 

like someone had rinsed it clean overnight.

 

He sat up slowly.

 

His clothes were dusty. 

His hands dry. 

 

There was no stone. 

No keys. 

No footprints. 

 

Just a faint breeze. 

And something missing 

that he didn’t know how to name.

 

He walked. 

 

The path back wasn’t marked, 

but his feet knew it. 

 

The wind had erased his steps, 

but the silence remembered.

 

He moved without rush. 

Without hunger. 

 

Without anything tugging at him from behind or ahead.

 

At the ridge, he looked back. 

 

There was nothing there. 

Not even a building. 

 

Just a flat expanse of sand and rock.

 

The Mouth had closed.

 

The town looked the same. 

 

Roosters. 

Laundry lines. 

Dogs behind fences. 

A boy kicking a ball down the street. 

Someone sweeping dust from dust.

 

He walked past the church. 

 

The doors were chained, as always. 

 

The mural of Saint Michael had been painted over again—

just a white shape now, 

waiting for something new.

 

His house was unlocked. 

Inside, it smelled like damp fabric and last night’s coffee.

 

His father was asleep on the couch, 

one arm over his face. 

 

The television glowed faint blue, 

flickering with muted static.

 

Nico stood in the doorway for a long time. 

 

Then turned off the screen. 

Pulled a blanket over the old man’s legs. 

And went to the kitchen.

 

He didn’t speak much that day. 

Didn’t need to.

 

The noise of the town filled the space around him—

motorbikes, 

radios, 

chickens, 

the long hum of distant trucks climbing hills.

 

He watched it all. 

 

Like someone returning to a play he used to be part of. 

 

Only now the lines were different. 

And the walls thinner.

 

That evening, Lalo found him behind the store, 

smoking in the shade.

 

“You’re back,” he said, 

like it was obvious 

and impossible at once.

 

Nico nodded.

 

“Did you… did you go?”

 

Nico didn’t answer.

 

Lalo didn’t push. 

He just sat beside him, 

passing the lighter back and forth. 

 

After a while, he asked, 

“Did you see him?”

 

Nico exhaled. 

The smoke curled upward, 

vanished in the breeze.

 

He said, 

“I saw what I needed to.”

 

Lalo looked at him sideways.

 

“You different now?”

 

Nico shrugged. 

“You ever notice how everything smells stronger after rain?”

 

“But it didn’t rain.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

That night, he walked past the edge of town again. 

 

Just far enough to see the dark line of the hills.

 

He didn’t go farther. 

Didn’t need to.

 

He knelt by the same crumbling wall where he’d sat days ago—

if that’s what it had been—

and dug his fingers into the dry earth.

 

He didn’t find the stone. 

 

But he found something like stillness. 

 

And it didn’t leave.

 

The wind kicked up.

 

He stood.

 

Looked out at the horizon.

 

There was no sign. 

No vision. 

No voice.

 

Just the faintest trace of knowing—

 

that something had ended.

And something else had begun.​

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