I came into it from the east side of the Funeral Mountains, dropping down one of those nameless washes that don’t bother making themselves memorable because they don’t have to. The rock there breaks sharp and ugly, dolomite mixed with volcanic junk, the kind that crunches loud underfoot and reminds you that erosion is patient and you are not. The smell of damp creosote rode low in the air, cooked resin and dust, and my hands were still black under the nails from fixing a seized pulley that morning because nothing out here ever stays fixed.

I knew roughly where I was. Roughly is as good as it gets. Somewhere between places people argue about on maps. Too far north to be tourist desert. Too far south to pretend it’s empty. The wash bent, narrowed, and dropped into a bowl that shouldn’t have held anything but heat.

There was water.

Not a trickle. Not a damp patch. A pool. Ringed with reeds that looked nervous about being there. A cottonwood clinging to life like it had filed the wrong paperwork and decided to stay anyway. The basin felt wrong-footed, like the geology had skipped a line. Basalt slabs fractured at angles that didn’t quite agree with each other, as if they’d cooled in different centuries.

I crouched and touched the water. Cold enough to sting. Not spring-cold the way you expect near Ash Meadows, where water has rules and pedigrees and biologists watching it like hawks. This cold suggested depth that my eyes couldn’t confirm. I watched the grease bleed off my fingers into the pool and disappear faster than it should have. I told myself the sun was messing with my perception. The sun does that. So does dehydration. So does not wanting to think too hard.

The pool had no visible feed. No seep line. No algae bloom. The surface stayed level when I drank from it, which was a mistake but not one I regret. The taste was clean to the point of abstraction. No story in it at all. Water like that makes you uneasy because it hasn’t been anywhere yet.

I walked the perimeter. My boot prints registered, then softened, edges sagging like the sand was embarrassed to remember me. The reflection of the sky lagged when clouds passed overhead, just enough that my eyes tried to correct for it and failed. I checked my watch out of habit. That was useless. Watches always are when you want them most.

The thought came uninvited that the pool might not be a place so much as a condition. A surface where something transitions. Not a doorway exactly. More like a rounding error. If the universe keeps accounts, this is where it loses a decimal.

I threw a pebble. The splash was muted, like the sound had somewhere else to be. Ripples spread, thinned, and stalled before reaching the edge. They didn’t stop. They simply gave up. Physics didn’t break. It just declined to continue.

I considered stepping in. No drama. Just wading. The way you do when you’re hot and tired and trying not to think about consequences. I watched the meniscus at the rock face. The refraction was off, though I couldn’t tell you how without a chalkboard and more confidence than I possess. The angles weren’t lying. They were dodging the question.

If the pool went somewhere else, it wasn’t advertising. No pull. No vertigo. Just water being suspiciously competent at pretending to be water. If it went nowhere, then nowhere was better engineered than most places I’ve stood.

I backed off and sat in the shade of the cottonwood, listening to flies work my pack and the reeds hiss in a breeze that never touched the surface. The desert tolerated the oasis the way it tolerates everything else out here: temporarily and without comment.

When I climbed out of the bowl and looked back, the green had already dulled, collapsing into the surrounding rock like it had decided not to stand out after all. That didn’t prove anything. Things fade in this country every day without violating a single law. Or maybe they do, and we just don’t write the laws down.

The wash took me again. The crunch came back under my boots, honest and abrasive and familiar, and I trusted that sound more than I trusted the water, which is probably why I’m still here and the oasis may or may not be.