Nonprophet.

      She picks her nails at the breakfast table, trying to pick away at the blood and dirt under her fingernails – or maybe just pick away at whatever part of herself she can. Of course, this task is almost impossible, every finger broken in various places, varying degrees; but still, Chaya has never been anything other than determined, an optimist at large. Once, when she broke her finger before – a work accident – she told her mother, who dismissed her concerns, not out of malice, but in a motherly way that states My Age and Wisdom Means I Know More About Broken Bones, and Since You Can Still Move Your Finger, You’re Fine. Later, she told her manager, who promptly told her that you can still bend and work with a finger if it’s broken. It still hurts to this day when she closes her fist, her middle finger protests with a loud ache each time.

Her gaze goes out the window, staring out at Winnie’s balcony – pointedly avoiding her stare, the look of concern that Chaya has never received from her before. It hurts her eyes, staring at the snow covered everything, and she vaguely remembers reading about the Donner Party, and snow blindness (and death and cannibalism and more death and--). She thinks, idly, as her gaze goes back down to the white wood, at the crack in the table – the fruit bowl that contains too many oranges, that snow blindness is shittier than staring-at-the-sun blindness. A heavy inhale, her hand that hurts slightly less (the right one, which she thinks is ironic, of course she’s left-handed) reaches forward to grasp at one of the fruits, rolling it on the table. As her thumb presses into the skin of the fruit, breaking it open, Winnie speaks.

“I think you’re a good person.”

Chaya pauses, the smell of citrus somehow too sweet yet too bitter for her to be comfortable with, and she finally settles on looking at Winnie, swallowing thickly, as if that’ll get rid of the smell, her broken bones, and the words that were just spoken to her. Chaya has been told she’s a good person before, and though she’s heard those words, and accepted them as truth, there’s always been a distant between knowing that and feeling that. Now, she thinks that Winnie is referring to the Past Version Of Her, that didn’t just come back from the dead, that wasn’t just murdered by her sister’s fiancé hours before. She digs her thumb in deeper.

“I don’t think that’s right, Winnie.” Her own voice sounds distant and cloudy, like she’s been on an airplane and hasn’t been able to pop her ears. A heavy sigh, beginning to peel the skin off the fruit, keeping her gaze on her elder. “But, it’s a little funny.”

Winnie raises her eyebrows, scratches at the side of her jaw, taking in Chaya’s soaking wet form, her busted lip – the dried blood caking the left side of her face, the spot where her hair is matted with blood and dirt. Maybe the dirty snow slush has seeped into the open wound on Chaya’s skull – making her delirious, or maybe the hypothermia has induced a fever that makes everything Fucking Amusing. Winnie’s guess is as good as Chaya’s, and they’re both just two Not Exactly Humans sitting at a table, smelling citrus and thinking about the ethical dilemma of being murdered by a sister’s fiancé who kills Not Exactly Humans.

Winnie opens her mouth, then shuts it. Pushes the braids behind her shoulders. She leans forward on her arms, a gesture that means she’ll bite, play along.

“Maybe he did it because he, like, hates seers that write all their little prophecies on, like, Hello Kitty fucking.. what’s that word, Chaya?”

“Stationary.”

“Fucking stationary.”

“You fuck stationary?”

Despite herself, Chaya smiles, wide and bloodied, a laugh that chokes off into a heavy cough. She shakes her head, a rattling sigh.

“Well, if – if that’s true, it’s not fair. C-cause who doesn’t like Sanrio stuff. It’s cute, right, Win? Like y-you like my stuff. You think it’s cute.”

“I’m a biased party.”

“He’s a fucking biased party.”

“He’s a hunter.”

“That’s biased against us.”

Another silence. Chaya begins to pick off the white little strings off the oranges, setting them in a row on the table. Every so often, she shakes out her hand – like that’ll make it better instead of worse (which it does). Us, meaning not Chaya’s sister, who the Gift (as their grandmother calls it), didn’t get passed to Bunny. Only to Chaya, another prophet/seer/soothsayer/annoyance in a long line of wicked women. Winnie can tell there are words bouncing around in Chaya’s head, by the way she’s chewing on her bottom lip, rearranging the whites of the oranges over and over – maybe she’s counting them in her head, like she does with most things when she’s overwhelmed.

For instance, after a long time of silence one day last summer, when Chaya jumped out of the window of her room to come to Winnie’s apartment, she sat in silence for two hours. Perched on Winnie’s couch with her knees around her legs, head resting on her shin – sitting on her long curls. Winnie had stopped wondering at that point when Chaya was getting her prophecies, because with each passing month, they got worse – and at that point, Chaya was having seizures, violent and shaking. Winnie had gotten so used to Chaya’s silence, it made her jump out of her skin when she was told she had sixty-four books on her bookshelf, and thirteen D.V.Ds.

Winnie thinks about asking how many she’s counted, but then Chaya squeezes them in her hand, squishing the poor tendrils of fruit together into one ugly clump.

“What’re you gonna do, Chai.”

“I don’t fucking know. Nobody – nobody told me what to do when my sister’s fiancé turns out to be a murderer. And you know Bunny won’t care, neither will mom.”

Winnie and Chaya both know this to be true. There’s a helplessness that’s in Chaya’s gaze that Winnie’s never seen before, and selfishly, it makes her uncomfortable. Hell, they aren’t even friends. Not really – Winnie is just some girl that Chaya’s brother dated for two years. The discomfort is enough to make Winnie amend her statement, offer levity and relief (hopefully) to herself and Chaya, even just for a moment.

“I meant now. Are you gonna eat the fruit, or what?”

“I’m allergic to citrus.”