It did not matter what Hannah said or did anymore, in fact, it had not mattered in many months. She could have shrieked from the mountaintops like a banshee and nobody would bat an eye; honey could drip from her lips and nobody would believe her. It was all about whose side you were on, WITH or AGAINST her family. She didn’t know which was worse truly. One treated her like a fragile blessing, and the other acted as if she was a disease to be eradicated. YET, still she tried to make peace with both for on the day of the great collapse it would matter anymore. Joseph would be RIGHT and the nonbelievers would be dead. All that would matter is what comes next and if there was enough to go around.

       “No trouble.” Hannah replied as she made a show of reaching into her bag and showing that what she had was of no threat – just carrots. “Here.” 

     there’s a lengthy pause, here. the silence stretches in-between them like the ringing in ears when you stand too quickly. tense, tense, tense. hesitation, too, in the way her hand stays set atop her sidepiece as hannah reaches slow, slow, gently into the bag at her shoulder. hesitation to stand down just as it is hesitation to draw it up and out to shoot. ( she should. anyone else would. hell, she usually would. she’d spit and curse and she wouldn’t hesitate to knock over the queen piece to a game that none of them ever wanted to play. ) 

     but then --- carrots. fucking carrots.