#tabrisel

 Prophetism, as it turns out, is highly overrated.

Inaya Peterson couldn’t see the point of being named a prophet. In theory, being a clairvoyant sounded incredible. In practice, however… well, that was an entirely different story. The divine revelation that she’d been born with a special stamp of heavenly approval had done absolutely nothing to invariably alter the course of her life. There weren’t even any cool powers in the bargain! There was no mindreading, no exorcising demons, no direct hotline to deities. She couldn’t summon forth a raging tempest. She couldn’t bring down plagues upon her enemies. She couldn’t even see into the future.

It wasn’t for lack of trying, of course. Countless hours she’d spent pondering the inner workings of her oh-so-special soul, searching for the mental switch that, once flipped, would grant her access to a broad range of creepy, cool powers. Prophets, she had decided, should have been able to transform at will into an eldritch being of diving judgement, glowing eyes and all. If nothing else she should have been allowed to take a leaf from the Oracle of Delphi. In her mind’s eye she could see herself on a three legged stool, a mysterious figure shrouded in smoke and cloaked in shadow, breathing in the sacred incense as she foretold the fate of kings—

To tell truth, her life hadn’t really changed much at all. Teenage prophets still had to go to school. They still had to listen to their parents, eat balanced meals, and get their eight allotted hours of sleep. They weren’t immune to the general ennui of modern life. Her free time was filled with the same hobbies she’d always enjoyed: ice cream, walks in the park, skateboarding, video games.

For someone who’d been chosen, the universe didn’t seem to be in any rush when it came to kickstarting her Chosen One plotline.

What did a girl have to do in order to get some excitement out of life? She would have been grateful for an assassin or two, or perhaps a kidnapper who’d force her to misuse her nonexistence powers for evil. Well… perhaps grateful wasn’t the right word, but at least it might have shaken things up a notch. As it stood, the only addition to her agonizingly mundane existence was the “mandated” company of her guardian angel, Tabrisel.

Inaya didn’t understand why the divine powers that be thought it was necessary to give her the most boring guardian angel in existence. It had taken her no time at all to realize that angels were like cake fondant. On the surface they could be colorful and interesting, full of potential. After her first encounter with them, however, she knew that they were little more than a disappointment. At least, that’s what Tabrisel seemed to be.

Being a prophet meant that Inaya could see and talk to Tabrisel whenever she pleased—and often when she didn’t. She had plenty of adjectives to describe her guardian angel… none of which were very holy in nature. Tab, as she sometimes called them, was lazy, mouthy, boring, and infuriatingly obtuse. Their life’s joy—if angels indeed had lives in the mortal sense of the word—was to annoy their charge at every given opportunity.

Tabrisel seemed unable to speak without every last word practically dripping with the smoothest sarcasm. They were older than time itself, capable of feats she could only begin to imagine, and yet chose to act lamer than her parents. Their idea of a good time was to lounge idly on the sofa, sipping various drinks from a bottomless martini glass. Their favorite pastime was telling her no. Everything Inaya asked for was against the rules, forbidden by some unseen force that dictated every facet of an angel’s existence. It was always no, no, no with them; sometimes it felt worse than her fuzzy memories of toddlerhood.

No, you can’t drink from my glass.

No, I won’t fly you across town just this once.

No, I’m not telling you the future.

This last one was especially frustrating. Talking to Tabrisel was about as helpful as watching yesterday’s weather forecast. They refused to tell her anything about the future, no matter how insignificant the request. It didn’t make any sense. Prophets were supposed to decipher portents, which they could only get from messengers. Angels, as she understood them, were ethereal envoys of the divinity. Wasn’t it their job to deliver news and judgement from On High?

Clearly, Tabrisel had been absent for Celestial Ministering 101.

“Curiosity,” Tabrisel once touted, “is a blotch on the stainless soul of man.”

“How profound.” Inaya kicked a rock into the pond, watching the ripples as they spread towards the shimmering reflection of the towering office buildings opposite the park wall. The dawn sunlight was halfway through fading into the smoggy haze of midmorning, the vibrant pinks and grays dissolving into the precursor of another cloudless spring day. They seemed to shimmer on the water’s surface as the ripples smoothed back into a motionless mirror. “You know,” she couldn’t help but add, “it would be easier to say, “I don’t know” whenever I ask a question you don’t want to answer.”

“Yes,” Tab agreed smoothly, “but that would also be a lie.” They hadn’t bothered with their borzoi form, hands locked behind their back and eyes on the distant skyline as they followed their charge around the pond.

It was still early enough that the park was nearly deserted, with only a few people attempting to enjoy the sunny weather. A stray jogger headed towards the nature trail, headphones blasting at full volume as their sneakers pounded the pavement. The park custodian swept the sidewalk near the front gates, his red hat bobbing between the saplings that had been planted last season. Squirrels scampered about in the cultivated flowerbeds, kicking up mulch in their play. A fat bee buzzed in a rosebush, balancing carefully on the pink blooms as they nodded in the breeze.

With so few people about, no one bothered to look twice at a lone girl circling the park pond on her skateboard. Still, Inaya didn’t raise her voice above a murmur; even though she wasn’t alone, anyone who saw her would think that she had been talking out loud to herself. If someone from her neighborhood were to see and tell either of her moms…. The last thing she needed was her parents asking awkward questions that came with no real answers.

The most prudent option would be to stay silent, perhaps even go so far as to ignore the angel following calmly behind her on foot. But her mind was awhirl with thoughts, questions stirring around and around until it was impossible to keep her peace.

“Why are humans curious?” she couldn’t help but ask, knowing full well that this only proved their point concerning mankind’s inquisitive nature. She kicked off against the sidewalk, picking up speed as her board crested the highest point of the circular path. “If it causes so many problems, shouldn’t we be born without it?” Inaya half expected Tabrisel to ignore the question, or perhaps to grace her with one of their painstaking smiles. To her surprise, they didn’t hesitate to offer an answer.

“It would be less work for us in the end,” they agreed slowly. “Still, it’s curiosity that separates you from the lesser carnivora,” they explained. Inaya looked over her shoulder to see them staring up at the clouds, a serene expression smoothing the thin cheekbones and manicured brow. She wondered if they considered themselves something of a poet, using words like carnivora and stainless soul. She hoped not; as exasperating as it was to try and hold a conversation with someone as smug and evasive as Tabrisel, it was worse when they started LARP-ing as Keats, or Tennyson, or… or any of the other poetic old men who no longer existed.  “It is what gives you free will.”

“Free will?” Inaya skidded to a stop, turning on her board to watch with narrowed eyes as they sauntered along behind her. “What do you mean?” Tabrisel tilted their head, their gaze drifting from her face to the denizens of the park, both big and small.

“Look over there, at the bee in the roses,” they said, nodding to the rosebush nearest her. “That bee has absolutely no free will whatsoever. She goes out to collect pollen, she does her part to make honey, she feeds the young in their cells and she helps to take care of the colony. All this she does without a single ounce of thought. Her instincts guide her, rather than any curiosity of the world around her.” 

“Well…  yeah.” Inaya shrugged. “That’s what bees do, isn’t it?”

“Precisely. Now, what is it that humans do?” Tabrisel asked lightly. “What made you get up this morning and decide to skate around the park? What made you want to try skateboarding at all? Was it instinct? Did you see the skateboard and realize that your genes were made for that specific purpose?”

“No, I just….” Inaya looked down at the skateboard beneath her sneaker. “I just decided to, one day.” Tabrisel’s brow twitched, the start of a sardonic grin curling at the edges of their mouth. Inaya knew that they were waiting for more, but what more was there to say? She couldn’t pinpoint any specific emotion that had made her pick up a board for the first time. “I thought it looked cool,” she finally supplied, rolling her shoulders in another shrug before pushing off down the hill.

“You thought it looked cool,” Tabrisel repeated softly. “No, you were curious. You saw your first trick and wanted to know what it was like to fly through the air with nothing but a board beneath your feet. You wanted to feel the wind in your ears and the blood rushing through your veins. You wanted to know what it was like to be entirely self-sufficient upon your own talent—if you messed up, there would be no one else to blame.”

Inaya rolled her eyes as she moved faster, hoping said wind would drown out the sound of their voice. She hated when they lectured like that, using her own thoughts and emotions against her. Thankfully it was a rare occurrence, and only ever used when they needed to prove some point. Unfortunately for her, their voice continued to ring in their head as loudly as if they had stood next to her on the board.

“The indominable spirit of mankind!” they joked. “Never once did you consider what might go wrong.” As if by design, Inaya winced as one of her board’s wheels jammed against a crack in the walk. Thankfully she hadn’t picked up enough speed to wipe entirely; if she had, she would have faceplanted straight into the concrete without a word. Instead she managed a sort of stumbling run into the grass, falling onto her hands and knees.

“You better not have done that on purpose,” she scowled, wiping at fresh grass stains on the palms of her wrist guards. 

“As a guardian angel, I believe that intentionally causing a skateboard accident would fall under the category of “not guarding”. Besides: for all you know, I just ensured you didn’t break anything worse than your fall. Scraped skin,” they sighed, “broken bones, sprains and strains… even a pulled muscle or two. And that’s only if you humans don’t break your necks on the way down.”

Inaya could have sworn Tabrisel was still on the other side of the park, but before she could move her head a strong arm grabbed her by the elbow. It lifted her gently until she was back on her feet, steadying her until she got her balance. Tabrisel reached past her for the skateboard, popping it expertly into their hands before looking it over appraisingly.

“Not to mention the material costs and hurt pride of taking a tumble every so often,” they mused, spinning the jammed wheel to make sure that it was fine before handing the board back to her. “No, that’s the sort of thing I’m left to think about instead.” 

“Well, yeah.” Inaya took the board from their hands, spinning the wheel herself before testing it on the sidewalk. “Like you said, you’re a guardian angel. That’s kind of your job, isn’t it?” Tabrisel smiled indulgently, hands once more clasped behind their back. Inaya sniffed, scrubbing her palms against her thighs for good measure and leaving a green streak along the edge of her jeans pocket. 

“You signed up for it,” she grumbled as she started off again, kicking hard against the cement until she was practically flying down the hill. “Unless angels don’t have free will, either.” 

The thought startled her. She nearly wiped again, regaining her balance at the last moment with arms outstretched and knees shaking. Gulping, she glanced behind her to see Tabrisel still waiting on the park sod, leaned up against an oak that stood sentinel near the crest of the hill. Their golden eyes followed, unwavering, as she continued her ride around the far side of the pond. She looked away, a small chill creeping down her spine as she focused on not hitting any more cracks in the paved walk. 

Could angels choose for themselves? Or… or was Tabrisel just as stuck with her as she was with them? If that was the case, did they secretly resent it? Resent her? Or were they incapable of feeling that resentment, seeing it instead as another part of their enigmatic nature? Did she feel injustice simply because she was human, and they were not? Was it truly that simple?

Inaya pondered over the thoughts for the rest of her morning ride, but an answer never came.

Come on, Inaya! Concentrate… focus….

“Just what on earth do you think you’re doing?” Inaya cracked one eyelid, glaring up at the angel who dared to break her (admittedly subpar) concentration. Tabrisel loomed over her work desk, a bemused expression on their face. They swirled the contents of their martini glass, free hand resting on their hip as they watched her.

“What does it look like?” she snapped, fingers prodding at the loose dark hairs around her temples. “I’m trying to see into the future.” All at once, she realized that she probably looked ridiculous in her current position—slouched over her schoolwork, fingers pressed to her temples and eyes screwed so tightly shut that the rest of her faced was scrunched with the effort.

“It looks like the only thing you’re trying to do is give yourself a migraine, kid.” Tabrisel chucked, shoulders shaking hard enough that a drop of golden liquid splashed from the martini glass. It landed on the edge of her desk, sparkling with a pearly, iridescent sheen. The hue was at once so brilliant and fluid that it seemed to encompass a miniscule dot of Heaven within its perfectly spherical shape.

Inaya watched, tightlipped and dry mouthed, as the bead quivered on her desk with every step Tabrisel took across the bedroom floor. Her throat burned with something beyond mortal thirst, but she knew better than to ask for a taste. She had learned her lesson the hard way, last time; her head still ached with phantom pain whenever she remembered her less than stellar experience with Tabrisel’s bottle of Long Island War Crimes.

Who cares? She grumbled to herself, choosing to forgo the temptation by flicking the bead to the carpet. It looks like spilled motor oil, anyway. Still, it was hard to ignore the pang in the pit of her stomach as she watched the wayward drop soak into the plush fibers.

“I’ll probably regret it, but….” Tabrisel leaned over her shoulder, surveying the mess of her homework spread across the desk. “Dare I ask what you’re doing? Scrying the future won’t help you learn test answers, if that’s what you’re after.”

“I’m not cheating!” Inaya shuffled through her papers, pushing aside her math homework before her fingers found the edge of a crumpled yellow flyer. “Take a look at this, Tab.” She tried to smooth the flyer before handing it over to them, scowling at the glossy embossed letters on the header.

“Career Aptitude Assessment.” Tabrisel turned it over, brows arching as they read the fine print with an increasingly wan expression. By the time they were finished, their brows had nearly disappeared into the bangs hanging across their forehead. “I’m afraid you’ll have to explain a little better than this. I’m not sure I understand.”

“They handed these out to us during morning assembly.” Inaya took the paper back with a sigh, tossing it to the side before running her hands through her hair. “It really got me to thinking, you know?”

“Sorry, but I still don’t see how a career placement test makes you think you need to see the future,” they said mildly, stirring the contents of their glass before taking the smallest of sips. “Besides, aren’t you a little young to be deciding the rest of your life? You’re not even thirty yet.”

“That’s it exactly!” she exclaimed. “I know they don’t know this at school, but everything’s already been decided for me, hasn’t it? I’m a prophet. When I’m an adult, I’m going to be busy… propheting, or whatever you call it—”

“Prophesying—”

“Whatever. The point is that I’ll be too busy with propheting—okay, okay! Prophesying— to worry about my job or… or anything else, right?” She looked back down at the flyer. “Why should I care about choosing a career? I don’t see what’s so important about it. I mean, what if I got my results back and I really liked it? What if I decided to go to college, or an accredited university or something? What if I traveled abroad?” she rambled, pacing circles around her guardian angel as she spoke.

“What if?” they agreed.

“College takes time, Tab. I can be there for four years, or eight, or however long it takes. Then, when I’m done, I’ll have a career that I enjoy. I’ll have one of those jobs that I get excited about every morning, one that I can see myself being happy in until I retire, and then what? I go through all that just so that one day, the higher-ups or… or God or… or whoever it is that decides these things is going to show up and say, “Good job! Too bad it’s time to be a prophet now!” How do you think that makes me feel? I’ll have to quit everything I worked for!”

“Uh huh.” Tabrisel took another drink, this one longer than the first. They paused, tongue working in their cheek, before adding, “That’s not exactly how it works, I’m afraid.”

“Well how am I supposed to know how it works?” Inaya crossed her arms. “You never tell me how it works. You never tell me anything.” Her only reply was a less than subtle eye roll. “I don’t want to invest all my time into something I won’t even be able to enjoy later. That’s why I need to see the future, okay? I want to know what job I end up with, to see if it’s even worth the trouble of making an effort. I want to be the one to decide my life for once.”

“You know,” Tabrisel mused skeptically, “If you ask me, you’re trying to solve a problem by creating the same one over again.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t ask you.” Inaya sat back down, her back to them as she rested her elbows on the desk and closed her eyes once more. There was a long period of relative silence, where she felt, more than saw, their eyes boring into the back of her skull. She waited for them to speak, to lecture her on how she was doing something wrong yet again, only to grow increasingly frustrated when they didn’t. “Okay, fine, fine. Say that I did ask you. What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” They chuckled again. “I’d told you as much earlier. You humans worry too much about the future. The whole reason you’re upset is because your teachers are trying to prepare you for a future that—just like every other human on the face of the planet—you can’t see. That worries you, so instead of finishing your homework and turning on your video games, you sit there making faces at the wall while trying to achieve the impossible. Am I right?”

“Ugh.” She slumped down in her chair. Why did they have to make irrefutable points? Even she couldn’t argue with the truth. “You don’t have to rub it in like that, you know.”

“You know, if you stopped bothering yourself with things you can’t control, life would be all the simpler.” Tabrisel sat the glass on the edge of her desk, squatting down until they were eye to eye. They looked more like a terrible motivational coach, or some happy-go-lucky camp counselor, rather than the haggard guardian angel she knew them to be.

“You can’t solve every problem you encounter, no matter how much you’d like to. Why not place your burdens to the side and live in the moment instead? I know people like to see you as a young adult, but in the grand scheme of things you’re still a kid. Why not relax? Enjoy life as it happens? Otherwise, it’s going to pass you by.”

“Because,” she growled, “I have a daily reminder that Heaven is nothing more than a bunch of badly… managed… bureaucrats.” She wasn’t entirely sure that bureaucrats was the word she was looking for, but it did match her mental image of Heaven Tabrisel made whenever they idly mentioned paperwork. She could see a bunch of angels in funny little business togas, sitting in golden cubicles on top of fluffy clouds, with the same mailbox cubbies that she saw in modern office buildings.

Tabrisel stared at her a moment, expression blank before they broke into helpless peals of laughter. She huffed, pillowing her cheek on one fist as she watched them tumble backwards to sit on her bedroom floor, long limbs spread and body limp with the exertion of laughing.

“I should put in a complaint with HR,” she finally grumbled.

“There is no HR in Heaven,” they gloated, wiping their eyes as they tried to pick themselves off the floor. “Humans are an earthly term. Why would we need their resources?”

“Then I’ll go to your boss!” she threatened. “I want to talk to your direct supervisor!”

“Hmm?” It was her only answer, offered alongside one of their smuggest little smirks.

“But seriously, Tab.” Inaya tore the corners off the flyer, shredding the yellow paper into little pieces of fuzz before letting them flutter to the carpet. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” They picked their glass back up, draining it to the dregs before stretching out on her duvet. “Take the test, maybe?”

“But it’s just going to be a waste of time!”

“Says who?” They closed their eyes, one leg crossed over the other. “Say you did take the test, and you found something you were good at, that you enjoyed. Say that you did go to university, or traveled abroad. And then you had a career that you were fond of afterwards. If you enjoyed yourself, made good memories, and lived your life to the fullest… why would you ever call that a waste?”

“Huh?”

“You act as if this world is static, Inaya. That nothing worthwhile ever comes of change.”

“But… well….”

“This life is ever-changing. Think about it. Places change. People change. Your mothers are the not the women they were at your age. Some people are happy to stay at one job for sixty years. Others do the same and die with regrets in their heart. There are circumstances, setbacks. No one person on this earth knows what their life will hold, and yet every last one has managed to make things work.”

“Even prophets?”

“Even prophets. You can’t hinge every last decision on the future when it’s not set in stone. After all, you’ll change one day, too.”

“I know who I am,” Inaya protested. “No matter how old I get, I’m still going to be me. I’m still…”

“You’re right.” They opened their eyes, staring deep into her own. “You will always be you. So take my advice and stop worrying about the future. Worry about the present instead. Make the Inaya of right now someone who can face the future, no matter what it holds. For it will change, and you need to be adaptable enough to change with it.” They smiled. “Change is not bad. It gives us hope by becoming. Enemies become friends. The impossible becomes possible.”

“But—” They waited patiently for her argument. “But it can work the other way, too.”

“Yes. It can.”

“So how are you supposed to know whether the change is something good or bad?”

“You can’t,” they replied simply. “That decision rests with you.”

“It’s that stupid free will thing again, isn’t it?” Inaya groaned. Tabrisel, on the other hand, smiled softly.