Baoxiang remembers so very little of her grandmother.

Her garden, nested in the Florida Keys, was small and secluded, brooded with foliage, ferns burdening the split fences. She, too old, and Baoxiang, too inexperienced, had left the garden wedged into a state of immobility.

“You are so intelligent, yet you struggle to peel an orange,” Her grandmother laughs as she grabs a cleaver and takes it to a misshapen orange grown from one of the trees. The oranges were persistent on growing, and Baoxiang was often tasked to harvest them come summer. 

“It was beautiful, once.” Her grandmother would often reminisce, reminding them both of a simpler life. Baoxiang saw the yearn furred into her features, weighing down heavily on her already sunken face. She knew she tried not to mull it over too much.

"Po-po..." Baoxiang would then mumble, tilting her head towards the ground out of embarrassment. 

“I kid,” She would then swing the blade into the ridge of the fruit, followed by doing the same for the other side, and then into the middle of it. She would cut it in a way that the blade would not sever its flesh, allowing her hands to dive into the crease and spread it open. The flesh would unravel itself in rows of cocooned citrus, for which they'd feast upon graciously.

A deliberate, calculating process made easy by her.

That night under flickering candles, Baoxiang’s hand traced the frayed pages of her grandmother’s books. It told the story of ten scornful suns that had once traveled around the earth; unaware of the trail of destruction they left in their path, flocking eastward like birds for the winter. 

They had all met their fates one by one, gradually shot down one by one by a grief-stricken man.

She ponders over that tale frequently. What would her grandmother do to the sun, had she seen ten? Would she keep them as so, or poach them to make one?

“I used to do this for your mother,” Her grandmother reminisced, gazing into the burning sunlight. “As smart as she was, she, too, could not peel oranges.”

When her grandmother passed, all things citrus and sunny in her life left along with her.

—

Baoxiang found Devi to be a living, breathing enigma. She tumbled into her life— and household—unapologetically, showing zero remorse for the matter.

“They had a discount on fruits at the farmer’s market today,” Devi announces, bursting through the door. She shows off a melon with a wrinkled rind and knocks on it several times, inspects it gently in her hand. “Ah, no wonder. They're about to go bad.”

“You're wasting money you don't have on nearly-spoiled fruits?”

“Really, only you would complain about someone buying fruit,” Devi hoists the woven basket onto the counter and grabs a wooden cutting board from the kitchen rack. “I'll cut them up.”

She takes out a mango out of the stash and grabs a knife from a drawer. Holding the fruit upright on its tallest side, she descends the knife into the fruit and slices it a few centimeters off from its stem on both sides. Baoxiang studies the way she cuts, the angles she twists the knife at — it is all done with purpose.

“There. Mango,” She announces, holding a piece of the fruit delicately and tilting it towards Baoxiang, almost like she’s afraid it'll break. She swipes the rind and fuzzy pit to the edge of the table. 

“That’ll make good fertilizer,” Devi grabs another fruit. “We should start a garden.”

She thinks of a garden, stricken with overgrown mourning. She thinks of Devi in the middle of it. The thought of it is treacherous in her mind, lingers for far too long. She shakes her head and diverges a path out of the fog clouding her rationale.

“No,” Baoxiang simply responds before turning back to her novel. She pays no mind to Devi’s disappointed pout.

However, she is taken aback when the undeniable scent of citrus fills her nostrils. When she looks up, she sees Devi peeling an orange with her bare hands. She shakes off the clouding unease just as she did before, just asks her: “You peel your oranges with your hands?”

Devi laughs, radiant. “Yeah. You get more orange this way. You didn’t know that?”

A man shot down ten suns with a bow and arrow. Would Devi tear each one down with her hands? If her flesh was seared in the process, would she care?

“I find it strange how you cut the other fruit with a knife, yet use such barbaric methods for only oranges.”

Devi snorts. “My mother always taught me to use my hands. It's easier.”

She twirls the fruit around in her palm before piercing the non-stemmed side with her thumb. Her finger impales it until its tip comes through clean on the other end. 

“Look, you see all this pulp?” When she removes her thumb, a trail of interlaced, almost vein-like string follows thereafter. 

“Is that not good for you?”

“Yeah, but it also tastes bad and quite frankly,” Devi flings the web into the compost pile, “I do not want to eat it.”

Continuing, she grabs a piece from the lotus-shaped opening her thumb left, and peels away. She peels, peels until the rind gives naught and she has to start anew again, until the fruit is raw and bare. The orange, now cradled in Devi’s palm, is gently sprinkled with leftover pulp. It almost looks moon-like, an equinox between night and day — scratched with craters and filled with the sun. 

Baoxiang tries not to think of Devi in a garden they would call their own. The fashion in which she would pluck fruit from the trees, their fruit, their trees, only for them to share.

She tries, she really does. 

“You should have just cut it with a knife,” Baoxiang continues on. She says this when really internally, she thinks: “I don’t mind the extra time it would’ve taken. Were oranges not made to be blossomed by the hands of the living?”

She regains her focus, resumes the banter. “It would have been quicker.”

"Bao. Babe. You aren't funny in the slightest, you know that? I should just eat these fruits by myself and let you shrivel up and die. The Vitamin-C poisoning would be worth it,"

"That's impossible. You can’t get Vitamin-C poisoning from five oranges, Devi.”

“I’ll make it happen.”

—

Baoxiang does not dream usually, but for the first time in a while— she does. 

She dreams of a golden hour where the light tints everything red. Dreams of angled sun rays, of a sky that blends seamlessly into itself. Somewhere between the blistering sun and herself lies Devi, peeling an orange with her hands. She does it the same here as she does in the apartment they share for this summer.

Thumb through the bud: “I think this would be nice.”

Rind split: “Just me, you, and peeling oranges for eternity.”

Now, Devi peels, a cycle repeated until the fruit is barren. She delicately hands it to Baoxiang, the weight phantom in her palm.

“That seems tiring,” Baoxiang comments.

Devi looks at Baoxiang, their features eclipsing into each other.

“No, not if it's for you.”