variegated [ blitz ; sigrid / alfie ]

s i g r i d.

I've never really been hush-hush about anything I didn't need to be; I mean, you get some strange looks petting stray animals but everybody says that I love strange anyways so in a deep part of me I'm supposed to like these dirty side-eyes. But in a way, I can be, since at least I know I have their attention as I run through the streets chanting a crazed thing about palm readings. My mother taught me, like everything else I need to know: boiling, lying and tweezing. Yelling is good for business, though, especially if everybody already thinks you're making shit up.

That's the fun part.

Because I get to sit at my neighbor's house - the door's always left open because she's never home anymore, peacekeepers took her or something - and wait, which I've never liked, feet propped by the heel on a chair as I lay on the floor. I get to sit and wait, and think, because they come here for whatever words they're betting out of me, and when my first palm to read comes I already see snakes in their future. Nobody believes the truth anyways, nobody believed my father's innocence, and nobody believes in the creases of their palms even though its part of their own genetical build. A smile stretches across my face, maybe I see my father in their future, a nice trip to the big ole D.C. is nice for some people - I hear the weather is great this time of season. I bite my thumb-

"Sig', you play fair now," my mother would say, oh, "but I am," I groan back as I flip to my stomach, "fair and nice aren't always the same thing." My hands hold each other, and "o' you know what I'mean," I respond to myself in my motherly voice. She's always going on about how I don't play fair, "these kids don' understand, y'know that."

And she's usually right, and always boring. In this new found spring heat, I need a little fun.