[This will make no sense outside of context, it didn't even make all that much sense in context being as it is something that bubbled up from the id, but if I'm going to try to post everything that means that sometimes there will be things that make no sense. Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 6), at a time when I was communicating very poorly.]
There's a young woman, on her head is an orange knit hat that her mother gave her before back before her family kicked her out and told her never to come back. The zippers on her coat pockets have long since broken. She once tried keeping things in them anyway. She will never make that mistake again. The pencil her jeans digs into her leg each time she takes a step. The thumb of her left glove is torn, thankfully not all the way through. She doesn't know exactly how that happened. She can't afford to buy a luxury item like new gloves. Besides, they still keep her hands warm (for the most part) and they still keep her hands dry (for the most part.)
Her job gives her enough to have a place to stay, and remain fed (for the most part.) She can't complain. Not when there are so many without work. She thanks God for her job, and prays for more jobs to be created, though she isn't sure what God can do. Getting someone in the right place at the right time to get an open job is simple enough, but actually creating jobs strikes her as something that requires solutions more human than divine. She might occasionally dream of God simply creating money for those without jobs to use in the meantime, and more specifically of it raining gold in a way that somehow manages not to be a painful hail of metal, but she's fairly sure that would cause some kind of inflationary catastrophe or other.
As she enters the station she avoids eye contact. Her eyes stay to floors, walls and, occasionally, ceilings. She hasn't felt comfortable around people since every friend she ever had left her and her church denounced her as a heretic. She doesn't realize it, but she changes her entire posture. She wraps her arms around her waist, her back curls forward and her shoulders bend inward. She presents as small a profile as she can to the world. She tries to make it through invisibly. Being surrounded by people makes her uncomfortable so she ends up hugging the wall. She keeps her eyes on the wall so that when she runs across a payphone -does anyone still use those?- she doesn't run headlong into it.
Then she sees it. She stops in her tracks. “You KNOW it's a Myth. This Season Celebrate REASON!” She didn't expect to find that here. She thought she'd left behind, or rather been left behind by, those who would tell her she was being disingenuous about her religious beliefs. Yet here it is: someone else calling her a liar. Someone else calling her unreasonable. She starts moving again, a bit faster, the pencil digging into her leg a bit harder with every step. She tries not to think about the fact that she isn't welcome and isn't loved. That she can't even move from point A to point B without being reminded that in the eyes of others she's nothing but a dirty little liar.
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