The Trouble with Time, Part 1 - First snow

She is hurrying down the street. Clouds have been heavy in the sky all day, thick and grey. There is too much to do. She's running out of time. She can feel it.

She glances back, crosses the street. She enters a store on the other side. A red haired woman keeps the door open for her on her way in. She smiles and nods a thanks as she slips into the shop. She browses the things on the shelves, not really seeing anything she picks up, her mind preoccupied with the pressure of time. The redhead asks the shopkeeper about some soaps. She slips out of the store as the woman pulls out her wallet to pay, but stops outside. She digs out her phone, checks her messages, even though she knows there aren't any new ones.

The red haired woman comes out of the store and turns right. She stares at her phone for a moment longer, then continues her way down the street, in the same direction as the woman went

She has to get at least this part done tonight. That way she can probably make it in time, and without too much last-second panic. If she doesn't get this done tonight... Well, better not think about it.

It will be fine. This is doable, no matter what happens tonight.

If only she really were that positive a person.

The red haired woman turns right onto a pedestrian street. She turns the same corner a few seconds later. The woman has disappeared from view, mixed in with the crowd walking the street up and down.

She has a moment of panic until she spots the woman's head bobbing away in a sea of very much not red hair. So at least that can be said about redheads: they might be very hard to find, but they're not too easy to lose. The woman is barely twenty meters in front of her.

She needs a plan. She can't keep following the woman for very long. This has been going on for too long. The woman already saw her face, and she has no idea if the woman is the kind of person who would remember a face of a stranger she saw for two seconds and probably didn't pay much attention, if she saw it again ten minutes later? No way to tell.

She looks at the woman's hat at first, hoping it flies off her head, so she could pick it up and simply look like a nice stranger. But it isn't windy, and the woman isn't wearing the kind of hat that would be blown away anyway. But that coat, maybe....

The coat will have to do. She can't see another way. But that means she will have to get close to the woman twice more. She sighs. It will be fine, she tells herself.

The woman has, luckily, entered another store, and she goes in after her. She pulls her hat deeper onto her head in the hopes that the woman won't recognise her and realise she's been following her. The woman is standing at a shelf, looking at some spices, trying to find whatever it is she needs. She goes to stand next to her, just back enough that she would see her in her peripheral vision, but not realise that she's looking at the woman's shoulder instead of the spices.

They both stand there a moment. Then she reaches out and pulls a bag of spice off the shelf. She walks away. She picks up a few other things, a couple of which she actually needs, unlike the... clove. She randomly picked clove from the shelf. Well, there's no going back without acting a little suspicious.

She makes it to the cashier's line just before the woman, pays her groceries, steps away from the counter to give the woman space to pay hers, fumbles around putting her change in her wallet and her wallet in her bag. She walks to the door, but just as she's stepping out, she stops and snaps her fingers as if she forgot something.

Smooth. So smooth.  

Really over-doing it, huh?

Well, too late now.

She turns, and bumps directly into the red haired woman, who had been coming out of the store right behind her. She mumbles an apology before disappearing between the shelves. She gets a big, good loaf of bread, as if that was the thing she had forgotten.

After she leaves the store she walks some meters, then stops and looks to her hand.

And there it is. A few strands of hair. It had taken way too long to cross that off the list. Almost too long. It would have been too late soon. Natural redheads are not easy to find. She smiles and carefully tucks the hairs in a place they won't get lost.

Suddenly something cold touches her cheek. She looks up.

Snow.

She has even less time than she thought.
___________________________________________________

So it begins. Again.
What is happening in this story? Your guess is as good as mine at this point. I think this might be the weirdest beginning I've ever written for a story.

The topic for tomorrow is Eyes.

~matleena