4
Her mind was skiing down pristine alpine slopes while her body sat at a table in a God forsaken fast food joint. The body envied the mind's ability to bog off on a holiday whenever it pleased but it consoled itself in the fact that sometimes the body had a heck of a lot more fun. It was a dull grey morning and the diffuse lighting gave everything a gritty moss covered wet look. It was one of those days that didn't belong to a season. It didn't have the vibrant colours and crispness of autumn, neither did it have the freshness and anticipation of glorious snow of a decent winter. The other seasons hardly exist in Manchester so this day belonged to misery.
She had the professional classy look of a young, hip, television fashion stylist. But she was a hair dresser in a small family business in Ashton. It was six months to the day that she had been working for her uncle and lately she had been getting very frustrated by everything and everyone. She was, however, driven by a ferocious ambition to be a famous fashion stylist so it won't be like this for much longer. A couple of years in college studying the scientific art of fashion design and she would soon make a name for herself and get away from it all to a life of glamour, beauty and lots of money.
She sat staring at the cream swirling in her coffee and the fractal eddies rising through the steam. Her eyes reflected the galaxy in her cup yet for a long time she didn't even focus on it. Soon, as time passed, the steam etherealised and her coffee transformed into the colour of her skin.
The mind came screaming back from enjoying an exotic cocktail in the Hotel Eiger in Mürren and jumped her into full consciousness. Back were the screamming children, the people scoffing food noisily and the heavy grey world. She checked her watch. It was eight seventeen and she felt comfortable with it.