Now You Seer

The Festival

I woke up in the morning to the sound of a drill. As in, a little hand tool that burrows holes in wood. It took me a minute to realize just what it was, but when I did, I got out of bed and wrenched open the door, poking my head out and looking around.

Victoria Falls was awake and buzzing, even though a quick glance at my watch told me it was only eight in the morning.

All night I had been tossing and turning, my body jolting awake every time I had found myself even remotely comfortable. At approximately three in the morning I had finally sat straight up in bed, looked around for a solid ten minutes, and then collapsed back into the blankets for the last time. I didn't get up again, but it was an uneasy sleep, filled with flickerings of the future that proved to be most unhelpful.

People were gathering to one location; the center of town. Directly in front of Mario's Pizzeria, there was this massive fountain that seemed to stretch twenty feet in diameter, but only two feet deep.

Now, there were a bunch of wooden picnic tables surrounding the fountain, and all sorts of street vendor carts littering the area. Only a few feet away from my spot against the railing in the hallway outside my door, an older man was hanging a massive banner.

It looked like a town celebration, a festival of sorts, with no specific theme that I could detect. But man, was it a beautiful morning.

If I thought mornings in my old hometown were pretty, they didn't compare to this right here in the slightest. The sun had long since risen, but the pinks and light yellows of morning time still hovered around the horizon, with thin clouds drifting across the sky.

Even the air seemed to be charged with the smell of the pink flowers that were all but suffocating Victoria Falls.

"Ma'am?" someone asked, and I turned to see the man that was hanging the banister, holding his drill and looking at me strangely.

"Good morning." I muttered, blushing furiously and returning to my room. Unfortunately, the town wasn't nearly big enough that a young girl could walk out of a motel room without getting noticed.

I almost let out a yelp of disgust when I ran a hand through my hair, only to find it greasier than I liked to admit. I had used the restroom the night before, so I knew with complete confidence that the bathroom was actually really nice. The shower curtain didn't look like it was about to collapse, and there were mini soaps and stuff in there.

Classy.

After my shower I pulled on a loose t-shirt and a pair of capris, only because they were the only clothing I had with me up in my room. The rest of it was locked away in my car, which looked rather lonely in the little parking lot as I walked past.

While out walking among the people, I noticed one thing. Most of them had these really pretty blue eyes. Maybe it was something in the water, or a lack of new traits for the gene pool, but they had the same dark blue eyes.

And they were noticeable, too. Glowing, almost.

"Hello!" I turned around and, lo and behold, there was the woman with the magazine from the night before.

"Oh, hi. What's going on?" I asked, surprising myself. During high school I had never pretended to be shy.

"Alpha James said that today would be a celebration, so we celebrate!" she said cheerfully.

I studied her with weary eyes, remembering her little wink with a wave of nausea.

"Alpha?" I finally asked, finding my stomach.

"Yeah, of the wo-" she paused, studying my facial expression, before smiling again, but less brightly "Oh. Oh you don't know. Never mind."

And just like that she flounced off with purpose, going to chat with the man who was hanging up the banner before.