The Fixer

She wasn't very tall! 5'0" She had red hair that tended to frizz in wet weather and looked like curly straw when it was dry. Her complexion wasn't flawless, she had freckles or maybe it was just one big freckle running across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were hazel green. Not that startling green, that gets a person noticed, just hazel.

She wore the clothing of the time -- the long fur outer coat, made to keep an Icelander warm. She wore a short brown leather skirt with woolen stockings to keep her legs from chapping with the cold. Her sweater was of the same iridescent purple as her stockings and she had red cheeks from the cold. She wore leather gloves that matched her skirt and a hat made of the same fox-colored fur as her coat.

Warmth was the primary objective, because it hadn't been warm anywhere on planet for years. It hadn't been warm since before the nulear winter thirty years ago.

She stood at the corner, in front of the huge office building. The Icelanders rebuilt quickly after the accident (no one called it a war) because they had people to house and refugees to absorb, as large parts of North America wer irradiated and uninhabitable.

She was waiting -- seemed that was all she ever did -- wait. The news she was about to convey was not good; it was important and she wished that anyone else would have been given the mission to impart it. As she stood there watching the traffic - the mechanical horses pulling everyone along the street - she wondered what her contact, the man who fixed everything, would look like.