L’albinos affamé

Alone she was sitting at a small table by the window at The Gristle on a cool spring day in Stratum XVII. She took drags off a vanilla glucose durry in between bites of stale pound cake. Her rosy irises and downward chin painted her as distant and unreadable, and the brief cascade of whitish hair from under a silly blue beret was incongruous enough to invite ridicule.
  Which — this being The Gristle, in the town of Classic City — was ground zero for snide commentary from hipster and BärteHansa types. Such is the usual reaction when social anomalies show up on the radar of the Condescending Cool: Immediate Squamous Scene Rejectus.
  The woman was known to perform cringey acoustic folk songs at local venues, and this was added fire to the ridicule already heaped upon her.
  Okay, fair enough on that part. But her physical condition and being from Canadia were of course no choice she could possibly make herself, so the derision of others at those facts came off as immature cheap shots.
  As for the cringey folk music, there’s no shortage of it locally, and (as with many genres) the cringe factor is usually based on twee, self-serious, and oversensitive pretensions.
  None of which were apparent in the woman’s music, mien, or spirit. Just a quiet poignancy with muted earnestness, if anything.
  The woman continued to silently chew her cake at the lone table as the afternoon sun faded to a weak grey. Word has it that she soon thereafter made her way back north. Guess the local welcome wagon must’ve been a bit too much to handle.
  Creative cretins of Classic City: We know how much you care for the unconventional and downtrodden — as you relentlessly keep saying so — but is it too much to ask you to put aside your fashionable nihilism and jaded, low-T snark to afford a simple stranger their dignity?