Watercolour feather on a forearm

The rain has been coming sideways down Bridge Street since eight, and the awning over my pitch has given up keeping it off the crates. I have sold three pots of ink and one bottle of ox gall to a man who wanted it for his nephew's school project. Mostly I have been watching the puddles spread their colours across the cobbles, the way the oil from the fishmonger's van blooms violet and then dies out to nothing. You would have liked it. You always said rain was just the sky leaking paint.

Yesterday a girl came by with a peacock feather tucked in her hatband, the eye of it gone a bruised green. She asked whether I had anything to make blue run into purple, not a flat colour but one that bled. I told her the trick was not to let the brush rest. Wet the paper first, lay the colour in and then let it go where it wants. She laughed and said that sounded like her life. I gave her a little dropper of indigo for free, and she gave me the feather, pressed flat between two pages of a paperback, because she said she had no use for it anymore.

I have it propped against the tin of pencils now. The barbs are still fine enough to catch the light, dark as a wet crow on the one side and shot through with blue on the other. I keep meaning to draw it before the damp gets into the spine.

Pop round when you can. The stall needs a second pair of hands and the rain never stops for long.

Love, Mags