The rain saw too many things beyond his nonchalant, apathetic glance, the cold, cruel exterior of his impassive stance, and the chilling, behemoth enigma of his bold, cutlass countenance. He didn’t care for it, the strange, unsettling sentiment of unraveled feelings, of fleeting, scarred moments that settled upon his features with a twitch of his brow, the flick of an ear, a clench of his jaw, the narrowing of his sinister stare. All of these motions and movements could be measured in some form of introspection, and he loathed that they’d somehow found a way to his face, embraced the taut nuances of stone, of rubble, of eternal youth damned, cursed and stoked to oblivion. He didn’t want the world to see what fettered, fed, and withered the archaic denizen of his otherworldly exterior, he didn’t want anyone to know, to view, to witness, the barbarity shift, change and alter from any prior marble mien; he was supposed to be the devil’s magnificent masterpiece, the brooding, satanic song that uttered nothingness, that spilled blood and flesh, that incensed, infuriated, then mauled the timeless pieces of divinity until their rapturous decay. He was supposed to be the creature of foreboding, of terror, of horror and onslaught, of intimidating, alluring decree that poured filth and frenzy into ferocious furor. He’d spilled too many secrets, wilted and festered from the haunting gallows he’d formed before, melted from winter into spring’s dulcet murmurings – she did not fear him, did not flee from his frame, and did not warrant him a single heart spun moment of fright. She made the form of his monument crack, and there pieces of him still unknown to the world that even he didn’t long to see, to watch, to cast shades of rumination upon. The coy length of her smile, the tilt of her head, was a trap, a spell, resembled a heady enchantment that cooled the length of his prior prosperity and made him shirk any response at all. To even admit this effect left him frustrated, immersed back into the framework of annihilation and upheaval, vile, contemptuous loathing, a comfortable zone of sedition that brought him back to the quiet, hushed furor of his eldritch, primordial incantations. Deimos retreated, retained his archaic blend of tyranny, persecution, malice and menace, wove it back into the strangled features of his face, so that when she christened some new alluring spell, he would only subdue it with the trace of his enmity and rancor.

But she was stony, implacable in her own way, and he was allowed to return to his brooding calculations, as she seared against the turbulent wind and conquered unknown foes. As she fought her whims, he stole pieces of the fanciful tides, watched as they sank, drowned, against his mighty indifference, his chained, harsh malevolence, his vicious, vindictive apathy. Her ruminations would not survive his sadistic mayhem, his callous calamity, his heathen strokes of horrible, atrocious revolution, or the detached, dissolute debacles worn into flesh and bone. She spoke, and he listened, but delivered not a word back to her, not a sentiment to speak of their trying day, not a syllable depicting the discoveries she’d made of his villainous, vile insurrection, nor a croon that labored of his dying, stony fixture. He refused to remark on the day, he rejected the notion of small talk, he spurned and dismissed her niceties – she’d driven too deeply into his ardor, sewn little nettles and thorns into the shambles of his heart, and he regretted allowing her to even embark on her little raptures and fascinations. He’d been swept in it, the disastrous pursuit of her melancholies, the yearnings of her fortitude, the woven template of two lost souls that rekindled too many familiarities, and now he ensured he stayed out of her boundaries, out of her lace, out of her charms and captivations. He would not be so easily caught again. When she asked, queried, pondered, if he could escort her to the Siberean home they both shared, he only uttered the non-committal expanse of sound and vice, saying nothing, offering nothing, pursuing nothing. “Hn.” Then his march began, a fluid, undulating posture of elegant, monstrous pursuits, the wilting pathways of demise, decay and death surrounding his inscrutable trail, and if she should follow him down the road to hell, he would still bestow naught but the sinister swing of his hedonistic reverie. That was where he belonged, along the hostile parchment of Satan’s pen, a world unsuitable for her chimes, her echoes, her soft murmurings. He’d still be stone, death, and mayhem, she’d still be rain, whispers and allurement, and he’d try to forget how she’d managed to wash away some of his ruined shards.