The rainchild drowned him in the wake of her cascading deluge, in the ardor of her torrential abstraction, in the canvas and tapestry of weary whims. Each rivulet was the sweeping, cold caress of her silent sorcery; each droplet was the sinuous, light stroke of her foibles, of her caprices, of her mercies and regrets. It drank his sin, ate at his malicious marrow, licked the vast tirades of bestial pursuits, barbaric containments, savage vessels and hollowed grails, licentious, iniquitous flavor. It itched and carved over his Tartarean marble and sculpted stone, tore, laced and lanced the aperture of his soul, wilted it to further darkness, further decay. It settled into the layers of his unholy vehemence and found more, digging into the enamel of nonchalance, of steel, fortitude and ramparts, until there was naught left but the desperate, forlorn upheavals of a wretched cretin and desolate devil. It parted ways with his severe monstrosities, his perilous, pernicious scrapes, and his masterpieces of arcane, reticent annihilations, contorting the fabric of his hide into darker shades of black, iron, hallowed conquerors and conniving demons. It drizzled down the fierce, insouciant contours of his face, slinking past the piercing stare, not obliterated, not destroyed, feral and seeking, touching where she could not. A ghostly trail of patterns, whispering, wanton traces of elemental design, enchanted, absorbed, beguiled and allured into the enriched sphere and scope of his anarchy, his acrimony, his trenchant, mordant enmity. It crooned melancholy, fostered snares, culminating in a wily, cunning scheme that brought his eyes to glare into hers beneath his dampened forelock. Was this her light? Her divinity? Her virtue? So why, when it reached his mouth, slipped across his tongue, did it savor of sadness, did it relinquish purity, did it regenerate hope where none should have existed? What was there to show from the pieces of her moroseness, misery and dismalness – for he had his own impart, share and bestow without her dying dreams, without her dimming heart, without her fervent ardor. Grandeur slid, hidden beneath the dusky heart of the Basin, raptures chiseled and thrown away, leaving only the mortal bones of the wounded, the proud, the strong and mighty. He’d survived nothingness, he lived through terror, domination and bedlam, and she, with her stalwart gaze and her harpsichord bliss, still tried to feed him the carnations and taffeta of her livelihood; irony bit through two souls.

He doesn’t belong in her showers of affections or the vestal ages of virtue, he cannot stand long in her essence without feeling the burn of avaricious anger, the coursing rage of feverish malcontent, the withered pinnacles of his nefarious, sinister distortions. Her elements dragged him into unknown territory, and the only reaction he could embody was challenge, opposition, scorn and derision, too weighed down by the crushed, twisted, maligned blood coursing through his veins, along his skin, across his muscles until each taut surface forced him to disorder and debacle. He yearned for calamity, he desired for destruction, he pleaded for affliction, misfortune, tribulation and catastrophe, to escape from the foibled laces, the mercurial hold she’d grasped upon his ominous, baleful soul. How dare she be able to see his scars, how dare she be capable of gripping upon his corroded, consumed entity, how dare she unwind the fabric of his labyrinthine conjectures, unholy regards and hungry, heinous sieges. Soaked, immersed and absorbed in the fingertips of her silent incantations, he backed away from her form, slowly, carefully, traced where he’d come from, towards the shadows, towards the inky shades of Stygian oils and containers, to where he felt secure, safe, the sanctuary of darkness. The minstrel of mayhem slunk and slithered in the drawn corridors of rain and shower, lancing stare hiding the inundated poisons, the vexed venom, of his blemished barbarity. He was silent again, hushed, withdrawn, hiding everything within the core of his hallowed shell, refusing to extend towards her again; she’d already witnessed too much. Like nettles and thorns pricking at his sides, dangerously tempting, alluring and out of reach.