There came a time when he found himself unable to stop thinking of water.
Rain. It was everywhere. When he walked, he would see it, even if it wasn't there, dripping from the trees and the buildings, as though they were melting. As though there was something beneath them, trying to burn its way through its own exterior; to melt away the buildings of his world, and break through into the splendor of Earth.
To breathe.
And he could only see it; could only watch and marvel at it. It was like melting crystal, dripping and running and splashing. It was beautiful, and it was everywhere. He never told anyone about it; his secret world, where there was water on everything, and the sky was brilliantly shining as the endless downpour came, falling and covering but not drowning anything. Not robbing the universe of air.
It was there to breathe.
Sometimes he would go out in the middle of the night; up atop his roof, dancing in the invisible rain, soaking himself in it and smiling. No one else could see it, so no one else knew.
It was his secret. The only one that he had.
It had never rained before. Not like that. This rain was pure and not recycled; new every time. Like the sky's eyes filled with tears and released them, endlessly falling from a hidden supply. Like angel's tears.
That was what he thought the invisible rain was. Angel's tears. The tears of his mother.
He slept upon the sea, the waves cradling him in a bed of immeasurable comfort and security. In his dreams, he saw waterfalls and bubbles; an aquatic world free of fish and not plagued by humanity. The beauty of the water was that, in all of its peacefulness, it was more powerful than anything known to man.
It was more powerful than he was, and he knew it.
So he rode with it, unable to control the sensation of its guidance, and he thought of his mother, and how she had loved him, and how he had loved her.
And he smiled as it washed over him, warm and loving and blue.
But the water had changed.
It had started to fall in sheets of red, dripping and splashing as puddles of blood. The buildings were no longer melting. They were bleeding.
And that was when he had realized that the thing that had brought him so much happiness was not a pure bath from the heavens…it truly had been tears. The tears of the Earth, before the wounds split open and allowed the pain to flow freely.
He had been soaked in blood, unable to stop it, unable to stop seeing it.
And then he had cried, and no one had known why.
The Earth was dying.
And he was the only one that knew.