+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar

Theme: 30, Under the Rain
Characters: Kharl, Garfakcy
Pairing: None
Warnings: Pure and unadulterated Kharl-flavored angst.
Need to Know Info: Umm... I didn't proofread this one at all? I've got a flight to catch, sorry.
Title Provider: So You Disappear (Xandria)

I was Dreaming of the Fire, of the Time when it was Wild...

The low, distant rumble of thunder does not seem ominous; for a moment, it is nothing but noise. Nothing but noise: a little desperate, a little sad. A far-off streak of lightning is reflected by the ocean, broken by the churning waves, made less powerful as its image is captured. There was a time when all of this would have impressed him, made his eyes slip wide in wonder, made his heart beat fast from joy. There was a time when this would have meant something to him—now it is nothing but another night, another fruitless display of power, just another storm that he will weather and forget.

Wind rips the trees back and forth in a violent waltz, whispers like a lost lover through the limbs and leaves and snatches at his clothes with greedy fingers. Lilac strands strike and tangle with his pale eyelashes; he cannot see and does not care, and like a restless spirit, he passes silently beneath the hissing canopy. His steps are sedate, his eyes are half-lidded. There is nothing in his nonchalance to betray the agony bubbling like acid in his stomach, the lead filling his lungs, the weight of desolation closing like a trap around his heart.

The sky is one roiling shade of charcoal, of almost black, lighter in places where the sides of clouds curve over and under each other like misshapen braids of hair, like wild blades of grass, fighting to be closest to not the sun, but to the earth. There is a pearl shine to the air, black pearls that glimmer so steel-gray in the light. There is no light today—but something makes everything gently blur together until he cannot tell the difference between the sky and the sea, the trees and the clouds, the dark earth and his pale, pale skin. For a moment, he feels as if he ought to say something, ought to raise his voice around the haunting whistle of the wind, just so he can be sure that he is still living, that he is still a separate being from the worms crawling beneath his feet. He does not make a sound—because a part of him does not want to. A part of him wonders what it would be like to be a mindless worm beneath the soil, wonders if that might not be a better life.

Then the rain begins to fall. Soft, too soft for the rolling thunder so far out in the sea, too soft for the crack and shatter of lightning, splitting the clouds like spears through the yielding bellies of fish. The steady fall of drops breaks something inside him: he cannot feel them—there is no way for the rain to work its way beneath the layers of his cloak (the layers of his heart); there is no way his moon pale skin could ever hope to be chilled or bruised by the crystalline drops. For just a moment, just the barest of moments, he prays that the next drop will fall faster, fall harder, leave a mark on his unmarrable skin. For a second, he wants to feel a pain he has never felt before. Surely something like that could remind him that he is really alive. Something like that could make him tremble, something like that could make him feel—he wants nothing more than to be able to feel again.

Lightning ripples in the sky like a serpent, and breaks his thoughts in two. His sharp lilac eyes, half-lidded but no less aware –no less desperate, no less helpless, no less cold– trace the string-like descent of the drops. They are like silver ribbons to his sight, binding Heaven and Earth together for an eye blink, and then breaking, slipping away. He watches one fall from a distance even his gaze cannot pierce. He watches it fall, turning over and over in the air, shimmering in the reflected glint of its companions. He watches it strike his raised hand, and he does not feel it—why isn't he connected to Heaven? The drop rolls off his skin like the water it is, and fades away. In the end, not even the silver thread of rain is enough to bind Heaven to Hell.

"Master Kharl, what are you doing?!" A distant cry catches his ear only vaguely, and he does not turn. The boy's demanding tug is not enough to move him. "You're going to get sick."

Kharl prays that he will, and knows that he won't.

Theme 31: Flowers
"I can't remember my father," Nohiro's, Rath's voice says, "but I bet he'd be someone like you."