The rain trickled down in a melancholy drizzle, as your boots sloshed through the dense mud collecting amongst the saturated grass, puddles of the moistened Earth suctioning to your each and every step. Growing up in the core of Birmingham, where the Small Heath skies were always grey and constantly thick with the collection of hazy smog and suffocating smoke, the ashen overcast that consumed the Warwickshire evening sky didn't faze you. However, even as the depressing cloud coverage of a shadowy grey appeared as it always had been, there was something about this evening's looming dreary rain, that felt different than any you'd braced in the past.
For as your boots trudged through the mass of squishing mud, the air that funneled into your expanding lungs in breaths of crisp and precipitation tainted oxygen, felt as though it soared through your chest as if it could clear away the emotions darkening the crevices like cobwebs. The air that smelled of the Earth, rich with the saturated soil and the growing scent of the stables coming into view, felt like the first deep breath you'd inhaled in months.
The evidence of winter had since melted away, gone were the mounds of snow muddied by the sloshing of passing tires or the little footprints of your son's snow boots, leaving dead and dormant grass rolling on for miles to come in its place. Snowflakes no longer sprinkled from the skies, bathing the land below in a light that made up for the absent of the moon, but it's chill remained in the air. Vicious as it nipped against the exposed flesh of your neck, blowing the whispers of the lingering season across your skin, as it spit the rain that felt like melted icicles pattering against your cheeks.
There was nothing to soften the blow of the cold, no spectacle beautiful enough to make up for the numbing temperatures that threatened your very bones, as the last of the snow had melted off the roof a week prior. It was the time in the season that seemed to drag on longer than any other, when the Christmas Tree laid dead at the curb with the memories of a happier month before, with rarely a day graced by the subtle pierce of sunshine. It was with the rolling out of a new year, that the days were long and the skies were perpetually grey.
The path you walked down slowly, became shadowed as the cast of the large stable structure engulfed the remaining trail. Darkening the mix of thick mud and rough gravel your boots trudged across, making the ground below your steps look as though night had completely taken over the land. The shade making the air that wrapped itself around your warm navy blue coat even colder. As though it could prick through the layers of fabric adorning your body, as the roof locked in the winter chill and forced it upon your exposed flesh.
The world fell quiet, as the only sensation that echoed with a presence through the late evening air, belonged to the strong whistle of the rustling wind and the soft exhales of horses safely tucked in their stalls. If the air had not held such a painful pierce and the sky lacked it's deeply melancholy shade, there could be peace discovered in the silence that rolled out across the land.
The rich scent of dampened soil and the strong smell of the horses only a few feet away from where you slowed in the threshold, were soon joined by a scent that overpowered them. You could no longer smell the comforting tones of a nature dead but ever present around you, or the aromas of the stables you had grown to enjoy over the years spent tending to them. For as your footsteps pattered to a halt at the edge of the threshold, peering into the stables that were concealed from the shadowy sky above, you inhaled the sharp and familiar stench of smoke.
It was a smell you'd lived with for more years than your memory could surely count, as it permeated each thread of fabric woven into every article of clothing you owned and tainted the depths of your lungs, even as you'd only touched their smoke once or twice in your formative years. But it's evocative presence captivated your life, much like the very man who smoked them. It was a bewildering comfort, one that clung to your skin and lingered in the air that swirled itself around you, for they smelled of him.
