Perhaps the rain fell in an incessant melancholy downpour that afternoon, for the sky above knew of the anguish that awaited below. Crying the tears that you could no longer shed, as it felt as though you'd simply cried them all. Drained of the salt of your pain, the moisture of your misery, the sky cried the tears down from the heavens so that you no longer had to.
Dreary was not a strong enough word for the way the world appeared that afternoon, for it was a word used to describe the place you once called home all the way back in Birmingham, nestled on Watery Lane. But this, this perpetual depression that poured out across the land, was an angst infused presence far beyond any sensation you'd ever felt from the universe.
For it was penetrating, with a force that all but threatened to rattle the very foundation of your bones. It sunk beneath the surface of your flesh, as though the droplets falling from the blanket of miserable grey and the atmosphere that stung with the dense breath of sorrow, burned through your skin like acid. It seeped through until it found the bones hidden underneath, nearly shattering them as the extent of the pain, that engulfed the skies as if it were a living and breathing thing, found the crevices of your chest and crawled into the very mechanics of your beating heart. Feeling the way it coiled it's hauntingly cold presence around the strings that kept the muscle, burdened with hurt, pumping warmth through your body that felt anything but.
It was like a shadow enveloped the countryside, overwhelming the landscape once alive with the richness of emerald budded trees and vivid chartreuse grass just coming back to life after the bitter winter. A breath of grey exhaled over the rolling estate that stretched further than the eye could see, all but bleeding the land dry of it's rightful shades and very soul that made Warwickshire in the spring so breathtaking. Leaving behind, a landscape cold and mournful as though it'd been stripped of it's very existence here on this Earth.
Your eyes watched from the tall set of front windows, the heels of your fidgeting but frozen stance digging into the embroidered rug beneath you, surely leaving behind indentations and the evidence of your long standing presence. Observing the solemn race of raindrops down the glass, trailing after each other as though they had hope that they'd surely have a purpose or place to wind up, never realizing that they were merely an expression of pain exhaled from the clouds above them. Streaking paths down the windowpane, until the glass appeared clouded and drenched as though the droplets were tears fallen from your eyes, running red and worn down the flesh of your face.
Only this time, you didn't feel the burn upon your flesh from where the salt slid along the raw trails left behind, instead watching them race down the window as though you were on the outside of your hurting soul looking in.
There had always been something slightly depressing to the pavement and the architecture that surrounded the front of Arrow House, the stone cold and worn with age, but it had never been more apparent then in that moment as your eyes studied the driveway. Perhaps, it had never truly bothered you or maybe you'd simply put up with it all these years, as the interior held a certain warmth in the very beginning, but as you watched the gleam of headlights illuminating the grey pavement, you couldn't help but witness this house for what it truly was now. A sad and utterly lonely building, for it was no longer a home but rather a collection of walls, keeping pain and turmoil locked within a cold void of emptiness.
You couldn't say with certainty just how long you had stood there at the set of windows, gazing out at the rainstorm that engulfed the estate in sobs that made the Earth sodden with it's despair, waiting for that single beam of headlights to appear amidst the abyss of bleak ashen grey. Just counting the minutes and the raindrops that started new trails against the windowpane, waiting for the sound of tires cruising up the drive, the glint of silver from his Bentley coming into view. Maybe it hadn't been as long as it felt, eyes following as the car parked right in front of the entrance, but perhaps, you'd been waiting longer than you even realized. Maybe, you'd been waiting for this day for a long time coming, you just didn't realize it until it dawned that morning with a clarity within your troubled mind and upon your anguished heart.
