A melancholy air cloaked the Earth as though it were ashamed of the rains it had unleashed that morning. For the gray appeared an impenetrable layer in the atmosphere, like a metal sheet dividing up the dusk, something cold and bitter with the rust forming from salted tears.
The rains had yet to cease, as their droplets still battered the Earth in unbearably cold patters. Midnight had brought in the tide of the storm, a ravaging howl of blistering winds that bent every tree to their whim, threatening to break their splintered bones of weeping bark and bare branches.
The rains fell with an anguish only that of a hurting, shattered soul could understand. For the downpour was torrential, endless floods hammering the dormant acres of Arrow House with a vengeance so fierce, it's velocity could only be measured by that of a searing pain.
It was as if the heavens had been torn in two, an ugly rip in the seam of its imperial tapestry. Threads left angry and raw, as the cries of something more powerful than the storm itself rained down upon the souls left inhabiting the Earth.
It was a motherly pain. Something so deeply rooted in the foundation of one's soul, the very essence of life in one's lungs, that drenched the lands. A guttural cry so primal and pained, it sounded as if the very chords of one's heart had been severed. It was a palpable pain, one that radiated down to the basis of brittle bones. Seeping into the pores of one's flesh until an agony bloomed in its place. It was an ache so strong, a cry so ferocious, a pain so deep, that it could only be that of a mother's loss.
Perhaps, the angels wept for you. Perhaps, that was the reason behind such a storm. For you couldn't help but wonder as your own tears soaked into the fabric of your pillow, if the angels above had begun to shed some for you.
Maybe it was then, as the heavens broke open and the floodgates of a ravaging rainstorm drowned Arrow House, that your little boy's soul had made it past those pearly gates of gold. Perhaps it was the angel who greeted him there, reaching her hand out for him to take, guiding him towards an eternity that would leave him never to wonder of suffering or pain, of hardship or need. Was it her? The angel who took your place, wrapping her wings around the boy you'd birthed in the bitter cold of a December morning all those years ago. Was it her? The angel who whispered out "I've got him now."
Perhaps she'd cried the same tears as you had, welcoming in a little boy too young for his fate. Maybe there's been a part of her who had wanted to turn him away, plead out to the Lord Almighty that there had to have been a mistake. But she'd taken him in and when he was safe in the room of the Lord, she cried.
The storm continued to ravage the lands until the twilight hour, as the looming promise of a new day began to sharpen its focus and the winds began to slow. Still, the rains continued to fall, but the rage in which they whipped against the aged brick of Arrow House as though it could splinter the haunted foundation, seemed to fade. For they turned to the silent sobs that could wrack a tired body in a cocoon of unimaginable anguish, a quiet kind of tear that perhaps ached worse than the ones that ripped out from the lungs.
Or perhaps, it was merely that the silence illuminated the void that built in the bedroom. The one shrouded in the shadows of the early morning darkness, but dense with the shadows that loomed from the souls within.
He'd held you in the darkness. In the clothes he'd adorned throughout the long and tireless day, smelling of woodsmoke and the faint sweetness of stable hay, he laid beside you on top of the sheets.
Thomas had made it home just before the storm began, but not before you'd fallen into bed alone with your loss. He'd pushed the bedroom door open with the soft creak of its hinge and stepped in to find your back towards him. But he knew you were awake, soft whimpers leaving your lips on the exhale of your shaken breath. The only thing Thomas stopped to do was slip off his shoes, before climbing on the bed beside you and enveloping you in a firm pressure that seemed to keep your soul from breaking any further than it already had.
