The Orchestrated Rain

Episode 2

The scene: a foggy morning in high mountains. A small plateau lies between two snowy peaks, green from the dense forest. A rocky road leads to it from a small town, located downhill by the river.

Early morning; predawn twilights; the air is clean and fresh. In the middle of the plateau, by the rocky road, a wooden house stands, surrounded by a thick fir forest. At a first glance, it seems large and luxurious, a mansion, but a closer look reveals that this is an illusion created by unproportinally small windows and crude design softened by time and a humid environment. The house looks old. Wooden walls are darkened and crooked. The roof shows rotting in several places, some of which are patched, often poorly. But even the patches themselves are made of the same old already dissolving planks. The house, however, is not abandoned, -- smoke is coming out of the stone chimney. There is also an electricity line, coming from the town below, but the house does not seem to be connected to it.

A man stands by the road, looking into the hazy distance waiting for a car that is climbing up from the town. Akin to his house, a woodman appears old and dark. However, his confident posture, tall and muscular body, black with only a few patches of gray hair indicate that he is in his late thirties at most. The man looks rough, with sharp features. His eyes are frozen, following some distant thought or a memory. A man of a few words, and it is unclear if the life in exile had made him that, or if he chose such life because he was always a loner.

A car finally reaches the woodmen's house and stops. After the engine gets silent, two doors open. The driver -- an average looking man in his fiftieth with a noticeable belly -- emerges from the front one, and after saying something that looks like a word of caution into the car, proceeds towards the woodmen. A moment later, a young woman emerges from the car. She seems like she has just finished her college and is about to embark upon her journey of life. She looks strikingly out of place here, with her sharp but tender features, clean and lush cloth. The one aspect of her that does however seem fit to the surroundings, is her eyes. Once bright and alive, they are now clouded by the fog like the forest around. But if the forest will clear itself in a few hours, the eyes of a young woman appear to be veiled by sadness and remorse forever. No force can give her back what she has lost.

As they approach, the old man greets the woodman and they proceed into the house. Casually, the woodmen's gaze falls on a young woman like a heavy chain. He stares with lust and hunger, akin to those of a patient hunter that has been longing for the prey for far too long. Alit with the interest and desire eyes of the woodman embrace the woman, consuming her slender, graceful figure that looks so strange, exotic here, among piles of stone, extinguished bonfires, and crude metal instruments.

The young woman senses how she is being looked at, recognizing the emotions so obvious and transparent, that only a naive child can hope to hide. With a hint of a sad smile, invisible to others, she imagines awkward advances, crude flattery, and piles of silly worthless gifts from the woodman. She thinks about it in detail as if imagining the torture procedure, barely able to prevent the disgust from showing on her face. But she has already accepted, accepted everything. It is exactly the sort of misery she has been looking for. As her body, her mind, her soul were rejected by the one they were intended for, she doesn't care about them, about herself.

Two men and one woman enter the house, and a heavy dark door closes shut. The rain starts. Later, only one of them would drive away at dusk. The scene gets darker and the sounds of the forest fade into silence. The scene ends.