Blood red sprouts hang from green stems, like trickling down from a pricked finger. Bent down by a torrential downpour, water slashing this way and that. Experimenting, like it couldn’t make up its mind which lashing out would cause the most pain.
He walked, drenched in viscous maroon rain, making a gentle crunching sound. The gravel soothed the sole of his bare feet, like nature digging its rough fingers in for a deep tissue massage. He revered nature and it rewarded him in its strange little ways. He unloosed his tongue and felt the raindrops sink into every pore. He drank it up gratefully, this holy water from the heavens. The maroon robes clung to him, afraid to let go. They whimpered and clung tighter as the rain grew violent. The drops played a tap-tap-tap on his shorn head and he laughed at their juvenile composition. He wagged a finger at them playfully and laughed louder, letting the child within resurface for air. They took the cue and quickly drowned in the gaping hole between his teeth and he gulped them down. They were now somewhere inside him, caught in the labyrinths and voids within, making that tap-tap-tap with his blood.
He then plucked the blood red sprouts and breathed them in. They carried in their heart the scent of their agony, sweet and sacrificial. He carried them gently, his precious load. They would find themselves at the feet of a sleepy-eyed man-god, sitting still age after age, even as the walls crumble around him. Who would watch serenely, without emotion as the blood drained out of them. And there they would lie, till another rain, another time would obliterate their existence. They would have no more memories of their being then, just a faint sense of something red and alive trickling out.
