Trickles of freshly fallen rainwater gently burbled through the metalwork drainage pipes affixed to the side of the building.

The skies had been overcast all day long, but it wasn't until the deepest part of night that the clouds above even began to give way. It had been a gradual thickening, one that had stretched over hours, as well the horizon. Something akin to a mounting threat, an ominous suggestion of always-impending precipitation that steadily built over the course of the afternoon, swelled on into the evening, and only at this point, well past midnight, began to coalesce into substance.

It was a kind of pitiful rain, though. At least it was, at first. One might've derided it as an exaggerated, over-promising mist. The kind of weather that loomed and darkened, only to piddle its way over the eastern hills before making too much of a fuss.

Then again, sometimes the canopy could turn on you. Sometimes, after regarding the distended sky as a kind of empty threat, you could find yourself shocked by the extent of its seemingly overflowing intent.

( Story Continues... )