Tempest. // gruvia au

2

Orbs of water droplets hung heavy on the blades of drooping grass. With every step through the tall brush, the dew drops brushed against the fabric around Gray's ankles, which made his trudging uncomfortable.

The stormy clouds still made the sky look quite sullen, filtering the morning sunlight into a gray wash. The lack of light made the casting shadows a little darker.

His heavy breath swirling up like vapour in the chilly air, Gray thought it was so surreal; the way the now gently dribbling rain recreated the familiar valley mountains into a completely different world. Spider webs tangled in evergreens and rotting logs appeared to sparkle, dotted with droplets of the rain. The stormy clouds above casted the illusion of a dark filter over the land. An earthy smell from the damp soil filled his nostrils.

It was beautiful, it was surreal. It was like a Utopia from one of his dreams.

Gray raised an arm to his forehead, pushing away the messy wet locks from his eyes as he looked down to overstep a moss covered log. His feet sunk into the spongy ground moss, water soaking into his boots. Gray would have blisters later.

She is sitting, bare feet draped over the edge. The pale light of the cloudy morning seems to illuminate her, and she is contemplating the world behind heavy eyelids and above a neck stinging from a cold whispering wind.

Gray kept his eyes sharp, looking for the tell tale signs of snapped twigs and flattened mallow to see of he was on the right path. Although it wasn't actually his job to go and check on the camellias, Gray felt obligated to do what he could for the worn old man. Maybe it was the way his skin clung to his bones, the way dark crescent moons pulled his tired eyes down, that made Gray want to do whatever he could to give Macarov a peace of mind.

Or maybe it was his own guilt -for just being human- that made him feel like he wanted to atone by doing as many good deeds as he could. Maybe he felt it was an evil to just breathe without giving breathe, to just not help when you could.

She's whispering back to the wind, adding to the atmosphere what once was in her now deflated chest.

"The fault is not in our stars or gods,
but in ourselves, my darling"

Gray, letting his mind wander, thought back to the many things etched in his mind about the Juvia Ocean Region, which he had acquired over the visits he made every year to make money in his trade.

The lore of the Ocean, the customs, the people, the festivals, the art, Macarov "the elder" and his wilting camellias, the allure of the Ocean...

No. No weird voodoo thoughts today.

Macarov's wilting camellias.

Gray, in a pondering mood, looked up at the cold slate sky. Raindrops plummeted to the ground around him. As a drop splashed on his eye, he blinked, swearing, rubbing the burning inflamed thing with the palm of his lens. When he wearily opened his pink eye, still burning slightly, his vision was blurry. He squinted like his Iris was trying to let in more light to focus like a shutter lens.

Gray growled lowly to himself. Just a little longer in till he got to the mountain summit, where the old man said the flowers grew near a ledge.

He wondered why the old man picked them. Well, he gathered the camellias in bunches during his weekly pilgrimage to the summit so that he could place them at his wife's memorial, he explained last night.

But Gray thought that his wife would much prefer them to be left alone on the mountain ledge, untainted by human hands and full of vitality.

She's humming on the ledge, sitting among the floral: