Through the endless veil of rain, through its crystalline corridors and iridescent reflections – through the twisting labyrinth of droplets there was a man.


His name was that of many things. Its true meaning had vanished long ago – vanquished by the heartbeats of those once needed and lost. His name was that of a long, billowing cloak – signifying surrender in its own way, blackened and charred by the secrecy needed for it to thrive. His name was that of the uncontrollable hunter – fangs bared in a snarl that portrayed nothing of its wild heart. The man through the rain's name was, after much pondering, also that of a misted cloud of tears – covered and hidden away from the world shamefully and without forgiveness. The man looking out the window and into the furies of the Earth was helpless to those enemies who chose to play upon his grief.


The man's hair was black. Not a soft, comforting shade of ebony, but a jet-black that tore through the eyes of the smiles that once laughed with it. His hair was black like the shadows ripping through birch trees and the coals of flames long conquered. The man's hair was a black flag of angry emotion spilling down out of his mind and reaching, with its long, curling fingers, down past his small chin. The man looking through his window and out into the storm had his face chiseled into that of a heartless stone; forever gaping at what once was, could have been, and never came to be.


His eyes were the color of storm clouds – once luminescent but now dulled and misused like a hunter's blade set upon a shelf merely to gaze at. Rimming those silver orbs were rings of sapphire-blue, like in most eyes of those from his family. The man's eyes were large and round, once, not so very long ago, used for putting a stopper in his endless curiosity. Now, however, those beautiful eyes ensnare naught but what they have been taught to see – the suffering in the hearts of those who sing; the tears in the eyes of laughing children; the blood in the wounds that memories often seem to create; and the knife through hearts that once had life. The man's eyes were all of those things, and when you have those terrible nightmares thriving within you, they do not often go away.


The man looking through the window and out into the pouring rain was skinny. His lithe frame was encircled with a cloak bathed in draping blackness, much like his hair and the pupils inside his eyes. His hands were slender and rather bony. They rested upon the windowsill, outlined in shadows of their own. Those shadows, ghosts of what lagged behind, were dappled and voiced by the ever-falling rain, with moonlight assisting in the contrasting whiteness and blackness of the scene. The man's face was bent over the window, hungrily observing the city street he was perched beside. His legs were curled underneath him, unconsciously granting him the ability to spring forward if ever he was discovered.


The man's face could be described as sharp, but it was simply long and elegant to those who were wise enough to perceive it as it was. Splashed upon that delicate face was the light of the street meshed together with the natural radiance of the moon and the golden drone of the street lights. They sent twinkles in the man's giant silver eyes and they widened still, accepting the light that made his face look like it did all those years ago. It almost seemed as if he was who he had been and not this shell he had become.


The man's skin was pale, like that minor segment of his eyes that was not metallic. He preferred to stay inside – not relishing the gazes of those who once knew him. He had been very popular, back in the days before his eyes were no longer like stars. He flinched away from those memories – they did nothing but scar. Trapped inside his inner battle, however, he could not halt the flood of things past from overpowering him.


He was sitting inside that rustic cabin, bathed along with everyone else in an aura of golden bliss. He had his instrument in his hand – he was cradling it like he had cradled no other. It was his most beloved possession, back in those days. Back in those days, music had been all that he was – the notes of his music pieced together his soul; gave it meaning and lifelines with which it thrived.


Inside that beautiful, flawless memory, the man was playing his music. The voice of his guitar was accompanied by hands streaming out the pulse and by voices crying out the story. The people surrounding him drowned him in their smiles – they struck him by surprise with their shameless awe. The music was all the man was living for now; it was everything he needed and everything he ever would. All else disappeared in that blissful night... one might call it the calm before the storm.


Inside the curling mists of his memory, the man's slender hands danced along the neck of his instrument, playing like a cricket sings to those who stay up to hear them. Through the night the man played, laughing gloriously with his friends – friends! – as they slowly brought themselves to life from where they had died within his heart.


The man grimaced as the memory progressed toward when it hurt… when the jagged dagger that was the past sliced into his heart and unbearably tore into his mind. The man recalled the way that girl had smiled at him, her teeth flashing white – like polished ivory. Her hair was like a silken banner of crimson and her eyes were like molten emeralds thriving upon the leaves of a meadow of flowers. Her skin was delicate and fragile, but her delighted mirth was as strong as any wall of stone.


It was the music that had brought her to him; the music that sang to the man all the ecstasy he could ever want, ever need. He recalled with a blinding clarity the way she had comforted him when he hurt, the way she'd held his hand and caressed him in false, amusing lies.


She had ripped him apart.


The man's face was pulled into an unrecognizable snarl as he dug his own nails into his pale hands, tearing through his skin to ease his agonized mind. The man's brilliant silver eyes were dark and menacing – like the storm clouds that threatened to overwhelm the city. He bowed his head so his forehead pressed against the glass of the window, the tears finally falling. The man had held those terrible things back for years and years… after all, only the weak showed emotion.


The man's own raindrops were possibly as beautiful as the eyes they fell away from. Each one glimmered and flashed its own twinkling purity, and the man with eyes like dying stars could not help but to become entranced. The tears ran down his thin face, draping his facial features in a tranquil frame of sorrow. The man's wide, gray eyes illuminated his face now, glowing brightly with the radiance that is misery.


The woman he had loved – the first breathing thing he had ever even adored – had left him for another. In the end, it was the fault of his music that had broken him; the flawlessly executed songs he played had almost been the man's doom. As the man's slender figure shook with sobs he could not bear to remember, he realized something for the first time since he had thrown away his soul.


Music had brought the man happiness... until her. What if it could work its magic again?


What the man did not realize as his soul traveled down the roads of memory was that he needed the friends of that night to come back. He needed the music he had made that night when the stars in his eyes shone to their fullest. What the man did not know was that his fingers were bleeding as he played beside the windowsill overlooking the city street damp with rain – what the man did not know was how he had exploded into his room and snatched the instrument back for his own. What the man, so far away in the labyrinth of his memories, did not know was of the puddle of liquid diamonds splashing down onto his wooden floor, mixing in with the crimson river dripping from his fingers. His guitar, glistening with the tears and blood of its beloved, cradled in the man's gentle arms, was like a gemstone of its own – a mirror of the new soul of the man with eyes like stars.