When we are drowned.

The rain poured—not in sporadic busts of the clouds but ceaselessly, day and night, and by the time he'd reached the shack, the mud path he'd been tracking for days was dissolved, drowned under four feet of water. Water was everywhere, coursing rivulets down abandoned sheets of asbestos piled against a fence, dripping from rafters and rain-slicked girders with an unmistakeable splash that stood out resiliently, even flowing over gutters and puddles and ponds with a noiseless turbulence that rekindled memories of the sea.

But he knew his place well enough because the seagulls weren't there, because the sand wasn't there, because the wind wasn't there to bring respite from the humid evening. Vapours condensed on his spectacles, and they wouldn't be wiped off despite however hard he rubbed them on his shirt. That the shack hadn't been whipped away by the storm surprised him; he would have enjoyed the sight of planks and splinters of wood coursing through the guts of an airborne whirlpool of dust and grime, his arms and legs flapping around like... well, a duck caught in the guts of an airborne whirlpool of dust and grime.

No. It stood there, as irascible as ever, little waves lashing against the platform, lolling and roiling around aimlessly with a moronic obedience to the laws of nature. Adjusting his knee-high boots, he stepped out of the car and carefully planted his feet on the ground, cautious not to slip or slide against the slush.

For a moment right then, the sun shone out through a patch of flimsy cloud cover, the single shaft of light reflected on millions of raindrops in its path, scattered eventually into nothingness, or perhaps into rodents that scrambled into the shadows. And as quickly as it came, the light vanished from the faces of the raindrops, the residual warmth fading from the skin of his arms, his face... he could remember her pulling away, backing away, walking into the clouds, into another man's scar-kissed arms, into another man's booze-drenched world of free-trades and unabashed bargains. If only she'd asked, he'd have given it to her, but even though she knew that, she'd left him.

It made him feel cold for the first time, his body naked, stripped off all the man he'd adorned through years of a tragic marriage, left to stand with an ageing soul right from under which a cushion of a thousand happy memories had been stolen. A bloody ritual would set it right, he knew, and he held the hand of a colder steel in his pocket, and started to walk. He could feel the water fighting his advance, pushing him back away from the door; the impudence!

Quicker steps that he thought would slide through the water found them retarded by small vortices that curled around his thighs. Could he swim? No, that would be foolish. Only a few tens of metres more, a short distance to whit; he could and would make it.