It had been raining for months, days upon days mixed together in a milky white wash, compounded and filled to the brim with crystal tears.
The storms were heavy overhead, coming in like tidal waves against islands deep at sea. Strong and demanding against the cries of trees and gurgles of the blood red lake.
The overlaying forests have been crushed, rebuilt, and crushed again by the storm's tearful force. The Foundation Building stood overhead the red lake belowing with each drop from the sky, risen above the rising waters as the storm creaked and groaned against the walls.
Clef stood apart from the scientists that clamored against the windows with anxiety in their bones, yelling insecurities into the air above their faces, trying to keep watch over their test. He sat there alone at a table, looking frail and pale against the gleaming whiteness of the wall.
Compared to the others he looked as though he was affected the most by the trembling rain that encompassed their days, water washing out the red from his cheeks and the gleam of mischief gone from his heterochromic blue green eyes. Lips drawn close and his breathing was almost as silent and overbearing as the weight of melancholy against his shoulders.
Pale hands held a clipboard close to his quietly beating heart, a pose of insecurity unnatural to him. He was an old Polaroid photograph dusted away from an album, whittened away from time, if he spoke a word, his voice would be close to a ghost. Wavering, uneasy, broken.
Now he sat seperated, staring at the papers in hand as the loud wet sound of droplets battered against the glass. A hand clasped against his arm but he remained motionless, it was like that every day, and the scientists around him grew mournful of the sadness that reeked off of him like a soft perfume.
They edged away from him, they would not look at him. If they talked to him and moved, he sat or stood blinking after them but would never follow. When they sang songs to pass the time or engaged in conversations around each other his lips barely moved. Only when words shared of moments past did his lips form shape and throat build up words one apon the other in an emotion silent and short.
They've been at that Site building for months, and yet the days passed on still without an emotional glance from Clef. None of them remembered much of the original Site building, most of them were too new to have spent time in there, but Clef remembered.
"It feels like a hollow shell." He said once, eyes closed as his rhythm faltured.
"It'll be ok!" They cried in reply. "Its like a storm," He said "Beating against my chest." "You're getting better!" They swore out.
But he remembered how it once was and sat quietly apart from the rest of them, watched the water dance against his paper, tears, like crystalline ballerina dancers. Dimly, dimly in the blinding light of the Foundation room, he saw it.
Green and black, a special breed of butterfly, fluttering, shakey and torn against the white of the walls. It fluttered and fell on his hand, spreading its wings far and wide against his hand before dying with a weak twitch, crumbling up into the creases of his palm like a barely noticable nudge.
The scientists still crammed against the window with heeving sighs, never noticing the door shutting behind Clef, still holding the crumbled monarch close to his chest.