The rain was inky black.
Vera Silent stood in front of the attic window of No. 17 "Forgotten Lane", watching the sticky raindrops winding down the glass, like a sentence that a poor writer had written incorrectly. This is not real rain, but the gray fog fallout accumulated over the "swamp of lies" - condensed from the city's lies, perfunctory and insincere words day after day. It corrodes tiles, rusts iron railings, and leaves pitted scars on stone roads.
She closed the heavy woolen curtains to shut out the suffocating gray. There are only three sources of light left in the attic: the eternal flame dancing in the fireplace (fueled by fragments of "warm memories"), the brass lamp on the desk (the lamp oil is distilled "sincere praise"), and the faint fluorescent light slowly rotating in seven glass bottles on the wall.
Those were the "whispers" she collected today.
