The heart of a man is depravity.

What you're about to hear is based on actual events.

Listen to discretion is advised.

The sun rises behind the eastern mountains.

It's light bleeding through the jagged teeth of the pre-don Andes.

Red and thick.

It sloshes over ancient granite and marble and sandstone,

rushing downhill to fill the valley.

The man thinks for a moment of a tale he heard in one of the many native villages sequestered in the hills.

Of a god whose hair was set on fire by a witch.

A great, blind giant who crawls across the thin glass of the sky,

looking for water to quench the fire before it boils his brain in his skull.

Finally, the red morning light creeps over the man's shoes,

up his legs and into the doorway of the simple abandoned valley cottage he'd found the night before.

His eyelid slams shut as the warmth baths him,

his brooding nature helpless to this small joy.

He turns up his nose to smell the frigid mists burning away before the heat of the sun.

Then twists and opens his eyes, following the light to the bed where the girl is sleeping.

His feet are heavy on the old floorboards.

They bounce underneath him as he walks,

barely supported by the few old logs the former owner had put in place as a foundation.

The girl loved the springiness of them.

...