When I was still a child, mother told me that where we lived, there was no such thing as rain. Whenever dark clouds pooled in the sky and showers of water fell down from above, mother would say that it were tears of a grieving sky. She knew about the climate outside of our home from father, who deserted us before I was born. He told her tales of life outside the harsh tundra where we resided, told her that what happened here wasn’t normal. Father left us without a trace before I was even born. Maybe the crippling loneliness of such a desolate place finally got to him. He never told us why he left.
Mother raised me alone. Whenever the skies started crying, she warned me that it was mourning the loss of a soul, and that if I weren’t careful, I could end up being the one it was mourning for. She instructed me to hide in the fields or block myself indoors with the windows shut whenever the skies started crying. And she always insisted that whatever I did, I was never to look at the sky when it was crying. I followed her instructions devoutly. Even as a child, I could sense danger looming in the air during the skies’ laments, as if there were something hunting me, something monumental sent from the heavens to erase those who lived down below.
However despite the seclusion and the constant bitter cold, I would say that I lived a fairly happy childhood. Mother was always there for me, always teaching me new things and taking care of me. Tending to the fields was hard but rewarding work, and coming home to a warm supper and a night of restful sleep kept me going.
This continued for a while, until one day during my late teens, mother went missing. I searched through the vast fields, bellowing her name for what seemed like an eternity, yet I never heard her answer. After hours and hours of searching in the bitter cold, I returned home exhausted, beaten and distraught. That was the only night where I cried myself to sleep. The last thing I found from her was a note in the kitchen. Written on it were the words: “The tears that the skies shed must always return back to them.”
After that incident, I was left completely alone. Seclusion can drive a man to insanity, and it wasn’t long before I started gathering timber, building a raft and sailing away from that cursed place. After several hours lost at sea, I stumbled upon a port city. I spent most of the rest of my years there, begging on the streets and doing odd jobs to earn enough money to keep myself alive.
Most regarded me as deranged when I told them of my childhood, insisting that the tales mother told me of the crying skies were but a lunatic’s hoax. And for a while, I truly did believe them. I thought that maybe I was insane. Or maybe I simply convinced myself that I was. But one day, I decided that I would return to my childhood home. Even now I don’t know exactly why I considered this idea, maybe I was to prove that what I experienced as a child really was true, or maybe I was because I wanted to have a moment to truly say goodbye to the place that I grew up in. Even in my adulthood, that place held a strong sentimental value.
When I arrived to the shore after a long journey at sea, I could still recognize the remarkable landscape, even after all those years. The titanic mountains still stood tall, with walls of fog masking their feet. But as I hiked through the Arctic plateau, I noticed that the rivers were all dry, void of the rushing water that flowed through them so many years ago. And as I approached the place where I once resided, I was greeted by nothing but sad vegetation and sheets of ash. The house, the barn, and the fields were all gone. In their stead lied but a thin layer of soot. Even the mossy vegetation seemed to take on a more golden hue in the vicinity.
It was only after the sky turned grey that I realised what had happened to this place. After I had deserted it, nothing had inhabited this region anymore. There were no more victims to claim, and the tears of the sky still had to come from somewhere.
I stared up at the encroaching penumbra. I could sense that it was hungry. It had devoured all the beings that resided here. Then it had consumed their remains. This place was hostile, cursed, profane. It shouldn’t exist. And I was standing right inside of it, ready to be taken.
Mother warned me that storm clouds couldn’t be outrun, that it was best to hide instead of to escape. Yet in the moment, it seemed like I had little alternative. I ran faster than I ever had in my entire life, my legs carrying me through the highlands. The clouds weren’t idling, and as the tears of the sky started to catch up to me, for the first time in twenty six years, I felt scared, truly scared. Scared, just like when I was a young child and hiding under my bed or in a field of grass. Yet the feeling was so much stronger, so much more potent and palpable. I didn’t dare look behind me, but even so I could sense something looming behind me, something towering and colossal, something that shouldn’t exist.
I never told anyone what happened during the time when I left the city. Nobody asked me anyways, and I doubt anyone even noticed. This secret had been eating at me for a long time. But I thought that I had come to terms with it for a long time. I truly did.
But then one day, the skies started to cry again. I knew immediately that it wasn’t the ordinary rain. My sixth sense never fails me. I could sense its presence, the presence of that being that shouldn’t exist. That night, hundreds of people disappeared without a trace. No one could explain the disappearances, no one except for me. But nobody will listen to me anyways. They have all deemed me insane. And that is why I am warning you instead. Because you are the only ones who will heed my council.
The sky has not eaten for a long time. It is terribly hungry, and it’s coming after you.