inspired by the JOYOUS weather we've been having, and my inability to enjoy myself.

This marked a brutal stretch of days. The air was clammy, muggy, and it hung about like sagging skin. It had fingers that clung and fondled, fingers like warm liquid, like blood, that teased and pushed. These bloody fingers were difficult to wade through, deep and sluggish. Kiche, who came from a world of climate control and machines that buffeted him with cool air, was not built for this. It disgusted him to crawl and splutter through this late spring atmosphere that seemed infected, sticky. The creeping, crawling little beasts were thriving, and he felt as if they were a plague, a punishment. Like they were waiting for him to drop dead so that they wouldn't miss the opportunity to feast on his warm flesh in the humid, swampy, spring twilight.

It was days like these that made the cult heathens absolutely unbearable. The heat made him cranky, cantankerous, and he did not want to get pushed over the edge, explode in someone's face, only to lose all that he had worked for. Thus, he found himself on the strange hill of budding scarlet flowers, praying for a breeze. But there was nothing to disturb the stems, no billowing caress of wind tendrils, only stale languid air. "Seriously, screw this." A sigh, hot and exasperated, rippled in the curdled air.