She loved the rain.

Not the rain that pours so hard it makes it impossible to see anything in front of you. Not the rain that's barely there, no matter how hard you focus on catching each and every drop. She loved the type of rain that you could walk the streets with, the one where you could sit on your balcony and breathe in the raw smell of the world without being immediately soaked. To her, the rain was a way to wash away the old, and make room for the new-nourishing the soil, the world, in which she lived in. She never understood why those around her fled from raindrops, why they screeched as the water touched their skin-rain was the most beautiful thing in the world, so pure and careless, how did no one understand?

He hated the rain.

Unlike her, he thought the rain was a cause for chaos and destruction.

He couldn't stand the way the rain made him feel, how it made the world around him look. The darkness wasn't for him. No matter how good of a mood he was in, the minute the skies darkened and the smell of rain overcame him, he could feel nothing but sadness. Never able to understand why she looked at the dark skies with a smile on her face, he judged her, and he judged himself for ever falling in love with a creature so infatuated with a crying sky.

She first saw him in the city, running into a small coffee shop as soon as the sky turned grey. It wasn't his jet black hair or his crystal blue eyes that caught her attention at first, but the way he glanced up at the sky and frowned, with every muscle in his face becoming tense. She found it funny. She wanted to ask the stranger what about the sky made him so angry. She ran in after him, and as soon as she crossed the threshold of the coffee shop, the rain came. It began to glisten on the streets just as she liked, illuminated by the street lamps.

"I don't like the way it glides across my skin, leaving it wet and uncomfortable. I don't like that dreaded feeling I get deep inside me, I can never seem to shake it off when it rains. What can I say, I simply do not like the rain." He answered her. She nodded and smiled. It was the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen, one that could light up the dark world he so deeply hated.

"Why do you love the rain so much?" he asked her as she made her way to the window.

"I love how the rain smells, how it feels, how it seems to bring out the gloom in the world that humans work so hard to bury deep within themselves. I learned to love the darkness, to embrace my melancholy world and live happily within it, as opposed to constantly running away from it. Rain is my reminder of that."

She laughed with that smile he was already in love with.

"If you listen closely" she continued, "you can hear the sound that the rain makes as it hits the pavement. How it falls to the ground in a rhythmic beat, sometimes fast, and other times slow. Reminds me of a heart, pounding away to the rhythm of love."