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Tanned skin glows in the blaze of the sun. Each ray beating down to outline muscular arms and a sharp jaw. The man moves forward, feet shuffling and scuffing at the gravel beneath his worn and faded boots. The sound crunches as his feet move a little faster. Lighter on the way up but a noticeable force on the way down: thump, thump, thump. The small pebbles on the ground are shaking as his pace increases. The tattered laces of his ‘seen-better-days’ boots trail on the ground with a foreboding promise of tripping him up. He doesn’t though. Before the laces can once again scuffle against the arid ground of sand and gravel, they are slapping against wet tarmac.

The taught muscles of the man’s legs are more prominent than ever as he continues to run. The sun is long gone, replaced by dark clouds and torrential rain. He smiles. Plump and full lips stretching into a wide grin, exuding nothing but sheer happiness however, just like the contrast of sun to rain, the figures eyes are saddened. His mouth – if viewed independently from the rest of his face, suggests nothing to be wrong.

His eyes however, play a different tune. They hold a melancholy that can surpass any Shakespearian tragedy. His body continues to burn, each muscle becoming warmer, hotter (despite the rain soaking through his thin tank top) and his breathing is laboured. Cold wind whips over pink tresses of hair, now flattened and stuck to a clammy forehead. The rain is beating mercilessly with the wind, causing a freezing effect. The man doesn’t stop, his knees strain and he can feel the bones and his joints scraping, grinding with the exertion.

He passes a few people along the way, gaining looks of concern and shaking heads of those who call him stupid. Not even this stops him though, he runs down the blackened surface, on and on. Until again, everything begins to shift. The black asphalt is replaced by green grass, the rain has vanished. Trees surround him, stretching for miles. The temperature is pleasant and should the man stop, he would feel it. Dark caramel eyes are laced with exhaustion now. Clothes weighed down from the recent downpour, body, energy and muscles still a blazing inferno. Hair soaked, forehead clammy. His fingers shake as he wills his body to push. To move. To run. He can’t stop, if he stops he will think. If he thinks it will hurt even more. Soon enough, the man is seeing tree after tree; each one looking the same as the next. Long stemmed grass slows him down further, tickling his ankles and dancing with the