As the London rain mingled with the soot that had long blanketed the streets and alleys of the ancient city, two young souls sought refuge from the torrential shower that had rudely interrupted their once-a-week opportunity to enjoy each other’s company away from disapproving parental eyes, and the socialites’ lips that were perpetually arranged to lustfully drip with gossip. They hadn’t seen need to bring an umbrella as the day had started as one of the rare sunny days in England’s summer. Perhaps it would have been prudent; within the course of a few minutes, sun gave way to rolling black clouds, but somewhat luckily the thunder claps indicated that the worst of the storm was not yet upon them. There was time to seek shelter at least, before the young lady caught cold.

As the two walked, the young man walked beside his beloved and used his jacket and body to shield her from the rain. Worried that the frigid rain would soak her proverbially to the bone, the young man searched the streets ahead for some sort of shelter. Mostly, there were warehouses and the sort of dirty boarded-up row houses that characterized the certain streets that were uncomfortably close to the foul mouth of the Thames; a river whose waters were chopped with waves and were practically indistinguishable from the churning storm clouds in heaven above. Usually it was a quiet, rather docile place to walk. Rarely was there any foot traffic due to the largely derelict nature of the area.

However, in the darkness of the storm, these same things that had appealed to the young couple in decent weather became sinister. The pitch blackness was nearly total as the sun had sunk deep into the jaws of the dark sky. What had once been familiar, no longer was so. The young man held his beloved closer, as she was now shivering. He would have to find somewhere for them to go.

“Darling, we’re going to have to find somewhere to wait this out,” he said, as much to affirm it in his own mind, as to inform her of his will.

He could hear the smile in her voice as she shook her head ever so slightly, “No, I’ll be fine. We shouldn’t make your family worry.”

She drew in closer to his body, her skin was cold and her hair was soaked and dripping with rain. He knew that there was no possibility that he was going to let her walk to her home clear on the other side of Trafalgar square in this weather, escorted or not. Ahead of them was a decidedly out of place building, but it appeared as if it were a shop of some variety or as if it were somehow in use at the very least. The architecture was some sort of Germanic-Baroque-Gothic hodgepodge of influences that made the building seem as if it had traveled through time and space to haphazardly settle in London no sooner than that week.