The cloud was weeping. They all wept sometimes – clouds got sad, too, after all – but this cloud had been her favorite of the morning. It had lazed its way across the sky, creating all sorts of wonderful shapes for her to identify. On the far west side, there’d been a dinosaur and then a train. As it passed over her blanket on the hill, it became a heart, a clover, and what looked like a swooping bird.
But as soon as the cloud floated towards the east, its white fluffy edges turned dark and gray. There was a great flash of lightning before the rains began. The girl frowned at the water pelting down upon her head, her hands reaching to the sky as if she could pull the cloud in for a comforting hug.
“Why do you cry?” She asked, shouting to be heard over the rain.
“Because the horizon comes and I don’t want to disappear,” it replied, a burst of rumbling thunder following its sob.
“But where one horizon ends, another begins! You may not be in my sky anymore, but you’ll surely be in someone else’s. You have many shapes left to make.” The explanation seemed to satisfy the cloud, as its torrential downpour tapered to a sniffling drizzle. The girl sat back down on her now-wet blanket, watching the cloud brighten from steely gray to gold-tinged silver. The sun peeked out over a sister-cloud, and her favorite cloud luxuriated in its rays, stretching and expanding and thrusting its sorrow away.
It became a cat and a fish and finally a great big smile.
