Cloud Friends

Puff appeared over the mountaintop at first light.

All night long, a thin mist had lain in the valley. When the sun warmed the slopes, the warm air rose. The higher it went, the cooler it got. The water vapor inside it turned into tiny droplets. The droplets gathered together, puffed up and grew round. At last, a plump white cloud sat on top of the mountain.

Puff was round and plump. His edges glowed pink in the sun. Inside him were millions of tiny droplets. They all leaned against each other and swayed gently.

Puff gave himself a little shake. A piece of him broke off, floated a short way, then stuck back on. Puff laughed. He shook again, and this time a little bump popped out of his right side.

Puff made the bump longer, then shorter, then longer again. He had found a game all by himself. He pulled one edge in and pushed the other edge out. Each time, he became a slightly different cloud. But he always stayed Puff.

Below Puff, there was dew on the grass of the slope. As the sun touched it, the droplets sparkled, then vanished one by one. The water was slipping into the air without being seen. Puff felt some of it inside himself, warm and new.

Down below, the foot of the mountain was still in shadow. A dog barked. A rooster crowed, and another rooster answered from far away. A thin line of smoke rose between the pine trees. Someone had lit a stove.

A flock of sheep was grazing on the slope. The sound of their bells drifted all the way up, ding, ding. A lamb ran after its mother, stumbled and got up again. When Puff saw it, he made one more bump, so he would look like the lamb.

As Puff pulled his bump back in, he saw another cloud high above him.

It was very high up, in the bluest part of the sky. It was long, thin and curly, just like a bird's feather. Its tip streamed back like the bristles of a brush.

"You're so thin!" Puff called.

"And you're so plump!" said the other cloud, waving its tip.

They both laughed. Puff puffed himself up a little more and stretched a bump upward. But he couldn't reach that high.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Wisp," said the thin cloud. "What's yours?"

"Puff."

"Puff," Wisp repeated slowly. "It suits you."

"Is it cold up there?"

"Very cold. I'm not made of droplets, you know. I'm made of tiny needles of ice."

Puff looked at his own edge. His droplets were soft and wet. Wisp's needles sparkled in the sun like grains of salt. For a moment Puff thought he felt chilly, and then he laughed again.

"I was born this morning," he said. "From that mist over there."

"I was born three days ago," said Wisp. "Over the sea. But high up, very high up."

"Three days," said Puff. That sounded like a very long time to him. He was only one morning old.

That morning they drifted side by side above the mountain, one low and one high. A soft wind was slowly pushing them both north.

"Look down there," said Puff. "That's our village."

There were red roofs, a round water tower and a winding stream. The stream shone in the sun like a thin silver wire. In the house next to the water tower, a window was open. A child stood at the window, arms resting on the sill, looking up at the sky.

"Is that child looking at us?" asked Wisp.

"At me," said Puff. "I'm closer."

Wisp laughed. "But I can see farther. Look over there."

Wisp stretched a thin tip toward the west. There, beyond the mountains, lay a blue line. It was a little darker than the sky, and a little brighter.

"The sea," said Wisp. "That's where I came from."

Puff looked at that line for a long, long time. The sea was farther away than Puff had ever been. Puff had only been born this morning, and he hadn't even left the mountain yet.

"Once I saw a rainbow there," said Wisp. "The sun was right behind me. In front of me, another cloud was raining onto the sea. Suddenly colors appeared inside the rain. A great big arch."

"I've never seen a rainbow."

"Turn your back to the sun and look at the rain," said Wisp. "There's no other way to see one. Even the seagulls look at it like that."

"Tell me about the sea," said Puff.

Wisp thought for a moment. That long body curled like a wave.

"The sea never stops," said Wisp. "It is always moving. There is white foam on top. When the sun shines on it, the whole thing sparkles at once. And it has a smell. A salty, cool smell."

"I've never smelled anything," said Puff.

"And I've never seen a stream," said Wisp. "So you tell me about the stream."

Puff looked down at the stream. "The stream never stops either," he said. "But it doesn't have much foam. It has lots of frogs. When it jumps over the stones, it goes splish, splash."

"Splish, splash," said Wisp. The voice came from very high up, thin and light.

They played like that for a while. Wisp made a wave. Puff tried to make a frog out of his belly, but the frog looked more like a potato. Wisp laughed so hard that the tip of the thin cloud trembled. An eagle passed below them and drew a circle without flapping its wings even once.

"You're going faster than me," Puff said after a while.

"The wind is always faster up here," said Wisp. "Yours blows down low, and mine blows up high. They're not the same wind. Sometimes they even blow different ways."

Puff looked down at the poplar trees. Their leaves were fluttering gently. Then he looked at Wisp's streaming tip. It was true. The bristles at the tip were fluttering faster.

The sun climbed a little higher. Little by little, Puff's pink edges turned white. On the grassy slope, a round, dark patch appeared. It was Puff's shadow. Puff was seeing it for the first time. He wiggled one edge, and the edge of the shadow wiggled too.

"I have a shadow too," he said.

"Mine is very faint," said Wisp. "I'm thin, so the sun shines right through me."

Puff searched the ground for Wisp's shadow. He couldn't find it. There was only a faint stripe on the grass, very slightly darker, hardly there at all.

As the sun rose, the shadow at the foot of the mountain slipped away. The tops of the pine trees came out into the light.

In the house by the water tower, the child waved. Then the child stepped back from the window. The curtain rippled once and was still.

Puff thought about the sea. A salty, cool smell. Then he thought about the stream, the stones, the frogs. In one morning he had come to know two new places. One he had seen, and one he had heard about.

Puff tried to smell something. He leaned toward the stream and waited. No smell came. Maybe he was too high up. Maybe a smell only came along with rain. Puff did not know.

He asked Wisp. Wisp did not know either.

"The smell of the sea comes all by itself," was all Wisp said. "The waves sprinkle it into the air."

The wind was warm. The eagle had flown far away and dropped down behind the mountain. Only two clouds were left in the sky.

High above, Wisp slowly waved that thin tip. Puff puffed up one edge, then let it down again.

On top of the mountain, a goat stood still, stopped chewing and looked up. Its beard fluttered a little in the wind. Then the goat bent down to the grass again.

The wind carried the two of them together, slowly, slowly, toward the north.