She pulled the collar of her wooly coat tighter around herself. The coat was immenses and as white as a bright moon. It was fluffy on the outside as well as on the inside. When she wore it she felt wrapped up like in a cloud herself. It made her twice a big as she really was and when she went to go out it brushed against both sides of the doorway at once. She felt that if she wore in inside out it would feel just the same, equally as warm.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, she knew, on her way down the garden path from her cottage. Even in the dark of the early morning, even without the moon on the ridge, she knew there were no cloud yet, there’s wasn’t a one. There wouldn’t be even one until she got to the cloud factory in the village and started making them. For that was her job, every morning to prepare and release the clouds that would drift away whichever way the light autumn breeze would take them. The ground under her feet was crunchy, frozen. The frost on the grass like little clouds, she thought, amused at herself for seeing clouds and things about clouds everywhere. “Well, you do think about clouds all the time, Nimbus.” she thought to herself. “It’s to be expected when you are from the our family, the family in the cloud cottage.”
It wasn’t yet light enough to see the factory ahead, its silver chimney, its long thin wooden building, the logpile outside. But she knew it was there, waiting to make clouds. Soon there would be deep, cottony ones, maybe wispy ones, or even little, fluffy clouds. She hadn’t decided yet.
As she prepared the machines of the factory - opening the , cranking the, making sure the reservoir of water was mostly full but not over filled - she was thinking in the back of her mind what kind of cloud to make today?
In the end she decided for the kind of cloud that would lie like blankets on the river, and mostly over the lake. She loved that kind, of cloud, a cloudbank her father had called it.
Then she had a bright idea! “I know, I’ll make two kinds of clouds today!” She was already sure that she would make a lot of the cloudbank kind, but which other kind? Then she remembered the older machine that only worked sometimes, the one that makes little wispy clouds. “I’ll make a few of those too.” She liked those ones, wispy like they weren’t really there, like you could see through the edges of them. The kind that clung to the ledges high up on the mountain sides and lasted well into the mid-morning. Everyone loves those ones, she thought, cranking the big lever that opened up the chimney. “Well, everyone except the goats that get lost in them and are then surprised when the find the edge of the wisp and discover the rest of the mountain has no clouds, She laughed as she recalled the quizzical look on their tiny goat faces when they come out into the sun.
She set the older machine in motion and crossed her fingers that it would behave today. The wispy cloud machine made a clunking noise, shuddered a bit, she held her breath, and then, then!, the machine belched our a little cloud. “Success” she cried, as the first little cloud drifted peacefully towards the roof. She rushed to open the big roof window, where even as that first cloud was going up and out, the early morning sunlight was coming in and down. “I better get a move on, it’s almost morning.”
My work is sup important she thought, after all, if I don’t get the cloud factory up and going before the village is out and about, what will the valley do for cloud cover today? It’s needed.
r, nit evena fff ibe. He knew this, beccause befir ehe got to work atbthe cloud factory there couldnt qqqbee any cliuds.
Who would have made them? she huffed. Almost indignant at the idea that anyone else but she could make the clouds.
Goes to work
Starts up the machinery, technical details
Cloud of the day
Some days she didn’t know which cloud to make, there were so many from which to choose. She had pictures on the wall of her room at home -she had pictures of every kind of cloud possible, and even some that were impossible. Most days she would choose from the pictures of clouds that were possible, but occasionally she would stand in front of the impossible clouds and, for fun, she would try to figure out which ones were maybe possible after all. Her favourite of those was definitely the sausage-dog cloud. A long cloud made of lots of tube clouds - tubes for the legs, a fat tube for the head, and of course a skinny tube for the tail. Tube clouds weren’t difficult to make, but getting so many of them to work together to form a whole sausage dog? That was hard. And making it in a dog colour? Very difficult indeed. Sausage dogs were usually brown, or a very dark black, she thought. She didn’t know how she would do that, but maybe some day. “Not today, but maybe someday.”
Daydreams favorite clouds
Old man’s dream of volcano ring clouds
Meanwhile at home in the cloud cottage the old man was still half asleep. He missed working at the cloud factory, he had done it for many year, but now it was his daughter’s turn. She’s doing a better job than me, he thought, sleepily. It was too early to get up and see what clouds she was making today. It was always a surprise, he never guessed right.
I wonder is she making storm clouds today? She’s probably not, that more for winter, another month or so until it’s cold enough for that. Thinking of the cold winter coming, he pulled the blankets back up around his head and fell back asleep. He dreamed of clouds. He always dreamed of clouds. It was his favourite dream, the volcano lake one.
He stands on the shore of the placid lake, a volcano bowl of a lake, almost completely round. He sees the shore all the way around, almost a perfect circle, unbroken except for the village over there to one side and the volcano itself across the other side. The clouds came from inside the mountain’s cone, rising out of its circular rim, the clouds themselves perfect circles, and hollow on the middle like giant Os. One after another they came, gently rising to twice the height of the volcano when the breeze would catch them and push them across the lake. Once they reached the middle, of the water they would start to fade, widen, and slowly disappear. He tried to follow each one to the end but never was able to. They were gone at some point in time, some point impossible to say exactly, but gone for sure. But there’s another one coming behind it, free from the volcano and starting its journey across the lake.
In his sleep, the old man scratched his nose, something he did when he was happy.
Nimbus’ dream of summer day clouds
At the cloud factory, Nimbus see the last of the morning cloudbank float clear of the chimney. She sees the last of the wispy clouds go out the roof window. She uncranks the levers, shuts the reservoir, checks the logpile for tomorrow. Before she leaves she turns out hte lights. It’s easy to forget this last thing because it’s now daytime and the autumn sun starting to stream in will in time melt away the cloudbank.
Pink Cloud
See photo for wishful dreaming cloud