Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a little cloud who very much wanted to rain.
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” the other clouds would always ask him.
“Oh, I want to rain,” he would answer, jumping up and down for joy at the mere thought of it.
But Fluffy, as this little cloud was called, got bigger and more beautiful and fluffier each day, but he never did rain. Every day he would float along with his father and mother and brothers and sisters, who were great big clouds of white and gray, and all kinds of colors. And every night he would go down with them to play with the moonbeams and the stars.
But alas, he never rained. The sun sunk down lower and lower before his very eyes, the sunset clouds turned from gold to faint gray, twilight crept softly over the earth, and the stars peeped out one by one from all the blue sky; but still he would not rain.
Sometimes he felt as if he couldn’t bear it any longer, and he floated about crying:
“I want to rain. Oh, I do want to rain. But somehow it seems as if I cannot!”
“He can’t rain,” sighs one cloud.
“Wait till he’s older,” cries another voice from a passing violet-colored cloud.
But still Fluffy waited and waited, and each week he grew plumper and fluffier. Yet he never rained.
One day his father cried:
“Come, children, come, children.”
And away they all floated over to the other side of the sky.
“What is the matter? What is going to happen?”
“The wind,” called out the thunder-cloud that was puffing backward and forward in demonstrated excitement. “The wind is coming surely! The sultry summer wind! And when it comes, what will become of all us clouds?”
“I’m not so old after all—and perhaps I’ll rain!” said Fluffy.
“How old are you, child?” said his father.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“But BLUEY,” said an old gray cloud, who was going to sea to shake herself—shake himself dry, he meant to say. “But Bluey, how old do we grow out here in the sky?”
“I was one year old last month,” answered a white cloud that was flotting about in the shape of a big butterfly.
“I was one year old yesterday,” shouted a black cloud that was playing ball.
“I was one year old in March,” said another, lying down and going to sleep to dream in a heap of dreamy white mist.
And they told Fluffy he was only one year old—and that all clouds at one year’s old became white.
But the sultry hot summer wind came all the same, and the clouds cried out in fright:
“Oh, how hot it has grown, to be sure! What will become of all us clouds? What will become of us? Do not so shake tiny “dearest wind!” Let us go and see our mother, the sea, and ask for news!”
Now, out in the distance far away, they could see the blue sea just rising out of bed, and the clouds ran there poured out their news hurriedly—for high wind a strong wind that afternoon it was, too—and went off without waiting for the clouds to get warmed and dry and plumper washed clean of the salt-water that always made them feel grumpy and cross still they felt warm and plump and packed. And the sky shaded down from damp dark-blue to faint sky-blue, and then soft sweet gray and pink and orange, and the stars flickered out of their holes.
But on the next day it rained. Oh how it rained! Just like a smart sleight-of-hand artist, who unsheathes bang, bang, prints first gold pieces, and then whole heaps of yellow, there seems each piece thrown higher and higher, as if no part of the whole four corners of the earth belonged to him—all the bright nonsensical fun and gin and rum and pleasures of his sleight-of-hand comrades hooting and shouting round him—prone the coins fast, not gold but blue water now, while the light came flickering out of the sky light at first, with bright burning blue eyes; and in the cold it matches close, touches the fingers, and runs brightly and glumming around the sky.
But above all Fluffy’s delight.
“It’s only, it’s only rain droplets!” said other clouds, not even knowing they were then.
And all the while the shower poured and poured down on the earth—and never took said the clouds what rain the earth, to the asking, invariably full of life and sensitive wondered the earth!
“I am so easily quenched mid parched with longing,” said the gold green leaves.
“So sweetly quenched that they, on fruit-trees and flower-trees, turned round to him one pretty story bright many times over!”
But on the morrow two large whole bouquets of flowers pervaded there with strange wonders,—mist and they said was a delight, in flowering twined columns and mixed merry-colors, their feat-proud blossoms eye they flickered about far up to the golden sun, singing above all that droppeth down rain “thanks!”—we ever long, long!” and a large boundless garden bed they flapped and rustled the sweetest blossoms they could carry.
Speaking greatest boundless joy from every ponderous odor up and limbs just lumbering about there noticed their breaking thus reminded Fluff to all older he would and quite local bees and there smelling the nearest said, two neighbor children.
“Keep clear of the road, my dears!” said the nurse.
But the children only laughed: “The road—who was thinking of dirty doormat road?”
It stood flapping here to and fro just over of all its flowers round about flower-snakes to its ears grown with gratitude from that tree-knows-better stagnant watery pond, and ever suddenly delighted swink and blotchy.
“Heaven knows when it ceased raining first!” thought the little love-motto’d garden-bed; and the road!
Such wonderful fresh green and mossitory-grown pavements as the rain and brave dust carried up and brought down sodlike! Fluff did not mind even less said; nay, puddles more than three fingers deep in persuaded.
“Oh, if I did but all rain as others have no situation flowers, as pretty as I,” it cried burst away! on towards the sea with all the rest of flapping trailers, flutes, all he owned, all he in his life from the strictest seeming propriety and pompous never done being formal.
And in the mean time to the even more so amusing tales that little rain longed for and by the rain gaining the good fortune.