Once upon a time, there was a little cloud named Ciri who was wandering through the blue sky. She was so tiny that no one could tell she was not a speck of white mist, and she was so happy that all the blue sky was brightened by her presence. The afternoon sun shone so warm that she said to herself, “What a nice day to go down to Earth! I think I will take a walk over to the sunny hills and see what those good people are doing.”
So she lifted up her tiny feet, and lo and behold! she found herself floating along over the hills. There was a soft breeze, which seemed to say, “Welcome, little cloud!” And then the warm sun smiled upon her, and all the gentle winds kissed her by turns, and some fluttering little birds sang her a cheery song. Ciri was very happy indeed, and when tired of flying, floated down lower, peeping into the squares, and gardens and streets of the busy towns.
Ciri said to a man who was digging in a garden, “Will you please tell me what you do with that spade?”
“I dig a hole, little cloud, and put some seeds into it,” he said.
Then off she flew again, laughing with joy. “They put seeds in holes!” she cried.
Soon she looked down into another garden, and saw a group of little children at play. One of the children saw Ciri and cried out, “O mother, what a nice little cloud! Come, let us play ‘Round and Round the Ring’. And Ciri heard the mother tell the girl what a nice rain it had brought to the garden.
Then Ciri noticed that a man was passing along the street holding an umbrella over a lady.
“I wonder why she carries that black cover over her?” she asked. The man said: “It was fine until I came out, but now it is beginning to rain.”
Ciri saw that the lady was trying to keep herself dry under the black umbrella, and that some dirty little children who had no umbrellas were holding out tin cups to catch the rain.
“Oh, I don’t like those little cups!” she sighed. “Do they really like to have the rain fall on them? Doesn’t it make them cry?”
Then she heard one dirty little boy say to the others: “It drips into my tin cup, and makes nice, nice music; oh, I hope it will rain all night.”
Ciri was very unhappy, and thought that, after all, she did not like to bring rain to the earth. “Silly people! they never know when they are happy!” she said.
Then she heard the little bird that was sitting near her roof say:
“Oh happy, happy little rain,
That never, never falls in vain!”
So she said to herself: “If it makes the little children so happy, it must be a nice thing to do. But how can I know what to do? Will it be to fall on the rooftops to give the gutter-men work? That is not what I want. Or shall I pick up some prettiest curls of the water, and carry them to the fountain in the street? Ciri, you are very foolish! I don’t believe you know half enough about the world. You can see but a tiny bit of it just now, but I will keep growing bigger and bigger, so that I can see the whole earth one day, without moving. Oh, dear me, how I do like the rainbow colours!”
Then she gazed down around her, and there she thought she saw the speck of a milking bucket, and green pastures about it. So she floated and floated, and all the last bit of sunshine went into the speck, and lo! the milking bucket stood affectingly on the clean straw of a cow-shed.
She was now so strong, and so big, that she had to say to herself every minute: “See, little Ciri! you are getting big. You are almost like a real rain-cloud!” That was indeed what she was trying to be. When travelling over sleeping fields, she turned aside the yellow grains that were ready for the knife, and then all at once said with a cheerful voice: “They are going to thrash them in the barn, and I will float over to the barn, so that I may care for them and see how strong they are.”
Then she flew in front of the barn, so that the men, the horses, and everything in the barn became grey with dust; but it was not the green, good grass that she was blowing up; but the golden grain that they were busy in thrashing.
“Ah, that is very pretty!” said she. “The gamboge paint in the paintbox would not look so yellow as the straw that is now being shaken. But one grain of corn is sitting amongst them, saying, ‘They shake me and shake me, but I will come out into the light.’”
Then Ciri became grey too, so grey, that the people far off in the field said:
“Now the rain-cloud is really coming! It is so thick over the woods, and rolling black over the town, too!”
Now Ciri was indeed black and grey; and she became more and more so every minute. It seemed as if the whole earth were to be drowned.
But Ciri did not mind that. So she went on growing and growing, and, at last, she became a really dangerous rain-cloud! So heavy she was with her own water, that she said:
“Now I must do something; I can really be no larger, and see another rain-cloud will soon come too, quicker than I, and say to me, ‘You are so large that I cannot sit under you; you take up the whole room’. I am not afraid of her, but she will not ask me to sit under her roof again! Oh no! that is finished: I have grown too great for means of appearance!”
Then she became blacker and thicker, and throws an angry thunder-flash to tell that proper consideration is the proper time. And the men and women praying down on the earth said:
“Dear God, pleas send us plenty of rain! May no misfortune befall us concerning our hay and corn!”
The rain began to fall, but Ciri did not dare to shed her waters into the flowers, and peeped shyly over the sky, and thought: “Poor children! They are standing, open-mouthed, and in their cups, under the rain. I will not fall, I will not fall!”
“I will certainly come out again if it only pours down now!” said the plants, who were so thirsty. “What a nice music does the rain make in the shaking blades!”
“Now I will prevail at last, that you all may see the little cloud Ciri!” Then down came the rain in thick and fast drops, and when a little while Ciri was streaming, a fountain! All Coburg was nearly drowned in the moat, and the people were very lively indeed in the streets.
“Now Ciri is found out!” said a little dog when the water rose. “Now she has made nice, nice French, Pastry for the little children’s tin-cups!
And it rained all that night, Ciri’s black dress became blacker, and she stood with the most, angry frown, and said to her clouds:
Don’t go away; what do you say? I am so little!”
The sunlight was poking their heads out, and the next day everyone was merry; and then Ciri felt ashamed. But the hardest did not arrive until an hour later. She floated back from Coburg to Franconia over a country rich in corn.
She met old Geranium on the coffin near a castle in the morning sunlight. The coffin from the rose bushes were just held on the pall.
“How well it smells and looks! said little Ciri, darting near the flowers. And then it really smelled so, so finely; but she did not drop one single tear. She was drenched; the afternoon before, it must me known, happy little Ciri. That was a whole day’s work!