Loving the Clouds

Chapter 1

It was a rainy day, when I first saw him.

I remember how the clouds looked as if they were weeping, sprinkling the earth in clear crystal drops. They had soaked through my thin white sweater with ease, leaving a trail of goosebumps where they touched. I had cursed my mother that day, as she had told me it was going to be sunny when I had to walk home from school. I had not bothered to bring a jacket, and that decision was certainly on my mind as I trudged down a rain-soaked sidewalk, hands stuffed in my pockets and shivering.

I had not seen him at first. My eyes had been too focused on a point in the distance, my house, that got closer every step. The rain was constant, yet my house was close. I was not worried. But I could not help but notice a flicker of colour amongst the dreary landscape, and I looked over at it.

He was just standing there, looking up at the sky. A simple red sweater and blue jeans, soaked, but he stood there as if a gap parted in the clouds and took the rain away. And maybe it did. His face was turned to the sky, chin tilted slightly, lips parted to catch drops of rain. Yet many missed, crashing against his face and sliding down his chin.

It was absolutely crazy, standing in the rain. Rain meant getting wet, and then cold. Cold was an uncomfortable thing. It crawled under your skin and sat in your muscles, numbing them to the point of exhaustion. It sucked the heat out of your body so that your only thought was of that warm house in the distance, and how each step brought you closer to it. Cold was a burden not to be wished on anyone, yet this guy welcomed it.

Maybe the normal thing to do when one saw a stranger alone was to keep walking, put your head down and hope they don't see you. But I could not do that. It never came to mind that strangers were dangerous and whatnot, all I wanted was to look at him. He seemed so peaceful, calm. All I could think about was how still he was, when I was shivering. How could he not feel the cold and shy away as I did?

We stood there, in the silence of the rain beating down in the earth, for what seemed like hours. I was fascinated, and I could not explain why. May it be the way the rain mattered as little to him as a minor irritation. May it be the way he stood still, a statue of blue and red, sparing only a blink. May it be even the way his eyes gazed up at the sky in that special way, as if he knew a secret no one else could find.

And while he could not see me, I could see his eyes. They were blue. So light a blue that they could even be mistaken as grey. Reflected in them were the angry clouds he stared at, and I could not help but compare the two shades. Two orbs of a grey-like blue piercing two dark, misshaped forms that blended into a blue sky. Eyes of a cloud, I had thought. How fitting.

He never saw me. I left before he could. How strange it would have been to find a stranger staring at you, I had told myself. I remember looking back over my shoulder as I marched down my driveway and seeing him there still, having not moved an inch, with his cloud grey eyes fixed on the sky.

Even now, as I am lying on a double mattress, my eyes following the fan whirling on the ceiling, I do not know why I stopped. He was a stranger staring at the sky, and I was a stranger staring at the clouds. I could not look away, and he never moved his gaze. In the cold, he did not shiver as I had. And as I walked on, I noticed my shivering less and less. A mere irritation, one could say.

That night, I dreamed of dark black clouds with rain. And of a circle cut out of the clouds. With shades of blue peeking through.