Chasing Clouds

One - Chasing Clouds

A child watched the cloud.

The child was a girl, with somber, dark eyes. Her hair was short, uneven and choppy, cut in a hurry and with a blunt knife. Cut early in the morning, with her mother still asleep. Her mother wanted it long and braided, but the child did not. It stuck in tree branches and gathered leaves and dirt. It took too long to clean, to brush and braid. So she cut it with a knife from the kitchen, without a mirror.

The child had seen the cloud, had seen it as the sun rose above the ocean. Her favorite color. Pink. She watched as it darkened and lightened in the early hours of the morning. It was beautiful.

The child was young. Young enough to believe she could touch the cloud, pluck off pieces like cotton candy. But she was not so young as to not be able to operate a sailboat.

***

The child pulled a small potato sack from the kitchen cupboard, dropping a half dozen apples and two slabs of baked mutton into her makeshift pack. The dark-haired girl filled a glass jar with water and sealed it tight. A lone potato was left in the sack.

She pulled a small, green-sailed sailboat onto the sand and pushed it into the water. She
hopped in. The wind was strong that day, and pushed the child and boat towards the cloud.

She stared at the cloud. Beautiful. She used the oars to speed the boat on, and correct the
path of the boat.

She sailed for many, many days.