Cloud Girl lives in the clouds. She eats there, and breathes there, and is there. At night you will find her spread-eagled in her bed, for she sleeps with her wings open. In the afternoon her skin has collected a thin, shiny film of moisture from spending her mornings at such high altitude. Sometimes you try to talk to her and it takes her a moment for her to react, as if she had to travel a great way to meet you.
You try to find this charming but most of the time,
you miss her.
Cloud Girl likes looking at windows. Looking through them all the time, she thinks, would just be rude. She likes to think that maybe furniture have thoughts and memories and so takes care to tread softly on stairs, and to mumble goodnight to her bed sheets every day. She mentions this to her mother once, who tells her she’s crazy. She gets called crazy a lot, but Cloud Girl doesn’t believe in getting upset over things that are inevitable, so she smiles in return. This never helps but, well, some situations just can’t be helped.
Cloud Girl wants to be an architect when she is older. Not a pilot? you ask, and regret how predictable you are.
But Cloud Girl doesn’t like being in machines because, most of the time, she doesn’t need them. She has feet and legs and a feather soul, and that is enough for her.
She wants to be an architect and design roofs. She wants them to be the most beautiful part of every house. She wants people to find nothing remarkable in her buildings, and then look at the sky and fall in love. She likes beauty that is hidden but obvious.
Secretly, she wishes that one day someone will come up to her and say,
You make the sky more beautiful than it already is.
Cloud Girl is often told that her way of life is only going to hurt her in the end. The higher you go, the harder you fall, they all say. They tell her to stop. To stop before it’s too late. She tells them that falling isn’t so terrible.
She knows how to pick herself up.
What she really wants to tell them, though, is how wonderful it is to fly without fear of the ground. How much she loves being in two places at once. How it’s like to dream and not stop.
She doesn’t, though. She doesn’t because she is afraid that even after that, after the colours and the feeling and the wind, they won’t understand.
Nothing would be more tragic.
Cloud Girl likes to say that she is never alone, even when there is nobody around her. You say this is good, but it scares you. You are afraid because whatever she is with when she is not alone may take her away one day. You are afraid she will never fall. That she will go higher and higher until you can’t even see her. Until she is blue like the sky, and just as intangible.
You are afraid because she is Cloud Girl, who lives in the clouds.
