The Cloud Hunters By Rebecca Harrison

They said the clouds were gone. Every night they told us about rain and we tapped our fingers to make the patter sound. They showed us pictures of clouds and we traced the outlines to remember their shapes. We gave them names. When everyone else was asleep, we whispered into fast winds so the clouds might hear us calling them back. The air tasted of dust. I listened to the dark and tried to hear cloud drift. In the morning, we looked for the clouds’ shapes in the skies. They weren’t there.

When no one was looking, we made maps to find the clouds. I hid the maps under my bed. We left in dawn dim before they woke and we ran below the empty cloud paths. I wondered how rain smelled. We walked past the edge of the dust sea. I counted waves, but not out loud. We walked toward the mountains. We spoke only the clouds’ names, and we forgot our own. We sang songs only clouds could hear. We floated.

© 2015 Rebecca Harrison

Rebecca Harrison sneezes like Donald Duck and can be summoned by a cake signal in the sky. Her best friend is a dog who can count. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and was a finalist in the first Wyvern Lit flash fiction contest. Her stories can also be read at Maudlin House, Rose Red Review, Literary Orphans, Pigeonholes Magazine, and elsewhere.