I watched a cloud die today; it was the saddest thing I ever saw.

I could no longer stand the cruel heat of the sun, so I sought the shade and lay on my back, sunglasses shading my eyes from the glare peeking through the leaves of my guardian tree. When I finally got settled, I noticed the cloud above me and realized how quickly it moved. It came down on me like a sort of evil, magical mist, spreading its soft and deadly fingers, growing larger in its descent. I slowly became aware of my fear, my awe, until I no longer saw an evil nature in the cloud, only its beauty as it changed form with a slow and fluid movement.

The cloud spread, its fingers fading into nonexistence. It disappeared bit by bit, killed by the heat of the shining, glaring sun. As though the cloud finally saw its own fate and wanted to escape it, the dying mass of puffy white moisture ran in all directions, splitting itself in two. In one half, I saw a mermaid trying to swim away to safety; in the other, I saw an eel slithering towards the cooler regions of the sky, with a wildly frightened horse and his rider following right after.

I felt an odd sort of pity as I watched them fade slowly away, until the mermaid was no more than a lady’s lock of hair and the mounted rider a screaming face, mouth open as it called out for help. The face thinned, became a skull crying out in despair, and still the sun’s heat ate at its edges, melting it away. When the last of the cloud had disappeared, every trace of it gone, I felt as if I’d just witnessed a murder by an evil overlord, the sun.

What do you see in the clouds?

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