Kids & Fables

by Scribes Stories · 6 min read · 2 views

The Little Cloud Who Wanted to Rain Gold High above the valley of Marrowfield, where the other clouds drifted lazily through their ordinary work of shading fields and occasionally releasing rain, there lived a small cloud named Wisp who had grown thoroughly dissatisfied with the entire business of simply being a cloud. "Everyone forgets us the moment we've passed," Wisp complained to her older, considerably more patient neighbor, a broad gray cloud named Thaddeus who had been quietly watering the same valley for longer than Wisp had existed. "Farmers thank the rain, never the cloud that carried it. Children point at us for a moment when we look interesting, then forget us entirely once we drift past. I want to matter, Thaddeus. I want to do something nobody could possibly forget." "You already matter," Thaddeus said mildly, releasing a gentle shower over the wheat fields below with the easy, practiced patience of long habit. "The wheat down there would wither entirely without clouds like us doing exactly this ordinary, forgettable work, day after day, season after season." "That's not what I mean," Wisp said, unsatisfied. "I don't want to matter quietly. I want to matter in a way everyone actually notices and remembers." It was around this time that Wisp overheard two farmers below, resting beneath a tree during their midday break, joking about how wonderful it would be if, just once, instead of ordinary rain, the clouds might rain down gold instead. The idea took hold of Wisp immediately and would not let go. Gold. Something valuable, dazzling, unforgettable, considerably more impressive than the plain, ordinary water she and every other cloud in Marrowfield had always released without a second thought. She spent the following weeks trying everything her small cloud imagination could devise, gathering the shiniest, most golden looking dust she could find drifting through the upper sky, mixing it desperately into her own gray body, hoping against hope that she might somehow transform her ordinary rain into the dazzling golden shower the farmers had joked about wanting. "This is foolish," Thaddeus warned her gently, watching her strange experiments with growing concern. "Rain does what rain is meant to do because water is exactly what the fields actually need to grow. Whatever strange golden dust you're gathering up there isn't going to nourish a single seed down below, however impressive it might look falling from the sky." "You just don't understand wanting to matter," Wisp said dismissively, continuing her efforts despite his warning. Finally, after weeks of determined effort, Wisp managed to produce something she was tremendously proud of. A shower that fell, briefly, with a genuine golden shimmer, catching the afternoon sunlight in a way that drew gasps from every farmer and child watching from below. For one glorious afternoon, Wisp finally had exactly what she had wanted. Every eye in Marrowfield turned skyward, pointing, exclaiming, genuinely amazed by the strange golden shower falling from her small gray body. But the celebration did not last. By the following morning, the wheat fields that had received Wisp's dazzling golden shower instead of ordinary rain had begun wilting badly, the strange golden dust she had mixed into her rain proving useless and even mildly harmful to the delicate crops that had needed nothing more than plain, ordinary water all along. "What have I done," Wisp said, horrified, watching the wheat continue wilting despite her frantic, desperate efforts to release genuine rain over the same fields, trying to undo the damage her dazzling display had caused. "You gave them something memorable," Thaddeus said, not unkindly, joining her efforts to properly water the struggling fields, "instead of something useful. I did warn you, Wisp, though I understand the warning probably felt like nothing more than an old cloud's dull, cautious thinking at the time." The farmers below, initially so delighted by the dazzling golden shower, grew considerably less delighted watching their wheat struggle and wilt over the following days, several fields requiring weeks of careful, ordinary rain from Thaddeus and the other patient clouds before the crops finally began recovering properly. Wisp felt genuinely ashamed, watching the damage her desire to be memorable had caused, and found herself, for the first time since her strange obsession began, actually grateful for creatures like Thaddeus who had simply, quietly, continued doing the ordinary work the valley genuinely needed, entirely unbothered by whether anyone below remembered to thank them for it. "I think I understand now," she told Thaddeus, once the wheat fields had finally recovered, weeks of ordinary, unglamorous rain slowly undoing the damage her golden display had caused. "I wanted to matter in a way everyone would notice and remember. But mattering and being noticed aren't actually the same thing at all, are they." "They rarely are," Thaddeus agreed. "The most important work in this valley, the work that actually keeps every field growing and every family fed, has never once needed anyone to notice it in order to matter. It only ever needed to be done, faithfully, season after season, whether or not a single farmer below ever thought to look up and offer thanks." "But doesn't it bother you," Wisp asked, "spending your whole existence doing work that gets so completely taken for granted?" Thaddeus considered this for a long moment, releasing another gentle shower over a field of young vegetables that clearly needed it. "I used to think it should bother me," he admitted. "When I was younger, considerably younger than you are now, I remember wanting exactly what you wanted. To matter loudly, memorably, unforgettably. But I've watched a great many seasons pass since then, Wisp, and I've come to believe that the clouds most worth becoming aren't the ones remembered for one dazzling, unforgettable afternoon. They're the ones quietly responsible for every single harvest a valley has ever managed to bring in, year after year, whether or not a single soul below ever thinks to look up and say thank you." Wisp spent the rest of that season working quietly alongside Thaddeus, releasing ordinary, unglamorous rain over the fields that genuinely needed it, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, a kind of satisfaction in the work that her brief golden display had never actually provided, however dazzling it had briefly looked catching the afternoon light. Years later, long after the story of the strange golden rain had become little more than an amusing legend the farmers of Marrowfield told their children, Wisp had grown into a broad, steady cloud herself, quietly responsible for entire seasons of healthy, well watered fields that no single farmer ever specifically remembered to thank her for. She found, to her genuine surprise, that she no longer minded in the slightest. "The wheat remembers," she told a young, restless cloud drifting past one afternoon, clearly harboring the same dissatisfaction Wisp herself had once carried so heavily. "Every single stalk growing tall and healthy in that valley below is a kind of memory, even if the farmers themselves never think to connect it back to any particular cloud. That's not nothing, little one. In fact, I've come to believe it might actually be everything that genuinely matters, however quietly it happens to arrive."