Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
“An ice cream truck.”
“In the summer?”
The little girl laughed and rolled onto her side to evade her mother’s tickles. The fattest bee she had ever seen buzzed nearby and distracted Millie for a second. The girl looked around for a sign of it, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. She lay on her back again, looking up at the bright blue sky above, framing the sky in a diamond with her little outstretched hands.
“OK,” her mother said. “I’ll give you a pass. How about….that one?”
The girl leaned in and followed the direction of the finger. She pursed her lips tight and squinted, angling her small face from side to side.
“Well,” she pondered, “it looks kinda fluffy.”
“All clouds look fluffy!”
The girl tried to tickle her mother who gamely played along, scooping the girl in her arms. The little body wriggled out of her grasp, sloping off her chest before resting her head on the woman’s belly.
“Kinda looks like Cinderella’s slipper,” the girl said.
“Cinderella’s slipper wasn’t fluffy.”
“Her carpet slipper was,” the girl replied, bringing a fresh fit of giggles.
The sun was freed from its cloudy prison and for that moment they both seemed to appreciate it, enjoying deep breaths, eyes closed and smiling as the warm rays streaked down. A minute later, when she had assumed her daughter had drifted off to sleep, threatening to follow her for a siesta, the girl spoke.
“You know, if I focus really hard, sometimes I can change the shapes of the clouds.”
Her mother, eyes still closed, smiled.
“Sure, you can honey.”
“No, really. Mr. Humphreys said that everyone can do it. He called it cloudbusting.”
“Your geography teacher?”
There was a shift in movement on her belly as she felt her daughter’s head nod. Birds were chirping high above. In the distance, far above, the sound of an airplane. Holidaymakers on their way to Spain. Greece. Maybe the Balearic Islands. Ibiza. She smiled inwardly remembering life before motherhood. Her hand reached out and stroked the brow of her daughter.
“See that one, mammy?”
“What?”
“Up there.” Her mother screened her eyes and saw the object of her daughter’s attention, a thick cluster of unbroken cloud. It was advancing like a huge milky spaceship in their direction.
“Watch me break it up into pieces.”
“Honey, you can’t just—” As she spoke, great fissures appeared in the mass and the object split into four equal-sized pieces and began to drift apart. Like a sheet of Arctic ice.
“I did it! I did it!” the girl cried triumphantly, hopping up and down.
“Honey, sit down. Don’t be silly.”
The girl sat and fidgeted with the hem of her blue denim dress. Noticing she was on the verge of tears, her mother spoke again.
“Try that one.” The girl looked up expectantly and saw the encouraging look of her mother’s face. “Over there.”
The girl sat cross-legged and focused her attention on the small cloud. She was still for a few moments, holding her breath. The sun had slotted back into its own home again. Temperatures dipped, and she noticed a breeze that sent shivers up her arm.
“It’s OK, love. That’s enough for today.” The woman rose from the ground and began to pick up the foodstuffs they had set up for their picnic. “Honey?”
“I can’t focus.”
“I said that’s enough, OK?” Yoghurt pots, sandwich wrappers and other items were collected and deposited into the bag. “Come help me here.”
“The plane’s in the way.”
“The what?” Her mother could feel a dark cloud looming in her own mind, threatening to spoil the afternoon.
“The plane. It’s in the way. I can’t—”
“Well, move it out of the way then!” Her mother snapped. The girl looked up at her mother, and then with a heavy sigh reached up and with her thumb and index finger flicked the air.
Seconds later, there was a squealing noise. Growing louder. They looked around and saw it. High above, but descending rapidly – much too fast – a plane with a long arcing trail of thick smoke, falling from the sky.
This story was written for the ambitious creative project, ‘The Weekly Kook’, where I release a brand new short story every week for a year, totalling…yep, you guessed it – 52 stories.
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