The Cloud That Cries Lina — Story 02

It started with a drip. Just one. It landed on the tip of Lina’s nose, as soft and unexpected as a sigh. She looked up, puzzled. The sky above Vaelinya was a vast, unbroken canvas of pale, peaceful blue. There were no rainclouds massing on the horizon, no hint of a coming storm. There was only the sun, warm on her shoulders, and one small, lonely cloud.

It wasn’t a normal cloud. It wasn’t white and puffy like the others that drifted lazily in the upper atmosphere. This one was the colour of a dove’s wing—a soft, troubled grey—and it trembled with a faint, continuous quiver. It was floating impossibly low to the ground, hovering just above the tops of the whisper grass like a lost sheep that had forgotten how to find its flock, or a boat that had forgotten how to rise on the tide. And as Lina watched, another perfect, silent drop fell from its underside. It was weeping.

A feeling of gentle empathy, a familiar tug in her own heart, drew Lina closer. She held out her hand, palm up, a silent offering. The cloud seemed to notice her. It drifted nearer, its edges quivering like a frightened kitten seeking comfort. Another drip, warm and surprisingly heavy, landed perfectly in the centre of her palm. It felt less like rain and more like a tear.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, her voice barely louder than the rustle of the grass.

The cloud pulsed, its grey deepening for a moment. It couldn’t speak in words, of course, but Vaelinya had its own ways of communicating. A faint, cool breeze, smelling of damp earth and something ancient, wrapped around her, answering her question not with sounds, but with feelings.

Lonely. The feeling was a vast, empty space, a quiet ache of being separate. Full. This was a feeling of pressure, of being filled to the brim with unspoken thoughts, unshed tears, and unseen storms. Heavy. It was the weight of carrying all that fullness, a burden that pulled it down from the sky, tethering it to the earth.

Lina knew that feeling. She knew it intimately. She thought of all the times she’d felt that way herself, when a quiet sadness would settle over her for no reason she could name. Days when her heart felt too full of things she couldn’t explain a tangled knot of emotions that had no words. Times when the tears would well up in her eyes even though nothing was terribly wrong. It was just… too much. It was the quiet weight of being alive.

She looked up at the trembling grey mass above her. “It’s okay,” she said gently, her voice full of a sudden, clear understanding. “You can cry. You don’t have to hold it all in. I’ll stay right here with you.”

As if her words were the permission, it had been waiting for, the cloud lowered itself further, until its misty tendrils were just above her head, close enough to touch. And then it began to rain properly. It wasn’t a cold, harsh storm. It was a gentle, steady weeping. The drops were warm and slow, and they smelled of things Lina had never known rain could smell of—the faint salt of the distant sea, the dry dust of forgotten attics, and the faint, melancholic melody of old, lost songs. It was the most sorrowful, and the most beautiful, rain she had ever felt.

Lina didn’t run for cover. She didn’t even put up her hood. She sat down cross-legged in the grass, tilted her face up to the gentle shower, and let herself get wet. She let the cloud’s sadness wash over her, feeling its immense relief in every drop.

She began to hum, a soft, rambling tune with no beginning and no end. It was a song of companionship, a quiet melody that said, you are not alone in this.

The cloud responded. Its weeping didn’t stop, but it changed. The steady rhythm of the raindrops became a little lighter, and the cloud’s grey edges began to glow with a soft, internal luminescence, like it was finally exhaling a breath it had been holding for ages. The rain slowed, the drops becoming fewer and farther between, until it was just a gentle mist.

Then, the cloud began to rise. It floated upwards, shedding its weight, becoming lighter and less dense as it ascended back toward its home in the sky. When it was high above her, it shivered one last, conclusive time. But this final shiver didn’t release thunder or lightning. It burst, silently, with pure colour.

A soft, shimmering trail of golden mist, as bright and warm as liquid sunlight, unspooled from the cloud’s centre. It drifted down, not like rain, but like a ribbon unfurling in a slow, graceful spiral. It drifted directly toward Lina. She watched, mesmerized, as it reached her. It didn’t soak her or touch her as a physical thing. Instead, it wrapped around her shoulders like a warm, weightless scarf, lingered for a moment with a feeling of immense gratitude, and then faded into nothing.

Above her, the small cloud, now a soft, ordinary white, drifted away and joined its brethren in the vast, peaceful blue. The sky was as it had been before.

But Lina felt different. The grass was wet, her hair was damp, but she felt inexplicably lighter. As if something heavy had been lifted from her own shoulders, too—a quiet sadness she didn’t even know she had been carrying until it was gone.

Later that night, as her mum was helping her hang up her damp jacket, she held it up. “Did you get caught in the rain?”

Lina shook her head, a small, secret smile playing on her lips. “Not really.”

“A storm, then?”

“No,” Lina said, looking out the window at the now star-filled sky. “Just a cloud who really needed a good cry.”

Her mum paused, then smiled that soft, knowing smile Lina loved so much. She leaned in and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “We all do, sometimes, my love.”

Lina nodded, her heart feeling clear and calm as the sky outside. “Next time,” she whispered, mostly to herself, “maybe I’ll cry with it.”