The Cloudiness

The earth: on surface

“Weather Forecasters have predicted that a powerful cyclone will hit some regions of South East Asia. Whereas coastal zones will get sever hit from it and may experience heavy rainfall along with a storm, other regions will only witness heavy rainfall. Forecasters have blamed warm temperature at sea surface and atmospheric instability for the formation of cyclone,” the news reporter says on the TV.

After listening to the news George summons his wife, Amaliah, and tells her that they need to stay extra careful for the cyclone may cause heavy damage.

“Hey, Amaliah, come here,” George demands.

“What is it, George! I am cooking,” Amaliah shrieks.

“There is going to be a cyclone. I wish, we had shifted from coastal region to some place in inland. Don’t know how long the God will keep on showering such gifts upon us. If he really wants to give something, he could bless us with a child. But he wants us to rot in old age with helplessness, “ George grunts.

“Ohh! George. Don’t be so disappointed with life and God. We are good. Alright! I am with you. And we will be doing fine in old age,” Amaliah says, and tries to console him by planting a soft kiss on his forehead.

George and Amaliah are middle aged married couple. They tried for a baby for at least 10 yrs. They exhausted all kinds of treatment, so that Amaliah could bear a child, but to no avail. It is George’s tenderness that he never allowed her feel a bit remorseful for not being able to conceive. Although he got little restless when he first got to know about Amaliah’s condition, but later he decided to extend all possible support to her.

Among Clouds : In the Cloudiness

Above earth’s surface up in the air there is a beautiful village on clouds -Cloudiness- vibrant and colourful. Each cloud makes one colony and they are numbered in order of their date of occupation. In the beginning, only few clouds were occupied, but as population grew only few are left vacant. Cloudiness has one God father and one God Mother. Both of them take care of each resident just like their own child.

Residents of Cloudiness are called fairies, just like we call residents of earth humans. They look exactly like humans. It is hard to categories them as angels, as they do not possess any angelic ability, but each one them has at least one peculiar trait that makes them special and formidable. Few have strong smelling sense, others have dynamic hearing range, and the list goes on. Only God Father and Mother have supernatural powers, so that they can protect everyone.Every female fairy’s name starts with letter A and for a male fairy it is letter B.

From quite some time, fairies are distressed due to human interventions. With the invention of aeroplanes, spacecraft, rockets, etc. Fairies cannot live peacefully anymore. Few of the cloud colonies even got pulverised when got hit by a spacecraft.

“Ahhh! Wonderful! Another horrible gift from filthy humans. Now they are sending cyclone to erase our existence. A child of so called man-made global warming,” one of the fairies says out loud in anger.

“Dear Adaline, don’t worry. God father will save us,” Bennet says .

The news of cyclone has wreaked havoc on everyone’s peace of mind. On every cloud colony there is an incessant debate ongoing over upcoming disaster.

Some are saying that this cyclone will be the end of Cloudiness, and others are calling it nature’s wrath. But everyone blames human for this disgusting future.

The D-Day

The most dreaded day has finally arrived. Both fairies and humans have made necessary arrangements to protect themselves from the side effects of the cyclone.

Whereas fairies have safeguarded themselves by sewing all cloud colonies together, human have secured extra ration in case cyclone brings along famine. All fairies are huddled together in one big chunk of cloud, and humans are praying with folded hands. Over cloudiness, fairies are relying on their God father and mother; and on surface, humans are dependent on mercy of government and rescue teams.

All of a sudden, there is loud thundering in the clouds. The lighting shines brighter and it scares both humans and fairies equally.

It was clear from beginning that the cyclone is no ordinary natural disaster, and fairies will have to bear maximum share of damage. With every tremendous flash of lighting, skin of at least one fairy got scarred. There is hue and cry all over in the Cloudiness. God father and mother both are helpless in the face of this powerful calamity.

Soon after lighting is done with exhibition of its strength, petrifying storm accompanied with hail gears itself up. The storm pulls the clouds in different directions and gradually all of them get teared apart into multiple pieces. During this process of push and pull, one fairy – Alvin (15 yrs)- loses its underlying cloud support and falls.

Alvin falls with skyrocketing speed with gush of air passing from under her body. She can see the burgeoning distance between herself and her cloud colony. Sleeves of her flared dress are ballooned out, and each strand of her hair is being pulled in opposite direction of her fall.

Now, she is only few kilometres away from the surface. She can see the well-planned colonies of human accommodation, and she is scared with the thought of her skull getting popped open on being hit to the rock-solid surface. But god has some other plan for her.

Just when Alvin is about to land herself on human’s home town, she notices that the surface below is not rock solid but is an undulating one. ohh! That is an ocean. She falls on the surface of an ocean with a thrust and dives deep into it and then bounces back to the surface. During this whole affair she loses her consciousness and her body is now under control of mighty waves.

Alvin, one of the fairies, as we all know, is also blessed with a unique trait. She is highly intuitive and she can judge human intentions with perfection. She lost both of her parents when she was 12 yrs old, since then she was under protection of God father and God mother.

The gloomy after effects

The following morning is full of embarrassment as it is not good enough to bring joy to the lives of living creatures. Both fairies and humans are devastated and are trying to pull themselves back to normal state. Both worlds have lost too much. Whereas fairies do not seem to have lost any living being except for Alvin, humans have face massive destruction and deaths.

Like every other resident of coastal region, George and Amaliah could not sleep last night. To put their fear to bed, they kept on watching their favourite TV show – “Two and a Half Men”. This kept their mood uplifted while the merciless weather kept on roaring.

With crack of dawn, George steps down stairs, and he finds that a large amount of water has accumulated on the ground floor. Everything is floating and it looks like an inhouse swimming pool. Then he steps outside to survey the situation. The entire coastal region has been washed away. Both George and Amaliah feel depressed over the state of their house, but later thank God for saving their lives. They decide to wait for the water to drain out, and shift all essentials to the first floor. Once done with the shifting, George trudges his way through water and moves outside to get his tool box. As he is heading towards the house, he gets distracted by something- it is a body of a young girl. He lugs the body all the way to his house.

“Hey! Amaliah, See I found this little girl’s body. She was lying unconscious by the seashore. She is still alive, I guess. Please hurry up. I need help,” George , scurrying in direction of his living room. His words and actions resemble extreme urgency and worry.

“Ohh! Poor girl. George, make her lie down on the floor, she must have swallowed a lot of water,” Amaliah says. She compresses Alvin’s chest to drain water out of her. Later, gives her mouth to mouth. Amaliah tries every possible way to revive her.

“I can feel her pulse. Perhaps she needs some rest. George, we will allow her to rest for a while and get back to her after few hours,” Amaliah suggests.

Alvin regains consciousness after four hours and finds both George and Amaliah by her side. She screams to the sight of strange faces and immediately jumps on her feet. She tries run but then Amaliah allays her fear by saying that she has been rescued by the couple and not kidnapped.

Alvin gives blank look to both of them and does not utter a single word out of fear.

“She is acting weird, Amaliah. We have saved her life and she was shouting on us,” George says with sorrow.

“how long have you known her, George?” Amaliah asks.

“What do mean? Don’t you know we just met her five hours back,” George groans.

“Exactly! We are strangers to her, and she is frightened, George. That’s why she screamed,” Amaliah says.

Amaliah serves hot tomato soup to Alvin, which was obviously new to her. Alvin keeps on staring at the soup bowl for a while.

“It is tomato soup, dear. Drink it up. It will be helpful,”

“What tomato!”

“Tomato, a vegetable. Anyways, leave it. I know, you might be feeling a bit disoriented. Take time and don’t forget the soup. You can call me when you need anything, I am in the next room,”

Amaliah closes the door behind her.

Alvin shifts herself to the balcony and keeps on looking up in the sky with hope.

“How is she doing?” George asks.

“She is disturbed. She hasn’t uttered a word since.”

The Cloudiness-

“Blaze, Why didn’t you save my daughter, ” God Mother asks.

“Arwen, you know, I tried, but I lost sight of her. And when finally saw her, she was already falling with speed towards the surface,” Blaze cries(God father)

When thunder and storm were terrorizing the Cloudiness, Blaze mustered all his strength and cast spell to bind the colonies together. With the help of his powers, he erected a shield like structure around the Cloudiness and prevented fairies from falling. But this was done past Alvin’s fall. Blaze was delayed only by few seconds. When he saw Alvin falling, all he could do was to drift her towards ocean to keep her from hitting the plain.

“Can we bring her back?” Arwen asks.

“No, We cannot. Once a fairy falls from here, she loses her association with the Cloudiness. Our forefathers believed that mixing up with humans makes a fairy filthy and she cannot be brough back to our sacred community. And I can’t go against the rules,” Blaze replies with disappointment.

“does she know it? She must be waiting for us,” Arwen says and tears start to well up in her eyes.

“She does. Her father worked in close association with me. she must know it,”

By the seashore-

Alvin knows that she cannot be lifted back to the Cloudiness, but is hopeful. Perhaps she is expecting a miracle.

“Did you check on her, Amaliah? How is she?”

“Stop asking too many questions, George. I don’t know, she keeps on looking up in the sky,”

Both George and Amaliah are confused, they don’t know how to handle Alvin. They tried to start conversation with her but she did not speak. So, all they can do is take care of her needs. They serve her food on time and provide her with comfortable bedding.

After few days, water drains out of the house and the sky shines brightly just like it used to before the cyclone.

They shifted down stairs, and kept Alvin’s bedding upstairs only to give her some privacy. However, Amalia takes multiple rounds to upstairs to check if Alvin needs anything.

Alvin did not speak for months, she was traumatized. But she is under guardianship of a lovely couple, and they understand her. That’s why they decided to give her some time. They even reported her case to the nearest police station but that also did not help. Now that a long time has passed, they conclude that either Alvin is an orphan or her parents are dead.

“ Amalia! Amalia! Hurrah!” George screams with excitement.

“ What happened, George!”

George holds Amaliah by the shoulders and moves her in a circle, and says, “She spoke to me and called me uncle,”

“That’s great, George. I know you always wanted a child to call you father, but at least you have found someone to call you uncle. Isn’t it great, love!” Amaliah says with a smile.

George does not say anything, he is overwhelmed with joy. But certainly, he is happy.

But what made Alvin speak ? As we all know, Alvin has one peculiar trait of understanding true intentions. She knew that she cannot go back and here on the surface, if she decides to live with someone, it must be someone genuine and caring. Although, she sensed that the couple is the best family she could ever get, she wanted to keep all risks at bay. After all, it is about sharing an emotional bond. She analyzed them in every possible way. She judged if they can be patient like a parent, or can serve her food if she is starving, if they can withstand her mood swings, and the list continues.

For a period of three months, she observed the couple closely and developed a close emotional bond. In her heart she decides to take care of the couple in every way possible. Afterall she is a fairy not some mean human.

“Hello, Aunty. May I get some food. I am hungry,” Alvin asks.

“Ohh! Yes, dear. Please sit on the dining table. I have cooked a special meal for you,”

After a long time, they all are dining together. All are beaming with happiness.

“Uncle and Aunty, I used to think that humans are bad, but after I met you both I feel otherwise,” Alvin says.

“Alvin, you so kind and I appreciate your honesty. I know where you are coming from. Humans could be bad sometime. Now that you are with us, you don’t have to worry about anyone,” George says , and gives Alvin a sideways hug.

Amalia secures her in the bed by tucking the edges of the sheet and closes the door behind her.

Once Alvin is alone, she closes her eyes and tries to communicate with Blaze and Arwen.

“Dear, God Father and God Mother. Thank you for staying in touch with me through my dreams and for my safe landing on the surface. Now that my emotions are under control, I shall take your leave. I have accepted Amalia and George as my new family. May the Cloudiness flourish under your guardianship,” Alvin lowers her voice to a whisper, so that only concerned ones can hear her.

Blaze and Arwen feel a bit relieved after receiving Alvin’s message, and bless her with a bright future.