The Little Rain Comes Back
Tick. Tick. Tick-tick. Milo lifted his head from the soft step and listened. Pip's ears were already up. The sound came from the terrace above them, small and quick, like someone counting. Milo climbed the stairs of vapour two at a time, and Pip ran beside him with his tail out straight. On the wide cloud terrace, rain was falling. Not much rain. A small grey puff hung low over the stones, letting down a handful of drops, and each drop landed with a tick on the pale floor. Milo held out his palm. A drop landed in it and sat there, round and cold.
The little cloud drifted along the terrace, watering the stones. Milo followed it. Pip followed Milo, stopping now and then to shake his paws dry. The drops tapped the railing, tapped a cup of vapour, tapped Milo's shoulder, tapped Pip's nose. Pip sneezed. The wind came up under the terrace and turned the small cloud slowly, the way a spoon turns in a bowl. Milo counted the ticks under his breath. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Each tick was a little further apart than the one before. He looked up at the puff. It was smaller than it had been at the top of the stair.
"You're nearly finished," Milo said. The little cloud tipped and let out three more drops. Tick. Tick. Tick. Milo did not want the sound to stop. He looked around the terrace for something to keep it in. There was a dip in the cloud floor near the railing, a shallow bowl the size of a hat, and Milo pushed the last of the drops into it with the side of his hand. The water lay still. It made no sound at all. Pip put his nose to the edge and looked up at Milo, and Milo sat back on his heels and thought.
He lifted a little water in his cupped hands and let it fall. It made a soft sound, not a tick. He tried again from higher up. The drops spread and sighed. Then Milo remembered the cup of vapour on the railing, thin and curled like a shell. He dipped it, held it over the stone, and tilted it slowly. One drop gathered at the rim, hung, and fell. Tick. Milo laughed under his breath. Pip's ears swivelled forward. Milo tilted the cup again, and again, and the terrace filled with the small sound of the rain that had gone.
They took turns. Milo tilted, Pip caught the drops on his nose and shook them off, and the ticks went on and on. Then Milo noticed the bowl. The water in it was lower. It was not spilling and it was not soaking away. Something was leaving it from the top, in threads, thin as hair. Milo put his face close. The threads were warm. They rose past his cheek and up into the dark, going somewhere, and when he followed them with his eyes he lost them among the stars. Pip watched them too, with his nose in the air.
Milo carried the cup to the railing and looked over. Far below, the land lay dark and folded, with a river through it like a dropped ribbon. Above the river, mist was climbing. It came up in slow soft sheets, the same threads, only more of them, thousands of them, all going the same way. Milo watched for a long time. Pip leaned against his leg and watched too, and his ears turned at every small sound the night made. "That's where it went," Milo said. "And that's where it comes from." Behind them, a last drop fell out of the cup in his hand and ticked on the stone.
He knelt by the bowl. There was not much water left in it now, just enough to see the sky in. Milo could have kept it. He could have tilted the cup all night and never let the sound stop. Instead he slid both hands under the edge of the dip in the cloud, the way you lift something asleep, and he let the floor tip. The water ran out over the rim of the terrace in one long thread and was gone down into the dark. "Goodnight, little rain — come back up," Milo said.
The terrace went quiet. Milo sat with the empty cup in his lap and listened to the kingdom instead: the long hush of wind under the stairs, the creak of vapour settling. Pip pushed his head under Milo's hand. Milo scratched the cream fur of his chest, and Pip's tail swept the wet stones clean. Tick. Milo sat up. There was one drop left in the curl of the cup, and it had chosen that moment to fall. He set the cup carefully down on the stone, on its side, so the drop could dry where it liked.
They walked the long way along the terrace, Pip trotting ahead and looking back. Where the railing curved, Milo found the little clouds asleep. There were five of them, folded along the top rail like grey mittens, pressed close, no bigger than loaves. One was thinner than the rest, with a worn look, and Milo knew it at once by the shape of its bottom edge. It had spent all its rain on his stones. "Goodnight, little rain — come back up," he whispered. The puff did not answer. Pip sat down underneath it and waited politely, in case it did.
Milo stayed to watch. The threads from the river were still coming, up past the stair, up past the terrace, in and out of the railing. When one reached the sleeping puffs it slowed down, curled, and settled into them like a cat settling into a lap. The thin one took a thread. Then another. Its worn edge rounded out a little. It grew from a mitten into a small soft pillow, and somewhere inside it, very faint, Milo heard water moving. Pip's ears went up and stayed up. Together they leaned in and listened to the little cloud filling.
It took a long time, and Milo did not mind. He sat with his back against the railing post and his knees up, and Pip lay across his feet, warm as a folded blanket. The thread-sound went on, soft and steady, like someone pouring in another room. Every so often, from somewhere far along the terrace, Milo heard a tick, as one drop or another found a stone. Tomorrow the puff would be full and heavy and grey, and it would come along over his head, letting its rain down, counting on the floor.
His eyes kept closing on him. He pushed himself up to go and found the floor had grown soft, the way the cloud kingdom goes soft at the end of the night. The terrace sank gently under his heels. Below the railing, a wide slow cloud was rising to meet them, pale and deep as new snow, and it came up around Milo's knees, then his waist, then held him the way water holds you. Pip stepped onto it, turned around three times, and lay down against Milo's chest with his chin on Milo's collar.
The big cloud carried them both. It went slowly along under the railing, past the sleeping puffs, past the cup lying on its side, and up the wide part of the stair where the wind was warm. Milo felt himself lifted and set down, lifted and set down, the way a boat is carried. He put his hand on Pip's back. Far off, out of the dark, small and patient, came a tick. "Goodnight, little rain," Milo said. "Come back up." Pip's breath slowed. The cloud went on carrying them, and the counting went on somewhere below.
