Carvings of cotton

So there was this small boy, small enough so that he barely weighed anything but his lungs were clearly very well developed. He could poise at high altitudes without gasping, reaching or placing an urgent mail order request for oxygen.

During the mornings he would sit cross legged, in his grey shorts that had a silver thread running down the seam, on the third smallest cloud that hung over the green valley at the edge of the earth. From time to time, when he shuffled into a more comfortable sitting position, things would fall out of his pockets. Considering the size of him he had very large pockets and one would wonder how much useless stuff he actually could cram into them.

Every now and again a small blue marble droplet would roll out of his pocket and drop onto the soft white cloud. It would sort of sit for a while, cradled in the fluffy down, before sinking in and falling. When it was nothing more than the size of a pin prick the boy would watch the hole in the cloud close in on it's self until it was whole again.

It had been a while since anything happened up there, but he wasn't really in the mood to try and make it rain heavily. The last time he tried to cause a storm, he ended up beating the cloud to within an inch of it's life with his bare hands. it didnt hurt that much, but it took a lot of effort for little to no return and even lungs like his can begin twitchings for oxygen when such effort is expeded.

He decided it may be easier to cause a minor snow storm. In all honesty the luscious green pasture below was starting to hurt his eyes a little as it really was very green, an emerald the size of a small cat could have been as bright, even if it was held up in front of the sun. If successful his snowstorm would mean the dazzling green would be turned to white and while you may consider white to be a brighter hue than green, the boy had yet to attain this realisation, as he hadn't made that much snow before.

You see the trouble with making snow is that it is a long and painstaking process, requiring not just immense patience, but a degree of skill and art you dont often find in small boys these days. There are some misguided fools who believe that snow is the product of exploding cows who have their milk frozen, but they are sadly very wrong about that, it would take a lot of cows to produce the snowstorm the boy had in mind. Besides snow is obviously just constructed from tiny fragments of cloud.

From deep within his pocket he pulled out a small red handled penknife which had a couple of semi sucked green boiled sweets stuck to it. He flicked these off and with the grey fluffy lining of his pocket still on them they fell into the trickling stream far below escorted by a couple of tiny 'plops'.

He began to begin work on the side of the cloud nearest to him. It would be somewhat foolish to carve away at the one upon which he was sitting so he reached out over the drop and chisselled away at a pear shaped cloud to his left. It was already not particularly symetrical, so it would be of little consequence if it were to lose a few more layer from it's outer.

Cutting pieces away was far easier than he remembered and the liquid candy floss seem to cling to his hand when he cupped it, requiring no effort. The cloud was moving very slowly so he had plenty of time to pull away several large handfuls of it and place them gently on the edge of his own cloud cushion. Surprisingly, as this often happens when you put two clouds together, the small flossy clumps did not merge with their new shelf, deciding to just sit, and await their fate in the boys hands.

Once he had enough clumps to make a snowstorm, he flicked open his butterfly knife and a glint from the suns reflection flashed across the left side of his face, making him blink. He started to fashion the cloud into shapes of things he had seen the day before. The peak of the tall grey mountain (the one that shrouded the moon even from the height he was sitting), the big white bird that circled below before diving out of sight and the spear shaped fork of the lightning which sometimes struck in the distance. He could but dream of how such an effect is produced, and the results that would have on his mission to reduce the glare of the green.

Fun as it was to make these ornaments they were not assisting him in his snowstorm quest, and his choice of subject for sculpting was limited, as he hadn't seen very much of the world just yet and it never is very exciting to just mould snow balls. So, he began to chip away at his sculptures and the remaining flossy clumps with his knife . The clumps grew smaller and smaller as featherlike fragments of cloud slipped from the knife and either drifted up or down dependent on the direction the breeze was blowing.

Like the speckled sheep shearers he would occassionally see in spring, he clipped away at the woolly cloud, and the fragments of fleece continued to scatter as if he were a sneeze over a mound of glitter.

Satisfaction weened his brow at the first sight of snow, a white spot on the top of the tallest tree and while it was a long way down, and could easily have been a roosting bird, the boy instinctively knew his task was coming to fruition. The momentum of that sight spurred him on, so he tugged and clipped at a faster rate, his arms almost in a blur as if he had to get the job done before he could go to bed, or go and play outside.
The single speck on the treetop had not flown away, in fact it had grown to resemble a roosting horse, and it was as the horses tail started to unfurl and slide down the side of the tree that the boy stopped.

He put down his knife and excitedly peered over the side of his cloud, cheeks rosy red from his toil, eager to witness the storm billowing bellow.

It had taken him 2 hours and seventeen minutes of lacklustre labour to build this horse, yet as far as the inhabitants of the grass below were concerned, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. For all the boys efforts there was no snowstorm. Merely a few graceful sprinklings that settled upon the tree before they could even reach the ground.
Upon this realisation, the boy became very disheartened. The edge of the world below was so large, how could he possibly make a snowstorm that would even reach the grass, let alone wrap the landscape in the albino quilt of silk he dreamed of? All of his friends seemed to unleash blizzards in their sleep so why after so much effort could he only make a feeble snow horse?

The boy began to notice how cold it was getting around him and his cloud, so he sat down, drew his knees up close to his chin and felt sad, the belly boulders of depression muddying up inside. He thought of the miles of the grass beneath, laughing in the breeze at his failed attempt, each swaying blade whispering his name as it moves. Everytime he blinked where he would usually see darkness or the red embrace of the back of his eyelids, he only saw green. Lime, pine, emerald, mint, olive, papaya, spring and lawn green. He thought of the others around, the boys who cast thunderbolts by merely flicking a toenail and it only made him greener, futility germinated where fertility farrows.

A small, isolated tear snuck out from the corner of his bulbous blue left eye and started to trickle down his cheek. The saline anti-freeze held it's own for most of the journey, but just as the tear reached his chin, at the final split second before plummetting to the ground below and becoming one with the stream, it froze.

He sat a while mulling over his plight, the icicle tear silent under his face. The thought of his idle horse suffering at the jeering strikes of teverish thunderbolts weighed heavy on his mind. He didnt know how to turn this around, how can so much labour lead to so little, when he has seen that so little can cause so much? He closed his eyes, and focused on his horse, picturing not just a pile of snow that merely looked like a horse, but a large, strong, actual horse, a stallion, with flowing white mane and strong steel hooves lined with silver.

He saw the horse arise from the branch upon which it was sleeping and leap down onto the ground where the tree was deeply rooted. After stretching out it's legs in front of him, it shook it's head, little specks of dandruff-looking snow falling from his mane, and settling on nearby pebbles. The stretching broke into a walk, and soon after a trot. Before long the white stallion was galloping around the pasture, splattering snowflakes everywhere from it's mane, speckling the hill, and quilting the hoof prints in the soil, sometimes even before the hoof had been lifted out. The river began to freeze over as the cascading snow sent it's temperature plummetting, the fish bemusedly peering out from beneath the crystalised surface, making a puzzled 'o' with their lips, and blinking in the albino glare. The entire pasture was coated in fresh, soft snowflakes, a baked alaska, towering tundra. The green was no more.....

The squawking of the big white bird circling below the cloud awoke the boy. Still hazy from his waltz with the sandman, he paused for a few moments before opening his eyes. He awoke half hoping to see the thing from his dream, but all he saw was a sky full of stars, weening their way out of the encrouching darkness. From over the side of the cloud he could see the green blades still waving below, taunting his every carve, craving his every teardrop.

In despair he dropped his head down onto his raised knees, forgetting the icicle tear that still clasped his chin, like a delicate brittle starfish on an opal stone. The hands of the icicle lost thier grip and cracked, until it slowly slid from his chin, gliding swiftly in a straight line downwards, and cutting a path through the cloud on which he was sitting. The boy expected to hear a (admitedly very distant and quiet) plop as the icicle pierced the water of the stream, instead, the sound of shattering china reverberated its way upwared to his small ears redenned by the cold. He held his breath in surprise, and peered over the small hole left in the icicles wake, a whisp of breath frost coiling around his face as it left his lips.

There below were the smitherines of his shattered tear, scattered on a small round patch of ice on the stream. The ground all around the ice was cushioned in the deepest, richest soft white down you could imagine. From where he was sitting he could only see a pure albino snow quilt filling the hole in the cloud from way below. On the quilt were two tree like, three twigged footprints of a bird. The boy put his face right to the hole and tilted his head at an angle. Only by doing this could he see the fringes of green at the edge of the snow. On the grass beside stood a small magpie, preening the snowflakes from his feathers. It stops and stares at the patch of ice on the stream, tilting its head from side to side. It looks around once more and takes flight, a metre off the ground. After circling the edges of the cloud hole, it swoops down on the fragments of tear, shimmering in the moonlight, picks up the largest splinter in it's beak and vanishes from view.

The boy just lies there, on his cloud, not moving. He knows that his snowstorm was unsuccessful in covering the green around, even though it was now under the ebony glove of night anyway. But whenever he looked directly down through the hole in the cloud no matter where he positioned his head, all he can see is snow. The small space his tear made, was now filled. And while he may have set his sights a little too high in the first instance, he could now accept his place as a snowmaker. Not THE snow maker but a handmaster of the winter at least.




*Cravings of the cotton wool prince* So there was this small boy, small enough so that he barely weighed anything but his lungs were clearly very well developed. He could poise at high altitudes without gasping, reaching or placing an urgent mail order request for oxygen. During the mornings he would sit cross legged, in his grey shorts that had a silver thread running down the seam, on the third smallest cloud that hung over the green valley at the edge of the earth. From time to time, when he shuffled into a more comfortable sitting position, things would fall out of his pockets. Considering the size of him he had very large pockets and one would wonder how much useless stuff he actually could cram into them. Every now and again a small blue marble droplet would roll out of his pocket and drop onto the soft white cloud. It would sort of sit for a while, cradled in the fluffy down, before sinking in and falling. When it was nothing more than the size of a pin prick the boy would watch the hole in the cloud close in on it's self until it was whole again. It had been a while since anything happened up there, but he wasn't really in the mood to try and make it rain heavily. The last time he tried to cause a storm, he ended up beating the cloud to within an inch of it's life with his bare hands. it didnt hurt that much, but it took a lot of effort for little to no return and even lungs like his can begin twitchings for oxygen when such effort is expeded. He decided it may be easier to cause a minor snow storm. In all honesty the luscious green pasture below was starting to hurt his eyes a little as it really was very green, an emerald the size of a small cat could have been as bright, even if it was held up in front of the sun. If successful his snowstorm would mean the dazzling green would be turned to white and while you may consider white to be a brighter hue than green, the boy had yet to attain this realisation, as he hadn't made that much snow before. You see the trouble with making snow is that it is a long and painstaking process, requiring not just immense patience, but a degree of skill and art you dont often find in small boys these days. There are some misguided fools who believe that snow is the product of exploding cows who have their milk frozen, but they are sadly very wrong about that, it would take a lot of cows to produce the snowstorm the boy had in mind. Besides snow is obviously just constructed from tiny fragments of cloud. From deep within his pocket he pulled out a small red handled penknife which had a couple of semi sucked green boiled sweets stuck to it. He flicked these off and with the grey fluffy lining of his pocket still on them they fell into the trickling stream far below escorted by a couple of tiny 'plops'. He began to begin work on the side of the cloud nearest to him. It would be somewhat foolish to carve away at the one upon which he was sitting so he reached out over the drop and chisselled away at a pear shaped cloud to his left. It was already not particularly symetrical, so it would be of little consequence if it were to lose a few more layer from it's outer. Cutting pieces away was far easier than he remembered and the liquid candy floss seem to cling to his hand when he cupped it, requiring no effort. The cloud was moving very slowly so he had plenty of time to pull away several large handfuls of it and place them gently on the edge of his own cloud cushion. Surprisingly, as this often happens when you put two clouds together, the small flossy clumps did not merge with their new shelf, deciding to just sit, and await their fate in the boys hands. Once he had enough clumps to make a snowstorm, he flicked open his butterfly knife and a glint from the suns reflection flashed across the left side of his face, making him blink. He started to fashion the cloud into shapes of things he had seen the day before. The peak of the tall grey mountain (the one that shrouded the moon even from the height he was sitting), the big white bird that circled below before diving out of sight and the spear shaped fork of the lightning which sometimes struck in the distance. He could but dream of how such an effect is produced, and the results that would have on his mission to reduce the glare of the green. Fun as it was to make these ornaments they were not assisting him in his snowstorm quest, and his choice of subject for sculpting was limited, as he hadn't seen very much of the world just yet and it never is very exciting to just mould snow balls. So, he began to chip away at his sculptures and the remaining flossy clumps with his knife . The clumps grew smaller and smaller as featherlike fragments of cloud slipped from the knife and either drifted up or down dependent on the direction the breeze was blowing. Like the speckled sheep shearers he would occassionally see in spring, he clipped away at the woolly cloud, and the fragments of fleece continued to scatter as if he were a sneeze over a mound of glitter. Satisfaction weened his brow at the first sight of snow, a white spot on the top of the tallest tree and while it was a long way down, and could easily have been a roosting bird, the boy instinctively knew his task was coming to fruition. The momentum of that sight spurred him on, so he tugged and clipped at a faster rate, his arms almost in a blur as if he had to get the job done before he could go to bed, or go and play outside. The single speck on the treetop had not flown away, in fact it had grown to resemble a roosting horse, and it was as the horses tail started to unfurl and slide down the side of the tree that the boy stopped. He put down his knife and excitedly peered over the side of his cloud, cheeks rosy red from his toil, eager to witness the storm billowing bellow. It had taken him 2 hours and seventeen minutes of lacklustre labour to build this horse, yet as far as the inhabitants of the grass below were concerned, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. For all the boys efforts there was no snowstorm. Merely a few graceful sprinklings that settled upon the tree before they could even reach the ground. Upon this realisation, the boy became very disheartened. The edge of the world below was so large, how could he possibly make a snowstorm that would even reach the grass, let alone wrap the landscape in the albino quilt of silk he dreamed of? All of his friends seemed to unleash blizzards in their sleep so why after so much effort could he only make a feeble snow horse? The boy began to notice how cold it was getting around him and his cloud, so he sat down, drew his knees up close to his chin and felt sad, the belly boulders of depression muddying up inside. He thought of the miles of the grass beneath, laughing in the breeze at his failed attempt, each swaying blade whispering his name as it moves. Everytime he blinked where he would usually see darkness or the red embrace of the back of his eyelids, he only saw green. Lime, pine, emerald, mint, olive, papaya, spring and lawn green. He thought of the others around, the boys who cast thunderbolts by merely flicking a toenail and it only made him greener, futility germinated where fertility farrows. A small, isolated tear snuck out from the corner of his bulbous blue left eye and started to trickle down his cheek. The saline anti-freeze held it's own for most of the journey, but just as the tear reached his chin, at the final split second before plummetting to the ground below and becoming one with the stream, it froze. He sat a while mulling over his plight, the icicle tear silent under his face. The thought of his idle horse suffering at the jeering strikes of teverish thunderbolts weighed heavy on his mind. He didnt know how to turn this around, how can so much labour lead to so little, when he has seen that so little can cause so much? He closed his eyes, and focused on his horse, picturing not just a pile of snow that merely looked like a horse, but a large, strong, actual horse, a stallion, with flowing white mane and strong steel hooves lined with silver. He saw the horse arise from the branch upon which it was sleeping and leap down onto the ground where the tree was deeply rooted. After stretching out it's legs in front of him, it shook it's head, little specks of dandruff-looking snow falling from his mane, and settling on nearby pebbles. The stretching broke into a walk, and soon after a trot. Before long the white stallion was galloping around the pasture, splattering snowflakes everywhere from it's mane, speckling the hill, and quilting the hoof prints in the soil, sometimes even before the hoof had been lifted out. The river began to freeze over as the cascading snow sent it's temperature plummetting, the fish bemusedly peering out from beneath the crystalised surface, making a puzzled 'o' with their lips, and blinking in the albino glare. The entire pasture was coated in fresh, soft snowflakes, a baked alaska, towering tundra. The green was no more..... The squawking of the big white bird circling below the cloud awoke the boy. Still hazy from his waltz with the sandman, he paused for a few moments before opening his eyes. He awoke half hoping to see the thing from his dream, but all he saw was a sky full of stars, weening their way out of the encrouching darkness. From over the side of the cloud he could see the green blades still waving below, taunting his every carve, craving his every teardrop. In despair he dropped his head down onto his raised knees, forgetting the icicle tear that still clasped his chin, like a delicate brittle starfish on an opal stone. The hands of the icicle lost thier grip and cracked, until it slowly slid from his chin, gliding swiftly in a straight line downwards, and cutting a path through the cloud on which he was sitting. The boy expected to hear a (admitedly very distant and quiet) plop as the icicle pierced the water of the stream, instead, the sound of shattering china reverberated its way upwared to his small ears redenned by the cold. He held his breath in surprise, and peered over the small hole left in the icicles wake, a whisp of breath frost coiling around his face as it left his lips. There below were the smitherines of his shattered tear, scattered on a small round patch of ice on the stream. The ground all around the ice was cushioned in the deepest, richest soft white down you could imagine. From where he was sitting he could only see a pure albino snow quilt filling the hole in the cloud from way below. On the quilt were two tree like, three twigged footprints of a bird. The boy put his face right to the hole and tilted his head at an angle. Only by doing this could he see the fringes of green at the edge of the snow. On the grass beside stood a small magpie, preening the snowflakes from his feathers. It stops and stares at the patch of ice on the stream, tilting its head from side to side. It looks around once more and takes flight, a metre off the ground. After circling the edges of the cloud hole, it swoops down on the fragments of tear, shimmering in the moonlight, picks up the largest splinter in it's beak and vanishes from view. The boy just lies there, on his cloud, not moving. He knows that his snowstorm was unsuccessful in covering the green around, even though it was now under the ebony glove of night anyway. But whenever he looked directly down through the hole in the cloud no matter where he positioned his head, all he can see is snow. The small space his tear made, was now filled. And while he may have set his sights a little too high in the first instance, he could now accept his place as a snowmaker. Not THE snow maker but a handmaster of the winter at least.


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