Blink and You'll Miss It

Tuesday was the first day Emile could remember since her childhood that she looked up at the clouds and actually saw shapes in them. There were five or six fluffy, downy ones swimming gracefully across an oceanic sky, clearly shaped like sea turtles. They floated artfully in time with her music playing softly on a boom box next to her, gently paddling their clearly formed fins to the rhythm. She rested her book (An anthology of faerie creatures) slowly in her lap without taking her eyes off the turtles. A breeze tousled her hair and seemed to lift her spirit slightly off her seat on the low wall. For a wonderful, wind swept moment, she was a kid again, and if she tried hard enough maybe the currents would sweep her up and she could fly away. The clouds really were sea turtles, not cumulus. It had been so long since she hadn't looked at the world scientifically and critically that the pure childish joy of shaped clouds made her want to smile and laugh and cry all at once. Instead she turned to the boy sitting next to her (but not really next to her as he was at least two people-sized seats away) and pointed out the turtles.

“What, you mean the cumulus ones?” was his reply.

This lead to a philosophical discussion on a child's view of the world as compared to young adults (such as themselves) which lead to a brainstorm of magic as a scientific possibility and then out to a pondering on the universe and the Meaning of Life. By the time the unavoidable Douglass Adams quote had been pulled out, the sky was an overcast gray and the clouds looked like nothing, save for a potential for rain.