Raindrop's Arc

Chapter 3 of 15

Raindrop chased the nearest stray drop and tapped a soft beat near it. The drop drifted off. He tried another, then another. Each one slipped past his rhythm. The sky was too wide. He was too small. He rose higher and saw the full spread for the first time. Drops hung in loose clusters across miles of sky, knocked into uneven patches that stretched past anything he could reach by hand. One drum could not call this back. A cool voice spoke beside him. "You are working at the wrong size." Cirrus Nimbus floated there, calm, watching the scatter. "Below us. Look." Raindrop looked down. A still pond sat in a green hollow, drizzle pricking its surface in slow rings. "Drops fall toward water," Cirrus said. "Give them a center. Pull from there." "I cannot pull that many alone," Raindrop said. Cirrus pointed past his shoulder. A vast spiral of cloud turned on the far horizon — the real storm, wheeling slow and huge. "That is your scale," Cirrus said. "Not one drop. The whole turn." Raindrop dropped toward the pond and set the drum against its edge. He struck a beat that matched the spiral's slow wheel. The drizzle answered first. Then, far out, the scattered clusters began to lean. He had stopped chasing. He had given them somewhere to fall.