Girl Cloud in the Pink Hat

Галина ФЕДОРОВА-КОСАРЕВА | Проза

Федорова Косарева

Girl Cloud in the Pink Hat

Girl Cloud in the pink hat broke away from Mommy Cloud and floated across the sky, feeling in a light-hearted mood. The wind gently pushed her forward and Girl Cloud, humming softly, looked at the small forest floating below her. She looked at the lake and she looked at the seagulls, which flew screaming over the water.

Then, the landscape underneath Girl Cloud changed to steppes. She heard the song of the feather grass. The dry wind tore at her hair, but she pulled her pink hat with magnificent feathers and ribbons down lower. After awhile, the hot wind almost dispelled Girl Cloud. She felt very bad and began to regret that she didn’t obey Mommy Cloud and ran away from her. Now, her adventure was turning into a disaster. It was impossible to go back or to even cry. Girl Cloud was so dried up that she had no tears. Her heart became filled with sorrow. She was ready to submit to her unhappy fate, but suddenly, she heard someone calling her.

“Help! Help! Cloud, hear me!”

With what was left of her strength Girl Cloud turned her head to see who was calling her. She saw a lonely, old oak tree towering above the steppes.

“What do you want, Mr. Oak?” asked Girl Cloud.

“I am old. I’m dying of thirst. But it’s not scary. I lived for many years. But my son is growing up near me. He is very small. And he will soon die without water. Can you help us?”

“I’m just a small cloud. The dry wind almost dispelled me. I’m barely alive and only my hat is saving me now. How can I help you?”

“Go back to your Mommy Cloud. Ask her to come here and shed rain on the parched steppes. Not only my son and I, but all inhabitants of the steppes would be grateful to you. Please, do it.”

“Oh, well, I’ll try. But I don’t know if I can.”

“You can do it. You are the only one who can save us. Please, help us.”

Girl Cloud rushed her way back to Mommy Cloud. She floated faster than ever before, because now it wasn’t just a brisk breeze, but an attempt to save the lives of others. She tried to find her mother over and over again, but she couldn’t do it. Mommy Cloud had probably turned into raindrops or floated to some other country. Girl Cloud met some large clouds, but her mother wasn’t among them, and she felt despair.

Meanwhile, the wind that previously tried to dispel Girl Cloud filled her with the water condensing in the air. She didn’t even notice that she became a large storm cloud. Then Girl Cloud realized that it was no longer necessary to seek out her mother because she was grown up now and could help Mr. Oak, his little son and all the living creatures in the hot dry steppes by herself. She heard the distant song of the feather grass in the steppes and floated there.

When Girl Cloud saw Mr. Oak under her, she shed powerful life-giving rain upon the earth.

“Thank you,” whispered Mr. Oak.

Suddenly, a strong lightning strike shattered his mighty body. He felt a piercing pain, but whispered, falling backwards, “Thank you.”

The young oak, his son, came to life, shaking his branches and absorbing the water with his every leaf.

When the wind died down and everything calmed down, Girl Cloud looked at herself in the mirror of the river. It turned out that she has matured already. Her hat became blue and her hair became grey, but the ribbons and feathers frivolously stuck out in different directions above her head as before. She shed a few tears over the fate of Mr. Oak and slowly floated away, wherever the fresh morning wind called her to.

About the author:

Galina Fedorova-Kosareva is a fiction writer, poet and publicist, a member of the Journalists’ Union of Russia and of the Writers’ Union of Russia. She was born in 1940 in the city of Chelyabinsk. She graduated from the Maxim Gorky Ural State University as a journalist, and then worked in the Arkhangelsk regional youth newspaper “Severnyi Komsomolets” (“The Northern Komsomol Member”). Her works were published in many literary magazines. In recent years, she published two new books of prose “The Long Echo” and “A choice without a choice”, the book of children’s short stories “The Little Secrets”, the poetry book “Songs of the wind” and the book of her memoirs and essays “Leafing through the years.”

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