Hours and hours flying over the Atlantic Ocean. There’s nothing to see in any direction besides the vast stretch of water below. And, of course, the smaller (but still enormous) bodies of water floating above it: clouds. I watched them, each one completely different from the one before or after.
I saw some small islands far away and wondered to myself: how many more of these might be hidden behind the clouds? Even a small cloud could be drifting in just the right position and speed to cover a tiny island from my view.
I dreamed what it would be like to have an X-ray lens and see right through the clouds. I pictured seeing things, not behind the clouds, but inside them. Things hidden, things that maybe weren’t meant to be seen. I imagine the clouds as shells. A soft, fluffy, white shell containing something restless inside, struggling to escape. Every small protuberance bump on the cloud’s surface is a bit of energy leaking out from its core. This is how the cloud gets its shape: a mirror of the chaos inside it.
Gravity is the cloud’s only weakness. It teams up with whatever’s inside, breaking the shell at the bottom.
The cloud rains, and it dies.