They come when I sit out for a smoke. Always do.
The sight of me sitting on the steps doesn’t do it. The flicker of the lighter doesn’t do it. The swearing when it won’t work doesn’t do it.
But that first long slow breath of smoke brings them scooting in low, rippling up the ground like giant fog banks, from cumulus to cirronimbus and beyond.
I’ve told them a thousand times a thousand and more: I’m too old now. Go play with the new girl. But they don’t seem to understand that meteorologists can retire.
***
It’s a lonely job, in its way. You don’t see a human being for months, on the maintenance checks, and of course you’re both covered in environment suits so it’s more a human-being-shaped object.
But you see people every day. They’re just vaster and fluffier. All my friends – my real friends, the ones you have long talks with and walks with and don’t even bother to say hello to because theyr’e always there with you even when you’re far apart – were clouds.
Fat and grey and soft and thin and wide and faint and great big angry anvils all passed me by up in the meteorologist’s hut, perched on the top of the tower heaved up over the city, held against the sky by guywires and cables and thousands of feet of rickety metal poles.
I spoke to a human once a week to request groceries. I spoke to the clouds every day for forty years.
Not like it was a sentence or anything, mind you – I had holidays. I just didn’t use them.
I had my work, broadcasted down a metal line to the people down below, who strained for every word. I had my food, in little metal tins. I had my friends, forever passing by and murmuring to me in my little box.
What else was there?
***
My house is on a cliffside, on a hill. I’m still way too close to the ground for my comfort, but it puts me at ease a little, even if six months isn’t quite enough time for me to have gotten my land legs back yet. My feet still feel unsure with having all that dirt and stone under them instead of miles of air.
I wonder if that’s why the clouds come. To make me feel at home, at peace. It’s ot a paranoia of mine, not really – if they’re doing that, it just proves they care all the harder. Not an easy or simple thing to do, to descend all that way from the sky to drift down here in the thick air just to see an old woman and her cigarette smoke.
I only started when I came down. It was too easy to breathe here. Six months in and I’m almost feeling at home now, which makes up for the foul taste in the back of my throat.
Today my visitor is a little wisp of cirrus, hurrying down from its perch to see me so quickly that it’s a good thing it doesn’t have legs or it’d be ass over teakettle. It’s shedding mass in the breeze without a care. Come on now; I can’t be THAT important. How will you get home like that, all frittered away? It can’t stay still even in front of me, bobbing this way and that like a schoolkid trying to think their way out of answering the teacher.
“How now, tiny?” I ask it.
It shivers, trembles, and snatches the cigarette right out of my mouth. Then it makes a break for it.
“Hey!”
I chase it, half-serious. Maybe it’s a dare. God only knows clouds do stupid things enough with each other’s encouragement; it’s a big sky and everyone gets bored, even the water vapour.
But it isn’t running half-serious. Cloud moves and moves and moves; doesn’t even stop to tease. It slows down when I do to keep me in sight as my freshly tarnished lungs wheeze and gasp, staying a good dash away from me at all times.
“What’s gotten into you? C’mon. I’m too retired for this.”
It shivers at me, and keeps moving. It keeps moving until it doesn’t and then I almost walk right into it, and by extension, the ladder.
Oh.
I look up, and up, and up, and up.
Yes, there’s no place like my old home.
“No, I’m not going back up there. There’s a new friend for you now.”
The cloud offers no comment. That’s normal. It wraps around me and seeps into my clothing and won’t stop shaking, and that’s not normal.
“Come on.”
Nope.
It already knows it’s won. If I’m complaining to the world at large, I’m already moving.
One hand at a time. One hand at a time.
So, for the third time in my life, I used the sky ladder. And boy did I regret those cigarettes.
***
The first mile is the hardest. By its end I’m sweating and freezing and wheezing and barely holding myself together as I sit on one of the maintenance platforms, legs dangling.
Halfway through the second I’m so exhausted I can’t even think, which means I’m starting to pay attention and I notice all the things that are wrong.
The clouds are moving against the wind. And none of them are close.
Well, except for the one in my coat. It’s a bit reluctant to go away, which is nice because I need the insulation. I hadn’t dressed myself for this today.
The last hundred feet are the real warning signs.
The air up here should be dry and thin. But the rungs of the ladder are thick with dew. Dripping, fresh dew. A cloud was here. A cloud that was falling to pieces, shedding itself as hard and fast as a summer rainstorm.
But it hasn’t rained in days and we aren’t due for at least another week.
I shiver again and I press on as the condensation grows heavier and heavier until I heave the trapdoor open and roll inside and I’m up to my ankles in cloudblood and I say “what’s going on oh” because that’s already a stupid question.
I’m eye to eye with my replacement for the second time. I didn’t know her well because I don’t know any humans well anymore, but she seemed nice at the time. Earnest. Forthright. A bit reluctant to meet my eyes, but that was something I’d noticed in a lot of people so not much to think of.
She has no trouble meeting my eyes now, even as her hands are busy tearing off strips of cloud. There’s a knife in one, a snapped-off looking thing that seems to have been made of a piece of the ceiling. A railing has been turned into a fishing rod. All fabric has been unravelled and fashioned into line.
And the walls and gaps and holes in the place have been filled with icy cloudbone, and the floor is awash in clear pure blood.
She chews. Swallows. Stares at me.
“I was hungry,” she says into the silence. It’s a very normal quiet voice and it doesn’t sound like a monster at all.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I take a step forwards but she decides for me knife-first.
***
The knife is easy enough to fix. Just don’t be where it is and then keep it far away from both of you until it’s less useful than a free hand.
But hands are hands and hers are attached to arms with a lot more muscle than mine. Time and tide haven’t helped me, and I don’t know how long she’s been at this madness but it’s clearly helped her grip strength. She’s got a hold on my wrist that’s putting an ache there that isn’t from the climb alone, and it’s a lot of work keeping that other hand from my neck.
My neck is tickling. The cloud is still there, and I feel really bad about that. It shouldn’t have to see this. Not after all it did already, poor little bastard. I wonder how big it was before it made that mad long dash down to see me. I wonder how many friends it lost, how much pain it saw before it made its plan. I wonder so many things I almost don’t see it in motion in time, see it pour out of my shirt, see it pour onto her face, see her moment of indecision as she tries to decide whether staying blind or loosing her grip is a bigger risk.
But my reflexes aren’t bad, even if my muscles are sore and my lungs are weak, so I stomp on her instep and twist with the wind and maybe that shouldn’t do the trick but well.
Six months is a long time up here, by yourself. But it isn’t quite enough to get rid of your land legs.
So she falls, and I make sure she keeps falling, and she falls across the floor and I didn’t think to close the hatch.
Not a sound. Not one sound.
***
I drain the floor. I close the hatch. I tear apart the rod and line and I hammer the knife back into something useful again.
The cloud stays for six days to get its strength back, and by then its friends have come close again, cautiously, carefully, and someone’s sent a polite questionnaire up the metal line and I’ve filled it out and made myself clear.
I’m still retired, obviously. But for the time being I can be retired up here.
And I needed to quit smoking anyways.