The Cloud and the Land by Diana Lisohub

 – We can tuurn lead intoo gold!

– Love your enthusiasm, but which problem would it solve exactly?

– I don kno... Bu it wou be fuuun!!

– Martin, you’re seriously getting on my nerves. I don’t want to get physical, I really don’t. But your face looks like it’s meant to be punched.

Martin indeed had an exceptionally punchable face. Nothing special or freaky, but the single look of it would assure you that nothing bright is coming out of his mouth.

It might be his nose. Very small, slightly squashed. He lifts it up to the sky like a proud gentleman, who thinks he’s above the others. Except I’m not sure Martin thinks at all. It’s probably his tiny forehead. No brain would ever fit in a forehead like that.

It’s definitely his small grabby hands. You wouldn’t believe what amount of strength those short fingers possess. That’s why I never let him close around my mugs and potions.

It’s all the above combined with obnoxious laughter that made him insufferable.

– You are not fuun at all, Marymary! I don understen...

That’s what he called Marianne – the leader of the Rain-cloud.

Every other May all the girls, who have turned 7 wind years, gather to fight for leadership on the Cloud. The commune got to pick one with the tallest legs and the sharpest sight. That way she could see far from the Cloud and alert the commune in case of danger. Although it’s always been very peaceful in the Sky and there was no danger whatsoever. So the leader would mostly spend all her time observing humans on the Land and sending them occasional rains and snowfalls.

Marianne loved warm summer rains. She found it adorable how people on the Land treated them differently from autumn rainfalls or winter storms. This concept of differentiating water was foreign to her, so it quickly became her best entertainment.

At the end of the last year, Marianne noticed that humans would come in places with some papers and come out of them with all kinds of goods. “It seems convenient,” she said and tried to implement something similar for her commune, mocking human money and stores.

But right now all the human Land, that fascinated her so much was under threat of being destroyed by her own home – the Raincloud that was rushing straight down, picking up speed.

– Oh you don’t understand? Let me fill you in. I told you not to touch the lead spring, Martin! But you didn’t care to listen so now the Cloud is slowly filling with this heavy viscous metal, and we are on the way to crash into the Land! Got any ideas?

– We can turn lead into gold... And dissolve it with my potion. I’ve bee workin on it all year, look.

– Wait, it actually makes sense. Do your thing, Martin.

After the potion touched the surface of the Cloud everything got back to normal. Since then Marianne’s disbelief in Martin slowly faded and she started teaching him. Who would have thought he had potential?