"A FAIRYTALE FOR ELVES AND CLOUDS"
by Fred Roberts

Once upon a time there lived a cloud with a  terrible  sense
of  direction.   He  was  always  losing  his  way.  He just
couldn't blow along with  the other clouds without something
happening.  People down below would sometimes look up  at  a
clear,  blue  sky  and  notice  a stray cloud racing swiftly
across it as if  trying  to  rejoin  the rest of the clouds.
One time a dense fog rolled over the countryside and decided
to stay a while.  The cloud lost his way so  badly  that  he
had  to  wait for the fog to move on before discovering what
had happened.  He had drifted into  a cave!  And so the days
and months  and  seasons  and  years  passed  and  became  a
background  for  this  lost,  directionless cloud whose only
strength was in losing his way.

At the same time in  the  Land  of Elves there lived a small
but very sweet girl-elf who could fly.  Everyone was worried
about her, not because she could fly (as  most  elves  could
fly),  but because she was very good at it, so good that she
had no idea how to  land.   She  would  just fly and fly and
soon the whole world with its Land  of  Elves  and  all  its
clouds  and  caves  would be left so far behind that it took
all the magic of all the elves to bring her back again.  And
no one knew how to  remedy  this because she simply loved to
fly.  Once she flew so far away that it took half a year  to
find  her,  and  that was only a lucky coincidence.  She had
flown so far past  the  sun  that  the  Earth met her coming
around in the other direction.

One day while the elf was busy flying and the cloud was busy
losing his way, a violent storm appeared out of nowhere.  It
rained and hailed and thundered and  lightninged  while  the
wind  blew  furiously in all directions.  And so it happened
that the elf and the  cloud  collided with each other as the
storm raged on and on.  The elf and the  cloud  tumbled  and
whirled  and  spun  and swirled together until the storm and
the clouds and even the  Earth  were left far behind, not to
mention the Land of Elves!  Now it  was  black  all  around.
Only  an  occasional  star  from  somewhere distant twinkled
indifferently  through  the  darkness  at  them.   There was
nothing else to do so when  they  both  had  recovered  they
began talking to each other.

"Are you a cloud?" the elf asked the cloud.

"Yes, but not a very good one, I'm afraid.  I always lose my
way."

There  was  a silence broken at last by the cloud asking the
elf, "Are you an elf?"

"Yes, and I have a problem, too.  I can't help flying higher
and higher, so  high  that  I  don't  know  how to come down
again."

The elf and the cloud smiled at each other.   A  loud  crash
interrupted  their  thoughts.   The  cloud  and  the elf had
collided with something hard.  It was still very, very dark.
Suddenly a voice all around them thundered, "Ha, ha, ha, ha!
Who dares to set foot on ME, the Dark Side of the Moon!?"

"Only a simple  cloud,"  answered  the  cloud in a trembling
voice.

"Only a simple elf,"  answered  the  elf  in  her  trembling
voice.

"Ha,  ha,  ha, ha!  You are my prisoners now.  What will you
give me if I let you go?"

"I don't have anything  to  give  you," cried the elf.  "I'm
just a poor, little elf who doesn't know how to land."

"I don't have anything to give you, either.  I'm just a poor
cloud who keeps losing his way," answered the cloud as  tiny
droplets of rain formed on his surface.

"Ha,  ha,  ha, ha!" laughed the voice.  "I know what you can
give me!  I've always  wanted  a  pair  of elfin wings and a
cloud's silver lining.  Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"Never!" said the elf.  "Without my wings I can't fly!"

"Never!" said the cloud.  "Without my silver lining I  would
be unhappy and rain all the time!"

"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Dark Side of the Moon.

The elf tried to fly away and the cloud tried to drift away.
But  it  was  no  use.   They  were held tight.  And so they
waited.....  and waited......   and waited....., but nothing
happened, so they waited some more.  Finally, almost at  the
same  time,  the  cloud and the elf had the same idea.  They
each knew now what  the  other  was  thinking because in the
time they had been held prisoner  together  they  had  grown
very fond of each other.

"Maybe  we  better  give  the  Dark Side of the Moon what it
wants," said the cloud.   "If  you  give  it your wings, you
could ride on me.  I would be your wings.   And  if  I  were
carrying you, I wouldn't need my silver lining anymore.  You
would be my silver lining."

"It would be even better than before," said the elf happily.
"With  you  holding me, I could never drift off too far, and
with me to guide you, you would never lose your way again."

And so they called  to  the  Dark  Side  of the Moon that it
could have what it wanted.  The elf gave it  her  wings  and
the  cloud  gave it his silver lining.  The Dark Side of the
Moon kept its promise and  gave  the elf and the cloud their
freedom.  The cloud carried the elf back to Earth while  the
elf told the cloud which way to fly.  In this way they lived
many a wonderful adventure with each other and flew over all
the lands and seas of the world.  All the while they enjoyed
sweet  conversations  which could only take place between an
elf and a cloud.  And they  never grew tired of each other's
company.  But the Dark Side of the Moon  was  so  mad  about
their  happiness  that it never showed its face to the Earth
again.

For Alexandra's birthday, May 1996

Fred Roberts