Floc was a cloud full of water.
The other clouds rained like this:
Splash! Splash! Splash!
Floc tried, but only a single crooked drop came out.
“Rain harder!” they told him.
Floc pushed his belly. He scrunched up his edges. He thought of enormous thunderclaps.
Nothing.
Every day he got heavier.
Beneath him, a field of daisies waited for the rain. A small flower lifted its head.
“You don’t have to rain like everyone else,” it said. “How do you rain?”
Floc didn’t know. He stopped pushing and listened to everything inside him: the sadness of not being able to, the fear of disappointing, and the desire to help.
Then a blue drop fell.
Then a green one.
And a yellow one, and a pink one, and a hundred tiny drops that danced down.
They didn’t make a big downpour. They made a slow, colorful rain.
The daisies opened.
“This is your way,” they said.
Floc became light. And whenever his heart grew heavy again, he no longer forced it to make a sound.
He let it rain.
