Lumi had tiny wings. They had grown in just three days ago — small and silver-white, tucked behind her shoulders like folded letters. And this morning, when she trotted through the long meadow grass, they gave one strong beat, and her hooves left the ground. One beat. Two beats. And suddenly the treetops were below her.
The clouds rose up around her like big slow bubbles, cool and damp against her nose. Lumi laughed — a small surprised sound — and beat her wings again, and up she went, up through the white, until the whole meadow was a green smudge far below. Up, up, up. Then she tried to come back down. She pointed her nose toward the ground and angled her wings. But the nearest cloud simply caught her — soft and firm, like a pillow that meant well. She bounced gently back up. She tried again. The cloud caught her again. "Oh," said Lumi.
So Lumi decided to fly across instead. She glided out over a wide stretch of sky, the wind making her ears flick back, looking for somewhere the clouds thinned to nothing — some slope she could follow all the way home. Below her, the meadow moved slowly past. A river caught the light like a dropped ribbon. That was when she heard a small worried sound.
A round, puffed-up cloud was twisting in circles just ahead of her, peering downward with a furrowed, lumpy brow. "It's gone," the cloud muttered. "It was right there. Round. Dark. Mine." Lumi hovered beside him. "What's gone?" The cloud — whose name was Billow — looked up. "My shadow. I had one this morning. Now I look down and there's simply nothing there."
Lumi looked down too. And there it was. A dark round puddle-shape, sitting on a lower cloud like a dropped hat, all by itself. Billow's shadow had simply slipped off. Lumi dipped below him carefully, the cold of the lower cloud sharp against her hooves, and pressed her horn against the shadow's edge. She nudged it gently — once, twice — and it drifted upward, slow as smoke, and settled back beneath Billow with a soft thump. Billow made a long, relieved exhale. His edges went fluffy again. "Thank you," he said, a little pink with embarrassment at the ears — or at least the place where ears might be. "Now. You want to get down, don't you. I can tell by the way you keep looking at the grass." Lumi nodded. "You don't fall," said Billow. "You breathe out. Slowly. Like you're breathing into a pillow. And you let the sky put you down."
Lumi breathed in. The air tasted of cold water and something faintly green, like grass from very far away. She thought of the meadow. She thought of warm ground. And she breathed out — slowly, slowly — one long breath, and felt herself begin to sink. Down through Billow. Down through the soft grey underneath. Down, down, down. The clouds parted around her like curtains, and the green came up to meet her, and her four hooves touched the grass with a quiet thud that she felt all the way up to her ears. The meadow was warm. The blades of grass pressed flat beneath her, then sprang slowly back around her legs. Lumi folded her wings. She lay down right where she had landed, her chin on the ground, the sky still pale and wide above her, and one small silver feather drifting down through the air to rest beside her nose.
