OWLS Barn Studio

The Cloud Keeper’s Daughter

Every morning before the village woke up, Isla’s father climbed the sky.

He went by ladder — a very tall one, made of light and old rope — and he spent his days tending the clouds. Shaping them. Fluffing the ones gone flat. Trimming the edges of storm clouds so they didn’t get too sharp. Painting the sunset ones that deep rose-gold that everyone stops to look at.

It was, he often said, the best job in the world. Isla believed him.

One autumn morning, her father came down the ladder looking tired. His hair was wild. His coat smelled of high, cold air.

“The October clouds are getting away from me,” he said. “They’re too restless this year. Too much wind.”

“Let me help,” said Isla.

Her father looked at her for a long moment. Then he handed her the brush — long-handled, soft-bristled, made from the feathers of birds that only lived above the weather.

The ladder was swaying. The sky at the top was cold and enormous and blue in a way that had nothing to do with colour — more like a feeling. Isla climbed slowly, holding the brush across her body like a balancing pole.

The clouds were enormous up close. They smelled of rain that hadn’t fallen yet. They drifted and bumped into each other like large, sleepy animals.

Isla started with a small one — a wispy, fraying thing that had come apart at one end. She worked the brush through it gently, pulling the edges back together, smoothing and coaxing until it held its shape: a rounded hill of white, solid and calm.

Then another. Then a large, dark one that grumbled when she touched it.

“Easy,” she told it, the way you talk to something wild. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to make you a little softer at the edges.”

The cloud grumbled again, then settled.

She worked all morning. By the time the village was eating breakfast, the sky was the most beautiful it had been all autumn — clouds arranged like something from a painting, the light falling through them in long, golden columns that touched the hills below.

Her father was waiting at the bottom of the ladder, looking up.

“Not bad,” he said.

Isla handed back the brush. Her arms ached. Her hair smelled of rain. She was smiling so wide it almost hurt.

“Same time tomorrow?” she asked.

Her father looked at the sky — at the clouds she had shaped, still holding their form, catching the morning light.

“Same time tomorrow,” he said.

The End.

~ OWLS Barn