Day Sixteen — The Cloud
“How can you not care about this, it’s our daughter’s greatest life event, don’t tell me not to be worried!” Lily paced, tense.
“Everything is going to be fine, why are you so agitated? All the preparations are well on their way and even if they weren’t, it’s not like we can’t change them if need be. Stop fretting, you’re upsetting Lelia,” Humon made an attempt to pacify her, but he knew his wife too well to get his hopes up. She kept pacing, nervously, so he sat back in the chair and waited for the emotional maelstrom to subside.
“Ael’s dress is not finished. The heat makes the lilac scent too strong, sister Abigail already complained about it. Like I haven’t enough to worry about with people being too close to the Fusion Cloud!” She continued pacing, then remembered her quiet companion was sitting at her desk and turned all her intensity towards him. “How about you? Are your tasks finished? Did you talk to Lelia? I wish I could do it myself, but I don’t have the knowledge,” she let out in one breath.
“She’ll be fine, I gave her all the instructions and we went over them several times,” Humon barely managed to get a word in edgewise.
“Did you give any thought to the speeches? I have no idea what to say, you have to help me with that, I don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of the Second Circle again!”
“You never made a fool of yourself in front of the Second Circle, they wouldn’t have chosen you as a diplomatic liaison if you did. Clouds are wonderfully straightforward that way!” Humon protested.
“And yet they needed fifteen meetings to make that clear,” Lily retorted.
“Are you still upset about that? It was centuries ago!” Humon couldn’t believe his ears.
“Never mind! I can’t imagine anything that would unsettle you clouds, how can you be so calm, it is so irritating!” Lily protested without a specific cause.
“Why wouldn’t I be? It’s just a Bonding Ceremony, I’ve seen thousands,” Humon commented.
Lily got even more upset. All the things she loved and admired about her husband were also the things that managed to drive her into a frenzy when she was upset: his calm, his superior form, his breadth of knowledge. Why did he always have to rub in her face the fact that things which for her were the realm of fantasy were for him daily routine.
Every time she got into a situation that was outside of her control she remembered she had married up and resented his unfair advantages. The Second Circle had never managed to warm up to her, if warming up to a being was something the Second Circle was capable of, and this made her so mad at times she could almost feel smoke coming out of her ears.
“Why is he staring at me like that?” she thought, furious, and her cheeks turned a deeper shade of burgundy. “It’s not my fault I can’t vaporize myself!”
Humon stopped for a second to admire the fact that despite a volatile personality, Lily had managed to master the emotional control required by her very sensitive diplomatic position, and wondered if there was a limit to her strength of will. He didn’t mind Lily’s emotional outbursts too much, he realized she would explode if she didn’t have a pressure valve and was comfortable serving as one. He contemplated what the Second Circle’s reaction would be if they ever experienced this charming flip side of Lily’s perfect composure, and picturing their astonishment always made him laugh.
The Tagas cloud had mentioned repeatedly, in so many words, that his wife’s interaction with the wisp delegation was always poised and efficient, a comment Lily would have taken as the utmost compliment if she could think like a wisp, but alas, she could not. What was it with humans and their emotional overload? It felt like they couldn’t carry themselves from one minute to the next without bouncing off their emotions like off so many trampolines.
Humon wondered how humankind managed to get anything done when it wasted so much mental capacity on this nonstop, fruitless churning of worries, insecurities and ego stroking. He had tried, early in their marriage, to explain to Lily that she could accomplish so much more if she just let go of her mood swings, but it didn’t seem to go very well, so he learned from the experience and tried to stay out of her emotional downpour whenever he could.
He suddenly remembered that the Tagas cloud had assigned him to a sequence of meetings for which his presence could not be substituted and quickly drafted a mental schedule to organize them as he watched Lily pace up and down the room and clap her hands in frustration when she remembered yet another detail that hadn’t been worked out.
“Good grief! Sister Abigail forgot to drop off the placement cards to Roberta’s lab! They need to be fixed, they have gilded letters! Sometimes I feel like everybody is provisionally mentally incapacitated. How many times did I mention that EVERYTHING had to be lavender?” Lily burst, startling him from his concentration.
“I’m sure everything will be resolved on time,” Humon appeased her.
“Not unless somebody pays enough attention to notice that it needs done!” Lily snapped. She couldn’t bear her husband’s peace of mind anymore and rushed towards the door to find someone capable of reacting, human, if possible, but as usual she was met at the door by a group of wisps with a list of items to review.
Humon watched in disbelief how his wife’s emotional deposit of dynamite dissolved in an instant and left in its place a level of composure he could mistake for wisp behavior if he didn’t know better.
The clouds made themselves at home and filled the room, claiming every horizontal surface for notes, meeting minutes and documents requiring signing.
Humon sat down at the table with them, to Lily’s surprise; her husband didn’t join consular meetings very often.
“This meeting is on my schedule,” he clarified, and they delved into a two hour briefing together.
Vlor Consular Mission of Airydew, Terra Two, July 18th, 3245
My sweet Lelia,
I may be the only person who can really offer you advice about your rite of passage. Humans are usually awash with feelings, aspirations and insecurities, all the things that stir the soul and resonate in this big sea of emotions they generate. Try to refrain if you can, especially during the ceremony, there is nothing that puts a cloud less at ease than the generous sharing of emotions.
You have to understand that the plasticity of consciousness we achieve by constantly creating and switching covalent bonds is severely hindered by personal charge flows.
This is what the delegation had trouble with in the beginning, it’s almost impossible to carry synchronized focus while you’re getting pummeled from all directions with fear, love, worry, jealousy, elation, it’s a cloud’s worst nightmare! Most of this stuff we can’t even understand, who cares about the physical shape? From our standpoint, if you don’t like it, take another one! But you can’t discuss these issues with a state locked life form.
It gets so exhausting, sometimes, being caught in the middle of a high pressure emotional match, the only thing I could compare it with in solid form would be getting slowly pressed into the ground by a fifty ton block of stone.
Since I moved to Terra Two I had to learn to live with it, but our very many guests have no heavenly concept of this constant pressure, so they will be both offended and mortified by the emotional deluge of that five hundred people party your friends are throwing for you on the beach. The clouds don’t know it yet, because on Vlor clusters range in the hundreds of thousands, so at this point they think they need to amplify the interest for the event a little bit.
I hate to give you chores, my sweet child, on a day that is supposed to be all about you, but you, me and Ael will have to brace some of the emotional flood for the benefit of our honored guests.
Enough of the unpleasantness! I hope your ceremonial covalent selections are fully compatible and perfectly tuned to your core vibrational frequencies, your Protoprogenitors are sticklers for clarity, especially the Tagas cloud, whose entire existence in the Second Circle was dedicated to the purity of harmony and polyphonic range. Don’t screech! Your covalent selection will be very helpful with that, there is a reason why we take so much time perfecting our matches within the Simplex Cloud, they form the foundation of our core cluster and stay with us for a very long time.
Don’t forget your Primary Progenitors have to be invited to join the ceremonial cluster first. The order of invitations is very important, this event is all about ceremony, hierarchy and protocol, make sure to go over your instructions again and rehearse all the steps until you can do them in your sleep, you can never rehearse them too much, do it again!
When you shift to gaseous form don’t overdo it with flashy colors, fractal artwork or vortex flourishes, most young clouds want to show off to the elders about what they can do, but this is really not the venue for it: be subdued and respectful. What the Bonding Ceremony signifies is your being welcome into a community of shared consciousness, in which all covalences, regardless of the rank or circle they belong to are equally contributing charge transfers to the Simplex. Your wisdom will grow with experience and in time you’ll feel a lot more at ease in your interactions with the Second Circle.
I don’t think I need to mention that at the end of the ceremony you will be the last to materialize, it would be rude to leave your guests stranded in a cloud without a center, again, this is all clearly delineated in the instructions.
I wish sister Roberta wasn’t preparing a surprise for us on this festive day, her innovations can be a little startling, especially when they touch on the time-space continuum. I need to ask your mother to talk to her about that, if anybody has the capacity to persuade Roberta, or anybody else, regardless of the species, it’s your mother.
Speaking of the human half of the family, I don’t know how we’re going to accommodate both safety and protocol because all non-clouds will experience extreme confusion in close proximity of the ceremonial cluster. I can assure you my principal and secondary progenitors are agonizing over this issue as we speak, they would abhor to come out of this event looking irresponsible.
I know Ael was invited to the Simplex before, but don’t assume she will be there with you in the cloud, I have to reiterate the Bonding Ceremony is all about protocol and she is too young. Feel free to ask her for pointers before it, though, any fresh perspective will improve your performance. I will definitely be there, remember to invite me in the first group, I’m one of your Principal Progenitors (oh, my! I started repeating myself, I’m slowly morphing into my original cluster!)
I love you, sweetie, be well rested and don’t worry about anything. Seriously, don’t worry! Whatever you do!
I don’t get to say this very often and I’m a softie for tradition, so here goes.
Blessings of eternal wisdom,
The Humon Cloud, Honorary Hosts of the Dominions, Germinals of the Third Sphere, Valent Rank Two, Lelia Cloud’s First Progenitor, in Grace
