Characters in the play:
1) A little white cloud, amiable, articulatre to the point of garrulousness.
2) A winter tree, leafless and bereft
Floating home from his dialogue with the timorous Thel (see Brief Candles # 15), that play’s Little White Cloud has somehow snagged itself on one of the branches of the Winter Tree.
CLOUD: I can’t move. You snagged me in your branches!
TREE: Just in one branch. And I didn’t snag you, you snagged yourself.
CLOUD: Well, however it happened, I can’t move.
TREE: Why don’t you just dissolve the snagged part and regroup when you’re free?
CLOUD: I would, but I’m feeling more….well, unified than I ever did before.
TREE: Unified?
CLOUD: More dense. I think I’m changing.
TREE: Into what?
CLOUD: I’m feeling creaturely. Maybe I’m becoming an animal. A cat maybe.
TREE: You’re beginning to look a bit like a cherub.
CLOUD: Well, I suppose if I have to turn into something, a cherub would be okay. At least I could still float.
TREE: Indeed you could. Look on the bright side.
CLOUD: But how can this solidifying have happened?
TREE: Well, I’m neither a tree-surgeon nor an arboreal psychologist, but I think it’s possible that a tiny bit of my residual sap somehow entered your cloudstream!
CLOUD: I do feel warmer.
TREE: You see? Yes, I think you’re becoming positively corporeal!
CLOUD: It will be harder to move about.
TREE: Oh yes, considerably harder. (he smiles the warmest leafless smile he can muster) But it will be so lovely to have some company. We can talk. We can reminisce….
CLOUD: Reminisce? About what?
TREE: Oh, I don’t know…leaflessness in my case and unfettered drifting in yours.
(curtain)
