The story of Rain
Once
upon a time, there was a creature with big, blue eyes that could see the world.
It had wings as thin as
the thinnest of clingwrap, and as shimmering as if they were made of the finest
of rainy weather. The creature, who
lived on a cloud, decided one day to visit earth. He wanted to find himself
a friend, since a cloud can be a very
lonely place; cold and soft as oblivion itself, for creatures with silver
wings.
So the creature wandered
down the rainbow, over mountains and forests, lakes, bogs and endless oceans.
He searched
in the deepest ponds, under the smallest rocks, behind every trembling bush,
in every meagre cabin and in all the
glorious castles he passed, though they were not that many. The creature walked
several turns about the earth, but
everyone he met wanted to change him into some kind of human; transform him,
lock him and put him out, cut his eyes and
his glitter wings, capture his wild dreams in a jar and tend his foreign language.
The creature could not stand
it ; he was a cloud creature and the clouds are used to flying wherever they
please.






So he walked on, and on.
He became very, very tired and there was nothing but concrete and asphalt
and people who
stared stragely at him where he walked. But he was exhausted now. He laid
down in the middle of the road and
waited. He had to wait for a very long time, because the evening was late
and most of the people has already fallen
asleep. But finally, a car came driving. It was a father on his way home with
his children to their mother, because
he was only a father on the weekends and was not allowed to keep them longer
than that.
- Daddy, daddy, what's
that? the youngest child suddenly cried out. The father stopped the car and
stepped out to
have a look at the creature, who was so exhausted that he did not even object
when the father took him in his arms
and carried him to the car. It was quickly done, because the creature was
a cloud creature after all, and was
for that reason very light.
The youngest child
stared in amazement at the creature and sucked her thumb with a little clicking
sound. The middle
child was absolutely sure that everything with wings was either birds or prehistoric
lizards, and because he knew
how birds used to act, he pressed againt the car door to be able to get out
as quickly as possible if the creature
suddenly decided to get hungry. The eldest child was asleep and did not know
anything until she opened her eyes and
found herself in a position between her little brother and a wing that sparkled
of rain and dust from the long walk,
the all too long walk. She withdrew in disgust in her seat.
When the car finally
reached the mother's modern house, the creature had fallen asleep. The father
carried him into
the house and laid him down upon the kitchen sofa, which the mother had bought
for 499 crowns at IKEA. The youngest
child poked the creature's wings, in humble admiration, but found them wicked
and nasty and hid underneath the
table. The middle child was already sitting there; the eldest child had locked
herself into the bathroom and the
mother thought the creature was unpleasant and wrong for not obeying the rules
and for not being human as the rest
of them, and especially because it ruined her perfectly good kitchen sofa.
The father thought, as he always did,
that the mother blew the whole thing out of proportion, and the mother thought
that the father could sod off and the
father did the best he could but ended up, as usually, in his own apartment
in the other end of the city.
Despite the protests,
the creature stayed in the mother's freshly scrubbed house. The two youngest
children kept
their distance, the mother cleaned frantically and tried to resist the urge
to cut the creature's silver wings off while he
was asleep, and the eldest daughter was disgusted to have a creature in her
kitchen, in her house, underneath her
own, safe roof.





But even this girl
had to obey the unspoken rules of the sagas. Against her will, she fell in
love with the creature
because this is a saga, where everything is supposed to be happy and joyful,
at least on the outside. But the creature
could not stand the mother, who wanted to change him, and the children, who
were disgusted by his mere presence. So
one night, he just simply walked out of the house, and because he was a cloud
creature, he was as free as the birds
and never had to obey any rules or laws.
So once again, he wandered
lonely. He went towards the bridge of the rainbow; he wanted to return to
his soft,
silent cloud. But the girl knew all this. Half her heart still loved the creature,
and the other half hated him
and little difference seperated those two. So she hurried after him, into
forests and oceans, through mountains
and valleys with small brooks that she did not even notice, she ran past houses
and ramshackled barns and did not
stop until she reached the bridge of the rainbow.


There, she took a pair
of scissors and cut the rainbow from its golden holds. She took the little
pot of gold
from the end of the rainbow, and began to walk her way back. The pot was beautiful
and concrete, and had no wings
made of rainfall, which the girl thought was the best thing about it. When
the creature reached the strongholds, the
girl was already half way home, and the end of the rainbow fluttered annoyingly
in the wind, high above the creature's
head, unreachable. Because you can not fly with wings as thin as silk paper
on this earth.
So the creature screamed,
cried silver tears from his big, beautiful eyes, and continued his quest,
yet another
turn about the earth. He walked and walked and the girl waited and waited
to one morning find a pair of torn, dusty
rain wings on the stairs outside her mother's clinically clean IKEA-house,
next to a pair of big, beautiful, but
closed and scratched eyes. The creature will leave them there and walk, with
heavy steps, turn after turn about the
earth and he will become more human for every mile he walks. He is looking
for a friend.
The end
Locations:
Picture 1-14, 19 = Gåreström och skog (The industrial lake and forest)
Picture 15-17 = Okänd, övergiven fabrik (Unknown abandoned factory)
Picture 18 - Jordkällare i berget (A rock cellar)
Picture 20 = Den gamla kyrkogården (The old cemetary)
Picture 21 = Gnosjö kyrka (Gnosjö church)
Picture 22, 23, 25, 26, 27 = Utanför den gamla kyrkogården (Outside the old cemetary)
Picture 24, 28 = Kyrkvägen (The church road)
"The story of Rain" is written by Tahariel and is published in swedish here