Once there was a cloud full of people. They were a funny sort of people, whose favorite occupations were blowing bubbles in their drinks and chasing each other around in circles. Overall, though, they considered themselves quite a goodhearted lot, and very few rules in the city were ever broken. But for every generalization there is an exception, and the cloud people’s exception was a little woman named Zayna.

Zayna was a hoodlum. There is little other way to put it. She had no respect for the rules and would do anything that suited her fancy. She would walk calmly down the sidewalks or hand out flowers to elderly people or quietly sip her drink through her straw. But that was only what she’d do in public. Zayna was the only reason that the cloud city had a police department, but the trouble was that no one could ever pin the crimes on her: there were never any witnesses, and Zayna always had a somewhat credible alibi.

So life went on that way for a while: people being silly and easily amused, Zayna causing havoc, and the police fruitlessly trying to pin major crimes (like gardens and polished windowpanes) on Zayna’s head. Life was livable and ordinary and very unworthy of a story.

But there is a story (this is it) and so it kind of goes without saying that one day everything changed.

One day, the cloud people’s Creator made himself known.

That particular day started off much as any other day: the cloud people awoke, ran combs through their tangle of bedhead, straightened their collars, and set out about their days. Children chased each other laughingly around bushes and streetlight poles, old men pleasantly blew through their straws and compared froth, and the in-between-aged people oscillated back and forth between both groups. And every everyone kept a close eye out for Zayna.

Zayna, however, wasn’t much interested in bothering anyone at that moment. The night previous she had had an awful dream and had woken up so entangled in her bed sheets that all she could manage to do was roll off of her bed and onto the cold, hard floor. There she lay, wriggling and squirming and gaining no headway in her struggle for freedom, for the better part of an hour. Perhaps she would have died there, had not a disoriented bird accidentally flown through her window, unknowingly alighted on her, and purely by chance happened to rip the sheets with his claws when Zayna startled her aloft again. So Zayna was freed and ready for another day of mischief making.

By the time Zayna had grabbed a quick brunch (it was too late for a proper breakfast by this time, and still too early to manage a real lunch) it was about 11:35am, and town life was in full swing. At 11:36am, Zayna stepped out of her front door, closing it snugly behind her, and by 11:37am she had left her front yard behind and was a quarter of the way down the block. It was 11:38am when things started changing.

First off, you must know that cloud city never has storms. Being a cloud itself, any storming that happens takes place below the citizens’ feet, falling down onto Earth. Having no storms, and being one of the uppermost clouds in the atmosphere, there is never any shade in the city, apart from being inside. While you and I would find this arrangement, so close to the sun, quite unpleasant, the cloud people are designed to tolerate much more extreme temperatures.

That being said, at 11:38am, a shadow fell across the entire city, and everyone fell into a panic.

Children started screaming, parents started screaming, grandparents started screaming…basically everyone was screaming. Except for Zayna. Because, you see, that’s the other thing I haven’t told you about Zayna: Zayna was completely mute. (This mark of individuality was another reason that the cloud people distrusted her so much.)

So anyway, Zayna didn’t scream. In fact, Zayna just stood there, still as a statue, for a good forty-five seconds.

She didn’t blink.

She didn’t breathe.

She might as well have been dead.

Except that she was still standing up.

And then, when the forty-five seconds had past, and as the street around her was choked with cloud people desperately running to get inside the relative safety of their homes, Zayna turned her head first to the left and then to the right and surveyed the situation with perfect calmness. Then she lifted her left leg, moved it forward, set it down, and repeated the motion with her right leg, and then did the whole thing over again until she had gone an entire block.

By now the city was deserted, all the house windows shuttered tightly closed, not a sound to be heard anywhere but the soft scuff of Zayna’s shoes on the sidewalks. Zayna didn’t really know where she was going or what she was doing. She didn’t know what was causing the shadow. And she didn’t know how to be afraid. And as she was thinking over this lack of knowledge, she heard it.

“Zayna.”

The voice seemed to be coming from behind her, and Zayna paused only a moment before slowly turning around. Four and a half blocks down the street stood a man, taller than all of the other cloud people but somehow not too tall, brighter than all of the cloud people but somehow not unnatural. His hair—that’s what it was called; Zayna somehow was quite sure of this—was dark and soft and wavy and framed his weathered face in a welcoming way, setting off his deep blue eyes so that they seemed alive all on their own.

“Zayna.”

Zayna blinked quickly, not quite comprehending how she could see the man so clearly from so far off, or how his voice seemed at once so near and yet so removed. But oh, his voice…

And then the man smiled.

Cloud people smiled too, occasionally: wispy things, those smiles were, and somehow even amongst such a harmless people there always seemed to be a ring of spite to their smiles, as if all the impishness that they never manifested physically was lurking behind that grin. But when this man smiled, it was another thing entirely.

“You aren’t afraid of me? Not like all the others.”

Zayna’s feet started moving forward again, hesitantly eager, as if all the world had come down to that distance of four and a half blocks.

“Do you know who I am?”

Zayna did. And she didn’t. And regardless, she couldn’t reply anyway because she’d never been able to say a thing in her life.

“I know who you are. And I know what you are. And I know why you are.”

Zayna was only a block away now.

“And do you know what, Zayna?”

Zayna’s steps slowed as she walked that last few yards.

“I don’t regret the way I made you. Not one bit.”

And then Zayna was there, gazing up into his eyes and knowing for the first time that she had been made. That she hadn’t just happened. That maybe there was a reason behind everything. Her hand moved to her throat without her meaning it to, and when Zayna noticed she paled in embarrassment and looked away quickly.

Because Zayna did regret the way she’d been made.

“What’s a voice anyway? All the others ever do is babble on about nonsense anyway.”

Not nonsense, Zayna thought. Community. They spoke the language of community.

“Do you know what you were designed for?”

For running in circles, Zayna thought. For blowing bubbles in drinks and for making noise and knocking things over a million other things like that that she had never done.

“Of course you do. You’re the only one who truly gets it.”

Even after years of keeping her mouth shut in silent acceptance of her plight, Zayna’s lips parted as she tried to protest this. But no sound came out.

“The world’s turned its purpose upside down. They take pleasure in the pointless and the malicious, and beauty is lost to them. Zayna, do you know that not a single law in the city is one that I ordained? That screaming is discordant to my ears?”

Could it be true? Could it really be that…

“You, though…you never were afraid to do what you knew was right. To walk a different path from everyone else. To bring joy, however forbidden, to others’ lives. Zayna, you’ve brought joy to me. Watching you, day after day…you’re the only reason I haven’t ended this all before now. Or let it all end itself; I think that’ll happen pretty quickly. Some days I thought that they’d manage it despite me.”

If only her voice worked. There was so much to ask, so much she wanted to know more of. And he was beginning to be confusing… ‘End it,’ for instance: didn’t the cloud sustain life?

“It’s too much for you to understand right now. I know that. But here, take my hand; they’ve had their chance at playacting life and squandered it. Now I want you to have a chance at real life.”

And much as she trusted him, Zayna hesitated. She looked down at her translucent hand, wondered if it would dissolve in the solidity of his genuine one. Wondered if she was going insane. Or dying. Maybe she was dying and this was some sort of death-trance.

“Zayna.”

When she placed her hand in his, the street disappeared and Zayna gasped. Aloud. Gone was everything she’d ever known, and now she was sure that it had all been flimsy and insubstantial anyway. Now she was encircled by colors that, though she’d never seen before, she recognized as beautiful and true.

“Zayna, look.”

On a small table stood a glass tank filled with a thick, dark gas. And amongst the gas, down immaterial pathways that almost resembled streets, crudely fashioned figures were just starting to peer out of their homes in apprehension. And then they began to emerge, and then, almost as one, they resumed their mad dash toward ruin.

And Zayna couldn’t help but chuckle sympathetically. And then she walked away. And never looked back.