Sora’s Shadow Show

Sora knew a wonderful story about a cloud that lost its rain. She had invented it while watching the sky, and in her head the cloud had a grumbly voice and a very surprising ending. Unfortunately, when she tried telling anyone, all the words hid. Her cousins would look at her, waiting, and she would suddenly remember something urgent she needed to do behind a bush. It was much easier to tell the story to stones.

One evening the Stegosaurus families gathered in their usual sandstone clearing. The adults browsed along the edges while the youngsters took turns describing their day. Ash told a noisy story about falling into soft mud. Willowtail explained where she had seen a blue dragonfly. Sora stood behind the others, silently repeating her first sentence. She wanted to join in. Wanting was almost worse than deciding not to, because her heart kept trying even while her feet backed away.

The low sun stretched everyone’s shadows across the sandstone wall. Sora noticed that Ash’s plates made a row of dark triangles. Her own shadow stood nearby, smaller and rather dignified. She tilted her head. It tilted too. She stepped backward, and it grew. The movement made her laugh. Ash turned. “What?” The words vanished again. Sora nodded at the wall instead. Ash moved his tail slowly, careful to leave plenty of space around its spikes.

His shadow swept across a dark crack in the stone. Suddenly Sora saw the river from her cloud story. A rounded boulder could be the mountain. The moving tail-shadow might become a long strip of rain. “That’s where it went,” she whispered. Ash blinked. “Where what went?” Sora looked at the wall instead of his face. “The rain. In my story.” It was the longest thing she had managed to say in front of the group all evening.

Ash did not demand to hear everything. “Could we show it?” he asked. Sora considered this. They found a place where the ground was level and everyone could move without bumping tails. Willowtail offered to be the mountain, standing in front of the rounded boulder so her shadow covered it. Ash wanted to be thunder, a role he prepared for by making several extremely silly noises. Sora could be the travelling cloud, moving along the wall.

At first the rehearsal was a muddle. Willowtail moved whenever she laughed, which made the mountain wobble. Ash thundered over every sentence. Sora forgot which way the cloud was going. The sun kept sinking, making their shadows longer. She felt the old urge to leave. Instead she asked them to stop. “Can the thunder wait until I lift my head?” Ash tried it. The pause gave Sora room to think, and the story found its next sentence.

They invited the younger hatchlings to sit at the far edge of the clearing. Sora kept her eyes on the wall. “Once there was a cloud,” she began, “who woke up much too light.” Her shadow drifted toward the mountain. Ash waited. Willowtail stood wonderfully still. When Sora raised her head, a rumble rolled across the clearing. The hatchlings giggled, but this time the laughter did not feel like a danger. It belonged to the story.

The cloud searched behind mountains, over rivers, and around a very grumpy tree. At last it discovered that its rain had already fallen while it slept. Everywhere it had looked, new plants were growing. Sora spoke the ending more loudly than she had planned. Then she looked away from the wall. The adults had stopped browsing to listen. Nobody was staring in a frightening way. They were smiling, or settling closer, or asking if the grumpy tree had a name.

The sun slipped below the ridge and the shadow stage disappeared. Sora felt tired and bright inside. Ash bowed so deeply that Willowtail had to remind him about the space behind his tail. A hatchling asked for another performance tomorrow. Sora still did not want to stand alone in the middle of the clearing. But she could imagine telling a story with her friends beside her. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll need a river that can giggle.” Ash began practicing at once.