Walking Through The Clouds

I stand on the edge. The world is spread out below me and I feel like an angel. I long to spread my wings and glide down to the green and blue mass below, but I cannot.

The cloud is lit from behind by the sun, and so a line of gold rims it. The cloud doesn't seem substantial enough to walk on, but it is, and I do. Small wisps of white mist curl and twine themselves up to my knees.

All around me there is masses of cloud. It looks breathtakingly beautiful and I wonder why more people don't come up to this world of mist and build castles in the air.

There is one, a tall elegant building. In the sunlight it shimmers slightly, changing colour from blue to green to purple. It has a tower, a single turret that stretches up as far as the eye can see. I have never seen its inhabitants and it occurs to me that there might not be any. I don't understand why anybody would want to leave this...this paradise after they had come, but I accepted that some people preferred earth and water to cloud and empty sky.

I am alone. No one is here and yet I feel surrounded by a presence. Not uncomfortably so, I am comforted by the fact that I am not alone, even in my exile.

And exile is what this is. I understand that now. I am the reason why nobody is here. I am the reason why the castle is empty and lifeless. I have been banished to this world of clouds and vast open spaces because I am hope. In the world down below me, people didn't believe in me. Down there my name was just another word. It meant nothing to the people. Ravaged by disease, famine, war and death, they scorned me.

"Hope. What is hope?" they would ask each other despondantly.

But here, amongst the silver lined clouds, I can be myself.

I am hope.