about clouds
(перевод выше)
Bear moved the wooden logs in the bonfire.
“You know, today at dawn, I was fishing at the lake and realized who I am.”
“Oh!” said Hedgehog, interested. “And who are you?”
“I am Cubelephant,” Bear answered quietly as he poured tea from the kettle into the mug.
“Why Cubelephant?” Hedgehog didn’t understand.
“Imagine that all forest animals, in fact, are clouds. You are a cloud, and I am a cloud. We sail through the sky and take on different shapes. But actually, most of the time, we have roughly the same shape.”
“Which shape are you, for example?”
“I am shaped like an elephant. I sail across the sky as an elephant-cloud. But suddenly, I come to a gorge, and I float into it.”
“What do you mean? What gorge?”
“For example, a hole in a rock in the shape of a cube high in the sky. And I, the cloud-elephant , I’ll go, driven by winds, into the gorge. I have to go because I can’t turn back -the winds are very strong at the top: the higher, the stronger.”
“And what happens?”
“I have to transform into a cube. That is, first, my wonderful trunk disappears, but I still have a cute behind with a tail. So, one part of me is already a cube, and the other part is still an elephant. But the wind still blows, and for a split-second, I am transforming myself completely into this shape and become a cube if the gorge is really large.”
“And there isn’t a cloud-elephant?”
“The wind continues to blow, and after some time, from the other side of the gorge, you can see my trunk and then my small eyes and large ears and so on.”
“And then?”
“And then, when I come out, I might be chunkier than before, thanks to being in a long gorge, but I gradually become an elephant again.”
“Hurray!”
“Yes, but the relentless, restless wind does what it must, and I float on - until the next gorge or a collision with another cloud with which I’ll merge and change shape for a little while, as the wind wishes”.
“Does this mean that you are a cloud-elephant in essence, but, in fact, it only sometimes happens that in reality, you are actually a cloud-elephant? Does your shape change all the way from rain until dew?”
“Yes, but it’s so cool to become a cube and a car and Noah’s ark, although it’s not so easy. It’s more pleasant to return to your natural shape.”
They fell silent. Bear began to sore, and Hedgehog was thinking that if Bear was really an elephant, he was likely a camel.