Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had no brothers and sisters. She lived in a cottage by the woods. She would go out into the woods with a little basket and find berries and flowers to bring home to her mother. One day as she was in the woods picking a bountiful batch of berries she had found; she was so focused on her task that she did not notice the clouds starting to darken and the smell of rain drawing near. By the time the storm hit, it was too late for her to try to make her way home. She found a place in between two thick-leafed trees in order to protect herself from the rain and to try to stay warm.
A lightning bolt shot in front of her, displaying her frightened face to the sky. The thunder rumbled, “why are you out here all by yourself?” The child yelled over the rain “I got lost and I can’t find my way back home through this rain!” The storm said, “you poor child, jump on my lightning bolt and I will play with you.” The lightning came down so fast, but she was still able to jump on the lightning bolt, shooting clear into the sky. She landed on a cloud, feeling the thunder rumbling all around her. The child found that the thunder booming was softer on the cloud, and the lightning shot clear through the cloud periodically creating a warmth in the cloud. She started to become more relaxed and trusting of this quiet storm, which was more soothing now than frightening.
The storm asked her questions about her life, her hopes, her dreams. In this happy state, the girl told him what he asked to know. She was surprised and delighted to find the storm listening to her enthusiastically, unlike her parents who never seemed to care for what she said. As the storm passed over her rooftop, she cried “there’s my house! Can you take me home?” The thunder said “yes, just jump on the lightning bolt and I’ll send you down.” So, she jumped on the lightning bolt and down she plunged. “Thank you!” She yelled and the thunder rumbled back a farewell as he passed.
She ran into the house and her mom met her at the door. “I was so worried!” Her mom cried, “where were you? You know you’re not supposed to be out in storms!” She told her mom all that had happened, but she did not believe her. Her mom simply said, “Don’t tell outlandish tales and never ever play out in a storm again, you could get hurt.”
This girl was not often a disobedient child, at least not on purpose. She just often got distracted, and she was often misunderstood by her parents. She loved the storm, though, because the storm understood her, and the storm would listen when no one else would. While she wasn’t with her quiet storm, she would think of all the stories and ideas and thoughts she would tell him when she did see him again, picturing in her head his reactions, his rumbling laugh shaking her or his quiet stormy silence waiting to hear what she would say next. Whenever she noticed the sky starting to darken, she would wait until her mom was preoccupied with her many responsibilities, or tell her mom that she was going to play in her room for a while and sneak out the window. The storm would send a lighting bolt to fetch her, and she would sit on her warm soft cloud telling her storm all she had previously been thinking to tell… over time, they became the best of friends.
After a few months, her mom started to notice her disappearance during storms. She began to look for her every time the clouds would darken. She would ask her to come knit with her or help her with chores. The child did not know how to dissuade her mother, so she complied. The thunder would rumble outside, her quiet storm beckoning her, the lightning would strike close to her house, brightly displaying her quiet storms presence. The child would cry and wish and hope that she would see her quiet storm again. Her mother made sure, though, that she would never go out into the storm again.
The longer she was away from her quiet storm, the child began to believe it had all been a dream, and as she grew older, she forgot her relationship with the storm. The quiet storm remembered her, though, and always tried to talk to her, begging her to come play, but she had become frightened of storms, because her parents warned her that storms were dangerous and told her of all the bad things that could happen during storms.
When she became an adult and remembered nothing about the friendship with the quiet storm anymore, but she experienced a different kind of storm. Adults have storms in their minds, a loud, impairing echo of negative emotions that cannot easily be avoided. Storms created by worries, stress, straining of the mind, experiences that were mentally harmful. She became preoccupied with attempting to quiet the storm in her mind, which consumed her until the end of her days. Never again would the quiet storm be able to help her, for she lost her innocence and lost her love for the simple quiet storm, replacing it with a storm more destructive….
