A Story of Shapes

Once, a traveler became lost in a land in which he had never before gone astray. The reason was the mist, thick, cold, and obscuring, unusual in that time of drought. He wandered until the mist began to clear and saw himself to be in a place he had not before visited, away from the road and ringed with rocks, and in the center, a figure, dim at first but gradually visible.
The man was waving around a sack, and not without effect, for the mist went into the sack and caused it to bulge. Little by little, all of it was drawn in so that the day was as clear as could be.
"What is that sack, good sir?" the traveler asked. "And what is your name?"
The sack-swinger stopped and saw the traveler for the first time. "Oh, it's a shame you saw that, it is. Now you must press the mist in this bag." So saying, he threw the sack on the ground and menaced the traveler until the job was done.
"Good. Now you must roll out the mist and make the edges even." The traveler did that as well. The mist made a large, gray sheet, and though its borders lacked definition, the traveler was able to tell where they should be.
"Good. Now carve apart the mist into sections." Seeing the traveler unsure whether to speak, the man went on to say, "The size is your choice, and up to you also is the shape, and whether to make them uniform."
The traveler made them blocks at first, but as he went he made circles and spirals and petals, and other shapes as well, some of them small and others nearly the whole length of it. More than that, his confidence increased so that he packed some together and pulled others apart as it felt right to do. When he completed his work, the man looked it over.
"At last, something I can use. I'll end the drought with this, and as for you." The man made the mist into the clouds and the traveler into the god of them, and from then on the world had weather again.
Finis

The Topside

The world just keeps going whichever way you go, so somebody in one of those directions must once have wondered what was on the topside of clouds. The town of Wheating was home to none of that sort until that pleasant day when even the doomsayers saw no cause for complaint in the broad, blue sky until a cloud jerked away from its path and something fell from it.
Wheating may have been a town that acknowledged the place of routine among the civic virtues, but taking an early lunch is no great crime when something like that happens. The entire citizenry temporarily relocated to the field owned by Wheating's number one citizen, Inkle, where the cloud refuse fell.
Less surprising than the fact it was a man was that he lived through his fall and took less harm than some have descending a simple staircase. His only source of distress, he told us, was his untimely removal from the cloud where he had work to do. The Wheatingers assured him they were eager to assist him, but in the meantime they hoped he would favor them with some tales of the world above the clouds. The man, whose name was Rmachl, begged them to forgive him for having nothing interesting to say since the topside was a boring, tedious sort of place.
The entire town with Inkle at its head came together to build a tall ladder which outsiders unfamiliar with its purpose might call a tower. Rmachl grew antsier as it rose and hopped from one foot to the other in an endless personal dance when it was nearly done. He thanked the townsfolk less fulsomely than etiquette might advise when the day came and put his foot on the first step when Inkle stopped him.
That local head man asked again what things were like on the other side of the clouds, and again Rmachl said it was nothing special. Inkle allowed that might be true, in which case there was no reason for him not to go up the ladder himself or even for a few of his friends to make the ascent. Only then did Rmachl, no longer intent on the ladder's progress, notice the force of armed men Wheating had gathered which was far from detestable. At a sign from Inkle the men climbed the ladder, which was how the world below discovered and immediately conquered the sky palaces and their celestial gifts of inexhaustible food and drink left behind by the gods after they made the world and hoarded by Rmachl's people while they looked down and laughed every day.
Finis