Ji glanced out the window.

She was in the changing room of Madame Elenegg's Ballet School, a building of medium size near the corners of Faerieland, and it was raining.  Since Faerieland is a cloud, a lot of rain gets its start in lower clouds and never reaches the faeries' domain; but when it does start in a higher cloud, it is always cold and falls heavily.

Slipping on her coat and stuffing her leotard into her gym bag, Ji ignored the chatter of the other students.  They were airheads and idiots, all of them.  She'd associated with them and taken quick control, once; now she didn't know why she had bothered.
 

 The company of human ballerinas was small; NeoPet ballerinas could be heard coming down the stairs from the upper level.  Ji could hear the happy cries of owners and pets reuniting in the entrance lobby, across the hall from the changing room.  Mothers and fathers and older pets would be coming to pick up the giggling girls around her.

Ji stood by the window and looked out into the sky.  Rain poured; the fluffy white clouds were obscured by sheets of iron-gray.  It was a depressing sight.
 

 Mesmerised by the sight of the cloudstuff slogged by the unrelenting downpour, Ji didn't notice the other girls leaving until Madame Elenegg tapped her on the shoulder.  "Ji - you'll have to wait for a while.  This storm is falling on Mystery Island and the boats are down; I'm sure your mother will come get you soon, but meanwhile I have to go home."

Ji blinked, puzzled.  "Should I just wait in here, then?"

The stern older woman shook her raincoat-draped head.  "I have to lock up.  I'm sure you won't be waiting long."

So Ji sat down on the drenched front steps of Madame Elenegg's Ballet School and kicked at whiffs of cloud with her feet.

Thunder rumbled drowsily in the distance, but no lightning glowed in the dark sky.  Even with it Ji doubted she'd be able to see any buildings nearby; the school was far from the major tourist centers of Faerieland.

A snatch of an Avril Lupevine song played in Ji's head, and she stood up and walked over to a cloud bridge that led from the cloudlet holding the ballet building to the main cloud of Faerieland.
 

Water cascaded down the hood of Ji's coat and poured over her gym bag.  She wondered absently if her clothes were getting wet.

Ji strained her ears, but only the pitter-patter of rain on cloud met them.
 

Suddenly the lyrics rose up through Ji's throat demnding to be said as urgently as her transformation phrase had the first time she'd held that cream and soft blue pen.

Was it her imagination or did she hear the sound of footsteps running on cloud?

And then, welcome as a ray of sunlight on a garden after a spring shower, a tall figure appeared running through the rain, growing clearer as the sheets falling between her and Ji became fewer.  It was Kara Lynn, face full of breathless worry.

"Ji, Ji!" she called as she drew closer.  "Are you all right?  I knew you'd left for ballet but then I heard that the boats were canceled and I didn't know if you'd gotten home..."

The short brunette ran to meet Kara Lynn and crashed gratefully into her, delivering a thankful (if somewhat crushing) hug of relief.  "I was alone - Madame had to lock up - and I was out in the cold and the rain and didn't know how long I'd be here..."

She looked up at the abnormally tall girls' face and wiped what was probably rain from her face and eyes.  "Thank you for coming for me ... I just wanted to go home..."
 

"You can," Kara Lynn assured her, hugging the younger (in mind and body if not in actuality) girl soothingly.  "I brought an umbrella - here-"  And she opened it above the two of them: an island of dryness in a cloud of downpour.  "We'll go home together."

Ji felt, as they walked off in the direction of the cloudships that would take them out of Faerieland, that she had never felt more relieved.  The last words of the Avril Lupevine song whispered through her head, and she hummed to herself: