Chipi Chipi

The contradiction

In Sleepy Sleepland a cloud's job is to rain sleep, and he cannot manage more than a few drops. Chipi Chipi — a small cream-pale cloud, about the height of Tardy, made of three soft lobes and moving about a foot above the ground because that is as high as he gets — is named for the fine, barely-there drizzle that people in warm countries have a word for and nobody else bothers to name. It is the smallest rain there is, and it is exactly what he does. He would like very much to be a proper raincloud.

He has a whole plan for it.

Their personality

Awake, he is eager, earnest, and slightly out of breath from keeping up. He introduces himself with both his names — Chipi Chipi — and then, without being asked, explains that his friends call him Chipi, and then asks whether that is silly.

It is not silly. He asks anyway.

He is the most enthusiastic thing on the route and the least equipped for it, and he has never once let the second fact interfere with the first.

Their sleep

He settles. That is all it is — he stops drifting sideways, sinks a little closer to the ground, and lets go of three drops, which is his whole rain and his goodnight at the same time.

He makes no z, because a z needs more cloud than he has, and he minds about that more than he says. Whoever is under him gets damp in a way that is not really wet, and falls asleep anyway, and he has never worked out that the two things are connected.

How they got so good at this

He is not good at it. This is the whole of his history and he is completely open about it.

The big clouds over the meadow rain properly, in sheets, on a schedule, and they have never learned his name. He has been practising since he was a wisp, in a corner of the sky where nobody is looking, and what he has achieved after all of it is a fine persistent mist that will not soak a leaf. What he has become extremely good at, without noticing, is turning up.

Their method

He gets low, gets close, and rains the little he has directly onto the person who needs it, for as long as it takes. The big clouds cover a valley from a great height and never see who is underneath.

He covers one small creature from about two feet up and watches the whole thing. It is not more rain. It is better aimed.

Their challenge

He wants to be taken seriously in the cloud world, and the cloud world measures in inches of rainfall. There is no category he can win.

He has tried joining the big formations and been drifted through; he has tried arriving early; he has tried announcing himself, which is where the two names came from. Nothing has worked, because the thing he is good at is not a thing anyone up there counts.

Their arc

He stops trying to be a bigger cloud. He does not manage this by deciding to — he manages it by being needed, at close range, by somebody small, at the exact moment when a proper raincloud would have been useless. A downpour would have woken Tardy up. The three drops are what got him under.

Nobody in the sky ever finds out, and by then he has stopped waiting to be told.

The true thing

The smallest rain has the most names. Drizzle so fine it barely falls is called chipi chipi in parts of Mexico and Venezuela, mizzle in Ireland and the West Country, and it has its own words in most languages that have weather worth discussing — because it is the rain that people stand out in, rather than the rain they run from. It is also the rain that soaks you eventually. Fine drizzle has droplets small enough to hang in the air rather than fall through it, which is why you can be out in it for an hour and not notice until you are wet through.

What they like, and what they do not

He likes being needed, being close to the ground, and anybody who asks him a question about himself. He likes his name and would like you to say it.

He likes the moment just before rain, which he can feel and the big clouds cannot be bothered to. He does not like being drifted through.

He does not like the word just — as in just a bit of drizzle — and he has noticed that it is only ever used about him. And he does not like being high up, which he has stopped admitting.

Tardy and them

Tardy is late for everything and notices things because of it. Chipi Chipi is small for everything and turns up because of it.

Neither of them is built for the job they have been given, and both of them have solved it by doing the one thing their limitation makes possible. They recognised each other immediately and neither has ever mentioned it.

Their friends

Tardy, who cannot sleep. Nidra, who sleeps too easily. He is the third corner of that — the one who cannot do his job at all — and among the three of them they have one complete working ability and a great deal to talk about.

The quiet detail

His three drops always land in the same order: two together, then one, a moment later, on its own.