The Cranky Cloud
Spicy Fan Fiction:
The Canoodling Cloud
Posted by Ernie the Email | August 2, 2025
It had been another long day of learning how to be a cloud at Cloud Academy, and every cloud in the sky was trying to unwind, playing CloudBox in their dorm rooms or sneaking out for a cloudcap over at Cloud 9. Well, every cloud but Cloudia, of course! Cloudia was in the school library for another late-night homework session, as she normally was.
The conscientious cloud was writing an essay titled “Weatherman Woes: A Systematic Review,” in which she examined the public downfall of several high-profile weather reporters and their impact on society at large. There was Bentley Brightside, who said there was totally no way that tornado would destroy your family home; Phoenix Puddles, who was blacklisted from every weather station for placing illegal bets on his own predicted weather outcomes; and Skylar Slipup, who made the infamous gaffe about “Cloud Cuckoo Land” and seriously offended thousands of clouds that were struggling with their mental health. Skylar ended every weather report now with a prediction that he would “do better with your weather,” but the damage was already done.
Cloudia sighed and put her cloud pencil down. After all that stuff happened with Cloudburt at the end of the book, she wanted to move on like this was some epilogue that took place a few years later. In that time, the cloud had tried to reinvent herself. She made a profile on all the popular cloud dating apps like CloudCupid, Plenty of Clouds, and ChristianCloudMingle, but she hadn’t matched with anyone yet. She even dyed some of her fluffy hair pink so she could look like one of those cool goth girls you went to high school with, but she only ended up looking like cotton candy instead. Cloudia wished she had someone she could smoke cigarettes with behind the bleachers.
But for now, all she had was her studies.
Cloudia was just about to gather up her things and call it a night when she felt a soft tap on her cloud shoulder. She turned around to find that new mixed-race student, Cloudie Cloud Storage, who was an email on top and a cloud on the bottom. Cloudia had seen him floating around campus before, but their air currents had never crossed paths until now.
“Excuse me,” said Cloudie. “Could I borrow your cloud pencil sharpener to sharpen my cloud pencil? I’m writing an essay on the unfair expectations placed on female clouds in a male-dominated cloudciety. I’m majoring in Cloud Gender Studies, with a minor in Just Generally Floating Around.”
“Oh,” Cloudia said, a little surprised. She was usually the only one left in the library this late at night. “Yes, of course.” She held her cloud pencil sharpener up for Cloudie to use.
Cloudie’s eyes met Cloudia’s as he slowly inserted his cloud pencil into the cavernous depths of Cloudia’s cloud pencil sharpener. His eyelids grew heavy as he jostled the cloud pencil around until it got nice and sharp, or as sharp as a pencil made of clouds could ever be. Cloudia felt her cloud cheeks also start to turn pink.
“Thanks,” Cloudie said, touching the tip of his cloud tongue to the tip of his newly sharpened cloud pencil.
“Do you . . . like writing essays?” Cloudia asked, her breath coming out in short bursts now.
“I love writing essays,” Cloudie replied, his eyes never leaving hers.
“What . . . else do you love?” Cloudia barely whispered the words, her cloud hand instinctively running up to the first button on her chaste cloud robe.
“Let me show you with a thesis statement and several supporting arguments,” Cloudie said.
Cloudia couldn’t take it anymore. She might have seemed like an innocent bookish cloud in that chaste cloud robe, but underneath, Cloudia was all cloud woman. The cloud buttons popped off and flung across the library as she yanked open the robe, and then Cloudia was baring her voluptuous fluff before the cloud email. Cloudie breathed in her forbidden vapors, and then he began to touch Cloudia’s cloud kneecap until her head spun, their essays now long forgotten.
The clouds embraced on top of the library table and swirled around like sugar in a cotton candy machine. Cloudia leaned into the reoccurring imagery: they nibbled each other’s sensitive fluff until they were licking the sweet sugar crystals stuck to their paper cones within. There were cloud hickeys everywhere.
At one point, they had to hold in their breath and their giggles as a hall monitor passed by the library outside. Cloudia never imagined that her first time would be in a public place like this, but oh, the thrill! She was like a real high school goth girl now.
When the hall monitor was gone, the cloud canoodling continued until Cloudia felt like she was on the edge of the Pleasureful Sky Whose Name Shall Be Screamed. But it was Cloudie who screamed first, and then heavy drops of inkjet printer ink were raining down all over Cloudia and smearing both their essays.
“Do you want to go out for breakfast tomorrow?” Cloudie asked afterward. “I know a great place that makes an omelet that’s even fluffier than us, and their cloud tomatoes are to rain for.”
“Oh, sure,” Cloudia said. “That would be nice.”
“I can’t wait for you to meet my parents.”
“What?”
“What’s your favorite movie? Mine is Cloud Atlas.”
“Um . . .”
“What are your cloud hopes and cloud dreams?”
Cloudia looked at this cloud email, this cloud boy, and finally realized that she didn’t need someone else to make her happy. It was nice to get absolutely railed by a cloud email in a school library sometimes, but she couldn’t always count on that to determine her mood. She was her own cloud woman. She always had been.
“This was great, Cloudie,” she said. “Really, it was. But I think I need some time. Okay?”
“Oh, okay,” Cloudie said, looking like a very disappointed cloud emoji. “Can we exchange emails? Well, I guess you’ve already seen all of my email . . .”
“I’ll see you around, Cloudie.”
The clouds left the library and went their separate ways down the academy halls. They didn’t even clean up the table afterward, and the new groundskeeper Mr. Chucklecheeks would have quite the time trying to scrub off all that printer ink in the morning.
“Chuckle, chuckle, ew!”
Cloudia took a long hot shower and washed off all the pink hair dye and the rest of Cloudie’s ink. Then she went back to her room and deleted her profile from all those cloud dating apps. She felt rejuvenated, like a fresh white cloud in a bright blue sky after days and days of nothing but rain. One might say she was walking on a cloud, if she wasn’t already a cloud herself and would have taken offense to that expression.
Cloudia got into her cloud bed alone and smiled. She was going to put herself first from now on. You could count on that!
It was going to be a great year.
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