Chapter Eight: How Heavy Is the First Raindrop?

That night, Mallow asked Milo, “How heavy is one raindrop?”

Milo searched every page of the postal handbook. It listed the weight of parcels, letters, cookie crumbs, and longing—but nothing about rain.

“Perhaps we will only know after it has been sent.”

Mallow gathered every wisp close. First the cloud imagined loosening one invisible thread, then a second. The drop inside slowly traveled downward and hung from the cloud’s edge, as round as a transparent postage stamp.

Fear pulled Mallow flat and long. Milo opened her little yellow umbrella, turned the whole thing upside down, and held it like a bowl.

The raindrop fell and rang against the fabric: ting.

Mallow immediately checked every corner. The cloud truly was a tiny bit smaller—but had not disappeared. A night breeze carried fresh moisture from the stream and pressed it into the missing corner, cool as a newly affixed return stamp.

Milo poured the drop from the umbrella into the blue-stamped bottle. The first raindrop, it turned out, weighed exactly as much as the words: I am still here.