The Sky Between Letters

“Find a cloud animal,” Grace wrote, looking up at a sky full of gray clouds.

She sat on her front porch with a pencil tucked behind one ear and a stack of paper on her knees. Above the roof, a long cloud had a round nose and two lumpy ears. Grace drew it quickly. It looked like a sheep wearing a very serious hat.

“Dear Theo,” she wrote, “I have a game for us. We each find an animal in the sky and draw it. Then we mail our pictures to each other. You go first after me!”

Grace folded the letter and slid it into an envelope. She liked writing to Theo, her pen pal, even though he lived far away. Her porch faced a little garden. Theo’s home was an apartment with a wide window. Between them stretched many roads and many days of mail.

A few days later, Theo’s letter arrived. Grace carried it to the porch and opened it carefully.

“Dear Grace,” she read. “I looked up, but my sky is clear as a blue bowl. I can’t find even one cloud animal. I looked everywhere!”

A little drawing was tucked inside. It showed Theo at his apartment window, peering up. Behind him, sunlight lay in a bright square on the floor.

Grace looked up at her own sky. The gray clouds had gathered into a whole flock. One looked like a turtle. Another looked like a cake with wings.

“That’s no good,” she murmured. “A game should be for both of us.”

She tried to think of a game they could play from far away. They could count birds, but Theo might see different birds. They could draw their shoes, but that didn’t feel like a sky game. Grace wanted something that belonged to them both, something that could travel in an envelope.

The clouds above her porch slowly changed their shapes. Grace watched, waiting for an idea to come along with them.

Then the mail carrier dropped another letter through the slot. Grace hurried inside to get it. It was from Theo, and something dark and funny was drawn across the front of the page.

Grace carried Theo’s letter back to the porch. She opened it on her knees, keeping one finger on the page so the breeze wouldn’t flip it away.

“Dear Grace,” Theo had written, “I still don’t have clouds. But look what the sun made!”

Below the words was a picture of Theo’s apartment window. The sun came through the glass and made a long shadow on the wall. In Theo’s picture, the shadow became a fox, with tall ears, a plump middle, and a tail hooked into a question mark.

“Is it a fox?” Grace wondered aloud.

On the back, Theo had added, “I think it looks like a fox. Or maybe a very polite dragon.”

Grace laughed. She held the page up beside her own porch. The cloudy sky had made her a sheep in a hat. Theo’s sunny window had made him a fox on a wall. Their skies were different, but both pictures came from looking carefully and wondering.

Grace’s face brightened. “The game doesn’t need matching weather!”

She hurried to her desk and wrote a new rule in large, neat letters:

“Either a cloud or a shadow can be the day’s picture. Find one, guess what it looks like, and draw it. Then send it by mail.”

She added a drawing of Theo’s shadow fox, then tucked in her sheep wearing its serious hat. Before sealing the envelope, she wrote, “Your turn. Cloud or shadow—you choose.”

The next day, sunlight reached Grace’s porch, too. It made the railing’s shadow stretch across the floorboards. Grace traced the shape with her eyes. It looked a little like a tall-necked bird.

She drew the bird and mailed it to Theo.

A few days later, a letter came back. Theo spotted a whale dozing in a cloud above his apartment. He drew it floating over his window, with one small puff of spray near its nose.

“Cloud today!” he wrote. “Your turn.”

Grace pinned the whale beside the fox and sheep. Their pictures made a little parade across her wall. One came from a gray sky, one from a sunny window, and one from a cloud that had wandered over Theo’s building.

The game had found its way between them.

After that, Grace and Theo took turns choosing what to look for. Their letters traveled slowly, but the game never seemed to mind.

Some mornings, Grace found a cloud. Once, it looked like a teapot pouring rain onto a tiny moon. Another time, she saw a long-eared rabbit hopping over the roof. She drew each one and wrote a little note beside it.

Theo sent back his guesses. “The teapot is making tea for the moon,” he wrote. “The rabbit is late for a very important carrot.”

On clear days, Grace searched for shadows instead. A chair’s shadow became a tall ship with a crooked sail. The porch plant made a shadow that looked like a hand waving hello. Grace drew them both, and Theo circled his favorite with a careful pencil line.

Theo’s letters brought pictures of his own. His window curtain made a shadow like a dancing bear. A cloud outside his apartment became a slice of toast. Grace taped each picture to the wall beside the others.

When she stood back, the pictures seemed to be visiting one another. The sheep in its hat sat near the shadow fox. The whale floated above the little ship. The toast cloud sailed past the waving plant.

One evening, Grace sat on the porch with the last letter Theo had sent. The air was quiet, and the garden leaves rested. She read his note again, smiling at the way he had described a cloud as “a very lumpy hat for the moon.”

Inside, she set the letter on her desk and washed the pencil marks from her fingers. Then she went to her room. A lamp made a calm patch of light on the wall, and the chair beside her bed cast a small shadow shaped like a curled-up cat.

Grace looked at it for a moment. She didn’t need to draw it tonight. It could wait until her next turn.

She thought of Theo at his apartment window, perhaps looking at a cloud, perhaps noticing a shadow. The game had room for either one.

Grace climbed into bed, while the little shadow cat rested quietly on the wall, waiting for Grace’s next turn.