Vihal's Assignment for Today Is...

The next day, thanks perhaps to having talked with Edwin and the former Cloud Painters, Vihal's heart was calm, and he was able to head to his workplace as usual.

Yesterday's failure had come of wanting, just a little, to paint the sky he truly wanted—carrying his brush as he remembered the days when he and Edwin had painted together.

As in those days, in a place with no fixed bounds, when he had painted dancing across the roadside and the walls of this and that—

That way was faster, and it let him paint the sky he wanted, and he supposed it was his own *way of painting well.*

But he also thought he could never do it the way Edwin did.

If he painted as he liked, dancing, he might once again forget himself and knock his brush against a bucket, or kick one over.

Thinking that, he could not bring himself to say, *now I'll practice my own way of painting.*

"The day I can paint as I want is still a long way off…"

Today, at any rate, he would paint carefully watching his quantities and his time—and with that resolved, Vihal arrived at the Weather Bulletin Office.

There was a stir of Cloud Painters gathered before the great board that listed the assignments.

On the board, name plates were posted in alphabetical order, and below each name were written the day's hours and the Sky Room.

Vihal, a head taller than the other angels, nearly bumped into several of them, saying "excuse me, excuse me," as he checked his room for the day.

"Six shifts today…?"

The morning watch: first, third, and fourth. Then the noon break. And in the afternoon: second, fourth, and seventh.

"The morning's first is Room F on the seventeenth floor… Thirty percent cloud. And then third and fourth, back to back…"

He had never thought he would be given consecutive shifts the day after a failure—shifts that were said to be pretty hard going even for a veteran. But the consecutive skies called for thirty and then forty percent cloud, which would be better than two back-to-back skies of one hundred percent, he decided to think.

"…All right…!"

He braced himself, went for his paint and brush, and carried them to his assigned room.

Vihal was heading for the egg-shaped building that floated just beside the Bulletin Office.

Inside, at its center, a great clock floated, visible from every angle; and doors were set all along the egg-shaped wall that surrounded it.

The entrance was the opening directly beneath the clock. The lowest level was called the ground floor; it was a rest area, and it had a nap room as well.

The floors ran from the first up to the twenty-fourth, and Vihal flew up to door F on the seventeenth.

The color of the sky in a room changed with the time of the land below. Painting on a blue sky was not so bad; but a night sky was harder. The whole room went dark, after all, and all one could rely on was the moonlight and the starlight.

During the trial period, he had been told, the first shift of the day would never be given a night sky. But when Vihal entered the room, it was a night room, with stars shining.

"Eh… night…?"

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