Tobia was a very well-behaved dog. He knew when it was time to eat, when to wait for the green light to cross, and above all he knew that you shouldn't bite your grandfather's slippers.
But there was one thing that Tobias didn't know how to do, and it bothered him a lot: he didn't know how to count clouds .
Every morning he would go out into the garden, sit on his favorite blanket, point his nose up in the air and watch them go by.
Round clouds, thin clouds, one that looked like a whale, one that looked like melted ice cream.
But as soon as he tried to count them, the same thing always happened: either a new one arrived from behind the roof, or the one in front split in two, or they all disappeared and the sky turned as blue as the bowl of fresh water.
— “What a mess,” barked Tobias, shaking his ears. — “Is there a way to keep them still for at least five minutes?”
One day he decided it was time to solve the problem.
He took a pencil (which he had stolen from the little girl at home some time before), a notebook (which wasn't a real notebook but a bill book), and began to write:
“Today, sky: 7 large clouds, 3 small ones, 1 that looks like a chair.”
But as soon as he finished writing “chair,” the clouds had already changed clothes.
The chair had become a giraffe, the little ones had disappeared, and in their place had appeared something that looked like a washing machine with wings.
— “It’s not fair!” — grunted Tobias. — “You can’t work like this!”
From that day on he tried everything:
counting out loud, counting quietly, drawing clouds with their paws in the dirt (until the neighbor's rooster came along and pecked at random to erase everything), even barking really loudly, hoping that they would stop just out of politeness.
But nothing. The clouds were free, stubborn, light.
They did what they wanted, and they didn't care about notebooks, slippers, or well-behaved dogs.
Until one afternoon, when he was about to get angry about yet another cloud that turned into a crowbar (yes, that's right), the little girl he shared the house with arrived.
She sat down next to him, without saying anything, and also raised her nose to the sky.
— “That looks like a snail, doesn’t it?”
Tobia looked. Yes. A snail with a comet's tail.
— “And that one instead… a teapot with a hat?”
Yes! A teapot with a gardener's hat.
They laughed together.
And Tobias understood that perhaps there was no need to count the clouds .
That the beauty was looking at them, imagining them, inventing them every time.
That clouds are like thoughts: they don't let themselves be lined up, but sometimes, if you're lucky, they keep each other company.
From then on, Tobias no longer tried to count them.
He just started looking at them better.
End.