Humans have always survived by filling gaps.
We do it when we hear half a story and imagine the rest.
We do it when we see footsteps in sand and picture who passed by.
And we do it when we look at the sky and wonder what might happen next.
In the early 1990s, Scott McCloud gave this habit a name. He showed how humans naturally join things together and how we understand meaning from what we see, plus, what’s left out. Those gaps matter as they invite thinking.
At World of Water, we were introduced to this by Peter Scott, and it stayed with us – not as theory, but as something we incorporated into our Little People Books storytellings, especially when telling the Story of Clouds.
Clouds are full of gaps.
They gather and drift. They hang around not seemingly doing much. They leave spaces where light slips through and their decision as to whether to rain or not seem to weigh heavy on them.
And that’s where our character * Peter McCloud gradually seeped into some of our water cycle stories. For example:
Peter McCloud lived in a little house by the sea.
The wind liked to whistle through his windows, and maps liked to roll themselves up and take naps on his desk. On the shelves sat jars full of strange things – half-built ideas, bits of string, and glass bottles that sparkled even when the light was gone.
Peter wasn’t famous, not yet. He just liked watching clouds.
Every morning, he sat outside and looked up. He saw big fluffy ones, skinny ribbon ones, and sometimes small clouds that looked lost. He noticed how they came in from the hills and drifted out to sea again – stopping for a moment, as if they were thinking about something.
“That’s funny,” Peter would say to himself. “Clouds have pauses.”
So he started making little machines to listen to the sky.
One whistled when the air felt heavy.
One hummed when raindrops were near.
Most didn’t work.
But Peter didn’t mind.
He liked waiting.
Waiting, he thought, was a very important part of listening.
One morning, he built something new. It was round, well, round-ish, with tiny wing-like bits around it and some long silvery tail things that flew around pretending to be bits of torn kites.
It was designed for hearing what clouds wanted.
Peter filled the thing with self-rising power and let it rise into a long low sleepy cloud.
First, he listened through his earphones, but he didn’t hear any words. There was just a soft sigh which sounded a bit like tired water holding its breath.
“It’s all right,” Peter whispered to the cloud. “I’m good at waiting. You don’t have to rush.”
And the clouds didn’t.
They too waited a little longer, then let fall a few drops:
Plop,
plop,
plop.
No storm.
No flood.
Just enough to darken the soil and wake the thirsty seeds.
Before long, people started talking about Peter’s new invention.
“The man who talks to clouds!” said a sailor.
“He makes it rain by whispering!” said a farmer.
Newspapers called him Peter the Cloud Popper.
Peter didn’t say much.
He just smiled and looked beyond the clouds towards Space.
At night, Peter would sit by the sea, spotting the spaces between the clouds where stars peeped through. Those spaces, he thought, were where sky and sea decided what to become next.
And sometimes, if you quietly listen too, and learn to wait a lot,
you might hear what Peter heard – the sky, taking a gentle breath
and giving you a high sigh – before revealing its next bit of wonder.4
* 'Peter the Cloud Popper' was abridged for net posting by Grant. It's a Little People Book story inspired by the book 'Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art' (1993) by Scott McCloud - a foundational reading for cartoonists and anyone interested in visual storytelling, sequential art, media theory and how humans process meaning that happens between panels (in the "gutter")