Finish the Story Contest Week #23 entry - Even the Clouds Smile

This is my entry for this week's Finish The Story Contest created by @f3nix! The contest provides writers with a partial story and then asks them to finish it. I had a lot of fun writing this and am excited to read the other entries!

Opening by @f3nix

Even the clouds smile

The bedroom was a sealed Fort Knox. An old black fan stood in a corner: the last bulwark of defence against the terrible heat of that day of August. The heat from its engine was exceeding by far the supposed cool that it should have been producing from the movement of the scorching air.
"... I’m going down to the store to help mum."
"Recently, the young dandy is getting his ass busy."
"You could do something too, every now and then," Santiago thought, managing to keep his mouth with a bridle at the very last moment.
"There is an article on the International on how bad news are preferred to positive ones and their effects on society," he chose instead to answer.
But the 15:00 news were now efficiently irrigating the paternal synapses and absorbing his whole focus.
"After 3 months from their first appearance, the research on cumuloids continues by the international expert pool led by Dr. Venters. All the analyses confirm that their molecular composition is not different from that of any other type of cloud: minute particles of condensed water and / or ice crystals. In the meantime, yesterday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the resolution requesting the member states of... "
"Chemtrails were not enough, eh Tiago?"
"I do not know, I try not to look at them. Those faces in the sky might also be harmless but they frighten me," Santiago cut short.
The quasi-dialogue would have certainly not produced anything positive in its prolonging, thought the twelve year old son. On board of his Zanella Motoneta, Santiago darted away from home, heading for the beach.
Down there, among the umbrellas reserved for the guests of the Los Reyes hotel, there were Vicky's deep black eyes waiting for him. Maybe today they could have been alone, maybe there between the waves or under the umbrella, he would have finally told her words that, for long days, had been banging in his head like the ocean’s backwash.
He still thought of those enigmatic clouds, the cumuloids, whose immense faces had formed and flaked in the skies for months now. With no exception, their eyes were covered and they displayed a subtle smile, similar to that of those Greek statues he saw in one of the rare occasions he opened his school books.

"What an idiot." Two rosy dawns light up on Vicky's cheeks to contradict the apparently cynical exclamation.
In front of her, two hearts drawn with a wooden stick on the sand of the shore with their initials inside. Tiago floundering.
A sharp cry pierces the silence. Dazed looks of the two twelve-year-olds jumping first on Vicky's younger sister, then, through the kid’s expression of terror, bouncing on the celestial vault behind them.
A cumuloid, alone, stands out clearly in a fake turquoise sky like the wing of a theatre stage. There is no trace of a kouros smile on the gargantuan cloud, which now seems about to drift on the sea shore. The ivory jaws widens deformed, vomiting a myriad of other faces. Distorted mutations depart ferociously from the obscene atmospheric funnel just to pierce back the smooth nimbus’ face, devouring its ephemeral flesh.
Time slows down around Tiago and Vicky, holding hands together without even realizing it.

The cumuloid continues spewing forth new faces. Their expressions are wild and ravenous as they swarm back to feast on their progenitor. They seem to snarl as they bite in, tearing the wispy flesh away in scraps. Jagged bolts of lighting fork from every injury, painting the beach in flashes of fell light. As the visage is gnawed and ripped away, an even starker physiognomy emerges, a still more beautiful and frightful likeness, masculine and feminine, serene and full of wrath. The new skin roils and gleams like celestial fire.

When the final grisly remants of its elder face have been consumed, the cumuloid’s eyes pop open and a scorching silver light spills forth. At the touch of that light, the lesser faces scatter like frightened birds, flying off in every direction, disappearing deep into the heavens and the offing and the sea.

The cumuloid casts its sight upon the universe, seems to take in, at a glance, the entirety of creation. Those argent eyes are bereft of irises or pupils, but mottled with ragged dark patches which shimmer and writhe as it shifts its gaze.

At length that gaze stops on Vicky and Tiago. Like everyone on the beach, they have watched the spectacle in fearful reverence. Instinctively, they squeeze each others hands.

The cumuloid stares into them and through them and around them, seems to regard them not as two distinct persons but a single organism.

The great eyes narrow and the exquisite, sculpted lips shudder and twitch.

The cumuloid speaks.

It utters just one word, and that word echoes in the firmament and in the deep. Neither Vicky nor Tiago understand it. And yet they feel its import, feel how it illuminates and overshadows them. And in the gasp and thunder of that utterance, they understand what a sacred and terrible thing it is to be Named.

The cumuloid then gives a gasp, and the blazing eyes go dark. Like a setting sun, it plummets into the sea, breaking apart into a foam that twinkles along the horizon.

* * *

Tiago and Vicky say nothing on the journey home. But both are aware, somehow, that nine years later they will marry, and that together they will know great happiness and even greater sorrow.

Curiously, neither one is eager for or frightened by that future. They simply know that it will be.

Image Sources #1
Image Sources #2

Thanks for reading! :D And thanks @fenix for the awesome story and contest, @marcoriccardi for hosting this week's event, and everyone in the @bananafish collective for what you do! <3