The Cactus and the Cloud

Below is a rough draft of the story that I will be using in my genre studies project. I need to do a lot of editing, proofreading, etc, but I still feel that otherwise it is still an okay story. The project idea is so: I will be doing two collages which I will place on the skeleton of an umbrella to create the umbrella covering. The underside is desert scenes, focusing on cacti. The topside will be a Portland collage, focusing on rain and clouds, etc. Hanging down, off of the sides of the umbrella, will be the following story, cut up in paragraphs, which will fold into the umbrella whenever the umbrella is folded:

I was a cactus living in a desert at the time. It was a drought, mostly, but I didn’t mind. I had gotten used to it. I hadn’t seen a cloud since I was just a baby cactus. When I was a baby cactus there was a tremendous thunderstorm over the scorched land. Many of my friends nearly died. My best friend, Pauley died that day. Drowned. I think him about him every day.
So you can imagine my apprehension when one day, as I was looking up at the sky, admiring the sun, and saw a faint wisp of cotton over the horizon. At first I didn’t think much of it. I see wisps all the time. In the past twenty years I had seen at least five wisps, and they didn’t much scare me. Anything larger than a wisp, though, and I get a bit nervous. This wisp got larger.
Soon it was a cloud, and it was looming right over me. I shuttered a bit. I couldn’t bear to think about what it might want or do to me. I cowered, my spikes trying to cover me from the inevitable downpour. My green skin shaking at the thought of a wet raindrop.
Instead, the rain cloud said “Hello.” I lowered my arms and said “How are you doing?” and she said “Just hanging out up here, and what about you?” and I said “Nothing much just kicking it, where are you off to?” and she said, “I going down to this place, Vegas,” and I said “Oh, yeah, I heard about this place, do you mind if I come along?” and she said, “Sure thing stranger, if you don’t mind the ride.”
So we took it down the interstate, racing to sin. It seemed like a perfect fit for the two of us. Vegas in the desert, a climate that I am used to, she would feel at home among the fountains, spitting their streams to the sky, and all the lights, lights, lights.
When we rolled into town, though, and we got nothing but cold shoulders. Everybody looked suspiciously up at her, and they kept a safe distance from me. The town just wasn’t too friendly, despite the warm glow of the neon lights and the ring of the slot machines. We didn’t much attention, thought, or too much company of others. We strolled down the strip, taking notes of the sidewalks and the streets and the different buildings. We got to know each other, and began to feel more comfortable around each other. My tenuousness around her began to ease. I didn’t think she was going to kill me.
As we strolled around, I picked up some hard liquor, some rum, some 151 and we began to take shots, me considerably more than her. At about the fourth or fifth shot, as the first began to kick in, I moved closer and closer, and put my prickly arm around her. She didn’t mind the spikes, being a cloud at all, unaffected by my pointiness.
We moved along and along and along, and it began to grow late so we decided to catch a bus back to our place, a divey hotel at the end of the strip. When the bus pulled up, though, the driver wouldn’t let me on. First, he said, because I was too drunk, and second, he said, because I was a cactus, and they don’t think too much of a cactus on a bus. He even went so far as to get off of his bus, walk over to the one behind him, and tell him that I was drunk and a cactus, and not to let me on. So, I pulled myself off, but unable to go on. I didn’t know how we were going to get back as was beginning to lurch into unconsciousness.
That’s when she began to wind, and wind and wind. She began to blow and wind and it lifted me up into her arms and she began to carry my limp body back to the hotel room. She did it with considerable ease, wrapping her wispy arms around my body, carrying me along the strip. She didn’t tire, and everything move from her direction. With her wind came some rain, and then a thunderstorm, moving down the strip, carrying a cactus.
Something happened to my inebriated body, wrapped in her water molecule arms. I am not sure to this day, since I passed out halfway down, and woke lying next her to her in the hotel bed. Something was different. Something about my skin. It didn’t hit me at first, but after a moment of contemplation, I realized that I was naked. I had taken off all of my spikes before I had got into bed, and my skin was damp from her skin, her dense condensation. At first I had panicked, remembering what had happened to my friend, those many years ago. I shouted, and hollered, and she calmly woke and calmed me down with “Shh, shh, you’re okay, there is nothing to worry about,” she said, and I said “What the hell happened?”
She told me that while she carried me home, her water-molecule arms began to transform me bit by bit as she walked block by block. The molecules began to penetrate my skin, and slowly they began to transform me. By the time we reached home, my body was completely different, and it was quite possible that I was no longer a cactus, and that I might never become a cactus again.
I felt fine, physically, and could cope with the idea of being forever without spikes, perhaps now people wouldn’t shirk away from me. We held each other, and made love, and lightning struck, a pathetic fallacy of all sorts, but this is no matter. When you make love to a cloud, you have to allow these things to happen.
So, we drove back, down the opposite way of I-15 back towards the desert of my home, back to the ocean of hers. She dropped me off with a wink and a smile, and I waved as she drove back. Holding back tears, I wandered around feeling as though I didn’t belong among these red sands, dry air, or anywhere. So I kept on wandering, and wandering. I wandered into the mountains, and into towns, and through valleys, and all around. I wandered and wandered until finally I made it to the ocean. I looked around for her, my beautiful cloud, but could not find her. I decided to stay until the day that I saw her.
In the meantime, I got used to the new climate. The people were much friendlier than before, and approached me almost too enthusiastically, almost suspiciously. I decided to get a place of my own. I found one, right on the shore. A bit small a bit cramped, but with plenty of windows to look out of to watch for her. And one day, I stepped into the bathroom in a rush, caught a glimpse in the mirror, and staring back at me was a cranberry bush.