Four Towers and a Sunny Morning

Toy Room City never slept — but it did stretch.

Every morning, the stuffed animals yawned, the goat dolls adjusted their button eyes, and the deer shook the sleep-wrinkles out of their velvet fur. The city buzzed with the cheerful business of being alive.

Right in the center of it all stood the Crayon Dollhouse — four bright towers, each one a different color, shooting up like jumbo crayons pointed at the ceiling. That was home to Crayon Pinocchio.

He stepped onto his balcony, blue-and-black supersuit crisp, rainbow crayon humming softly at his belt, black sunglasses catching the morning light.

"Morning, Biscuit!" he called down to a small sheep doll on the front path below.

Biscuit was the fluffiest, roundest sheep in all of Toy Room City — bright white wool, tiny black boots, and the most serious expression a stuffed animal could possibly wear.

"Festival's in three days," Biscuit called back, clutching her little checkered bag. "Everything has to be perfect."

The Empty Spot on the Shelf

Biscuit didn't show up the next morning.

Pinocchio waited on the front path for a full ten minutes, rainbow crayon bouncing at his belt. He checked his watch. He checked it again. Then he flew two blocks over to Wool Lane — the street where the sheep dolls lived — and landed outside Biscuit's small round house.

The door was open.

Inside, a stuffed goat neighbor with patchy gray fur and one lopsided horn was standing in the doorway, shaking her head slowly.

"Gone," the goat said. "Packed up that little checkered bag and went. Left before sunrise."

Pinocchio stepped inside. A tiny cot. A shelf above it. One bare hook where Biscuit always hung her festival ribbon — the white satin one she'd won two years running.

The ribbon was gone too.

Then, from outside, a mechanical humming buzzed overhead. A silver delivery drone dipped low and dropped a folded note straight onto Biscuit's empty cot.

Pinocchio picked it up.

On the front, in small neat letters, it said: *Don't look for me.*