The City That Never Sleeps In

Canvas Forest City woke up loud, the way it always did.

Delivery drones buzzed between the paintbrush towers of Paintbrush Thicket, dropping morning packages on balconies. Street vendors on the main boulevard were already calling out breakfast specials. Somewhere nearby, someone's phone was playing a pop song way too early.

Paintbrush Buck stood on his tower balcony, coffee in one hand, giant glowing blue paintbrush leaning against the railing. He watched the city below with calm, unhurried eyes. His bright blue supersuit caught the morning light.

"Morning, Buck!" called Dalia from the flower shop across the street. She was a humanoid deer with russet fur and a wide smile she never seemed to misplace. She waved her watering can at him.

He raised his coffee cup back.

It was a perfectly ordinary morning in Paintbrush Thicket.

Which made what came next feel even stranger.

Three Empty Mornings

Dalia was still waving when her smile dropped.

She lowered the watering can slowly. Her amber eyes swept the street, then the rooftops, then back to Buck.

"Wait," she called up. "Have you seen the Thicket kids this morning? Pip, Rosso, and little Wren?"

Buck set down his coffee. Those three were always out early. Pip selling homemade bracelets near the corner, Rosso racing his beat-up scooter around the fountain, Wren perched somewhere with her journal, writing questions about everything she saw.

The street was quiet where they should have been.

He leaned over the railing. "When did you last see them?"

"Yesterday evening." Dalia's voice had gone flat. "I thought they just went home early."

Buck scanned the thicket with his x-ray vision — straight through buildings, dumpsters, parked vehicles.

Nothing.

He pulled out his phone and called Rosso's number. It rang. Then rang again.

Then a drone hummed past, carrying a morning delivery — and sitting on top of it, tucked under the package straps, was Wren's journal, flapping open in the wind.

Empty pages. Every single one.