A Perfectly Ordinary Tuesday

Crayon Cat Castle sat right in the heart of Artwork Land like something a very ambitious child had designed on a Friday afternoon. Its four towers were enormous crayons — red, yellow, green, and blue — pointing straight up into a sky that always smelled faintly of fresh paint.

Inside the tallest tower, Ms. Crayon Cat was doing absolutely nothing heroic.

She was eating a cheese cracker, still wearing her supersuit, reading a comic book called *The Claw of Doom*, and humming to herself with her striped tail swishing in rhythm.

"Perfect morning," she announced to no one.

Her giant orange crayon leaned against the wall nearby, glowing very faintly at its tip.

She didn't notice.

Pip, her small paint-brush assistant with a red handle and wild bristles for hair, poked his head through the doorway.

"Ms. Cat," he said, "did you leave the crayon on last night?"

She turned a page. "Nope."

The Parrot in the Pantry

Pip — the small living paintbrush with a red handle and bristle-hair — pressed himself flat against the doorframe.

"Ms. Cat," he said again, slower this time. "I'm asking because it's drawing."

Ms. Crayon Cat lowered her comic book.

The giant orange crayon was standing up on its own. No hand holding it. No surface beneath it. It hovered at a slight angle, its glowing tip moving in quick, certain strokes against the stone wall.

A line became a leg. A leg became a body. A body became a very large, very detailed parrot.

Then the parrot blinked.

Then it screamed.

The sound hit like a trumpet thrown down a staircase. The parrot launched off the wall in a burst of orange crayon-lines, flapping wildly, and knocked Ms. Crayon Cat's cheese crackers straight off the table.

"Hey!" she snapped.

The crayon didn't stop. It was already drawing something else — bigger, with four legs and enormous ears.

Pip dove behind the doorframe.

"Ms. Cat," he said, muffled, "that looks like an elephant."