A City That Hums

Deer Super City was the kind of place that never stayed quiet for long.

Street painters argued cheerfully over colors. Kids sketched comic heroes on sidewalk chalk boards. Even the delivery drones beeped in little rhythms, as if the whole city had a favorite song it couldn't stop humming.

And standing tall on the city's southern edge was the Creative Caribou Fortress — black as midnight, windows glowing a deep electric blue, its silhouette sharp against the orange evening sky.

Inside, Ms. Creative Caribou sat cross-legged on a wide oval platform in her main studio room, surrounded by floating holographic sketches that she'd been rearranging all afternoon. Her blue hair drifted slightly from the air vents. Her glowing blue eyes scanned each design.

"That one's off," she murmured, tilting her head at a sketch. "Something's missing."

She reached up, and the holographic sketch flickered — then faded completely.

The Morning That Forgot Itself

The sketch didn't just fade. It took three others with it.

Ms. Creative Caribou — a humanoid caribou with tan-brown fur and small antlers — stared at the blank air where four holographic designs had floated seconds ago. She pressed the restore button on her studio panel. Nothing came back.

"Weird," she said quietly.

She pulled up her city feed on the main monitor — a wide curved screen that streamed live footage from all across Deer Super City. Her glowing blue eyes moved quickly from square to square.

The chalk boards near the east market were blank. Every single one.

A drone delivery bot hovered outside a bakery, its little jingle-tune completely silent, just blinking dumbly at the door.

Then one clip stopped her cold. It was from the city's open-air broadcast tower, where a radio host named Gran Dottie — a cheerful, round-faced elderly woman with silver curls and enormous orange glasses — sat in front of her microphone with her mouth open. No words came out. Gran Dottie, who had narrated Deer Super City's morning for thirty-one years, could not think of a single thing to say.