A Morning Full of Color

The studio tower smelled like paint and possibility.

Ms. Paintbrush Caribou stood in the middle of her workshop, rainbow cape swishing behind her, both hands on her newest invention — a big silver canister bristling with dials, nozzles, and exactly one very important warning label she hadn't read yet.

"Watch this, Pip," she said.

Her assistant, a young caribou with sandy-gold fur and goggles forever pushed up on his forehead, leaned in close.

She twisted a nozzle. A burst of brilliant blue shot across the room and splattered the canvas in a perfect swirl.

"That's amazing!" Pip said.

"It's better than amazing." She turned to the window. Canvas Valley glittered below — colorful rooftops, painted meadows, cheerful streets. "I'm going to give this whole valley the biggest color festival it's ever seen."

She grabbed the largest dial and cranked it all the way up.

Deep inside the canister, something went *clunk*.

The Canister's Answer

The clunk wasn't small.

It was followed by a hiss, then a deep, wet *boom* — and the silver canister blew its lid clean off.

Paint didn't pour out. It *erupted*. Not the brilliant colors from the test burst. This was something wrong — a thick, churning grey that moved like it was alive, flooding across the studio floor, climbing the walls, swallowing Pip's yellow notepad, his green pen, the canvas on the easel.

"Ms. Caribou—!" Pip scrambled backward, a young caribou in a white lab coat barely dodging the spreading tide.

She grabbed the canister and twisted every dial back to zero. Nothing changed. The grey kept coming.

She shoved the window open and looked down.

Canvas Valley was already changing below. The painted red rooftops were going dull. The cheerful yellow meadow fences — turning the color of nothing.

A voice crackled from the emergency drone hovering just outside the window — a small silver disc that served as the valley's alert system.

"Warning. Color failure detected. Cause unknown. Spreading fast."

She stared at the canister in her hands.