The Lodge with Four Good Reasons

The four crayon towers of Crayon Beaver Lodge were impossible to miss — one red, one yellow, one green, one blue — rising above the treetops of Craft Room Forest like giant art supplies someone had forgotten to put away.

Ms. Crayon Beaver sat on the balcony of the blue tower, dangling her wide flat tail over the railing the way she always did after lunch. The forest below was busy. A family of armadillos rolled past on the main path. Two deer in overalls waved up at her. A pair of gecko neighbors argued cheerfully about whose garden grew better tomatoes.

"Gorgeous afternoon," said Pip, a small sheep who lived on the lodge's ground floor and handled most of the filing. He leaned out of the window below, chewing on a pencil. "You've got that look."

"What look?" Ms. Crayon Beaver asked.

"The one where everything's fine," Pip said, "and you almost believe it."

Something That Shouldn't Be There

Ms. Crayon Beaver was still thinking about Pip's remark when a drone buzzed past her ear.

It wasn't one of hers.

It was small and boxy, with four spinning blades and a tiny camera eye pointed right at the lodge. It hovered, turned slowly, then hummed away over the treetops.

"Pip," she called down. "Did you just send a drone up here?"

The woolly sheep poked his head out the window below. "I don't own a drone."

Ms. Crayon Beaver pushed off the balcony railing and flew up — not high, just enough to clear the canopy. She spotted it immediately.

There, maybe half a mile into Craft Room Forest, four towers poked above the trees. They were the same colors as her own — red, yellow, green, blue — but rougher, lumpier, like someone had copied them from a bad photograph.

The drone circled those towers once, then landed on the tallest one.

"Pip," she said quietly into the air, eyes still fixed on the distant shapes. "Get your notepad."