Tilly the Toad and the Treasure Trunk

Chapter 1: Keeping Things Tidy

In a mossy little village called Puddlebrook, there lived a young toad named Tilly. Tilly had bright green skin, bouncy legs, and a room full of wonderful things: a jar of shiny pebbles, a collection of feathers, a box of crayons, a tiny drum, and a stack of storybooks.

But Tilly never put any of them away.

Her crayons lay scattered across the floor. Her pebbles were mixed in with her socks. Her drum sat under her bed, and her storybooks were piled on the windowsill, tilting like a leaning tower.

"I know where everything is," Tilly would say. "Mostly."

Mostly was the problem.

One Saturday morning, Tilly woke up excited. Her best friend, Wren the sparrow, was coming over to play, and Tilly had planned a surprise: a puppet show using her favorite red feather and her little drum.

"Where is my red feather?" she asked, hopping around the room.

She looked under the bed. She looked behind the curtains. She dug through a mountain of socks and pebbles. She found a lost button, a half-eaten cracker, and one very surprised beetle, but no feather.

"And where's my drum?" She hopped about faster. Then her foot landed on a crayon, and she slid across the floor and bumped into the bookshelf.

Thump! Flutter! Crash!