In the shimmering city of Glowtopia, where buildings stretched like giant jellybeans and the streets hummed with the zzzt-zzzt of floating cars, lived a little girl named Emma. Her room was a cozy nook at the top of a tower, filled with the warm smell of cinnamon toast and the soft pitter-patter of raindrops on her window—even when it wasn’t raining outside. That’s just how Glowtopia worked.

But Emma had one tiny problem. When the lights dimmed and the city’s glow turned into a sleepy blue, her room felt... different. The shadows stretched like lazy cats, and the walls seemed to whisper, creak-creak, as if they were telling secrets. Her toes curled into the fluffy rug (softer than a cloud’s belly), and her heart went thumpity-thump like a drum in a parade. "I don’t like being alone," she’d say, hugging her stuffed robot, Beep, tight enough to make his buttons pop off. Ping! Ping! They rolled under the bed.

One evening, as the scent of bubblegum floated up from the street below, Emma had an idea. "Beep," she said, "what if we make the room our friend?" Beep blinked his one good eye (the other was held on with tape) and let out a bloop of static. Emma giggled and grabbed her glow-paint. With a swoosh of her brush, she turned the whispering walls into a jungle. Vines curled around the bedpost, and a friendly lion (with polka-dot fur, because why not?) grinned from the ceiling. The air smelled like fresh-cut grass now, and the floor felt bumpy, like walking on tiny hills.

But then—CRASH! Emma tripped over her own feet (she was great at ideas, not so great at walking) and landed in a pile of pillows. Poof! A cloud of glitter exploded, tickling her nose. She sneezed so hard her hair stood on end. ACHOO! Beep, who had been knocked onto his back, waved his arms like a tiny robot in distress. Beep-beep-beep!

Emma burst out laughing. "Okay, maybe not a jungle," she said, wiping glitter from her cheeks. She tried again, this time painting the walls with stars. The room twinkled like a night sky, and the floor turned squishy, like stepping on marshmallows. The air smelled like vanilla ice cream, and the whispers turned into giggles. Hee-hee-hee!

But then—SPLAT!—Emma sat on her paintbrush. Squish! Blue paint oozed out, making her look like a smurf who’d had a very bad day. Beep beeped sympathetically, his tape-covered eye drooping. Emma sighed, then grinned. "Maybe the room doesn’t need to be anything but... ours."

She flopped onto her bed, pulling Beep close. The walls stopped whispering and instead hummed a quiet tune, like a lullaby. The rug tickled her toes, the air smelled like her favorite blanket (warm and a little bit like cookies), and the shadows stretched into shapes that looked like... well, like nothing scary at all. Just shapes. Maybe a dragon. Or a cupcake. Or a dragon eating a cupcake.

Emma closed her eyes, listening to the shhh-shhh of the city outside. "I’m not alone," she whispered. "I’ve got you, Beep. And you’ve got me." Beep beeped softly, his tape-covered eye blinking in agreement. And with that, the room wrapped around them like a hug, warm and safe, until the stars on the walls faded into dreams.