In a small Italian village past a dark and lonely graveyard, and resting limply on the north of the village, across a river and separated from the rest of the town, was a small, lonely house. It was not an unpleasant house, however as it had pear trees growing in the garden. They were often vibrant, and gave the garden a pleasant smell when they were ripe.
However, it is winter in 1923, and the pears are past their season. Branches are hanging heavy with snow, and silence usurps the garden, save for a church bell ringing in the distance, and the wind howling its grievances. The night is long, and the darkness stretches and seeps into every nook and cranny outside, and thick ashen clouds bringing snow in hinder the pretty stars from watching what went on in that strange little house that cold December night...
"By the Blue Fairy's cogs- where is that spanner gone?" A voice echoes from inside the lonely old shack. A man of about 60 years of age hunts his workbench for his missing tool. He pauses to scratch his head, and looks once around the room. Finding nothing of his prized spanner, he shifts aside papers containing blueprints, measurements, calculations and sketches. He taps one finger on his ear lobe in thought, before stooping to check underneath.
"I must have that spanner! It must be here- I have to fix his arm a bit more..." He mutters to himself.
On the workbench, sits a beautiful robot made of fine gold metal. Gepetto had fashioned the Gabriel of automatons into a little boy. His blue eyes, fashioned from lights, stare at the wall. He lies limp, and his right arm hangs dangerously loose, where the old man had been tweaking it after an error in size.
For you see, Gepetto longed to be a father. He had been popular with the ladies in his youth, and he even found one he fell in love with, and her name was Natalie. The two had been engaged, but, in a twist of tragedy, she died of pneumonia as a nurse across in France. Heartbroken, he had never considered marrying again. Now, he was busy crafting a little companion to keep himself from getting lonely, even if he couldn't talk. But, looking back on that night, cold and bitter as it was, it was one of those nights I observed that there was a sense of warmth in the house.
Who am I, might you ask? My name is Crick, and I am a toy. I am alive- or at the very least, I can move my limbs without the need for winding.
Forty years ago, Gepetto created me as one of his earliest projects- a clockwork cricket. I was the only success in the first batch of five clockwork toys he created, and I have lived here for many years since.
He may have created me, but the Blue Fairy, the Patron Saint of Inventors, granted me the ability to live on every night there is a blue moon with no winding of my key needed. This reason I shall delve into later, for this is not my place to tell it.
But tonight, the blue moon and a wishing star are to be adjacent very soon.