One does not trifle with love

Create a new plot around the character of Pinocchio. He can become somewhat different: a thief, arrogant, an impostor, clumsy, unlucky, fearless... In any case, he remains a wooden puppet. He can evolve throughout your story and undergo transformation. He continues to lie, and his nose grows longer each time. Your short story should not exceed 6000 characters, including spaces.

Pinocchio was only three years old when he was taken from his mother's arms and handed over to the child protective services. He remembered very little of the indifferent yet resigned look on her face, even less of the signature she placed on the adoption paperwork. He spent over five years in La Ciuciarella, a maze of walls and corridors filled with parentless puppets. Some were worn down by time, while others, like him, were still under warranty, with a possible future ahead. All it took was to make oneself lovable; that was the contract one had to make with life to avoid being forgotten.

It was on a winter day, when he had stopped hoping, that Pinocchio met Geppetto. Accompanied by the center's director, the old man, with a crumpled hat over his chest, timidly introduced himself as his guardian, seeking approval. Pinocchio didn't take long to decide his fate. He jumped out of his bed and grabbed his adoptive father's hand without hesitation. With the tips of his wooden fingers, he held the beginnings of what he thought was unconditional love.

Summer was coming to an end, and Geppetto was happy. In this small Corsican village surrounded by mountains, his little boy was growing rapidly, and the old stone house finally echoed with slamming doors as he had long wished for. He thanked the Lord once again and inquired about Pinocchio, whom he had sent to fill the water jug. He searched for him along the narrow streets bordering the fountain square and began to worry as night fell. No one seemed to have seen him, and he experienced his first paternal anxieties.

It was nearly ten o'clock when the prodigal son returned and, with disconcerting naturalness, detailed his kidnapping by local separatists. He boasted of having escaped from them, and as he recounted how he had knocked out the strongest one with a single kick, a sudden pain forced him to stop. His wooden nose had extended like a telescope and nearly touched the old man's forehead as he sat there, a dejected expression in his eyes. It was bound to happen sooner or later. His angel was lying to him, and the lengthening of his nose was irrefutable proof, quietly confirmed by the director of the orphanage. Despite Geppetto's reassurances of his love, Pinocchio, as if enchanted, sank into total denial and, from that day on, lived in perpetual falsehood.

Years passed, and Geppetto accepted with a certain fatalism his son's repeated fabrications but couldn't prevent the source of his love from drying up. With a bitter feeling of failure, he placed him in a small studio in Ajaccio, his high school diploma in hand and lies in his eyes. At seventy-five, it was time to pass the torch.

Pinocchio, on the other hand, was not alarmed by this change of fate. Charismatic and quite charming, he had mastered the art of using his charms and deceits to achieve his goal. He would not be orphaned of love for long! After a first day of wandering aimlessly, he entered the Bar des Sanguinaires, just a stone's throw from his place, and set out to meet his next victim. She didn't take long to find. Livia, a pretty brunette from Bastia, still shaken by her father's recent death, was an easy choice. Finding a willing ear, she generously shared her sorrows, and it was only natural, between sobs, that Pinocchio took her hand and gazed into her still moist eyes. Lover or father, he didn't care. She would know how to love him. Over time, Livia didn't worry about her lover's nose extensions. According to him, they were proportional to his desire, irrefutable proof of growing love. The more outrageous the lie, the more the illusion of love enveloped the beloved, whose heart, swollen with desire, radiated an even greater passion. Unfortunately, this love truce did not last. Pinocchio then multiplied his conquests, but to no avail. Just like paternal love, a woman's love seemed unable to fill the void. A psychologist might have attributed it to the remnants of abandonment and the irreplaceable absence of a mother's affection.

And then, unexpectedly, there was Marie. Marie, whose sensitivity calmed even the most troubled souls. Marie, whose gentleness soothed the deepest wounds. With long, blond hair caressing his turmoil, her tender gaze radiated compassion. For the first time, Pinocchio felt his wooden heart beating to the rhythm of passion, his skin tingling as if in a perpetual breeze. His whole being, dizzy, which he interpreted as the promise of eternal happiness. There was no need to lie anymore; she would be his queen on Earth.

The story could have ended on this vibrant note of a love anthem, but unfortunately, our Don Juan's reputation had preceded him. There was not a neighborhood in the city that did not echo with the story of his famous telescopic nose, the weathervane of his amorous emotions. Marie was undoubtedly the most beautiful, but she had ears like everyone else, and after the whirlwind of the first few days, she regained her composure and became rather perplexed by her lover, whose passionate declarations did not make his nose grow. She even thought she saw it shrink when, on his knees, hands clasped towards his face, now bearing a disappointed expression, Pinocchio begged her to believe him sincerely. Marie almost pitied this puppet, a hostage to his nose, entangled in the strings of his lies. She placed a final kiss on his wooden cheek and affectionately whispered to him never to lie again in the future.