In the middle of the South-Western Etunian Ocean,  there is an  island called Ismea, and on that island there is a kingdom called Rocley. (There are two other kingdoms in Ismea but they're not in this story.)

*A shorg is kind of like a cross between a goat, a camel, and a highland cow.

In Rocley, there were three friends: Byron, a shorg*, Ringla, a goblin, and Sooty, a cat.

They lived together in a treehouse in the magical forest.

                                  The crystal   

 Let's go catch some fish, mooed Byron. (It actually sounded like this: "Moooobahen!" but Ringla and Sooty understand Shorta, the language of Shorgs.).

So they walked down to the creek  to catch some fish.

When they were walking back to their treehouse, Sooty saw something shiny inside a log. Look! A crystal! he meowed.* The  evening sunlight reflected off the pink and green crystal, "I wonder what type of crystal it is?" said Ringla, "Let's take it back to the treehouse to find out."**                   

                                   * * *

When they had found the treehouse a week ago, it was a disaster. Books were scattered all over the floor and bits of the floor had rotted away. The past week had been mainly spent fixing the bits of the treehouse  that

*Ringla and Sooty understand cat speak

** Obviously, Sooty and Byron  understand Goblinese!

    had rotten away and cleaning up the books. So, when they were sorting through the books, they had found quite a few books about plants and rocks, suggesting that the previous resident of the treehouse was some sort of scientist.

 Before they found the treehouse, Ringla had lived in the village of Knurp with her parents and her cat, Sooty. One day a gang of bandits, led by Snake and his brother, Hyena*: the most wanted villians in Rocley, attacked Knurp and burnt it down. Ringla and Sooty escaped by riding on Byron, one of the shorgs. 

* Their parents weren't very good at coming up with names

                              * * *

Ringla searched for a book about crystals. Plants of Southern Avar. No.  The Big Book of Algae. No.  The Legend of The Sitting Goat. No. The Updated Guide to Interesting Crystals. Yes!

Ringla took the book to the table to read it and Sooty climbed  on to the piano and started hitting the keys. "Ching! Dong! Chong!"

Ringla read through the book but she couldn't find anything about the crystal they had found.

She looked out the window and saw that the moon was high in the sky. Sooty was sleeping under the piano.

                  Somewhere nearby...

Two cloaked figures crept through the forest.

"Where is it?!" said one of them, impatiently.

"Jussst wait, we are ssso clossse I can sssmell it!" said the second one. 

 "But you said that yesterday!"

"Yessss but then it moved!"

" 'It moved!' What do you 

mean, 'It moved!' How can a crystal move?!" 

"I don't know! Sssssomeone probably picked it up!"

"What do you mean someone picked it- look, Ekans!"

"What isss it Aneyh?" 

"There's a tree house!"

"That'sss where the crysstal issss!"

" Sshhh! There's someone inside," whispered Aneyh. "There's no way we can get it without them waking up!"

"We sssshall wait until they go for a ssssstroll, then we sssshall ssssteal the crysssstal!" exclaimed Ekans excitedly.

                                  * * *

The next day Ringla, Byron, and Sooty decided to walk 

 to the apple orchard to get some apples. "Then we can try to find out more about the crystal" said Ringla.

So they walked along the rocky track that led to the orchard. After a bit of walking they arrived at the orchard, which consisted of five trees covered in ripe red apples, and started picking some apples. After they had around half a bucket of apples, Sooty saw two cloaked figures walking in the distance. Look strangers! He meowed as he waved his paw in the direction of the strangers.  That's strange, thought Ringla.

                                          * * *

Back at the treehouse, Ringla looked for more information about the crystal. She read through nearly every book about rocks and found nothing. She was about to give up when she saw a book called:

The Guide to Magical  Artifacts and Crystals in Ismea.

Ringla picked up the book and looked through it.

The book said about all sorts of things.  It mentioned a sword that could shoot out lightning,  a pigeon feather that could summon snails from another dimension...

and a pink and green crystal that could do nearly anything! Ringla looked at the picture of the crystal, it looked exactly like the crystal they had found the day before! The wishing crystal  is safely locked away in the village of Knurp,  where it has been safe for hundreds  of  years. Ringla  continued  reading: If it  falls into the wrong hands the consequences would be catastrophic.

                                     * * *

"Where could it have gone?" wondered Ringla, the crystal had gone missing and they couldn't find it. 

Look! Footprints! mooed Byron.  

From the strangers! meowed Sooty.   

Ringla remembered what the book had said. "We have to stop them!...But how?"  She grabbed the book and turned to the page about the crystal and started reading: To activate the wishing crystal  it must be taken to its original  home, The Temple of Wishes, in The Uranium Jungle. The crystal was originally kept on a platform, where people would pay to have their wishes granted by the crystal. It worked out well... until people started getting greedy. One day the temple guardians decided the 

crystal was too dangerous. So they took the crystal as far as they could, to the village of Knurp. 

That's why the Bandits attacked! They wanted the crystal!  realised Ringla. But how come they didn't find it?  Someone else must have escaped from the fire with the crystal and hid it in the log!

                                      The Desert

The next day the three adventurers began their journey to the jungle. They had mapped out the most direct route on the map: they would travel through the desert, over the mountains and into the jungle. Ringla guessed   that the thieves would go around the desert

and through the plains, which was the easiest route but took longer, which was why they were going straight through the desert.

After a few hours of walking, they reached the hot and sandy desert. They had brought a copper pot full of enough water to last a week, which was how long it should take to cross the desert. The map said that on the other side of the desert there was a stream, so they could get some more water there. Because Byron was part camel, he could hold water in his back, so before they left, Byron had a big drink of water. 

They travelled in the night, when it was the coolest, and slept in the day, when it was the hottest.

Night                                                                       Day

After six days of traveling in the cold nights and sleeping in the hot days, they ran out of water!

The three thirsty travellers continued walking through the sandy desert, looking for water as they went. Byron found some water in a tree hollow, and Ringla found some cactus fruit. In the morning, they gathered sticks for a fire to burn the spikes off the fruit.

                                        The Mountains 

 The Jamayan Ranges loomed in the distance, the mountains casting a shadow over the desert.

"Look," said Ringla "I can see the mountains!"

But how are we going to climb them?  mooed Byron. There's blackberry bushes at the bottom!   Ringla and Sooty looked at the base of the mountains, and sure enough, there was an impenetrable wall of prickly blackberry bushes around the base of the mountains. 

"How are we going to get past?" asked Ringla.

Sooty picked up the end of some rope they had packed.

We could tie the rope to a stick at one end and tie the other end in a knot and lasso it around a tree at the other end. He meowed.

But I wouldn't be able to balance on the rope! mooed Byron. 

What about... this! Sooty pulled a knife out of the bag. We could cut the bushes up!

So they cut a tunnel through the blackberry bushes and began the steep ascent. After a few hours of climbing, they got to the top of the mountain. The view was amazing! They could see the tops of the trees in the jungle far below. In the distance, they could see buildings of different cities. "You can see everything 

 from up here-" Ringla started to say.

"Moooooooooooooooo!" Byron was sliding down the mountain! Ringla and Sooty started running after him but then they fell down the mountain as well!

"Aaaaaagggggghhhhhhhhh!"

"Meeeeeoooooooooow!"

They fell for a few minutes until they reached the bottom of the mountain. "Well, at least that was quicker than walking!"

                                          The Jungle

Byron, Ringla, and Sooty looked around at all the strange  plants in the jungle: there were magnificent  trees with purple leaves and golden bark, gigantic yellow flowers the size of a house, and trees that looked like weeping willows except the branches were pointing upwards and the leaves were blue and red* . As they walked through the Jungle they didn't notice the Slith** slithering behind them!

*more like a smiling willow.

** A slith is half wolf half komodo dragon.