"You brought a hamster here," Sunshine said flatly and the creature twitched his whiskers as if he knew he was being discussed all of a sudden. The twins meanwhile continued to make obeisance to him. He blinked and looked around for some more substantial fare and was rewarded with a seed biscuit from Sharshua's snackpak stash.

"Hamlit looks very sacred, don't you think?" Divvy said.

"Miracles are on the very tips his claws," Fizzy insisted hopefully.

"He'll love Ragadoon," the Greetiyah girl continued with growing sarcasm. "It never rains, there's no vegetation and it gets really, really hot by noon. I hope we don't end up leaving his little bones to whiten in the sand, like these poor creatures around us."

"This place is not completely devoid of life," Princess Rapture said. "For else where did the sign come from, with its kind admonishment of minding the bones?"

"I do remember something in my early schooling on Greetiyah history that this once was a pleasant enough place to live. Sharshua mentioned a well may have poured out its waters here, but now it is dried up. There were other wells too, that's right!" and she became animated as legends from her country's past jumped out at her from the cupboards of memory where they had lain concealed, perhaps from when she was but a tiny child on her mother's storytelling lap. "The climate got hotter and the land became parched, turned to desert, with only a few places left. The Pilgrimage of Five Wells. That became the local name, a tradition following on."

"Looks like there's only four now," Bubbles observed, edging towards a shoulder bone for she was itching for a bit more dune surfing with the twins. They though were trying to get Hamlit to perform a water divining miracle with little success. He only wanted to consume not produce water. Not yet anyway.

Sunshine wasn't listening. She was lost in a world of memory searching, nursery jingles and old folk lore.

"First you meet the Buzzy Sands, then Birdless Towers in but three hours," she intoned in a dreamy voice. "Terrified are Forests wide, with Picture Folk soon at your side, until you come to Shadows Deep where timid souls at night do creep." Sunshine looked around her at the shaded depths of the sunken space glowing with luminous bones of countless timid creatures. Her eyes were wide and she trembled a little. "We are here," she whispered and the faintest of echoes answered her in the affirmative.

"Shadows Deep," Rappy created her own echo.

"We are at the end of a pilgimage, not the beginning," Sharshua added her own take on the matter. "This is perhaps portentious?"

"It was a cycle," Sunshine said with a frown. "The few remaining tribes would wander from place to place replenishing their supplies of water and foodstuff. They still do, somehow, so it is said."

Like all places that once were flourishing in peace and plenty the memory of happier times lingered long after all that made it great had faded. So Sunshine had learnt of rhymes and stories of legendary days and the province of Ragadoon was a notable subject for such tales.

Now it was a barren desert land with but a fraction of the population it once had. Hardy tribes of nomads clung on to their ancestral territories with stubborn determination, yet their numbers dwindled from year to year so that the place took on an abandoned air, solitary and devoid of all life.

The sign at Shadows Deep may for all the girls knew have been written a hundred years ago and they were the first visitors there in a very long while.

"It would be an interesting thought perhaps to perform this legendary journey," Princess Rapture suggested, "make our own Pilgrimage of the Five Wells."

"Hamlit would appreciate that," the twins insisted, taking up the idea. "He could bless each place in turn to ensure a plentiful water supply for everyone. Tourist shops might be opened and souvenirs provided. Hamlit tee-shirts would become a must have accessory."

"Getting ahead of ourselves," Bubbles laughed.

"Is it possible? To travel like that. Ragadoon is two hundred miles wide and the circuit a long one. The tribes walked to each in turn, usually at night, and it would take many days."

"Hire a taxi," Bubbles yawned.

"The Life Whorl can shorten the distances," Sharshua stated with a knowing smile. "Where would be next on our sacred itinerary?" and she held out the complex device that gave her world spanning power.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"The Picture Folk and Terrified Forests are quite close together so we can visit both at once," Sunshine replied, growing excitement evident in her demeanour. "This is a noble quest and a story to tell my brothers when we have completed it and then shopped at the Palmistra Trinket Mall."

"Picture Folk?"

"You'll see."

"Trinket Mall?"

"You'll see."

Sunshine explained the journey would consist of a trek across open sand for fifty miles if they were to attempt it the traditional way, but once Hamlit was settled in his basket and the luggage gathered, Sharshua zapped the Flare Girls to the desired location in an instant.

It was a larger series of rocky pinnacles that met their gaze when they arrived on an open patch of flat desert covered in coloured boulders that scattered off to the empty horizon. Their luggage followed them like a faithful bundle of pets. Here again were shady gorges and cave hollows, withered palm trees and faint signs of former occupation. A few walls lay in crumbled heaps, merely hinting at boundary lines.

"I guess this one's dried up too," Bubbles put into words what was on everyone's mind.

"Well," Sunshine said with forced merriment, "it's the Picture Folk we've come to see," and she studied the tracks in and around the rocks until one particular beaten path took her fancy. "Follow me. I think this is it."

The girls wandered into the crevices and dark gorges of red sandstone striped with ochre and umber and other paint box shades, enjoying the exotic geology of this legendary land.

"No bones at least," Rappy sighed. Then she turned a corner, looked up and there they were. The Picture Folk.

Sunshine stood before the countless paintings that festooned every bit of the rocky surfaces that made up each side ot the gorge they were passing through. She raised her hands, pointing at the images on display.

"Here you see an early tribe of stick people with a flock of three legged animals. Imagine, these people were alive thousands of years ago, going about their daily business, not knowing they were to be immortalised upon the timeless sandstones of Ragadoon for their descendents to admire," Sunshine said, indicating figures daubed in ochre paint upon the rock face.

"What happened to the three legged animals?" Fizzy asked.

"They evolved through the magic of realism into the four legged beasts we see today. Also we were blessed with hair in later generations," and she fondly caressed her thick black curls.

Other strange paintings adorned the natural walls in the gorge complex, some in garish colours still bright after so many years.

"Look! There's an ancestor of Bubbles," Divvy noted, a redhaired creature of indistinct species having been portrayed cavorting in a circle of smaller figures like some demonic goddess. "The Bannatyne tribe passed through here some time in the past." The girls sniggered at this thought.

"Is that a flitter?" Bubbles said to deflect their attention.

"Where? Oh, possibly," and Sunshine frowned at the incongruous thing the Frangea girl had cunningly pointed out. Perhaps, she thought, primitive peoples had witnessed visitors from the skies and tried to convey these air chariots as best they could, resulting in a remarkable likeness to the rotor fliers of the modern world. Something like a bicycle in an adjacent grouping made her squint.

"Oh, I smudged it," came a wail from Fizzy just then and horror lit Sunshine's face as she rushed over to where a small legless furry animal had been painted, perhaps thousands of years ago. "It looked so like Hamlit I just wanted to touch the cute little thing," and she showed the yellowish paint on her finger.

"It's still wet?"

Sunshine wandered about the gorge silently a moment, listening. Then she was drawn to the humming sound of a human voice somewhere among the purple shadows. Eventually she came across a squat figure sat upon a stool with a box of paints by his elbow. A great turban hid his face as he busily stroked pigments on a wall, then with a fat brush deftly teased out a stick figure that looked like an early Greetiyalah tribesman.

"What are you doing?" she asked coldly.

"Nothing," the man said, standing abruptly so that his paint box slammed shut and his brush disappeared behind his back in a guilty gesture. He sported a dark bushy beard and eyebrows that seemed to sneak under his turban as he saw a number of young ladies suddenly gathered around him.

"You were painting pictures," Divvy accused. "Are you so old they all forgot you and left you behind?" she added this unlikely scenario.

"Sorry, I spoilt your hamster," Fizzy added. "Might need a retouch."

"That's it," the man said, seizing upon the idea. He scratched his beard and eliciting a grin that displayed colourful teeth. "Just doing a bit of retouching is all, keeping these sacred and very ancient paintings fresh so's people like you misses can come view them. No point if they've faded or been washed away by rain, whatever that is."

"That's very commendable," Sunshine felt obliged to say, not knowing quite what to make of this encounter. "Keep up the good work," and she marched off down the narrow path, stumbling only slightly on the loose rubble as she went, cheeks red with embarrassment.

"Remember," one of the twins said brightly, "hamsters are sacred in Ragadoon," and she pointed at Hamlit in his basket.

The man made no reply to this but watched the girls disappear, not quite understanding what they said, but a thought came to him. Thus he opened his box, marked a particularly nice untouched spot of wall and chose some yellow paint, then some pink paint, and a little bit of sky blue, as he began a new legend of strange visitations to the ancient lands of Greetiyah that might have happened in the dim and distant past.

Then when he was done he packed up his paints and brushes, shouldered a large rucksack that was his home from home and briskly followed after the visitors. They were obviously rich and must surely need the services of a guide in this harsh and dangerous land. The more dangerous, the higher his services might cost.