"One night a terrible storm surged across the land," Pickkl said in a storytelling voice, hands waving dramatically between bites of chewbars provided by Sharshua, for everyone was at lunch amid the truncated trunks. "First the leaves were torn from every twig, then the twigs themselves broke off and disappeared into the night." He paused for effect.

"Did the branches go next?" someone asked.

"Branches large and small. The very bark was peeled off and only the stumps remained. It was a terrible disaster from which the beautiful forest, once full of life and birdsong, never recovered. A terrifying night and all the trees died of fright," the guide concluded with a nod that said such a fate was inevitable.

Everyone was sat in a circle having lunch with Sunshine's banner waving in their midst.

"I fear," Sharshua said quietly as if the fate of the trees frightened her too, "these are fossilised trees, perhaps having been thus a million years or so."

"Who can remember back that far?" the man dismissed the observation with a contemptuous shrug.

"A storm perhaps indeed occurred," the Octora girl hastily agreed. "Scouring the sands from this buried relic of a distant past, bringing it to light. At the same time it choked the well," for of course the spring that made this one of the Five Sacred Wells was nowhere to be seen.

"The Roaming Figitiyah are having a hard time of it," Bubbles noted, chewing on her own noontime snack. "Everywhere they go, the place is as dry as a bone."

"Mind the bones!" the twins inevitably shouted.

"This is why we have brought Hamlit," Divvy added amid a chorus of groans from the other girls. "He is a walking, talking miracle worker and will bring floods of water to this parched land. Behold," and she let the creature scurry around her legs in search of crumbs from the pastry she had been eating.

"Except of course," Fizzy felt obliged to add for the sake of accuracy, "he doesn't talk."

"What is it with this verminous little rodent thing you keep petting?" Pickkl said, eyeing the creature with a wrinkled expression of disgust. "It can do nothing to save my people."

"On the contrary, o man, sir," Divvy contradicted with a failed attempt at Greetiyah speech. "You are in the presence of the Sacred Hamster of Ragadoon."

"All my life I've never heard such a thing," came the response from the disbeliever. "Time for a nap," and with that he stretched himself out on the hot sand with his rucksack as a pillow and a sheet covering him like a shroud.

"Tempted to leave him here," Sunshine muttered as she tossed some stone bark over among the tree stumps so that it clattered in the breezy silence.

"Heard that," the man muttered back.

"Leave him to his rest a moment," Princess Rapture kindly said as she watched Sharshua tempt Hamlit with a boiled sweet which she tossed into the sand so the creature pounced upon it in a flurry of dusty particles. "It is the Birdless Towers next, I believe. Is this far?"

"Fifty miles," the sleeping man muttered dreamily for it appeared he could work and rest simultaneously, a useful talent. "That way," and a grubby toe appeared from the soiled sheet and pointed off to a dune-crested horizon glowing in the bright sunshine.

"Thanks for telling us. Now we know we can be on our way. Your services are duly dispensed with. Goodbye," and Sunshine reached for her banner.

"Or is it that way?" and the toe swung its chipped and blackened nail off in another direction at least ninety degrees more. "Or," a thirty degree return twist, "over there?"

"Sharshua, my dear friend and dorm mate," Sunshine said through gritted teeth, "what does your locator map say?"

"There are three named places on the map within fifty miles of our current location, none suggesting towers devoid of birds," she replied. "It must be a local Figitiyah name."

The man sat up suddenly on hearing this.

"Is one of the locations called the Depthless Spring of Crystal Waters Sweet with Honeydew?" he asked hopefully.

"Unfortunately no. Darnit, Feebliyah and Hunh, are the recorded names on official maps."

"Never heard of them," and he slowly resumed a prone position again, having briefly resembled a corpse suddenly imbued with life only to have its hopes of a second outing dashed again before he could break into a song and dance of joy as happens in all the best horror movies.

"Well we can check all three if you are unwilling to continue," Sunshine pointed out.

"How is this possible? Are you magical desert sprites who can flit from place to place in the blink of an eye with a grain of sand in it?"

"Yes," Bubbles said in forthright tones. "Which shall we try first Sharshua? Darnit?"

"No need to be rude," the twins recited on cue.

"Wait a moment," the corpse protested, fully animated now. "If we begin walking now, briskly, we could be at the Birdless Towers by sundown. This I promise o generous maidens, guardians of small furry rodents, respecters of bones, and world renowned travellers."

"I do not think I would like to walk fifty miles briskly," Rappy stated. "Let us gather our luggage and this kind gentleman can point the way."

Everyone but Pickkl understood her meaning so that in no time they were ready. Even Hamlit squeaked in anticipation from his wicker abode.

"Well, o man," Sunshine said, standing proud with her banner fluttering noisily. "Toe us the way," and the twins sniggered.

"It is-" and in a flash they were gone.

"-that way. Hunh?"

Pickkl found himself staring at the wall of a roofless house that had not been there a moment ago.

"This is Feebliyah, not Hunh, may I say," Sharshua dared to correct the obviously confused man. "Based on your gesture."

He was not listening. Instead he knelt in the sand, tossing handfuls of it in the air and wailing miserably.

"I am cursed, I am cursed," he repeated between wailings. "Demons have seized me and carried me off. I will never see my favourite goat again."

"Or paint three legged animals on sacred walls," Sunshine pointed out without sympathy for his distress.

"I am sorry, so sorry. I promise never to desecrate the Picture Folk again, or arrange the bones in Shadow Deeps to make funny animals of."

"What?"

"Or make jokes about such a silly name as Feebliyah. Sorry I didn't mean that. It's a nice name really."

"Perhaps we should not have zapped him?" Bubbles said, a little worried at such ravings.

"He'll get over it. After all, he appeared familiar with flitters, bicycles and strange people with red hair," Sunshine observed tartly. "Snap out of it, o man, we're at the Birdless Towers now. Only I don't see any towers. What gives?"

The location might best be described as a landslide meeting an earthquake during a direct meteor strike.

"Some natural disaster has hit this place also," Sharshua admitted, surveying the cracked rocks and ruined fragments of buildings. Two walls were standing only, others had fallen into the riven ground in heaps of rubble and most curiously amid all this devastation a washing line devoid of washing except for what might be an odd sock straddled a dark crevice that released noxious fumes noisily.

"This was once a settlement of some note," Pickkl said, picking himself off the ground once he realised no one was noticing his tantrum of despair anymore. "Then there was a meteor strike some miles away that caused an earthquake resulting in a hill collapsing in a great landslide that destroyed the place."

"Thought so," Sunshine said grimly. "And Birdless Towers?"

"Oh, someone used to keep homing pigeons in a series of tall dovecotes." Pickkl paused and laughed quietly as if enjoying a private joke. "Every time he sent them out," he chortled, "they never came back," and he wiped his eyes, such was the depth of his mirth.

"I guess you had to be there," Bubbles summed up the matter straightfaced. The twins, to give them credit, did snigger a little.

"Somewhere under all this induced volcanic activity a well once existed," Sharshua concluded scientifically, consulting her tablet as she twisted it this way and that. "Feebliyah is a disaster zone best avoided."

"How can we?" Pickkl moaned. "It lies upon the path of our sacred pilgrimage. It might smell of bad eggs but it is all we have. That and the Buzzy Sands."

"Fizzy Sands!" a certain twin misheard with interest.

"It is the fifth and final well on the pilgrim's way," Sunshine explained. "And the sooner we get there the better. I yearn for malls and civilisation, in that order."

(Sorry but that's all for here folks! Looks like the pilgrimage is a washout, or dry out or something. Will the twins ever find worshippers for their furry friend among the desert wastes? Will tribal hordes sweep them away, fill their cooking pot with said furry friend, and leave their bones unminded bleaching in the sun? Will any shopping get done? Find out in the gritty conclusion to 'The Sacred Hamster of Ragadoon' available in e-book form at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and all the other excellent online retailers. Shop around for a competitive price!)