Page 7

The Jewel World

By the banks of the crystal stream, Merkeeta, Katya and Kicker cheerfully make golden shell jewelry while JenJen in the background fishes out golden shells. The Emerald Queen spies on them in the background.

They girls kept walking until they came to an aquamarine stream. This lovely blue stream flowed over smooth silvery gray rocks. When the girls looked into the water, they saw fish with bubbles coming from their mouths. The bubbles floated up to the surface as air and fell back down to the bottom of the stream as diamonds. Golden shells were all over the bottom of the stream.

Merkeeta wanted one of them and reached into the water. Her hand entered the quartz water, slowed down for a second, then kept reaching down to the bottom of the stream. She was able to grab a gold shell and pull it out.

"Look at this," she exclaimed. "It's gold. Solid gold! I want to make earrings."

She held the perfect gold shell up to her ear. As soon as Merkeeta said she wanted to make earrings, gold wire appeared. Rainbow seemed to be a world where words created things. Merkeeta reached into the water again and pulled out a second shell which matched the first one.

"Earrings!" all the girls exclaimed, and soon they were quite busy gathering gold shells from the river bed. Merkeeta and Katya made earrings for themselves. Kicker and JenJen made necklaces and charm bracelets out of their gold shells.

In the distance, behind a tree, a lady in a long green gown stood watching them in silence. The girls were so busy with making their golden shell jewelry, they didn't even notice her there.

At that moment, the quiet lady in green approached the noisy, chattering girls. They looked up with amazement to see such a beautiful and dreamy lady. She was dressed all in green and covered in jewels.

The lady was an opossum with darkly shadowed eyes, a pale face and a long, delicate nose. She wore six gold bracelets on her arms, an emerald necklace, emerald earrings, and a large emerald ring on her finger.

Kicker excitedly held out her golden necklace so the lady in green could see it too.