The Adventures of Three

This story was created entirely by -Sufferinq. It is a fictional story, obviously. It probably won't get much attention, but that's alright.

Chapter One: Things Happen to Those Who Overplay Minecraft
   Kiralie woke up to the sound of her Echo Dot. It was making a sound like an alarm clock, signaling her to wake up. She shifted around in bed, not wanting to toss off the cover. She was still tired, and even though she herself had set the alarm, she refused to get up to it. At least, until it got louder and louder and she had to get up and stop it.

Kiralie groaned as she sat up, wiped her eyes, and got off the bed. She murmured, “Echo, stop.” The small robot didn’t hear her, and the alarm got louder and louder. Kiralie groaned. “ECHO.” The machine made a low blooping noise and a blue light came on, flashing in her direction, meaning the machine heard its name. “STOP.” Kiralie said, squeezing her eyes shut.

These were the key words to get the machine to cease its annoying trilling. She was glad that technology existed, but she would never get used to this every day. Her mom could turn it off on the weekends, but she chose not to. Either this was because she was too lazy, she forgot, or she thought it was funny to break her kids’ eardrums by blaring an alarm. Kiralie couldn’t cancel the alarms herself, though sometimes she desperately wanted to after forgetting the following day would be part of the weekend.

She got dressed in a thin, blue hood with white stripes down the side. Then she put on a pair of faded jeans and socks, then some white tennis shoes. She pulled the hood over her head. It had wolf ears. She loved that hood so much that she never brought it to school for fear of it being stolen.

Kiralie loved wolves. So did her best friends, Layla and Kasey. They all talked about them at recess sometimes, but only for funny reasons. They never really spouted facts.

She thought back to when she and her friends had met. It was in fourth grade, when she’d moved to the school of Burton and met her best friends, Kasey and Layla. They were all friends on day three.

Apart, their humorous powers were sized down. But together... they could do anything that was funny-ish and full of humor!

But summer break was dividing the friends. Kiralie didn’t know Kasey’s address, nor did Layla. Kiralie kept forgetting to ask him what his address was, and remembered it just then. She pulled out her school iPad, then thought better of it. She had her own iPad.

Kiralie’s thoughts were disturbed as she heard three sets of footsteps pounding up the stairs. She knew instinctively who it was as she heard giggling and tussling about going on on the staircase.

“Stay out!” Kiralie ran over to lock the door, then settled back onto her bed. She kicked a blanket off her bed out of anger.

“Can we use your Kindle?” came the ignorant reply. It was Kiralie’s eight-year-old sister, Kimara.

“No,” Kiralie snapped. “Go use your own Kindle.”

“But it’s deeead!” whined Kimara.

“I don’t care.” Kiralie replied.

She’d just wanted some time alone in her room to call Kasey and Layla on Teams. She had a lot to tell them about.

Over the summer, she’d bought a parakeet. She’d named him Pea. He was green, with a yellow head. His gaze was amber and mischievous. He tended to poop on her hands and fly up to the ceiling fan, trilling sweetly and shrilly. He especially liked to do this when the fan was on, though this worried Kiralie.

He loved to eat seeds and nuts, and, when he was in his cage, chirped impatiently, waiting to get out.

Pea’s favorite place was on the table. He found crumbs and liked the feel of the surface under his yellowish talons.

She’d also adopted a cat named Squirt. She was a black cat with unusual, startling golden eyes. She was full grown, and she looked like a walking puffball. Kiralie had made a mental note to give Squirt a haircut, but she kept forgetting to do it.

Strangely, she and Pea got along. Squirt would sit on the table, flicking her tail. Pea would sit tranquilly at her paws, squeaking, “Ka-kreeee-aah!” Some of these times, such as when Squirt was agitated after a trip to the dentist, made Kiralie worry that she would kill Pea out of her anger. But instead, Squirt petted Pea’s head, like he was her own little therapy animal!

Though she was still unsure why her pets were such great friends, she was glad they were. She would have been so sad if they were to attack each other.

During the weekend, she’d got a watch that could record videos, call people, and take photos. It could do some other things, too, but she hadn’t explored it all yet. She’d been given it by her grandmother as a late birthday present, and Kiralie had thanked her profusely.

She pulled out the iPad she had been given for Christmas and went to the Teams app. She started a call with Kasey and Layla.

Layla answered immediately. She was punctual like that.

“Hi, Kiralie.” she said.

“Hello, Layla.”

“Where’s Kasey?” as Layla asked, Kiralie looked at the black part of the screen where his profile picture was.

His picture was a wolf, of course. A blue and purple one, with a shining pelt.

As she daydreamed about dancing white wolves among the stars, Kiralie was startled to hear Kasey’s voice. It seemed he had answered the call while she was distracted.

“Why’d you call me?” Kasey’s basketball jersey on top of a red t-shirt looked lazy and slob-like compared to Layla’s tight yellow leggings and white knee-high dress.

“I just wanted to say hello,” Kiralie replied, at the exact same time that Layla answered, “Kiralie called us.”

Kasey blinked. He looked tired. Kiralie couldn’t help but giggle at how messy his hair looked. It was like a bird’s nest!

For a while they talked about life and made jokes. At one point, Kasey said “I have so many pets, I don’t know what to do.”

Kiralie couldn’t help but say, “Kasey, old woman, lived in a shoe, she had so many pets, she didn’t know what to do.”

They laughed and remained silent for a while.

Then Layla had to leave. She and Marcus were going to the store with her mom.

As they said their farewells, Kasey showed Kiralie a few funny iMovie trailers he’d made, like one about legs and one about characters he named “Joe”, “Don”, and “Ur Mom”.

After a little while, the conversation kind of fell apart, seeing as Kasey had to leave.

As she hung up, Kiralie thought about her new watch. It had a few apps on it, and it seemed she could go to the app store to get more.

She startled as she saw Minecraft Pocket Edition on the watch. Modern day technology truly had no limits.

She didn’t see how you could play Minecraft on a watch.

She installed the app, which took forever. She passed time by asking the Echo to play songs by Parry Gripp. Parry’s songs were- let's just say- impossible to fall asleep to.

What felt like twelve hours later, the watch beeped. Kiralie jumped.

Minecraft Pocket Edition downloading has finished.

  Launch program?

   

Kiralie clicked yes. She hadn’t played Minecraft for a while, and she supposed it was time to play again.

She chose Hard mode. The loading screen taking her into the world was stalling greatly and taking a very long time.

When she popped into the world, she was relieved to see the brown and green colors of the grassy landscape.

The controls were very tiny, and she found it difficult to control her character until she found she could swipe left and right to look left and right. She could also swipe forward to run forward and press the screen to jump.

Mining proved difficult as she had to double tap and hold the screen, but despite all the hardships, Kiralie had soon built a little dirt hut.

Night fell, and Kiralie was still outside hunting for wool. She needed to make a bed to get through the night quickly.

As she was searching for sheep, she heard a hissing sound behind her. She turned to see a green, four-legged creature flashing white.

The creeper blew up.

“No!” She hit respawn and dashed outside of her house. Then she realized something. Her items were far from home, on the explosion site. She doubted that if she went out to find them that she’d reclaim them.

Filled with frustration at the loss of her iron armor, Kiralie threw down her watch and folded her arms in frustration.

She heard a knock at the door and ran downstairs.

It was a man from the FedEx company, bringing in a package.

When he had gone, Kiralie was surprised to see that the package had her name on it!

She had never had a package that had been addressed to her! Quickly she ripped the label off the box and opened it up. She didn’t bother to see whom it was from.

She threw all the packing peanuts over her shoulder in all her excitement.

Squirt stalked over and played with the packing peanuts as Kiralie excitedly pulled another box from the package.

A Nintendo Switch!

She squealed and swung around before pausing to look at it. There was a sticky note attached to the damaged box. It seemed the switch had been preowned. Kiralie didn’t care as she took the actual Switch from the box it had been mailed in.

She decided to read the note. Maybe, since she’d ripped the label off the box, it would tell her who sent it.

Dear Kiralie,

''  This is the old Nintendo Switch that my family doesn’t use anymore. We have a new console, and each have a Nintendo Lite. I thought of you and asked my parents if I could give our old Nintendo to you.''

''  I hope you enjoy it. And I know you, so don’t overuse it!''

  -Audrey D.

 Kiralie wondered how Audrey didn’t overuse it.

She plugged the Switch into the wall to charge, as it was low on battery. Then she took the games out of the box.

Then she felt eyes staring at her from the back. She turned and saw her mom, maw open slightly.

“Hi, Mom.” Kiralie offered the story about how they got the Nintendo Switch. Her mom launched into a texting frenzy, thanking Kiralie’s cousin’s family profusely.

''I hope this wasn’t a cruel practical joke. What if Mom thinks I stole it?'' Kiralie thought, then shook her head. Audrey was honest and kind.

Kiralie ran back up to her room and played Minecraft Pocket Edition on her watch for an hour.

---

When she was finally satisfied in her large house, she turned off Minecraft Pocket Edition and checked the watch’s clock.

3:04 pm

 She went onto Teams again to call her friends. Layla didn’t pick up this time, but Kasey did.

“Do you know where Layla is?” Kiralie asked Kasey quickly as soon as he picked up.

“Layla is at my house.” He angled the camera so that Kiralie could see Layla in a chair adjacent to Kasey’s.

As before, they made some jokes and laughed, and then they had to hang up.

Kiralie realized that she’d spent an hour talking with her friends. She decided to play Minecraft yet again. It was so addicting!

Pretty soon, Kiralie had built a Nether Portal with stone in the edges. She decided to put fence all around it so no mobs could get into her house.

Then she went to prepare. She packed two sets of iron armor, three diamond swords, a bow and three stacks of arrows, and a fire resistance potion.

She only had one potion, seeing as she didn’t know how to brew. She’d just claimed it from killing a witch.

Before leaving, she splashed the potion on herself and put her armor on. She held her sword at the ready.

Then she jumped through.

For a minute, the tiny screen of the watch was clouded with purple mist, but she moved forward, and it cleared.

The Nether was breathtaking.

Behind her, a lava waterfall cascaded into a deep orange sea of the same substance below. A few ghasts hung around, crying out. Pigmen, holding their golden swords and grunting, wandered around on the Netherite floor.

And in front of her, the most beautiful block she’d ever seen shone bright white rays across the reddish walls and floors.

It was a simple block. It was neon white and almost blinding, even on a tiny screen.

Voices seemed to whisper from it, and tendrils of steam came off it.

Kiralie quickly crafted a pickaxe with a few extra iron ingots she’d brought in case of emergency.

She started to mine the block, and the whispers steadily got louder and louder.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a minute, then opened them. The block was almost mined up, and it had large cracks all over.

She gasped as she heard a sound of glass breaking. It felt as if she was being pulled on, every muscle shortening and squeezing together.

She screamed and shut her eyes tight. This didn’t feel very nice!

Then, her pain was eased, and her vision faded from red to black.

---

She woke up on some grass, gasping and blinking.

It was too much to take in.

She looked around her. This was the world of Minecraft.

She scrambled to her feet with a gasp. Immediately, she ran over to a tree and banged her head on it to clear her thoughts.

Her vision swam for a moment, but when it cleared, she was still in a very blocky world.

She didn’t know what to believe and wondered why she wasn’t waking up from the horrid dream.

Then she remembered what had happened. Grief, surprise and anger took her over as she remembered the block that she’d mined that had caused all of this.

Begrudgingly, she checked her inventory and... there the neon block was.

She was so angry to see the thing that had caused her to bang her head against a tree that she tossed it out of her inventory.

Pop!

The block appeared back in her inventory. She decided to check for other things in her inventory as well.

She did have a few things. She had a bird cage, a cat carrier, and her watch. She also had her iPad and a stone sword.

She called Layla and Kasey.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, “Please pick up.”

Chapter Two: My Friend Brought Me to An Alternate Dimension
Layla’s iPad was being called. It startled her out of petting her cat, Harvey. She checked to see who was calling and pressed the green answer call button. Kiralie’s voice immediately came onto the iPad, but, before Layla could say anything, she was whisked away into another dimension.

She started falling, and her vision swam.

“What’s happening?” she murmured as she fell, while the faint outline of life below started becoming clearer. She tried to adjust her body so the impact wouldn’t hurt as bad.

She tried to move her feet under herself and succeeded in doing so. Then she realized beyond her feet was the blue sky and a pixelated sun. Her now-square head then hit the ground, with a crack, and everything went black.

---

Layla woke up a couple hours later, her mind blank. She couldn’t remember what had happened and why she was in so much pain. Her vision was blurry, and she only had a half a heart left. She was lucky she survived.

The next thing she knew, everything came rushing back to her. She remembered falling through the air.

She jolted awake. Kasey had wandered over to her and was talking on the phone while crafting a furnace to cook some chicken he found. But he was crafting it wrong.

He was using diorite instead of cobblestone and his face was getting redder with every wrong try.

“Here,” said Layla, standing up. She immediately fell back down to the ground and Kasey came rushing over to help her.

They succeeded in getting Layla over to the crafting table, and she showed Kasey the right way to craft a furnace.

After he placed the furnace down, Kasey immediately got to work cooking the food, when he realized he didn’t have any fuel.

Layla was getting a kick out of the whole thing, Kasey wandering around, trying to find a tree, then trying to reach the topmost piece of wood.

His solution was to place the blocks he had mined, then after getting the wood, he got mad, realizing he now had to mine the blocks he had placed.

After a few minutes, he had all the fuel he needed and successfully cooked the chicken. He handed it to Layla, and she delightfully chomped down on the meat.

“Mmm,” she said to herself as she savored the delicious piece of chicken.

She was about to compliment Kasey on his cooking skills, when she realized all he had done was put the chicken and the wood into the furnace and it had done all the work for him.

She decided, mentally, the furnace was the better chef.

The sun started to set. Kasey had called Kiralie several times to find her, but his efforts were useless. Kiralie could be across the world.

Layla and Kasey had eaten, and Kasey was working on a shelter, made of any block he could find. He was currently working on a wood, stone, diorite, and dirt wall of the shelter, the second to last one.

He had found one piece of coal and made one torch, to light the shelter. Suddenly, it went dark. The sun had set behind the distant mountains, and mobs started to spawn left and right.

Layla and Kasey had already had an encounter with a Creeper, but this was much worse.

Zombies and spiders were everywhere. Kasey was battling a zombie with one hand and punching a skeleton with his other one, when a spider creeped up behind him.

Layla tried to yell out, but she was still weak. The spider lunged at Kasey’s forehead. Fangs pierced flesh, and Layla stood up, even though it consumed most of her energy.

She ran (or more accurately, hobbled) over to Kasey. They ran for the shelter, and they placed blocks as fast as they could. Only a few mobs got in, as Kasey was defending the entrance with his two hands.

Rotten flesh, spider eyes and bones flew. At the end of the fight, Kasey snuck outside and picked the remains up.

They had enough bones to tame a whole army of wolves!

Then, as if on cue, a small husky-wolf hybrid came up to their house, sniffing around. They could hear its footsteps outside of the house’s walls. Layla peeked out of a window, and immediately gasped. She looked into its small, amber eyes.

It was a baby husky, separated from its parents.

“Kasey,” Layla begged, “there’s a baby wolf outside. It looks like a husky breed. Can we keep it? Pleeease?”

“No,” Kasey grumbled. “We already have enough work to do.”

“Pleeeeeeeaaaaassseeeee?” Layla begged, repeatedly, until Kasey finally agreed.

“On one condition,” he said, “you take care of it, and if it hurts either of us, we get rid of it.”

“Okay!” Layla squealed. She did her signature happy dance before taking a stack of bones and heading outside.

- - -

Layla came back with a baby wolf tagging along behind her. Kasey groaned.

“Can we dye its collar yellow when we get yellow dye?” Layla asked, getting ahead of herself. Kasey nodded simply. His expression didn’t change.

Layla was planning out what she would name it, and what kind of house she would have for it, and what color she would dye its collar.

Kasey moved the crafting table and furnace inside, and then placed two beds he had crafted earlier.

Kasey and Layla crawled into bed, and the baby wolfy (husky-wolf names mashed together), nicknamed Sunny, curled up on her lap.

Kasey made sure Layla was feeling ok before falling asleep himself, still in his shorts, with his basketball jersey over his red shirt.

Later that night, Layla woke up shivering. She had just had a terrible nightmare.

While battling the ender dragon, both Kiralie and Kasey had died, leaving her to finish him off. She was so close, when the dragon landed and shot fire all over her.

She screamed as the flames licked her skin. The pain was more than she had ever experienced.

Then she woke up.

Her whole body ached, and her head throbbed. Kasey woke up, hearing her panting. He came and gave her some food before falling asleep.

Layla lay back, thinking about what her earlier dream could have meant. Her heart slowed until her breathing did too.

The next thing she knew, she was asleep.

Chapter Three: Together Again
Kiralie jolted awake. She was panting. She’d had the weirdest dream that she’d been in a game. Minecraft, to be exact.

She laughed at how ridiculous the dream sounded. Then her gaze fell onto her hand.

Her smile faded quickly.

She muttered her disappointment. She couldn’t believe this was real.

Her stomach startled her thoughts, rumbling loudly. Kiralie sat up, trying to think of what to do.

She hunted the area, searching for trees. Unluckily, she had ‘spawned’ in an open field. She picked up a flower, and, after thinking for a bit, promptly shoved the flower into her mouth.

She spat out the flower immediately. It tasted like... well, like a dandelion. Sighing, Kiralie decided she’d have to leave the field to find food.

After she had wandered over countless meters of flat, spongy land, she saw a few brown-and-green figures in the distance.

Kiralie ran as fast as she could. The trees were getting closer; and soon she’d made it to a thick, growthy forest.

On the ground, the remains of a skeleton lay. She picked up a bow, two arrows, and three bones.

She recalled building dog houses for wolves in Creative mode. If you tamed wolves with bones, and Kiralie had bones, all she needed to do was find a wolf.

She tucked the bow into her inventory, then kept her eyes peeled for any animals to slay for food.

Instead of a pig, or maybe a cow, something red caught her eye. It was shiny and hanging from a tree.

An apple!

Luckily, it was within reach. As she bit into the hard skin, she savored the juices coming from the apple. Before long, the entire apple had been devoured.

Upon finishing, Kiralie began to wander. She threw her apple core to a pig, before promptly slaying it with her stone sword and storing the meat inside her satchel. She made up her mind to dry it later, so it didn’t rot.

She kept walking in a direction in which she was sure she’d get home. She’d followed the sun, but it was getting dark.

Just when she thought about letting herself collapse and be eaten by woodland creatures, she heard two voices.

Two familiar voices...

“...could she be,” she heard Layla saying. “What if she’s out there alone and she gets hurt? Or worse? Killed?”

“I don’t think that will happen,” Kasey said. He sounded more like he was forcing himself to believe than Layla.

“But...” Layla trailed off, obviously not wanting to argue but thinking differently.

Kiralie decided to check on her pets before she did anything else.

The cat carrier came to her mind first, and she took it out of her inventory.

At first, it was light and small, a miniature version of the carrier. But as she took it out, it got bigger and bigger, heavier and heavier, until it was full sized. At that point, frantic mewling could be heard from inside the carrier.

Kiralie carefully opened the carrier door and a very dizzy, anxious Squirt tumbled out. Kiralie forced Squirt to eat some porkchop, and then took Pea out of his cage.

He had a few emerald feathers on the floor of the cage, and his normally prim and proper coat of feathers was messy and disheveled.

He chirped a few times, then shook out his feathers. Kiralie gave him a piece of apple she’d gained back after recollecting her apple core.

When she was assured her pets were somewhat full and calm, she ushered them into the carriers they’d previously been inside. Pea went into his cage quite obligingly, but Squirt wouldn’t go near her carrier.

After a lot of failed attempting to put Squirt in the carrier, she settled with letting her cat ride along on her shoulder.

She approached the small hut that Layla and Kasey had decided to seek shelter in and knocked on the door.

For a few heartbeats, all sound inside the hut shut off. It seemed that Kasey and Layla were surprised to have a visitor.

After a minute, the door swung open to reveal Kasey, wooden sword at the ready- kind of. Kiralie laughed as she realized Kasey was holding the sword upside down.

Recognition flashed in Kasey’s eyes as he realized who Kiralie was. Then a sense of self-protection flitted into his expression.

“What is it?” He demanded, holding the sword upside down, but dangerously close to her face. “Don’t make me use this.”

“You’re holding it upside down,” she choked out, hearing Layla laughing from behind Kasey.

Kasey quickly attempted to do a sword trick where he flipped the sword and caught it on the other side.

Unluckily, he didn’t know anything about sword tricks, and screamed as the sword narrowly missed stabbing his toe.

The room was tense yet again before Kiralie and Layla launched into a fit of laughter.

Kasey sat there, his face going red with embarrassment and frustration. He swung the door shut behind Kiralie and stomped into the house.

He sat on his bed, looking frustrated and self-conscious.

“Sorry,” Kiralie said, before sitting next to Layla on her bed.

She and Layla chatted for a few minutes, talking in excited, hushed voices at all the changes that had happened recently; the acquisition of Kiralie’s pets, and the change from Earth to Minecraft.

While they were talking, Squirt jumped nimbly down from Kiralie’s shoulder and landed on Layla’s lap. Layla absentmindedly started stroking Squirt. Squirt purred and her ears flicked in pleasure.

Kiralie and Layla were deep into a conversation about school when suddenly, the lights flickered out.

Kiralie cried out, secretly scared of the dark. She started to run around with her hands out in front of her.

As she heard Layla struggling to relight the torch, her hand went into something wet and sticky.

As the light flickered on, Kiralie realized what she was touching. She shrieked and pulled her hand out of Kasey’s mouth.

Kasey started spitting out dirt. Layla howled with laughter while Kiralie’s face went tinted with red as she wiped her hand off on her hood.

---

After a while, Kasey had collected enough wool to have Layla build a bed for Kiralie.

As she settled down under the white wool covers, Kiralie had a rush of thoughts passing around in her head.

She fell asleep, the light curtains of her eyelids shutting down over her thoughts.

And she dreamt.

The sky was milky white as ''Kiralie padded along on her... paws?! Sure enough, instead of feet with tennis shoes on, she had white-gray-brown paws.''

''She started to run, but she went nowhere. She could feel herself running in place, and voices whispered around her.''

  “That cannot be the one.”

  “Measly pile of fur and bones.”

  “Low potential, and she just takes up space.”

  “Unneeded waste of flesh!”

  The harsh comments bore down on her shoulders, weighting her down and pressing onto her muscles.

  Before she knew it, a howl rose from deep inside her bosom.

  The voices seemed startled and murmured amongst themselves.

  “But she has the Howl.”

  “We haven't seen it in generations.”

  Kiralie could feel eyes bearing down on her.

''  “Be gone, young hero.” The voice had a frightened edge to it. “Never return!”''

---

 The birds chirped as Kiralie woke up. She was in a little shock, but she didn't wake up in a cold sweat.

Why the dream didn't worry her, she knew. She never thought dreams were true.

Plus, this one had been lucid. She'd known she was dreaming.

But... what could it mean?

Chapter Four: Across the Sea We Goooooo
Layla couldn’t sleep. She was thinking about the nightmare that she’d had the previous night.

Also, Squirt was purring and rubbing her fur in Layla’s eyes, which was irritating.

In addition to that, Sunny was growling and her fur standing up at the sight of Squirt. This caused the cat to hiss occasionally and dig her claws into Layla’s skin.

Before Layla knew it, Kasey was shaking her. Obviously, he couldn’t see that she was awake.

Layla fake-yawned and got out of her bed. Kasey had walked over to the makeshift table made from a few tree stumps. Kiralie was frying eggs on a rock on the furnace, which had a stove on top.

The eggs smelled warm and delicious, and Layla wondered where Kiralie had gotten them.

Kasey looked like he was reading her mind, and he answered, “She went out and found a few chickens this morning. She also found another wolf.”

He motioned to a wolf, sitting in the corner. It was darker than Sunny, its main pelt being midnight black. However, it had a cream-colored underside and legs, like Sunny. It had a red collar, and its ears were a bit bigger than they should have been.

“That’s Rainy,” Kiralie said without turning around. “I found him in the woods when I found the eggs and thought he’d be a good friend for Sunny.”

Layla nodded. She walked over to pat Rainy’s head before retiring to the table in the seat opposite Kasey.

The smell of basil filled the room as Kiralie added a few ground-up leaves to the egg.

When she served the breakfast, Kasey started to wolf it down as if he had not eaten in years. Layla took more time, picking slowly through her food.

“What’s wrong?” Kiralie asked, a hurt look in her eyes. “Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, yeah.” Layla said. “I’m just... not hungry.”

“I can tell something is bothering you,” Kasey said. He was looking Layla straight in the face as if he were emitting all her secrets.

Layla sighed. She didn’t know what to tell her waiting friends. The truth was, she was bothered by her dream, and she was tired from her sleepless night.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said. This, as earlier mentioned, was a half-truth, as it wasn’t all that were bothering her.

Kasey nodded. “Was Sunny bothering you, too?”

“Yeah. The growling was annoying.” Layla sighed again.

Kiralie looked at Squirt, who had perched herself on a small, overhanging ledge of dirt. She didn’t look at all frightened, even though she could fall off if she moved the wrong way.

“This house is shoddy craftsmanship,” said Kiralie suddenly. Kasey turned red in the face.

“No, it isn’t,” he said. “I built this house, and I think it’s great.”

Layla looked at the wall of many different materials and smiled. “Sure.”

Kasey looked mad now. “Well, if you think you’re so smart, build your own house,” he snapped. Then shame flashed in his eyes, and he looked like he didn’t mean to say what he did.

“I’m sorry,” Kasey started, but Kiralie didn’t let him finish.

“We’ll gladly build our own house,” she said to Layla, who felt suddenly surprised at Kiralie’s words.

The friends stared at one another for a moment, then all said, “I’m sorry.” in unison.

The argument was forgotten; breakfast was finished quickly. Layla tried to eat faster and finished after Kiralie.

“I think we should go somewhere else and build a new house,” Kasey suggested.

“I’m with him.” said Kiralie. “After all, this shelter won’t stand a storm.”

Kasey ignored the teasing.

“That sounds like a good plan,” Layla said, hoping to break the short cord of tension in the room.

“Let’s go pack,” Kasey said, before roughly shoving Pea into his cage. The bird twittered in surprise for a moment, then puffed up his chest, his dignity lost.

---

After the trio had packed their few belongings into a few homemade leather sacks, the group made quick work of the small hut.

“Why are we destroying my hut?” Kasey asked as he punched in the third wall.

“So that we can have materials when we leave. The materials will prove helpful in building another house,” Kiralie explained.

After the hut was torn down and the materials in Kasey’s inventory, the friends started a trek through the forest. The dogs would run off occasionally and bark at wayward robins and squirrels, and then Layla would run off to catch them.

For a while, the trio could only see the green, white, and brown of the trees, but gradually the forest cleared.

They found themselves stepping in sand and gravel. They were on the ocean’s banks.

“How are we going to leave?” Layla asked. “We’ve explored all of the island, but we have no way to get off it.”

“We can craft a boat!” Kasey volunteered.

“Good idea, Kasey,” Kiralie said.

Layla and Kiralie sent Kasey back to the forest to punch wood to build the boats with. As they relaxed, the dogs played in the sand and drank all the water they could.

Rainy realized something before anyone else and started barking frantically.

All attention snapped to the whining, barking dog.

“Wait. Where’s Sunny?” Layla realized what was happening.

''Woof! Woof!'' Rainy jumped up and down on the sand, jerking his snout towards the ocean.

Oh, no, no, no... Layla saw a small gray dot bobbing along in the water, about thirty yards away from them.

“Sunny’s in the water!” yelped Layla. “And she’s going to drown!”

The group sat in silence for a few seconds, before Kasey began swimming towards the yelping dog in the ocean. Before long, his head had gone under the water, and Layla was scared that they’d lost him, too.

Right when she was about to swim over there and struggle to help Sunny and Kasey out of the water, a beige dot appeared under the gray one.

It was Kasey, holding Sunny!

The beach was filled with shouts of joy and relief from Kiralie and Layla as they welcomed Kasey back to shore.

Kiralie tossed Kasey a sheep’s skin to dry himself. Sunny looked like she was in shock, so Rainy nudged her a few meters away from the ocean and pushed her down into the sand.

As the dogs rested, Kiralie kept a close eye on them. Layla and Kasey began to construct a boat.

---

Almost six hours later, the boat was finished. It was about as long as a coffee table, and it had a built-in cabinet for storing food and belongings.

After loading everything onto the boat and making sure the dogs were safely on the vessel, the friends clambered on board.

Kiralie spread out a sheepskin on the bottom of the boat as Kasey attached the sail. Seeing as it was getting late, the friends quickly ate a few porkchops that they had saved for the adventure and fell asleep on the boat. The waves soothed Layla into a lovely, dreamless rest.

---

Layla woke up to the sound of thunder in the sky.

She shook the others awake as a raindrop pelted her nose, followed by more.

“Oh no,” Kiralie groaned. “Not a storm!”

Kasey tried to attach another sheepskin to the top of the sailboat to protect them from the pounding rain, but the skin blew into the violent ocean.

The boat groaned as the waves struggled to pull it down to the bottom of the ocean.

“Hurry! Craft an oar!” Layla desperately yelled to Kasey, who was fumbling to place down a crafting table.

Kasey shoved some wood onto the table in a few different combinations, the storm crashing around him. After his fifth wrong try, he yelled, “I don’t know how!”

“Let me!” Kiralie snatched the wood from Kasey and quickly crafted an oar. She stuck it into the water and pushed with all her might and strength.

The boat slowed down slightly, but the will of the ocean was stronger.

Kiralie cried out as the oar was ripped from her hands and plunged into the dark, angry water.

“The oar’s gone!” she called out.

Layla started screaming, and Kasey covered his ears. Kiralie watched the storm ahead.

Suddenly, Layla saw her face light up with surprise and happiness.

“Land ho!” Kiralie shouted over the hipping of the wind and the frantic howling of the frightened dogs.

Layla rushed up to the side of the boat and looked at the silhouette of an island in the distance.

“Land!” Layla shouted in Kasey’s ear. “We’re almost there!”

Then, something happened.

To Layla’s utter horror, a bright plume of lightning crashed down from the sky and hit the mast. It burst into flames almost immediately.

Layla hoped that the water coming from the sky would put the fire out, but she soon realized that it probably wouldn’t. The flickering flame stayed lit despite the rain pounding all around it.

The tension and fear in the air was so strong that Layla could almost see it as the fire spread onto the middle of the boat.

Kiralie crafted a bucket and threw water onto the flames. They died temporarily but started up again with an angry hissing noise.

Kasey and Kiralie worked frantically to keep the flames out, filling their buckets and throwing water on the fire as fast as they could. When they’d succeeded in putting out the flames, they leaned against the sides of the boat to rest.

Unluckily, the sides were thin wood, not very strong, and collapsed under the weight of Kasey and Kiralie.

Water poured into the boat, and all Layla could say was “This day keeps getting better and better!”

Before she could blink, the water was over her head.

She was drowning!

Layla desperately pushed towards the shore, and inwardly sighed with relief as she noted Kiralie and Kasey at her side, doing the same.

Her head broke up above the pounding water, and she violently gasped in the tangy air.

Then her head crashed back under.

The force knocked her out, and as she drifted out of consciousness, her last thought was:

My mom’s going to kill me if I die.

Chapter Five

Secrets

Kiralie woke up on a bank of sand and gravel. She spit out the water in her lungs and sat up.

Kasey and Layla were still unconscious on the sandy shore, but the dogs were up and sniffing around.

She breathed a sigh of relief. They were all safe.

She looked out into the ocean. The remains of their boat floated around, bobbing gently in the sea.

She checked her inventory and was glad to see that the pets were safe in their cages. Somehow, her inventory was waterproof.

She ate a thick slab of beef, then noticed a fish by her foot. She gave the fish to Squirt.

To Pea, she gave half of an apple. She let her bird and cat out of their cages and sat back.

As Kasey came to, Kiralie noticed he had a big cut across his leg, likely from nails on the remains of the boat. He, in turn, spit out all the salt water in his lungs and blinked the water out of his eyes.

He gazed frantically around the beach, and, finding everyone safe, let out a big sigh.

After a little while, Layla was awake, and they had packed all their things into their inventories.

“Look!” Kasey pointed to the rest of the island. “This is a Mooshroom Island!”

Strangely large red-and-white mushrooms sprouted from the ground. She couldn’t see any, but Kiralie knew that red-and-white cows lived on islands like these. The cows were called Mooshrooms.

The dogs ran off in front as the trio started to wander. Frantic mooing and barking rose from a distance ahead.

The wolves came back with beef and mushrooms in their mouths, wagging their tails eagerly.

Kiralie was horror-stricken.

“Rainy! Sunny!” she exclaimed. “Those cows are so rare that only a few hundred people have seen them, and you just killed one!”

However much of that the dogs understood, their ears and tails drooped. They looked truly, genuinely sorry. It was so funny that Kiralie laughed.

She took the mushrooms and beef and tucked them into her inventory. “Well, it wouldn’t be wise to let them go to waste...”

The trio punched up as many large mushrooms as they could. They saw a few Mooshrooms spread over the island.

But, as all good things come to an end, so did the mushroom island. Kiralie’s stomach churned at the thought of sailing again on the merciless sea.

“Woah.”

Kasey’s voice startled Kiralie’s queasy sea thoughts.

“What is it?” she and Layla asked in unison.

“Take a look at this.”

Layla walked to where Kasey was and Kiralie followed. In the ground were a few horizontal and vertical grooves.

“I think it’s a trap door,” said Kasey.

They worked to dig the sand out of the grooves, and, sure enough, a stairway down into the ground yawned open at them.

“Maybe this leads to another island,” Kiralie said hopefully.

Or maybe it leads to certain death.

 She shook the frightened thoughts out of her head. We can do this.

And she ran down the staircase.

---

Layla and Kasey reached the bottom first. They had volunteered to destroy all the mobs on the stairs, since Kiralie had a large cut on her arm and was in no condition to fight.

When she reached the bottom, the others were in a large and gaping cavern. Crystals lined the area, and old minecart rails wound all around the cavern.

“Woah.” The others were in awe, too.

Kiralie quickly snapped out of her impressed state, however. They had places to go, and a way home to find.

She shook Kasey’s shoulder, then Layla’s.

As soon as they’d recovered, Kasey had the sense to mine some diamonds, iron ore, coal, Redstone, and lapis, along with a few rainbowy crystals they found around the cave.

“How will we ever get home?” Layla asked.

“I have no idea, but hopefully we won’t be stuck here for long.” Kasey replied.

“What do you guys have against Minecraft?” Kiralie asked. “It’s not every day you get sucked into a popular video game and get to-”

An angry hiss startled her, and she trailed off.

“Stay still,” Layla hissed. “I think I know what that is.”

“What?” Kasey asked her.

“Take a look over there.” Layla pointed to a blackish-bluish contraption.

A cave spider spawner.

“Be very quiet. They’re busy weaving webs, but if we’re too loud or get too close, they’ll attack us with vicious poison,” Layla said. She’d obviously had experience.

They paused before attempting to sneak past the spiders. Kiralie took the opportunity to place the wolves in makeshift carriers she’d made and put them into her inventory.

Each of them held a bucket of milk at the ready, to drink if they were attacked by the poisonous spiders.

Milk would take away the poison, not even leaving a trace of nausea.

So, all prepared and taken care of, the trio began their approach.

 The spiders didn’t see or hear them at first, but their treacherous hissing and crawling noises almost made Kiralie cry out.

Twice a spider glanced at them, but they retreated to the shadows near the back of the cavern.

When they were clear of the room full of spiders, Kasey sighed loudly.

But that sigh was loud enough for the spiders to hear.

First, only a few came into the cavern the trio was currently in. They attacked Layla first, biting her arms and legs. She cried out in pain.

Kiralie and Kasey worked together to kill them, but Kasey was bitten. Kiralie wasn’t.

Layla drank her milk and her face suddenly looked a lot less green. Kasey did the same, drinking his milk... but not fast enough.

Faster than Kiralie could count to ten, more spiders than she could count pounced from the room...

...and landed on Kasey.

He cried out in shock, flailing his sword around and around in a frantic attempt to dispatch the spiders, but they were crawling all over his skin and biting him in all his exposed places, like his arms and legs.

Layla rushed forward and hacked off the spiders as best as she could with her sword, but she was too late to save Kasey.

When all the spiders had scrambled away or been killed, all that remained of Kasey was a few wisps of smoke and his items.

Kasey had been slain by the spiders.

Chapter Six

Roasted Spider Eyes and Mushroom Juice

“No!” Layla cried.

It couldn’t be.

Not Kasey... why Kasey?

She stood there in shock, watching Kasey’s items hovering slightly above the ground.

Kiralie was in a blind rage, roaring and killing spiders like a beast. She drank some milk each time a spider attacked her, but only a few drops.

Kasey hadn’t thought of that, drinking all his milk at once.

Oh, Kasey. What would Kiralie and Layla do without him? Layla had never felt a sting like this before.

She now thought about losing Kiralie, too. She wasn’t strong enough to survive on her own!

Kiralie destroyed the spider spawner, too. When all was calm, Layla burst into tears.

Tears welled into Kiralie’s eyes, too, but she blinked them away furiously. For a moment, she stood there panting. Then she started to shudder. All the strength seemed to have left Kiralie. Her eyes rolled up into her head.

She collapsed, as did Layla.

Layla fell asleep...

---

Layla’s eyes flickered open.

''Where’s Marcus? Why am I in a cave?''

 Then the thoughts came rushing back; Kasey was dead, and she wasn’t in her normal life. She was stuck in Minecraft with her friend Kiralie, and she couldn’t find her way home.

The smell of meat filled her nose and she sat up. Who was cooking meat?

She turned her head to see a figure cooking some unrecognizable meat in a furnace.

“Were you really that tired, Sleeping Beauty?” Kasey asked sarcastically.

“Kasey!” Layla ran over and hugged him. Kasey quickly pulled away from the embrace.

“You’ll make me burn myself,” he retorted, though he looked glad to see that she was fine.

Kiralie was already awake and sitting at a makeshift table. She was sipping a hot cup of...

...spider blood?

“Yuck! Why are you drinking that?” Layla asked Kiralie, motioning to the disgusting beverage.

“Try some,” Kiralie said, and passed a cup of spider blood to Layla. Layla begged Kiralie to tell her more about the rejecting refreshment. Kiralie would say no more; she just kept sipping at the red stuff in her cup and paying no mind to Layla.

Layla took the cup in her hands. She decided that she was thirsty; she hadn’t drunk anything since the storm.

Layla took a quick sip of the blood...

...and was surprised to taste something so good!

“This isn’t spider blood, is it?” she pointed to Kiralie’s cup.

“Who said it was spider blood?” Kiralie looked kind of smug. “It’s mushroom juice with wild berries and sugar.”

Layla realized she never would have thought that that combination would be good.

“Where did you get the sugar and berries?” she found herself asking.

“There was sugar cane growing on the banks of the ocean. All you must do is grind it up. And as for the berries, Kasey and I found a bush growing near one of the mushroom trees.”

“And how did Kasey come back?”

“Well, in traditional Minecraft, beds are spawn points, right? You sleep in one, and the next time you die, you wake up in your bed.”

“But the last time Kasey fell asleep on a bed was back at his shoddy old hut.”

“Layla, point is, it counts anywhere you fall asleep. When we washed up on the shore of this island, we were unconscious, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Kasey respawned on the beach and came to tell me what happened. We crafted some things for this cavern and made breakfast. Then you woke up,” Kiralie explained. “And ruined my silence,” she added playfully after a second.

For a moment, Layla remained quiet, grateful to be drinking her nice hot juice.

Then, the silence was broken.

“Breakfast!” Kasey called.

“What’s for breakfast?” Layla asked Kiralie.

“I have no idea, to be honest.”

Kasey brought the plates around. Well, the rocks that served as plates.

“What is this?” Layla asked Kasey.

“I’ll tell you after you eat it.”

Kiralie tucked into her meal, eating bite after bite. “This is good,” she muttered between bites.

Layla followed, eating her strange meat. It was kind of tangy and had a trace of juice inside.

It was kind of... addicting.

After wolfing down her breakfast, she asked Kasey, “Will you tell me what it is now?”

Kasey smiled, leaned down and whispered in her ear.

“Roasted spider eyes,” he said.

Layla almost lost her breakfast. “What?!” she yelped.

Kiralie choked on the spider eye she was eating. Kasey patted her back until it went down her throat.

“You could have poisoned us,” Kiralie choked out.

Kasey looked genuinely sorry. “Apologies,” he said. “We ate all of the rations we had already, so I had to make do.

“And” he added, “it tastes good, does it not?”

Layla wouldn’t speak to Kasey for the rest of the morning.

---

Around noon, Kiralie and Layla went out to scavenge for more food.

Kasey was staying in the cavern, exploring and looking around for more riches.

He’s quite a greedy guy, Layla thought randomly. ''And he could have poisoned us with those spider eyes. Even though they tasted great, we could have died, and he knew that perfectly well. He is a risk taker, but he’s also considerate. And... she smiled at the thought of this, he can’t craft anything on his life. But-''

“Hey.”

Layla distinctly heard Kiralie talking to her, but she kept talking to herself.

“HEY!”

Kiralie pinched Layla’s arm, hard, and Layla realized what she was doing. Her face turned pale.

Kiralie was holding her by the back of her shirt. And over a ledge, two feet away, a waterfall thundered into a pool of white water.

“Thanks.” Layla didn’t know what else to say. She was so stunned at her carelessness.

Kiralie nodded curtly and took Layla’s hand. She led Layla through the stubby patches of mushrooms and the large mushroom trees.

“There’s a clearing this way,” she said. “It’s where we got the berries for the mushroom juice that we served you this morning.”

Layla licked her lips at the thought of the juice, which the berries had made better.

She squeezed Kiralie’s hand the entire way to the glade.

As she pushed through a final bush, Layla gasped.

It was the most colorful field she’d ever seen. It had blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, and many other unidentifiable fruits.

There were also fruit trees, like pears, bananas and peaches. There was even a walnut tree!

“Wow,” Layla breathed. “This is beautiful.”

Kiralie nodded, then took out a leather satchel and begun to pick raspberries. Layla took another satchel and picked bananas.

When they’d collected many different varieties of fruit, they cut them up and let them dry. This was so they didn’t rot and could be saved for travel.

While the fruits dried, Layla and Kiralie started conversations.

“Hey, Kiralie, how do you dye armor? I’ve always wondered.”

Kiralie stood up. “I can craft it with you.”

She gave Layla some iron and showed her how to craft a cauldron.

“Take the cauldron... and fill it with water.... see?” Layla spilled a little over the top and Kiralie cleaned it up.

“Then, find some dye.” Kiralie picked a blue flower and crushed it up into dye.

“Put the dye in the cauldron...”  Layla threw it into the cauldron and the water and dye splashed everywhere.

“No, no, let’s start again. Put the water in the cauldron and put in the dye...” Kiralie was trying to be patient and that was apparent.

Layla did everything, but carefully.

“Then... put the armor in the pot.”

Layla started to put some iron armor in, but Kiralie stopped her. “It won’t work with metal. You have to use leather armor.”

Layla was surprised to see a pair of blue leggings in the pot after they’d let the color set.

“I’m going to put these on,” she said.

Layla walked behind a tree and changed into the blue leggings. They looked good with her white dress.

Kiralie looked pleased.

She was making a few T-Shirts using the pot of dye. She’d made a dark red jacket and a white T-Shirt for Kasey, who was the most underdressed out of all of them. His basketball jersey and shorts didn’t provide much protection in cold weather.

When Layla approached Kiralie, Kiralie held out a comfy black sweater and some long, woolly pants.

“Where did you find all this stuff?” Layla asked from behind a tree as she put on her new clothes.

“Kasey and I did a bit of exploring while you were asleep,” Kiralie answered. “Turns out there’s an entire string of caverns, and a network of rails. There are a lot of clothes in chests down there.”

Layla came out from behind the tree. “How long was I out?”

Kiralie looked up at Layla in her new things. “Two days.”

Layla felt her eyes go wide. So that’s why she’d felt so hungry when she’d first woken up. She was accustomed to three meals a day, and rarely, two.

To go two, almost three whole days without food... the fact was surprising to her.

They lay in the sun for about an hour, before dark clouds began to roll across the sky.

Kiralie got up first, then held Layla stand.

“The fruits should be dry now, anyway,” Kiralie said as she packed the different fruits into separate satchels.

Layla picked a few blackberries and ate them, then the duo was on their way back to the trapdoor.

By the time they reached the staircase, there was a sheet of rain coming down.

Luckily, Kiralie and Kasey had fashioned an umbrella from sticks and a sheepskin, and it kept Layla and Kiralie safe from the pelting rain.

They rushed down the wet staircase and through the room that there had been spiders in...

...but they weren’t in the little base they’d set up.

Kiralie looked confused and grasped Layla’s hand. She looked around before pointing to the tunnel on the left.

“I think it’s this way,” Layla heard her mutter.

“I’m not so sure about this,” Layla pointed out. “It’s good to stay put when you’re lost...”

“We’re not lost,” Kiralie scowled. “I know where I’m going.”

She led Layla down various tunnels, before releasing her hand with a sigh.

“Okay, now we’re lost.”

Chapter Seven

What is Going On?

Kiralie had no idea where she was going. She had led Layla down a lot of different tunnels, but none of them had led to their home base.

After admitting she was lost, Kiralie proceeded to be the asker of questions.

“How are we going to get back?” Kiralie asked Layla, fear in her eyes,

“Well,” Layla said, then paused. “I don’t know.”

Then Layla’s gaze turned angry and sour. “This is your fault! If it weren’t for you, we’d be safe on the staircase, then discover you made a wrong turn or something. Or maybe Kasey would come save us!

“But now, it’s hopeless,” Layla continued. Kiralie could feel tears welling in her eyes. She hadn’t meant to get them lost!

Layla’s eyes softened. “Sorry,” she said.

Kiralie ignored her. “I think I know how to get back.”

“How?”

“Well, each time we had to choose a corridor, we chose the one on the left side.”

“So... what does that have to do with it?”

“To get back, we have to choose the corridor on the right each time we must choose.”

“That’s a good idea.” Layla stood up. “Let’s do that.”

They did as Kiralie had suggested and were relieved to find themselves near the big staircase.

“Looks like I did take a wrong turn.” Kiralie headed in the right direction.

When they arrived in their mini home base, Kasey looked up from a pot on the furnace and asked, “What took so long? I had the urge to go after you.”

“We got lost,” Layla said simply.

Kasey didn’t pry for more information; he just went on tending the pot.

“What is that?” Layla didn’t want to eat more spider body parts.

“Kiralie said she was going to make an herb soup, so I’m boiling the water for her.” Kasey pointed to the pot of bubbling water.

“Thanks,” said Kiralie. She went over to tend to the pot and Layla sat down at the table in the chair next to Kasey.

“Look what I found,” Kasey said after a second. He pulled something out of his satchel.

Layla took it. “A book!” she exclaimed.

Kasey nodded.

The book was called On the Rails: A Guide to Riding on and Fixing Tracks.

The pages were worn with loving and overuse. Obviously, this handbook had been used often.

Layla opened the book to the first page. She read aloud to Kasey.

Rails

''  Rails are the contraptions in which a minecart runs on. Rails are needed to keep the cart on track and ensure that it doesn’t bump all over the place.''

 There was a picture of rails on the bottom of the page, with labels on parts of a minecart and parts of rails. It also displayed the different kinds of rails.

The next page was all about the different kinds of rails.

For about a half hour, Layla and Kasey took turns reading aloud from the handbook, before Layla was distracted from her page with the smell of a hearty soup.

“Dinner’s on!” Kiralie hollered, though she had no need, seeing as Layla and Kasey were legitimately ten feet away from her.

She passed around some bowls carved from rock, then filled each halfway with some... chicken broth?

“Where did you get the vegetables for this?” Layla asked.

“You didn’t see them? They’re from the garden we picked berries from.”

“Oh,” said Layla. She’d been too busy talking and picking berries to notice a vegetable patch.

But the stew didn’t look normal. It had a purplish tint to it.

“Are you sure you used normal herbs in this?” Layla asked, sniffing the soup.

“Yeah. The only unfamiliar thing was this shimmery purplish-bluish vegetable. It smelled kind of spicy, so I thought it would be good to put in the soup.”

“Oh.” Layla took her spoon and started to eat the soup.

It was quite good, and a little spicy. Before she knew it, Layla had finished her soup.

Kasey was already having seconds, so Layla took seconds too.

When they were all so full of soup they could burst, Kiralie put down some beds.

They lay down and took a peaceful night of rest.

---

Layla felt weird as she woke up. Kind of... itchy.

She tried to sit up in her bed but fell over again.

  What’s happening to me? Layla found herself thinking. She slid herself off her bed and tried to stand up on two feet.

She crashed to the floor...

...and then she noticed her paws.

Her scream woke up Kiralie and Kasey... who were wolves as well!

They were yelling at the top of their lungs until they could hardly breathe. Then Kiralie calmed everyone down.

As suddenly as it had happened, something switched them all back to humans.

“What happened?” Kasey whispered.

And Layla woke, gasping, from her dream.

As she realized what had happened, she sighed and wiped sweat off her forehead.

It was just a dream.

 She realized just how silly it sounded to just become a wolf. She figured she’d need to drink a Polymorph potion to become an animal.

Kasey was asleep, but Kiralie was awake and using a homemade pot to make some breakfast. She had her back turned to Layla, and obviously had not noticed that Layla was awake.

Layla couldn’t smell anything besides a rich, potatoey aroma. She supposed Kiralie was making something with potatoes in it.

Suddenly, while Layla was pondering what was for breakfast, Kiralie called out to wake them up.

“Wakey wakey, no eggs or bakey!”

Layla got up out of bed to see Kasey stirring in his red blanket. He rubbed his hands quickly over his eyes and stepped out of bed too.

Layla went over to the table. She sat down in a chair. Kasey chose the chair opposite her.

Kiralie didn’t serve them right away, but fed the wolves, Squirt, and Pea. When the pets were satisfied, Kiralie brought the contents of the pot into the dining area.

It was not made of potatoes. The smell must have been the potatoes drying on the counter.

It was… pancakes?

“How do you make pancakes in a pot?” Layla asked Kiralie curiously.

“It’s my own little secret,” Kiralie announced.

Layla didn’t think that pancakes made in a pot would taste very nice, but she bravely stuck her fork in.

“Wait,” Kiralie said. “The best part is the syrup!”

She poured a sticky purplish substance onto Kasey’s and Layla’s pancakes. The “syrup” smelled fruity.

“What’s in it?” Kasey stole the words out of Layla’s mouth.

“Blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. Try it,” Kiralie added.

Layla wolfed down her breakfast, and Kasey followed suit.

“This is great,” Layla said, wiping a smudge of syrup from the corner of her mouth.

Kasey nodded, but said nothing as Kiralie put a few more pancakes and fruity syrup on his plate. Then he started eating again.

After breakfast, Kasey asked if he could tell them something. Layla and Kiralie nodded in unison, so Kasey began talking.

“I had a weird dream,” he started.

“Me too,” Layla cut in.

“I dreamt that I woke up to a scream and I… well, this sounds weird… but, I was a wolf!” Kasey summarized.

“That was my dream too,” Layla said.

“And mine.” Kiralie added.

“Sharing dreams sounds like a book I read once,” Kiralie proclaimed. “I think we’re seeing the future, or a vision, or something of the sort.”

“Let’s stop thinking about it,” Layla volunteered.

So they began talking about something else.

“Wait,” said Kasey.

“What is it?” asked Kiralie.

“I think that the wolves need a bath.” Kasey grinned.

And he was right. Mud and grime was caked up in the wolves’ fur, along with stains on their faces from their natural instinct to gobble food as fast as possible. They also had a few berry stains and likely had more than a few hopping fleas in their pelts.

At the sound of the word ‘bath’, the wolves’ heads snapped towards Kasey. Rainy let out a deafening howl, and both he and Sunny scampered out of the cavern.

The trio laughed and began chasing after them, through many twisting and turning caverns. Suddenly, they stopped, confused at Kasey’s sudden cry.

“Woah!” Kasey hollered. Kiralie and Layla hesitantly walked over to see what Kasey was pointing at.

It was a black and gray wolf. It was an adult, as were Sunny and Rainy, and it had a glowing crystal in its mouth.

At the sight of humans staring, the wolf let loose a tiny, warning growl and turned tail. It started trotting away.

“We have to follow it!” Kasey exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted a wolf!”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Layla began jogging after it, Kasey and Kiralie quickly catching up.

“But what about Rainy and Sunny?” Kiralie protested. “What if they get lost in the caverns?”

“They can follow our scent trail,” said Kasey. “They’ll find us.”

As they gained on the wolf, they heard desperate barking. It sounded like Rainy and Sunny!

Putting a bit of speed on, the trio managed to catch up to the wolf. Kasey quickly tamed it, and it sat down.

He made it stand up and follow them into the cave in which Rainy and Sunny were.

What they saw made them gasp.

There was silence for a moment. Then Layla cried out, “They’re going to burn!”

Chapter Eight

Molten Cheese is Good. Lava is Bad.

“No!” Kiralie yelled.

Layla ran over to where the wolves were stranded, on a thick slab of rock, with a wide lava moat strapped around it. She was careful not to get close to the burning orange liquid, but she looked desperate.

The moat was about five feet wide, a large, gaping hole. The wolves must have ran and jumped onto it when they had momentum, but now they didn’t have enough space to run and jump.

Kiralie looked around, taking inventory of the place. She had some dirt in her inventory, and fifteen pieces of it.

It was enough to construct a bridge into the lava moat and onto the tiny rock island.

Kiralie placed down five pieces of dirt in a straight line that served as a bridge. Then she climbed on.

“Come, boy! C’mon, girl!” She began to coax the wolves to step across the bridge to safety.

Then she heard a kind of squeaking sound. She looked down from the hesitant wolves toward the makeshift bridge.

It was Sunny who had made the sound, and she was tilting her head towards the bridge. The dirt was on fire!

“Oh no!” Kiralie worried. The wolves pressed themselves against the cave wall. Rainy was growling and barking like a brave woodland wolf, but fear sparked in his eyes.

As the dirt burned away, Kiralie, Kasey and Layla searched around the cave for something to help them get to the wolves. But they didn’t have much time. The rocks that the wolves were perched precariously on were slowly melting and crumbling into the lava!

The trio were getting a little bit sweaty, the droplets splatting onto the hot earth with a hissss as they evaporated.

The wolves’ tongues were lolling out, and even if the rock beneath them didn’t waning, they would have died from heat exhaustion.

“I found something!” Kasey had worked so hard to find resources and make a pickaxe. He had mined up some cobblestone.

“Good job!” Kiralie knew that cobblestone was flameproof.

She took the stack of cobblestone from Kasey and constructed the bridge again.

The wolves ran across it to safety, and no one spoke as they retraced their steps back to their home in the rock. The wolves helped, running down the correct tunnel when the trio didn’t know which path to take at a few forks in the caverns.

Only when they were home, did Kasey say something. “I will name this wolf Stormy.”

Layla looked delighted. “Now they all have weather names!”

Kiralie felt satisfied. She took out all of the leftover pancakes from breakfast and then they all sat down at the table.

She put two pancakes on each plate and poured some fruity syrup over them. Everyone ate quickly, as the adventure had been tiring.

Layla and Kasey went on reading the redstone book, though Layla was mostly reading it by herself, since Kasey kept looking away as if he were thinking.

The friends spent most of the time resting from the biggest event of their day, but Kiralie kept thinking about how unproductive they were being.

“Let’s go gather berries,” she said. “One other person should come with me, so someone can be left guarding the cave and the pets.”

“I’ll come,” announced Kasey at the same time that Layla said, “I’ll go!”

“You can both go,” said Kiralie. “I’ll stay here and guard the cave.”

“Thank you,” Layla said. She and Kasey each picked up a basket.

“Wait,” said Kiralie before they could get outside. “If you’re in trouble, let me know.” She passed Kasey a small whistle, fashioned from a stick.

“When did you make this?” Asked Layla, staring at the whistle in Kasey’s palm.

“I didn’t make it, I found it,” Kiralie said. “It was on the floor in the cavern with the wolves. I picked it up as we were leaving.”

“Oh,” said Kasey, before promptly almost breaking their eardrums, blasting a long, loud note.

“Stop,” cried Layla, and Kasey stuck the whistle into his pocket.

“Sorry.” He said quickly, then turned to Layla. “Let’s go.”

He and Layla packed a few snacks and departed.

As soon as they left, Kiralie turned to the wolves. “All right. Time for a little battle training.”

“You first,” she pointed to Rainy, whose ears seemed perkier than usual.

Rainy puffed out his chest and let out a short bark. Kiralie laughed.

She constructed some test dummies by filling sacks with dirt. Sunny watched, helping by stuffing the occasional wayward bug into the sacks.

When she had made about a dozen dirt sacks (she had a lot of dirt), she laid one out.

Rainy started to step towards the sack, but Kiralie held up her hand. “Do as I say,” she instructed the wolf. Rainy sat down and looked expectantly up at her.

“First battles tactic,” Kiralie said, making her voice a bit steelier. “Bite.”

Rainy growled, his hackles raised. Then, without warning, he charged at the sack and bit it right in its- well, where its face would be.

“Good job, Rainy!” Kiralie applauded for the little pet. Rainy puffed out his chest again and shot a triumphant look at Stormy. Kiralie didn’t know what that was for.

“Your turn, Stormy.” Stormy sat up, watched Sunny scratch her head with a hind foot, and walked up towards the sack.

Stormy made his eyes narrow and menacing. Then he began to circle around the sack, eying it. Then, with no warning whatsoever, he charged into the sack and bit it, then darted out and circled again in a quick, fluid motion. He repeated this a few times, and, apparently satisfied, stalked back out to join Rainy and Sunny.

He flashed a doggy grin at Sunny, and sniffed haughtily at Rainy.

Suddenly Kiralie understood. “Oh.”

''They’re competing for Sunny? But why?''

 “Um. Sunny, your turn.” Kiralie pointed at the grey-and-cream female wolf, who was waiting patiently.

Sunny walked up to the sack, took a deep, doggy breath, and started to put on an act.

She limped along on three feet, holding up one forepaw. She was whimpering, and she looked as if she were in pain.

Kiralie was about to stop her so she could check out the injury, but before she could say anything, Sunny gave up the act.

She jumped back and forth, across the dummy and back out again. When she finally finished, the sack was nothing but a mangled mess of fabric and dirt. She’d attacked with her claws, not her teeth!

“Woah,” said Kiralie. “I’ve never seen a wolf fight like that.”

Sunny looked proud, and one of her ears flopped down at the tip. She looked so cute and happy!

“Good job,” Kiralie praised all the wolves. “Now, let’s practice stealthiness.”

She laid the dummies over in the corner. Then she put on some armor and pretended to be an enemy attacker.

“Patrolling the perimeter,” she said in a deep voice.

She paced back and forth a bit, but, after a minute, she sensed movement and tensed. It looked like Rainy’s dark pelt blending in to the shadows of the cave.

She looked around and held her makeshift sword- a stick- towards the ever-moving pelt of Stormy, stalking around and around…

When Rainy ambushed her from behind!

He slid his paws against her chest, careful to have his claws tucked in so he wouldn’t hurt her. If she were a real attacker, he’d have his claws out and scratch her up.

“Good job,” said Kiralie, out of breath. Sunny and Stormy came out from hiding, and Stormy looked proud.

Kiralie decided the wolves deserved a treat for doing so good in their training. She fished around in the cupboard until she found an old box. There was nothing in it, but if she made some dog treats to put in it, they’d have more food for the wolves.

Squirt was sitting on the counter when she got back, along with Pea. “How did you get out of your cages?” Kiralie asked them.

In reply, Squirt nimbly sat up, jumped off the counter, landed on her paws, and cat-sashayed away.

Pea flew up to perch on her shoulder. He screeched in her ear so she put him back into his cage and shut the door.

“What can I use to make dog treats,” she muttered, “ones that the dogs will like?”

The dogs liked raw meat. Maybe she could also put a few vegetables in there to make it healthier?

Kiralie got out a sword and started cutting up a porkchop she found in the cupboard. When it was almost pulp, she put it into a bowl carved from stone. Then she cut up a carrot and a potato and put them in too.

She put on some gloves, then took out a chunk of potato mixed with carrot and pork. She rolled it into a ball and flattened it. Then she used an old can’s bottom to cut a circular hole in the “batter”, about five centimeters in width and height. She cut as many circles of that same size from the piece of batter, then put the rest of the dough back into the bowl.

She repeated this until almost all the mixture that had been in the bowl was now small circles. She fed the excess batter to the wolves. They gobbled it hungrily, and Stormy attempted to share with Sunny, but she refused and ate her portion by herself.

When the wolves had finished, Kiralie sat down at the table with a book she’d found. She could barely read the first sentence, which was, “Liza was a happy panda,” before she heard a faint sound.

A whistle.

Kasey and Layla needed her! She packed a few swords and some armor, then went on her way to find her friends.

She dashed through some lush undergrowth, her hood flapping behind her. She glanced around for Layla and Kasey, but she couldn’t see them anywhere.

The whistle got steadily louder, until Kiralie could hear it in the thicket closest to her. She dashed through the weeds surrounding it and ran into the middle of a big fight.

Kasey was trying to fend off three skeletons with a wooden sword, but his hearts were slowly depleting. He was down to three, then one and a half, then half…

And Kasey disappeared in a wisp of smoke as an arrow hit him and killed him. Kiralie shouted, “Kasey!” but she knew he would spawn in his bed in the cave.

Layla was halfway up a tree, trying in vain to shelter herself using the leaves. The skeletons and zombies couldn’t get to her, but the spiders were slowly climbing the tree.

Kiralie ran toward Layla, ignoring the stinging arrows now embedded in her shoulder blade. She killed the two spiders climbing up the trunk, then proceeded to slay the mobs.

She had killed three out of ten when a zombie struck her and flung her into the river. Layla had fled back towards the house, her berry basket clutched in her hand.

Kiralie thought she was safe from mobs in the river, but a stinging, three-pointed weapon was hurled at her from underwater. She managed to catch it, so that it only grazed her leg, but it still hurt.

The Drowned that threw it swam upwards, striking her with another trident. Kiralie tried to get out of the water, her hearts down to two.

Then she realized it was hopeless. She let the Drowned strike her again, and the red, ‘You died,” screen popped up. She could control with her mind, but there was only one button: ‘Respawn’.

She tapped the button and her vision swirled purple for a minute, but then she was in the cave. She was tucked inside her red blankets.

She sat up, aware of her hearts at ten. This meant she was at full health.

The first thing she noticed was Stormy sleeping at the foot of her bed. She reached down to pet him. Sunny and Rainy were in the corner, grooming each other and talking in hushed barks.

Stormy woke up and his tail wagged slightly, then he lightly jumped off the bed and walked over to Rainy and Sunny.

He growled a bit at Rainy for being close to Sunny, but Rainy barked something at him and held his ground. Sunny sat beside him, and barked something quietly at them both.

Then she turned tail, clearly a bit irritated, and stalked up to yuh bed, where she settled down on Kiralie’s chest.

Stormy attempted to follow her, but Kiralie shooed him away. She liked petting Sunny’s silky fur.

She was so absentminded as she petted Sunny that she didn’t notice Kasey coming up to her bed and lightly tapping her shoulder.

She woke from her daze at once and looked up at Kasey.

“How are you feeling?” Kasey asked.

“I don’t need you to look after me,” Kiralie grumbled, getting out of bed.

Layla was sitting at the table, so she and Kasey went over to join her. She was eating a cooked porkchop sandwich, and there were two more sandwiches for Kasey and Kiralie.

Kiralie ate her sandwich fast, as her hunger bar was low.

When she had finished, she walked over to the wolves again and petted each one. She thought that maybe if she gave Stormy and Rainy the same amount of attention, they’d stop fighting over poor Sunny.

But after the pets, Stormy attempted to get Sunny and groom her, but Sunny sat by Layla’s foot and refused to get up.

This caused a small squabble between Rainy and Stormy, but luckily, nothing too serious. They mostly just barked at each other and cuffed each other around the ears (with their claws tucked in).

“Kasey, Layla.” Kiralie remembered the treats. “I made some dog treats. They’re in a box in the cupboard.”

“Cool. I didn’t know.” Layla pulled the box out of the cupboard and gave each wolf a treat.

Stormy gobbled up his treat, but Sunny and Rainy took a bit longer, seeing as they weren’t as hungry. This gave Stormy an opportunity.

He walked up to Rainy, and, quick as lightning, snatched Rainy’s treat. He brought it over to Sunny, dropped it, and wagged his tail.

Rainy let out a bewildered whimper at his lost food, but, knowing he wasn’t as strong as Stormy, sat in the corner, ears drooping. Sunny looked equally bewildered, and she growled at Stormy.

Stormy looked hurt, but he growled at Rainy and stalked away.

Rainy bound playfully over to Sunny and play-tackled her. But Sunny didn’t want to play. She slunk into the corner and plopped down to sleep.

Kiralie took Pea out of his cage and fed him a blueberry. She liked how he took it in his claws and lifted it to his mouth, then discovered it was too high and sat it down, pecking at it.

It took him nearly half an hour to finish the blueberry, and he looked stuffed. He flew onto a crag in the wall and tucked his head into his wing to rest.

Kiralie felt tired, and she could see Layla and Kasey pouring water over the torches to shut them off. It was night already. Their adventure in the cavern had made them unable to eat lunch in time.

Layla collapsed into one of the beds on her right side, and Kasey crawled into the one on her left.

I wonder why the wolves are competing for poor Sunny, Kiralie thought. She’s not the only female wolf in the world, and the wolves could have stayed on our island if they wanted to, um, find another wolf they liked. Suddenly she felt a strange burst of frustration. ''Why don’t I like the idea of Sunny and Stormy being… together? Why do I think it should be Rainy?''

 Kiralie stopped her train of thought there and drifted off to sleep, aware of Kasey snoring lightly to her left, and Layla fidgeting with her shirt sleeve.

---

Kiralie woke up to Squirt’s black fur in her face. She quickly pushed the cat off and sat up.

Rainy and Sunny were curled up together in the corner, and Stormy was sleeping at the foot of Kasey’s bed.

Layla wasn’t in the house, or anywhere to be seen, at least.

“Kasey,” Kiralie whispered. “Kasey. Wake up.”

Kasey had been awake already, because he just sat up and turned his head towards her.

“Where’s Layla?” Kiralie asked.

“No idea,” Kasey replied.

“Layla.” Kiralie said loud enough for Layla to hear if she was in the cave.

“Layla?” Kasey called out for her as well.

Layla didn’t answer. She obviously wasn’t in the cave.

Kasey leapt out of bed, Kiralie behind him.

“She left a note on her pillow,” Kasey observed.

Kiralie sprinted over to Layla’s red wool bed. She noticed an old scrap of paper on the cushion and grabbed it. It was neatly folded in half, almost symmetrically, so she unfolded it and read Layla’s neat handwriting on the inside.

To Kasey and  Kiralie:

'' Sunny Is going somewhere. I am going off to find her.''

''  I don’t know where she Is, or where she could be, but I just know that I have to find her. Please don’t come looking for me. I will be alright.''

 -Layla B.

P.S. I found out that eggs make Rainy gassy, so don’t feed him eggs.

   “We have to go looking for Layla,” said Kiralie. “She could be stranded, like the wolves.” She turned to Kasey. “Or worse; she could be fighting mobs and getting hurt! Or she could be lost.”

Kasey nodded. “Pack your bags. We’re going on a mission.”

Chapter Nine

Little Lost Layla

Layla walked through the mushroom forest, trying to avoid the low-hanging thorny vines that scratched her knees as she went.

Sunny is out there somewhere, she told herself. All I have to do is find her and bring her back.

She wondered if Kasey and Kiralie had found her note. Knowing them, they’d try to come after her and would refuse to leave if they found her.

She also wondered if they would heed her warning and avoid giving Rainy scrambled eggs.

As she puzzled, roaring water distracted her from her thoughts. She had come across the same waterfall that she’d almost went over earlier.

Then she saw something in the dirt a few feet away from her, nearer to the waterfall.

Layla’s heart leapt. It was a paw print, about Sunny’s size.

Layla’s vision turned to a whole trail of paw prints going down the side of the steep hill that the waterfall roared down from. She followed the trail of paw prints and, there, heard a distant barking.

Layla raced down the rest of the hill, and Sunny’s gray pelt caught her eye.

Layla turned pale as she focused on that gray pelt of Sunny’s. The wolf was snarling at another female wolf, her ears flopping back to make herself more menacing.

Layla wanted to help Sunny, but she knew she’d likely be badly hurt in the process.

But Sunny lashed out at the wolf playfully. Her paw brushed the other wolf’s face and it gave a protestant bark. Then it tackled Sunny, yipping playfully.

Sunny nipped her play-attacker, then seemed finally to notice Layla.

Sunny wagged her tail and ran towards Layla. Like a playful dog, she put her front legs on Layla’s legs and licked Layla in whatever place she could manage.

Layla smiled at the squirming wolf, then looked up.

Sunny’s associate stared at Layla with cold, envying eyes. Obviously, this wolf didn’t want Layla to take Sunny away from her.

“We need to go, Sunny.”

Sunny’s tail drooped, and she ran over to her friend and licked her on the forehead. Then she scampered off towards home with Layla.

While they were walking, Layla was thinking. She wondered what she would tell the others when she got back to the cavern. What if they didn’t read the note and thought she abandoned them?!

Your attitude affects the situation. She took a deep breath. If she panicked, her sense of direction might be altered, and she’d have trouble finding her way home.

She thought of her brother, her mom, her dad, her cat, her home. She would miss them all so much if she got lost and couldn’t make it back out into the real world.

Layla felt tears sparking in the corners of her eyes, but she brushed them away. She wasn’t going to cry… she wasn’t going to cry…

Before Layla could start crying, she bumped into something warm, and it gave a cry of surprise. Layla whipped an iron sword out from her satchel, and called out, “Who’s there?”

“Layla?” Layla’s eyes focused on Kiralie’s face and the wild tangles that had come from living days without a comb.

Layla shoved the sword back in the satchel as Kasey came around the corner. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting her, either.

“Layla!” He squeezed her so tight that she felt the air being pressed out of her.

“I wasn’t even gone that long,” she protested when Kasey let go. “When you died, nobody hugged you like that.”

“You did,” Kasey pointed out.

Layla rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

Kiralie interrupted before they could get into an argument. “Sorry we came after you.”

Layla remembered that they weren’t supposed to come. “Well, at least I found Sunny.”

Sunny wagged her tail and licked Kiralie and Kasey’s hands and faces. When all the greeting was done, Sunny sat down on Kasey’s foot.

Kasey tried to shake her off, but its hard to get a hundred-pound wolf to leave you alone.

They sat and talked for a few minutes, and Layla tended to her scratches and cuts with a med kit Kiralie had brought.

After Sunny got off Kasey’s foot, they took the opportunity to start walking home.

Through the scratchy vines and stinging nettles they went, with Kiralie giving Layla a piggyback ride. Layla didn’t like it up there because the ride was so bumpy, but she didn’t protest and started to doze off since she hadn’t slept much last night.

Her dreams were filled with howling wolves, strange blue and purple crystals, flowers, ink, and the bottom of a pit, where two red eyes glowed.

Then her vision cleared, and she was in a dark forest.

The trees loomed ominously above her, each more than seven feet tall. The canopy of leaves was so thick that Layla couldn’t see the sky. She guessed it was night, because it was so dark, but it could just be the trees blocking out sunlight.

Sssso, we meet again.

 Layla spun around, looking in all directions. “Who are you?” Fear built up inside her and she heard ominous laughing.

''The last time you sssssaw me, I was in a different form. Now, I am pure. I am whole… wait.''

 The darkness itself seemed to press in on Layla, inspecting her and criticizing her.

''You’re not the one! That curly haired one… where did they go?''

 The voice, though disembodied, seemed to turn towards Layla.

Where is she?

 Layla shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and closed her mouth. She was scared, but she wasn’t going to give anything away in case this strange being were to harm her friends.

Well? The voice had taken on an unnatural hiss. Layla resisted and pressed her mouth shut harder. She bit her lip.

The voice sighed. ''I knew you would not be reliable. Good-bye.''

 And just like that, Layla woke up.

She made a little yelping noise as she awoke. She hoped she wouldn’t startle Kiralie… but she couldn’t still be on Kiralie’s back, since she was surrounded in warmth and fabric and had something furry and moving on her face.

She opened her eyes rather hesitantly. Something with brown and black fur rested on her face, so she pushed it off.

It moved rather slowly, obviously rather hesitant to leave the comfy perch that was her head. Once it was off, Layla sat up and looked at the furry creature in her lap.

Harvey, her cat, stared up at her.

“Harvey!” She hugged his plump, soft body. Harvey squirmed and mewed in protest, so she let him go.

Only then did she notice Kiralie sitting by her bed. Layla launched into a question.

“Where did you find him?” Layla asked Kiralie.

“We heard mewing and banging from the forest, so we searched around. We found this old chest, and inside was a carrier holding this guy.” Kiralie pointed to Harvey, who had settled himself on Layla’s lap.

Layla nodded. The tasty smell of herbs was filling her nose, so she turned to Kiralie. “What is Kasey making?”

“Salad, I think,” said Kiralie. “He said he would put different herbs in each salad and surprise us.”

Layla started thinking of flavor combos. Tomatoes and cheese? Sour cream and onion?

“Lunch is ready!” Kasey called out. He had already put the bowls on the table and had passed out cutlery.

Layla went over to her chair and sat down. She smelled something meaty in her salad and took her fork.

“What’s in here?” she asked Kasey. “Not spider eyes again, I hope.”

Kasey shook his head. “You guys never forgive or forget, do you?” He teased.

“And it’s a surprise.” He flashed her a smile and began to eat his salad.

Kiralie was the first to discover what was in her salad. “That spicy vegetable I put in my soup!” she exclaimed. “And Ranch dressing! Who knew it’d be a good combo?”

Layla started to eat her salad.

“Bacon!” she said. “Bacon and.. red cabbage! This is great!” She turned to Kasey. “Can I have some Ranch dressing too?”

Kasey nodded. “But it’s not ranch. It’s a homemade dressing.” He smirked. “Or cavemade.”

After lunch, everyone settled down to read books until about three PM. Kiralie was the first one to stop reading.

“I think we should explore the caverns,” she said. “We may find rare ores, the greatest we’ve found so far is iron.”

Kasey looked interested, and Layla smiled. What if she could take a diamond into real life?! Maybe her mom and dad could use it!

But, knowing Marcus, he’d probably use the diamond on something like a bunch of model airplanes or expensive lego kits.

Kasey and Kiralie packed some bags, while Layla tended to the pets. She made sure they’d have enough food and water until she and her friends came back, and a comfy place to sleep.

Sunny was still avoiding Rainy and Stormy altogether, walking away when they got too close. Layla told her, “Be nice to the boys.”

When all was prepared, Kiralie led the way into a random tunnel. They marked the tunnel they had gone down, too.

Layla marked the tunnels, holding a big red piece of wax and drawing lines on the wall of the cavern they passed through.

The first few minutes, they struggled through a mess of corridors and forking paths. Then, they made their first discovery.

It was a rather large room, and a few blocks of iron ore lay strewn about around the cave. But that wasn’t what made it special.

In the center of the room, there was a large book pedestal. On the pedestal, a book with a red bookmark sat. The book had an odd, purple glow. It was an enchanted book!

“Let’s get it!” Kiralie ran over to the pedestal, and, without any precise care like Layla would have used, picked it up off the pedestal and tucked it into her inventory.

The pedestal rumbled and sunk into the floor, like a booby trap.

Then everything happened very quickly.

Oh no, Layla thought as a rock wall pushed itself in between her and Kiralie. Kasey was on the other side with Kiralie. Almost immediately, Layla heard the sound of bewildered shouts and banging around on the other side of the wall. She heard her friends calling her name, but everything was blurred around.

No, no, no…! Panic bubbled up inside of Layla, waiting to escape in the form of tears or frantic yelling.

She could hear Kasey and Kiralie yelling from the other side, but they didn’t have a pickaxe to mine up the stone.

Luckily, Layla did. It was stone, and heavily worn, the durability around ¾ gone.

She quickly got ahold of herself and used the stone pickaxe to mine up the cobble. With every swing, the rocks cracked more and more, until the pressure was too much for the cobblestone, and it burst into smaller chunks, not even half the original size. Layla picked up the floating, miniature block. She felt sort of dizzy as she knelt down to grab it, and she popped it into her inventory.

Kasey and Kiralie were relieved to be back in the main cavern with a trembling, shuddering Layla. Then, they realized what was wrong, and started frantically yelling at each other. Layla’s eyes were half-closed, and she couldn’t see properly. She saw a fuzzy shape running out of the cave.

Layla wasn’t sure why she felt so cold and sick, but it was certainly unpleasant. She collapsed.

Layla’s vision was fuzzy as she shook, unable to control herself. She lay sprawled out, and she was sure that her hand had brushed a rocky wall and was now bleeding.

She was faintly aware of Kiralie emanating worried looks and murmurs as her eyes slowly closed. Her skin prickled, and she felt herself sliding into sleep. In one last attempt to assure Kiralie she was alright, Layla struggled to stand up. Unfortunately, she was overtaken with shudders and landed painfully on the stone floors again.

She fought to stay awake, to evade this strange disease, this change in her body, but she felt her eyes closing lightly once again. She spluttered out a cough, and the black ate at the corners of her eyes. The flecks evolved into a complete black cover, closing over her vision. Her last whisper before she fell asleep was, “What’s going on?”



Layla drifted into a dream, relieved. She was perched on a cloud, and the night air cooled her skin. She was free of shivers, in her sleep, at least.

She was surprised she didn’t fall through, but she knew this was a dream.

I ssssee my ssssummoning sssskills might not be as bad as I thought, hummed the voice.

“You again!” cried Layla. “Stop this!”

I don’t have to do anything you sssssay, challenged the voice. ''Or, do you think those pathetic ssssssacks of meat that are your armsss will be able to find me and ssssstrike a blow? Oh, I’m so sssssssssscared! Help me, mommy!''

 Layla growled, then swatted around at the air with her hands. “Tell me who you are and wake me up right now! My friends are worried about me, and I have things to do!”

Layla overbalanced herself and felt her body tipping backwards, tripping on sticking-out pieces of solid fluff on the surface of the cloud.

You imbecccile! The voice cried. I haven’t finished with-

 And Layla tumbled off the puffy white cloud to certain doom.



Layla woke up, panting. She was still on the floor of the cavern, and Kiralie was sitting near her, presumably keeping watch for mobs or intruders.

At the sound of Layla waking up, Kiralie turned to look at Layla.

“Are you feeling okay?” Kiralie asked.

Layla nodded, but she didn’t feel okay. She wasn’t shivering anymore, but she felt nauseous and cold, and all clammy.

Kiralie handed Layla a piece of dried, cooked pork. Layla ate it very fast, so Kiralie also gave her a bottle of mooshroom milk.

“Where’s Kasey?” Layla asked, sitting up.

“He went off to look for herbs to help you, or maybe some island villager to come heal you,” said Kiralie.

“But I’m fine! Really!” Layla raised her arms and nodded, as if to show she was fine and somehow signal Kasey to come back.

“You were out for two hours,” Kiralie said.

Layla groaned. Half of her Minecraft life was passing out! “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Kiralie sighed. “I tried. You wouldn’t wake up. Your eyes just wouldn’t open. Kasey thought you might be dead.”

Layla sighed. “Well, what help did he expect to find? We’re all alone on this island, and he probably has forgotten where the herb patch is!”

Kiralie smiled. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure we took a map when we left, and now it isn’t here, so I think Kasey stole it.”

Layla decided to tell Kiralie about her dreams, having nothing else to do but chat as they waited for Kasey to return. Kiralie nodded intently as Layla recounted her dreams, pausing occasionally for Kiralie to comment or ask for deeper information.

When she’d finished telling the tale, wrapping it up with “and then I woke up,” Kiralie had her hand on her chin, stroking it thoughtfully.

“You said the voice talked with a lot of s’s,” said Kiralie.

“Yes, and it annoyed me out of my mind!”

“I think that he’s a creeper.” Kiralie declared. “He or she. Maybe they’re trying to get us to work for them!”

“Yeah. But if it’s like what happens in many other stories, his minions wouldn’t hurt us when they saw us. But a creeper tried to blow Kasey and I up when we first landed in this world.” Layla revealed.

Kiralie tapped her chin again. “But what if he didn’t think we were… well, worth recruiting in the first place, and then decided we were good enough and came to… erm, message us in our dreams?” Kiralie asked. “Or maybe he just doesn’t have minions and is a random creeper trying to get our help.” She added.

Just then, there were footsteps heard outside of the cavern, slowly. There was also a noise of liquid sloshing around in a container of some sort. The stride, Layla quickly realized, sounded like the way Kasey walked, but what could he be carrying?

Kasey came into the cavern with a heavy sigh and put down an equally heavy wooden bucket. The bucket had a purple liquid sloshing around inside of it. “She’s up?” He puffed.

“Yes,” Kiralie replied unhelpfully. Kasey could see that Layla was sitting, legs crossed, on the stone floor.

“But then I brought this for nothing!” Kasey spluttered, pointing at the bucket, then posing as if he was going to kick the bucket over.

“Wait!” Said Layla. “Why don’t we save that for later?” She popped it into her inventory, not adding any weight.

Kasey stared, then his face went red. “I could have put it in here the whole time?!” He roared.

Kiralie and Layla burst into giggle fits. Kasey pouted, then realized how childish he sounded and stood, tapping his foot and waiting for them to quit the laughing.

When the room wasn’t filled with the echo of laughter anymore, they silently picked up their things and stood up. “We should go home,” Kasey said. Everyone obliged as he led the way to the cave.

Thanks to Layla’s red chalk streaks, the way home was easy to find. They drank the rest of the water from Layla’s canteen that she’d helpfully packed, and reached their base shortly.

The wolves wiggled excitedly at the sight of the trio returning home. However, they didn’t move. Stormy and Rainy were sitting together, and apparently had been bonding while the trio was gone.

Sunny, however, was sitting in the corner with Pea, curled up in a ball around the little bird.

Squirt and Harvey were sitting on the table, flicking their tails impatiently. As soon as Kasey, Layla and Kiralie got into the cave, Squirt pushed a bag of wheat off the table.

It spilled everywhere and Kiralie began to put it back into the bag. Harvey let out a mrrrroww of amusement. Squirt sassily raised her tail and jumped off the table, clearly glad to see the others back but not showing it.

Harvey began licking his paw, using it to groom his brown face.

Even though it was chaotic, all was well in that moment.

Chapter Ten

A Lovely, Likely Suicidal Trip

The trio worked to clean up the mess the pets had made while they were gone. Layla cleaned up the stains of food all around the wolves’ bowls and mopped up the remains of the wheat. Kiralie replaced the stone blocks that Harvey and Squirt had used as scratching posts. Kasey made their next meal. It was more of a “linner” than dinner or lunch.

As they sat around the table, the pets came up and begged for some of the cooked pork chops Kasey, Layla, and Kiralie were currently munching on. “You can’t have any,” Layla said. “You’ve already eaten all of the dog and cat treats in secret!”

The pets’ faces switched from pleading to ‘Uh oh, busted!’ As Layla playfully chased them all away from the table. Sunny hid under Kasey’s bed, Stormy ducked under a broken test dummy, and Rainy sat behind Kasey’s legs and peered through them at Layla warily.

When the pork chops were gone, the trio decided to hit the hay. Kasey and Layla, in turn, got into bed. Kiralie checked on the pets one more time before pulling her own blankets up to the top of her head, like she always did.

She felt something climb into bed beside her. Kiralie took the blanket off her head and saw Harvey curled up. “Layla?” Kiralie called. “Your cat is on my bed. Shouldn’t he be on yours?”

But Layla was asleep and snoring lightly. Kiralie groaned, patted Harvey on his little brownish head, and settled back into the covers.

—-

Thankfully, Kiralie had a dreamless sleep, and when she woke up, she felt free of the exhaustion that had bound her and kept her as prisoner the previous day. She sat up in bed, and noticed that Harvey had started a new siesta on Kasey’s face.

Layla was already awake and was reading at the table. She had an apple core in front of her, remains of an apple that she had most likely eaten for breakfast while the others were sleeping. Layla noticed Kiralie staring, and put the book facedown on the table. She came over to Kiralie’s bedside, careful not to step on Rainy, who was taking a peaceful snooze on the floor in the dining room.

“Hey,” said Layla, then proceeded to pepper Kiralie with questions. “Glad to see that you’re up. Is Kasey awake yet? Did you have a dream? Who was in it? Was I? What happened in it? Did you hear that hissing voice? What did it tell you?”

“I didn’t have a dream last night,” Kiralie said, matter-of-factly. “But now I am having a terrible morning, since I can’t have two minutes of peace.” She ended by teasing Layla.

“Sorry,” Layla apologized. “I’m just excited about all this. And kind of jealous. Apparently you’re someone special that the hissing voice wants to recruit or something.”

Kiralie laughed drily. “I’m not special. I’m just kinda funny sometimes.” She gave a lopsided shrug. “And I know how to play Minecraft,” she added.

Kasey, who had miraculously woken up, likely from all the noise the two girls were making with their conversation, groaned and tossed in his bed. The groan scared off the snoozing, fat brown cat on his head, who meowed indignantly and stood up.

Kiralie and Layla giggled simultaneously. Kasey pulled himself into an upright position in his red wool bed, rubbed his eyes with his fists, and yawned, stretching his arms out.

“What’s going on?” He asked, his eyes displaying his annoyance at being awoken. He immediately sneezed, as there was a bit of cat hair in his nose.

“We’re just talking.” Kiralie volunteered, trying not to laugh at what had just happened. “It’s girl stuff.” Layla nodded gravely, then turned to Kiralie and smirked.

“What are we going to do today?” Kasey asked after he had went into the corridor and gotten dressed, unlike Layla and Kiralie, who had to wait their turns.

Layla went into the corridor to get out of her pajamas and into her clothes. Kiralie started talking to Kasey. “I think today we should move camps. We’ve stayed here long enough.”

“Okay.” Kasey said. “Where do you think we should go?” Layla came back in, dressed in her original clothes; a dress and leggings.

“I’ll tell you when I’m done getting dressed.” Kiralie went into the corridor and put on classic brown leather leggings and a chest plate with the enchantment of the book on it; Protection II. The book, miraculously, had not disappeared, but its enchantment had changed to Silk Touch. After enchanting the armor, the book had reappeared in her inventory with the new enchantment on it. Kiralie had decided not to tell Layla or Kasey, as it was a surprise for them.

She went back into the cave. Layla said, “Kasey told me you think we should leave. Where do you think we should go?”

Kiralie said, “I have two ideas. The first one is further into the cave. The second one is across the sea.” She paused. “We can vote on it. But if we’re going across the sea, we should probably collect ores before we leave. We’ve only got two stacks of iron, five and a half stacks of coal, and a few diamonds.”

“That sounds like a lot to me,” Layla commented, confused. “Two stacks of iron is sixty-four plus sixty-four, which is…” she paused for a few seconds. “One hundred and twenty eight pieces of iron, and I’m not even going to mention the coal.”

“Well, I’m guessing you mostly play in Creative mode, then,” countered Kiralie. “Iron is very useful, and is burned through at the speed of light.” She too paused. “And if we die, it’s all gone.”

Layla suppressed more questions, which was obvious by the way she pursed her lips. “Let’s go mine some materials,” she said.

—-

''Chink. Chink.''

''  Chink. Chink. Pop!''

 Kiralie dislodged an iron ore block, popping it into her inventory. She already had fifty-seven of them, but she just kept mining. She knew she was sweating, but she didn’t stop. And when her pickaxe broke, she just made a new one with her iron and kept on going.

Layla, Kasey and her were strip-mining, pounding away at the blocks. The occasional barking of the wolves and the rhythmic chinking and clinking of the pickaxes could be heard from hundreds of blocks away.

Chink.

  Chink.

  Pop!

 Kiralie mined another iron ore block, then gave a shout towards Kasey and Layla. “There’s an opening here!” And peering inside, she could see a variety of mixed ores, including…

“DIAMONDS!” Kiralie broke into the cave with another swing, hopping down nimbly into it. It was at least a four vein cluster, attached to the ceiling! She whipped out her iron pickaxe and mined one, two three, four, five, SIX diamond ore blocks! She desperately wished that her loyal pick was Looting III so she could get more diamonds. She only had six.

By this time, Kasey had jumped into the cave, followed by Layla. They noticed some lapis and red stone in the walls, and, without a word, began clinking away at them. The clinking of picks against lapis and red stone was quieter, since the materials were softer, which made them easier to work with than diamond, iron, gold, or stone.

The cave was filed with the echoing of barks and whimpers as the wolves tumbled in, each taking a heart of fall damage, as did the trio. Rainy began limping on a hind leg, and it appeared that Sunny’s hip joint was hurting by the way she whimpered after each step. Stormy was completely unaffected except for the fact that he’d bumped his head jumping into the hole instead of falling.

The group continued further down the newfound cave, Layla placing torches as they went to light up ores. It all felt the same to Kiralie, and it all blended together. It was all so natural, the swinging of the picks in time to the nonexistent beat of the mine’s core. She didn’t even know which ores she was mining anymore, and she became senseless to the world around her. She started humming along to the pickaxe’s blows on the red stone ore she was currently mining.

''Chink. Chink.''

  Chink chink chink.

  Pop!

  Hmm, hmm hmm hmm, pop!

After a while in the mine, the group got hungry almost simultaneously. Layla munched on some bread, while Kiralie and Kasey ate some raw potatoes, their arms too tired to cook them. Right then, it was silently decided. The group couldn’t mine any further. They were going across the sea.

Layla placed some beds down, as she was something like their travel keeper. Kiralie and Kasey collapsed into their separate beds at once, Layla in the middle of them both in her bed. The beds were each spaced one block apart. Layla snuffed out the torch nearest to them so they could take a rest.

Kiralie tossed and turned to get comfortable, murmuring things like, “This is the roughest bed I’ve ever slept in”, and occasionally checking for pebbles which had fallen from her shoes into the bed. The trio hadn’t even bothered to change into their pajamas, or wash the smears of coal off their face. Kiralie was aware of black smudges on her bedclothes from her cheeks and legs.

Finally, she found a somewhat comfortable position and tucked her legs into her chest. She pulled the red covers over her head, and was aware of both the cats sleeping at her feet. “Why do they always sleep here…” she muttered to herself, before she felt her eyes flutter closed.

—-

''“Sssso we meet again.” The familiar voice rushed into Kiralie’s ears, but it was all dark. Was she dreaming or not? She couldn’t even tell herself.''

''  “What do you want?!” She shouted into nothing. She looked down and saw her own blocky body, fists raised in a position as if she were ready to punch something- or someone- into dust. She wished she could locate this strange voice and start slaying them with her sword so that they’d leave her be.''

'' “I want the book,” said the voice simply. A green, leafy, clawed hand poked out of the darkness, palm out. “Give it to me, and you and your friends might not sssuffer.”''

''  Kiralie was seriously freaked out, so she didn’t say anything, just backed up, turned around, and sprinted away at the fastest speed she could manage. “Oh no oh no oh no why is this happening…” she muttered to herself, and she could feel her eyes wide in terror.''

''  Kiralie heard thundering footsteps behind her. “GIVE ME THE BOOK!” Screeched the voice loudly. “THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!” Kiralie turned around and screamed as she saw a giant creeper looming way up above her. It had one red pupil, redder than blood, redder than rose bushes, redder than a robin’s blushing stomach. The reason it only had one pupil was simple. It’s other eye was gone. There was a large scar over where it probably used to be, but it looked old. It’s claws were sharper than those of an average creeper, and large splotches of different colors coated its body. The whole deal kind of had a red haze to it.''

''  “Please stop!” Yelled Kiralie. “My friends and I need this book!” She desperately hoped she could wake up from this surreal dream.''

  “I will never stop, not until I get the Everlasting Tablet!” The monster shouted, desperately crawling along the black ground. What the heck is the Everlasting Tablet? ''Kiralie thought, racing ahead of the creeper, who had stopped and was just peering at her evilly. In the horizon, she could see a glowing white light.''

''  Suddenly, she became aware of a wolf running beside her. It looked normal….''

'' …except when it turned toward her, its sockets were wide, gaping and empty. Its mouth was opened in a silent scream as it vanished, bit by bit, pixel by pixel.''

''  Kiralie screamed even louder and ran even faster. She could see that she was getting closer to the neon white light, which was a doorway which led to… who knows where? She just wanted to get out of here.''

  She approached the door, and, in one quick, fluid motion, jumped through.

  Then, the world went red.

—-

''  Layla was asleep. She could feel it. But something was happening around her.''

''  She heard a noise. A squishing sound, and shuffling around… and a scream pierced the air.''

'' Layla couldn’t control herself. She was stuck, and she could… feel each of her body parts. It was hard for her to describe to herself. She just sensed each body part’s presence. It was so… unnatural. She couldn’t control anything, couldn’t shift her eyes, could only listen to the squishing sounds and grow steadily louder and closer...''

''  The sounds were so close, and suddenly, they stopped. Layla shuddered, unable to scream, unable to blink, unable to turn away. Helpless as a baby in its mother’s arms.''

''  She saw a shape fly past her vision, and she shuddered internally again. Her eyes were fixed on the spot where the shape would be. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t run away.''

  She couldn’t even breathe.

''  There was a sudden flash of white, which flashed to red, and back again repeatedly. The sequence nearly blinded Layla. At least she could scream... not that anybody would hear her if she did.''

'' She heard a voice. A deep, gurgling, hissing, squishing voice. Not quite the hissing voice in her dream. Layla screamed some more, as the voice steadily got louder, whispering in a chant.''

  “Treasure found in cave and sea

  Allies to be or not to be?

  With help of a friend from the wood

 Set the world to be as it should,

  Take sharp claw and feathered hand,

  And stop the Eyeless One in his plans.”

''  Then there was a screech, and Layla’s vision turned black and silent. It felt like she had been awake, and that she was now drifting to sleep at last.''

—-

 Kiralie gasped loudly, shooting out of her bed. She saw a flash of rocky ceiling before she hit the ground with a crack. She saw a blinding white flash, and a bright pain shot through her.

She must have screamed, because she heard a rustling and the surprised voices of Kasey and Layla. However, all she wanted to do was sleep once more, a dreamless sleep. She groaned, then looked up to see Layla and Kasey standing over her.

“Are you okay?” Asked Layla, fear in her eyes.

“Yeah,” murmured Kiralie. “I just hit my head. I’m okay.” She rubbed her head for a second, until Layla reached out her hand to help Kiralie up. Kiralie look it, grunting as she lifted herself from the ground.

Kasey tossed some apples out of his inventory, and though he didn’t speak, his message was, “You should eat something.” Kasey crunched on his own apple, and Kiralie and Layla, in turn, bit into theirs as well. When the apples were gone, Layla and Kasey packed up the camp while Kiralie scouted the area for hostile mobs. If there were any, she would kill them to keep her friends safe. Her head was still throbbing dully.

After the camp was all packed up, the beds safely inside Layla’s inventory, the trio followed the trail of torches they had made coming down the tunnel into the cavern that they had been standing in. Up they came, into a familiar upper tunnel. There were holes in the walls where they had picked out the ores.