Once upon a time there was a great engineer named John. John created a robotic tiger and named it Magnus. Magnus became John’s best friend.

Once when John was driving on a highway, he suddenly saw a truck coming from the right side. The truck driver didn’t see John and the truck crashed into John’s car with a loud bang. John died in that unfortunate accident.

When John died, Magnus felt very sad so he went to the jungle and started living there. There he met a gorilla.

The gorilla asked Magnus, “Who are you and where are you from?”

Magnus replied, “My name is Magnus and I’m from the city. I’m going to live here in the jungle from now on.”

The gorilla asked again, “If you are from the city, why did you come here as city life is much better than life in the jungle?”

Magnus replied, “The man who created me died and then there was no one who could take care of me, that is why I came here.”

On knowing Magnus’s story, the gorilla said, “But there is more danger here for you.”

Magnus asked “Why?”

The gorilla explained, “Well, because the elephants can crush you, rhinos can tear you and lions can eat you!”

Magnus smiled and said, “They can’t do anything to me because my material is much harder than you think my friend.” Then he asked the gorilla, “What’s your name?”

The gorilla answered, “My name is Clark. You can be my friend and I will introduce you to others here.” Clark took Magnus to meet Crusher, a gorilla that was much stronger and bigger than Clark.

Once when they were playing in the jungle, they heard a loud screech and a cry as if someone was in serious pain. They looked at each other in surprise, wondering where the sounds came from.

Magnus turned to his friends and said, “We should go and see where the sounds came from and help if someone is in trouble.” So they rushed towards the direction of the sounds. After going deep in the jungle, they saw a tree with three scratches on it.

Magnus said looking uncertainly at the strange scratches, “It doesn’t seem to be of any animal that I know, do you guys have any idea?”

Suddenly Clark disappeared and the remaining two heard a sound like a whistle and an evil laughter.

As it started getting darker, they started hearing weird sounds and suddenly they heard Clark’s strange and zombie-like voice saying, “Help me!”

Magnus and Crusher searched everywhere but couldn’t find Clark. Feeling exhausted, they sat under a tree to rest and fell asleep. At about midnight, Clark returned badly injured, with bruises all over his face and body.

Looking at his dear friend, Crusher cried angrily, “Whoever did this is going to pay for it.”

It looked like Clark was taking his last breathes, so Crusher told Magnus that he knows a place which was supposed to have magical qualities. If they took Clark over there and threw him in the lake called ‘the healer of injuries’, Clark would get healed. Clark was quite heavy, but Magnus managed to carry him all the way to the lake and threw him in it. Clark got healed surprisingly quick and came out of the lake.

When they returned to the place where the attack took place, they saw the creature that had attacked Clark. It had a body like a lion, a tail like a dragon and it was the size of a dinosaur who could also breathe fire.

Magnus at once got out of control with anger and ran towards it to attack, but the monster just pushed Magnus and he went flying like a bird and dashed into a tree. The same happened to Crusher and Clark when they attacked the monster.

Then Magnus and his friends decided to attack the monster together. Magnus bit the monster’s tail, Clark started punching its eyes and Crusher took a root from an old tree and wrapped it around the monster’s neck and started strangling it. Attacked together by all the three, the monster fell on the ground and finally got defeated.

However, what happened next surprised them all. The monster suddenly started glowing and then turned into a very beautiful fairy! The fairy turned towards them and spoke in a sweet voice, “Congratulations friends! You have passed your test as a team.”

But Magnus and his friends looked at it in bewilderment, not understanding anything.

The fairy smiled and said, “I had come to test your courage and see how good a friend you guys are. I also wanted to see whether you work separately or can be good as a team too. You proved yourselves that you are not only brave, but good friends as well, and also that you are great together as a team. So, always believe in you strengths and support each other.”

Saying this, the fairy disappeared, leaving the three friends smiling with pride.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 13th, 2018