Hello friends and welcome to Sleep Tite Stories.

This is the fifth part of our story about Esther and the magical book of dreams.

Esther is a very curious girl who is always daydreaming about heading off on an adventure.

Shirewood, where she lives, is very boring for her and she can't wait to go and explore the areas around her.

Esther is reading a book that she found one day when she took a different path home.

But she is afraid she is going to have to give it to her mother now and she doesn't know what is going to happen when she does.

The magical book of dreams, part 5.

Once upon a time, in a world full of magic and fun, there lived a little girl named Esther.

She lived in a small village far from any castles at the very edge of the known kingdom.

They were surrounded by beautiful gardens, flowers, sparkling streams of water and protected from the elements by moss covered rocks and tall towering trees.

It was a wonderful and quiet place far from the hustle and bustle of the mystical forest.

Esther's small village was called Shirewood and life there was slow by design.

Whereas those of the mystical forest might talk of politics or philosophy, those of Shirewood were more interested in practical matters like agriculture and preserving their old ways.

They didn't have all the conveniences of the other villages, towns or cities in the kingdom and they were very protective of their way of life.

Despite the lack of conveniences, they were very independent and outsiders, though welcomed with open arms, were rare.

What Shirewood was known for was as a gateway to what was once known as the unknown realm.

The kingdom was huge, with vast plains, deserts, mountain ranges, forests and seashores, but it was not all encompassing.

There were regions far afield that the kingdom traded with or heard about from those who loved to travel.

But they were as mysterious to those in the kingdom as traveling to some far off exotic place might be to us today.

The most mysterious and the most dangerous was the place that Shirewood served as a gateway to.

While many people used to travel through Shirewood in order to understand this place of mystery, the unknown realm holds as much mystique today as it did hundreds of years ago.

The reason for this is quite simple. No one has ever returned from their expedition to explore the realm.

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