The Chocolate Rabbit, Walnut Squirrel, and Silk Cat families have come to stay in a cottage by the sea. Even after playing all day in the sea, the children still enjoy taking a bath and barbecuing the fish they catch.
When they climb into their hammocks at night, they have so much fun that the last thing they want to do is sleep.

Late one night, Freya the Chocolate Rabbit Girl, Ralph the Walnut Squirrel Boy and Tiffany the Silk Cat Girl go out onto the veranda and look up at the sky.
“It’s so beautiful!” The stars spread across the whole sky.
Just then they see a huge shooting star come falling toward the beach.

“I’ve never seen a shooting star that big,” says Ralph. “Tomorrow let’s go and try to find where it fell.”
Ralph just loves strange things. The next morning the three set out for near where the shooting star came down.
“It came down around here,” says Ralph.
“Maybe it was a real star,” says Tiffany.
Just for fun, they search around, and look behind a small rock. There they have a surprise.

Behind the rock is a pile of glittering seashells. They are both delighted.
“They’re beautiful! Just like little pieces of star.”
“Look at all of them! It’s amazing they all fell together. Maybe the shooting star was showing us the way to this treasure.”

Freya, however, watches them in silence.
They are seashells she picked up the day before. They were in the way while she was swimming, so she put them there. But Ralph and Tiffany are so excited that she doesn’t have the heart to tell them.
So she just watches as Ralph and Tiffany happily fill their pockets with the shells, or wrap them up in their handkerchiefs.

“That shooting star brought us a gift we never expected,” she thinks, and smiles.
“We’ve got something to show you,” Ralph and Tiffany tell the babies when they get back to the cottage. They tell them all about how they found the seashells.

“When the shooting star fell, it told us where there was treasure.”
“These shells are like little pieces of star.”
The babies are very excited. “Treasure! We want treasure!”
“Don’t sleep tonight, and watch for a shooting star,” Ralph and Tiffany tell them. This sounds like trouble.
“Now what? There aren’t any more shells there,” thinks Freya. “The babies are going to be very disappointed.”

She sneaks out to the beach by herself, finds more shells, and piles them behind the rock.
“I’ll watch for shooting stars,” she tells the babies that night. “You go to sleep.”

The next morning when the babies wake up, she says, “A shooting star fell last night,” and takes them out to the beach.
“Was it around here? Or maybe over there?”
She begins searching among the rocks.
“We’ll look, too!” say the babies and toddle happily around.

Soon Ambrose the Walnut Squirrel Baby finds the shells behind the same rock.
“Look! Lots of treasure!”
Creme The Chocolate Rabbit Baby and Gilly the Silk Cat Baby gather round. They are all very happy.

Watching them, Freya smiles happily. “That shooting star really did bring gifts.”
The shells Freya spent so much time gathering become souvenirs of their seaside holiday for everyone.

The story spreads around the village, and soon all the children say, “When you see a shooting star by the sea, it’s telling you where there’s treasure.”
Whenever she hears this, Freya feels both happy, and a tiny bit embarrassed.

THE END