Sty| Treatropolis: A little bird told me

In the ruins of a once mighty city, the clatter of tiny hoofsteps rang out in the silence. A small navy blue styx was excitedly chasing a vibrantly colored bird with a trailing rainbow sour belt tail. The styx chirped and yapped and the fluttering display of color. He was always happy to see something flying, and he felt like he just had to chase them! Something about the way that the colors moved through the air never failed to draw his eye. he just wished that it would stop being so high up!! He was so focused on his feathered friend, that he didn't notice the shape running past until he crashed right into it!

 The styx toppled over as whatever it was he ran into pushed him away. He chirped as he waved his tiny legs in the air, eventually flipping himself back over, looking over to whatever it was that so rudely interrupted... whatever it was he was just doing.

Oh! It was one of those fluffy colorful things, they were always super exciting, sometimes they wanted to wrestle (though they tended to play a little to rough), sometimes they wanted to play fetch (they weren't very good at it though, they usually threw the thing at him instead of away), and sometimes they-! Oh no! The little styx reeled back as he noticed what the fluffy thing was holding, a dreadful Shiny Scary!! While they might just look like any other Nice Shiny, or even a Shiny Snacky, Shiny Scaries were just the worstest, scariest, nastiest things that the little styx ever knew! Shaking with fright, the little styx crouched low to the ground and made the biggest grrrbarks that he could. The Fuzzy thing stared at the the little styx, before looking up and running away! The little styx stopped barking, he did it!!1!one! He started wagging his tail super hard as he stood tall in pride, because he was the bravest, bestest, goodest boy in the whole- The little styx's thoughts were once again interrupted he suddenly heard very loud barking right behind him, and he was scooped up in the air!

The little styx yelped in alarm as he was tightly squeezed and shaken around by something very loud, and very red. "¡oʇ ɟɟo uɐɹ noʎ ǝɹǝɥʍ ƃuᴉɹǝpuoʍ sɐʍ I ¡uɐɥɔ oɹoʞoʞ" Whatever was holding him kept barking and barking, without stop "¡ǝuo loɯs ɐ uǝʌǝ 'sʎɐp uᴉ ʇɹodǝɹ ɐ ǝɯ uǝʌᴉƃ ʇ,uǝʌɐɥ no⅄" it wouldn't stop holding him, it wouldn't stop barking "ǝɹǝɥʇ ɥʇɹɐƎ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝɔɐɟ ǝɥʇ ɟɟo pǝddoɹp ɐpuᴉʞ ʇsnɾ noʎ puɐ 'ǝɹoɟǝq noʎ pǝddoʇs ʇ,upɐɥ ʇɐɥʇ ʇnq 'ɹǝɥɔɐǝɹɔ ǝlʇʇᴉl ɐ ʇsnɾ ǝɹ,noʎ ʇɐɥʇ ʍou ǝdʎʇ oʇ noʎ ɹoɟ ɹǝpɹɐɥ s,ʇᴉ ʇɐɥʇ ʇǝƃ I 'ǝʞᴉ˥" stop stop stop stoP STOP STOP STOP "¡MO"

The little styx fell to ground as the red noisy thing recoiled. It may have looked like one of those red water snackies, but it certainly didn't taste like one. "¡¿ɹoɟ ʇɐɥʇ sɐʍ ʇɐɥM" Of course it was still barking at him. The little styx growled as loud as it could, ears pressed against his head as he tried to look as threatening as he could. "¿ʇɹɐH˙˙˙" The Red Noisy reached toward him. All the fight draining out of him in an instant, the little styx turned away and ran as fast as he could, deeper into the city as the creature stared after him.

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The little styx loved to explore, there were so many exciting colors to see, and snackies to eat, and new friends to make... but it seemed like just around every corner was something scary... Wouldn't life just so much be so much easier if the little styx just stopped being scared? If it just let go of all those pesky emotions, all those thoughts that became harder to formulate with every passing minute, if they just let go of everything, just allowed it's consciousness to sink below the waves of the dream. And so the little styx became nothing.

Wait

wait? a voice rang out from the void, light and musical, like a bird singing out into the darkness of the night. Stay with me little buddy. the styx reached out to the beautiful sound, but trying to wade through the emptiness felt impossible. Ok, ok, do you remember me? Im 

The styx paused, what was it saying? what did that mean? Why was it here? The a frenzy of emotions began to well up in his chest. Woah, it's ok little man. We don't need to do everything at once, just stay with me. That seemed easy enough to do, the voice may have been hard to hear, but the birdsong was so beautiful.

Let's start with something easy, tell me the biggest, most important memory you can find. You can do that, I know you can. Memory? The little styx reached deep down, digging for something, anything. He just wanted to continue hearing that beautiful birdsong.
The little styx dug and dug through the nothingness for what felt like forever. And then it felt something.
Small fragments of sensations, the feeling of crisp hot air, "-Feel free to go wherever you want-", galloping through a burnt forest, "-I'd recommend checking out-", looking over endless plains with herds of strange mutated creatures, the scratch of a pen on a journal, his journal, taking note of wondrous landscapes and adventures...

The voice laughs lightly, Yes! That's amazing! Now listen, I'm going to ask something big of you. remember your nightmare. remember the nightmare you came from. This came much quicker, an ocean of form flooding into the emptiness before him, he looked through the memories, he scanned the flashing images, he, he

he felt the hard slap of his shoes against the concrete, he could hear the wailing of the dreamer behind him. She held him in her arms, clutching him close in the hope that she could somehow stop the flow of his blood. He had been shot, he had shot him, he was the victim, the killer, the blood, the gun, the concrete, the walls of the alley, the heat of that night that caused beads of sweat to prick her forehead. Her... He reached up to touch her face, the face of his w-

And the crescent sun became whole.

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In the ruins of a rapidly decaying city, the steady rhythm of a gallop is muffled by the cacophony of the buildings falling, creatures and people screaming, the very ground cracking open. Hart, a lithe but hardy stygian runs through the city, wings slightly opened to help maintain his balance. He calls out to others directions for how to get back to the train station, breaks down debris trapping people, carries small, confused looking treats to the train. As he watches the last of the carts speed down the track, he snaps open his wings and follows, his body burning as the blinding sunlight hits him, he escapes the world reshaping itself around him, diving into the sparking nightmare portal.

And tumbling out back home.
After a few moments of regaining his breath, Hart shakily raised himself to his feet. The clean air of his warm summer garden soothed his muscles as he slowly followed one of the many bubbling streams to the center of his kingdom, before collapsing at the base of the great fountain of the dreamer and her love. He drew his exploration journal closer to him, softly flipping through it's pages, from his first exploration in his friend's post-apocalyptic pastoral kingdom, to his last entry, a series of sloppily scribbled drawings of candy birds that must have been over a week old. Sighing contently, Hart turned to the next clean page, carefully dated it in the corner, and began to write.