“Styx! Styx!! Here, boy!” 

Ozzy cups one hand to his mouth as he calls out frantically to his little friend. His other clutches at Styx’s cereal bowl in the hopes that the familiar object might help draw him out. There’s still a dampness in his eyes, a tiny crust of salt clinging to the fur on his cheeks. His voice is almost hoarse now from the yelling, but he can’t give up. Not when his first friend is out there cold and alone.

Not when it means someone else has abandoned him.

“Styx!”

Behind him, Vira casts her eyes about, looking for the Doglefox. They’re in an open field now, the shops and houses and market stalls of Neopia Central long behind them, because there are footsteps on the path leading out of the city: tiny little paw prints spaced out far apart, different from the close little trot that Styx usually takes up when he walks to the plaza with Ozzy.

Vira comes up next to him and snorts, glancing down at the paw prints on the path. “Still running, huh? Looks like he really wanted to get away.” 

Ozzy bites his lip. He doesn’t want to face the thought that Vira might be right, but her voice makes the one whispering inside his head louder: Of course he wanted to leave. Why would he want to stay with you?

He opens his mouth and yells, “STYX!!!”

Their search leads them to another path, and then another. Still, the Doglefox’s pawprints continue on, into a sparse line of dark green-and-brown trees, and then into trees less green and healthy. Overhead the canopy thickens, but not with leaves: with branches, gnarled and twisted and angular, like claws reaching up into the dark clouds above them. Below them, thorny brambles begin to creep onto the path, as if grasping at their legs.

Ozzy shivers. “Um… V-Vira?” 

“Styx… here boy…” Vira pauses her calling, and turns to him. “What?”

“Th-this is… I th-th-think we’re in the Haunted Woods.” 

Vira looks up and around. “Uh, yeah. You got a problem with that?”

Ozzy hunches in on himself, clutching the cereal bowl with Styx’s name on it closer to himself. His eyes dart back and forth, certain that he just saw something move. “N-n-n-no,” he lies. “I just… d-don’t think this is the k-kind of place he’d run off to.”

“What are you talking about?” Vira asks sternly, hands on her hips. “You see those itty-bitty paw prints, right? And all those ratty twigs? What else could possibly be leaving them behind?”

“I guess… But…”

“But what?”

“Why would he be in a p-place like this?” 

Vira sighs. For a second, the cold irritation drops from her face, and something else softens her brow. “Who knows?” she mumbles, her voice distant, but in a second she’s back to her usual self, and she flits over to Ozzy to drape an arm around his shoulders. “But it kinda suits us, doesn’t it?”

She shakes him. Ozzy doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure she’s right, but… something is telling him she’s not entirely wrong, either.

Vira releases his shoulders, then takes his hand. “Come on. This way. I’ve got a good feeling.” 

Ozzy follows along helplessly, so worried he can’t even appreciate how warm Vira’s hand is—or maybe it isn't warm at all. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t feel like he knows anything anymore.

He tries to shake off the uncertainty. “What do you mean by ‘a good feeling?’” he asks, still glancing through the trees surrounding them for any sign of Styx. All he sees are shadows—creepy, shifting shadows.

Next to Ozzy, Vira shrugs a shoulder. “I dunno. It just feels right, though, doesn’t it?”

The path narrows. The brambles and thorns that had lined the sides of the trail thicken, and now Ozzy has to be mindful of stepping over them. Some of the brambles have tiny, glistening black berries on them. Berries that he’s never seen before. The further they go, the more there are. 

“Yeah… yeah,” Vira says. “I think we’re going to find exactly what we’re looking for here.”