This was Drip.
“Don't move,” Drip crowed.
Despite snaking from so base a beak, Drip's voice was chipper, through and through. The bird spat happiness, impossibly, in only two words.
“Bell,” the beak clucked, “You're behind on rent.”
“AHHH!” Bell said. He said it again, louder. For effect.
Drip screeched.
They soared, Bell and the bird. Old fences, the occasional tree, and at least one aesthetically placed wheelbarrow rushed by beneath. Bell felt a deep, sinking sense of regret at what was now being confirmed to him: that the inexplicable rustic aesthetic of his strange land really did wrap its tendrils indefinitely outward. As they flew, the floating masses of land blurred below like the spots of a leopard fast approaching. Bell finally knew what it was to cast his own meteoric shadow.
“Oh Bell,” Drip chirped with singsong rhythm, “Consider this a courtesy call. And don't forget to pay the Baal.”
Bell's mind evaporated. Nothing existed except his aching shoulder, which seemed to have bumbled its way between a vice and a furnace.
“Okay, Dri—” he gasped. He clamped his eyes and gritted his teeth like that strange device known to us all which clamps and grits.
“OKAY!” he cried louder than The Dog could ever hope to. “I'll get the Baal some Happy!”
Drip squawked a horrid, painful screech, as though he had just been tarred and defeathered on the spot. “QUIET!”
“Sorry, Drip. I'll keep it low. If you could just loosen your—”
Pressure released.
He was falling.
He screamed.
1 Horse.