Before reading, see here and here.
Hullo tinies! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.
Once upon a time there was a lovely little pony named Popsy. Popsy the Pony lived in a meadow splattered with buttercups. It was a lovely meadow. The sun was always shining, the weather was always balmy, and the other animals in the meadow – birds and insects and burrowing moles – were happy and contented. Of course it was a completely artificial and unnatural meadow, quite unlike real nature, which is bloody and gruesome and utterly horrifying, full of violence and pain and death. Just ask a sheep. Sheep know. That is why they barely get a wink of sleep, they are so frightened and fretful.
Anyway, tinies, one day Popsy the Pony was having a lovely time in the lovely meadow when, all of a sudden, this pastoral idyll was shattered by the intrusion of reality … no, let me rephrase that … this pastoral idyll was shattered by the intrusion of the hidden, Lovecraftian, true reality beyond our puny human comprehension, and Popsy the Pony was slobberingly devoured by an enormous squid from the Black Pit of Hellish Nothingness. Slobber slobber slobber! Eek eek eek!
The end. Now, tinies, you may run away screaming and blubbing like fotherington-tomas.
A truly heartwarming tale, mon brave. I shall endeavour to read it aloud to a selection of bewildered infants at the earliest opportunity, in suitably menacing tones.
Smooth swine!
Much as I admire your attempts to de-Lovecaftise your brain (I was growing weary of tentacles…), I fear this story contains some insidious stereotypes that may be venturing into eldritch territory. Why are we encouraged to side with Popsy, who by your own account seems a bit vapid and absent-minded about personal safety? Or to view the enormous squid (who obviously came from a difficult background and isn’t even given a name) as the villain of the piece? What if he was simply hungry, and thought bumping off a dim-witted pony was preferable to further frightening an already terrified sheep?