Some foals never know their parents’ love.
For Babbeh, life started with only pain. An abrupt, painful fall, terrible noises as he rolled along cold metal, then rough scrubbing. Laying there chirping, every inch of his frail newborn body aching, he was roughly grabbed, and then…something so horrible that for a short while, Babbeh fell asleep.
~
Babbeh woke up, cheeping as his poopie-place ached. He tried to crawl blindly, trying to find the mummah or daddeh he knew should be here to love him, feed him, and protect him, but stopped short when his poopie-place hurt even more! A munstah! A munstah was numming his poopie-place!
Laying on the soft pad, which even now was beginning to reek from his scardy-peepees, he chirped softly. Where was mummah? Where was daddeh? He was so hungry, so hungry that the tummeh-owwies were even worse than the poopie-place-owwies!
He sniffed the air, hoping to smell his mummah, but all he smelled were the scardy-peepees.
“Peep! Cheep! Cheep!” he pleaded, but mummah didn’t come. Mummah didn’t love him anymore?
But now he was growing used to the smell of the scardy-peepees, and he could smell something else, something that made the scary tummeh-growlies even louder. Milkies! Crawling forward, in spite of the poopie-place-owwies, he felt something soft. MUMMAH! Mummah still loved him!
Latching on, he greedily began to suck, only to recoil. Why was mummah giving him nu-taste-pretty, yicky milkies? Was he a bad babbeh?
But the hunger overcame the disgust, and he began to suckle again. It was so yicky! So bitter! So he drank just enough milkies that the tummeh-owwies were just barely bearable.
“Peep?” he chirped, asking mummah to give him huggies and make the poopie-place-owwies go away.
But mummah didn’t give him huggies or sing him mummah-songs. Daddeh didn’t pick him up or give the poopie-place-munstah sorry-hoofsies. Babbeh was ignored, unloved, by parents that would let him suckle yicky milkies, but didn’t care about his heart-hurties or poopie-place-owwies.
~
After so many forevers, Babbeh was startled into a fit of terrified cheeping and peeping as he was violently rattled around. Rolling back and forth across the nu-smell-pretty pad, his fluff became soaked and matted with his own scardy-peepees. Worse, each time he rolled he slammed into something hard and cold, scaring him even more and making the poopie-place-munstah eat his poopie-place more.
The rattling lasted even more forevers than the silence and loneliness, until it abruptly stopped. Once more there was quiet, but now Babbeh felt so, so yicky from the scardy-peepees. Babbehs weren’t supposed to be yicky!
“Peep? CHEEP! CHIRP!” he pleaded again, begging mummah to give him licky-cleanies so he wouldn’t smell so nu-pretty.
~
Forevers after forevers after forevers. With his seeing-places closed and no sleepy-time-huggies, Babbeh had no idea how much time was passing. He’d given up asking for licky-cleanies, or huggies, or mummah-songs. He was a bad, bad babbeh, and mummah and daddeh didn’t love him! Nobody would love such a yicky, ugly, dummeh babbeh!
Suddenly, there was strange feeling, and Babbeh began to tumble around the little space that was the only place he’d ever known. Chirping in disgust and desperation as he rolled around once more, he pleaded for it to just stop! He just wanted mummah and daddeh to love him!
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tumbling stopped. Babbeh began to suckle again, more for comfort than out of tummeh-owwies, but mummah pulled away from him. No! He was such a bad, yicky, dummeh babbeh that mummah wouldn’t even give him yicky milkies?
“Oh, Hell yeah!” came a voice, with a rush of too-cool air. Babbeh unconsciously gasped, drawing in a huge breath of the first nu-yicky air in so, so many forevers.
“Perfect colors,” the voice continued. “A perfect Dashie!”
Had Babbeh been older, he would have rejoiced at having namesies, but he was such a tiny chirpy babbeh that the words meant nothing.
“Let’s get you out of there,” the voice said kindly, and although he couldn’t understand the nice-mistuh’s words, Babbeh felt so, so many happies.
Then, the little space flipped over, and Babbeh was falling! Then he jerked to a stop, dangling by the poopie-place-munstah. Chirping from owwies and scardies, Babbeh made more sorry-peepees. Then with a pop, the poopie-place-munstah let go, and he was falling once more.
He landed with the worst owwies ever, and something warm and soft closed gently around him. “Whew, you stink,” the voice said.
Babbeh nuzzled up to the soft warm thing. Was this his mummah? No, it smelled like a nice-mistuh. Was he going to have a new daddeh?
~
Mel’s hands throbbed even through the thick mittens as she finished shoveling. Half-running to the shed at the back of the run-down wreck she called home, she fumbled with the lock for a while with numbing fingers before finally getting it open. Hastily storing the snow shovel, she headed inside.
Not that it was all that much warmer in here than it was outside. Old, cheap insulation and an antiquated heater don’t make for a toasty residence. Especially considering how little she could afford for energy bills. Still, it was better than outside.
Shedding her outer layers, Mel quickly walked to the bedroom, which through much effort on her part, and a lot of ragged old blankets nailed to the walls, stayed reasonably warm. Even so, she still sat shivering, wrapped in a comforter, for the better part of fifteen minutes.
While she sat, trying to warm up, she pulled her phone out of the drawer. It was pretty much the only thing she had that could loosely be called a luxury, a remnant of a prior life. Paying the frankly exorbitant fees to keep service on the damn thing hurt, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t stop. Any day she could have gotten the call, after all.
It’d been a rough six months. Well, closer to eight now, come to think of it. Isn’t it strange that time passes so quickly, even when every day is a slog? Regardless, she had not had a good time.
Of course, Mel was one of the lucky ones. “Lucky,” of course, being a relative term. She hadn’t been crushed or burned or drowned. It didn’t mean her life hadn’t ended that day.
It was surreal, at first, learning that there was nothing to come back to. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she’d even fully come to grips with it now. Life in the orphanage hadn’t been great, especially not in a city so infested that even walking down the street was a struggle, but still. All gone, in the blink of an eye.
She suddenly snapped out of her musings. Right, there was still a lot to get done. With a sigh, she stood up, making her way to the kitchen to try to scrounge something to eat. Unmarked can lotto once again. Wonderful.
~
Babbeh shivered. Even wrapped in the nice-mistuh’s nu-hoofsy, it was still so, so cold. Cold wasn’t good for babbehs! But Babbeh was a bad babbeh, so maybe the nice-mistuh wanted to give him coldy-owwies.
“Hmm…” the voice sounded concerned. “I guess you’ll have to bear with it a bit longer. Can’t just put you in my pocket without your can.”
Babbeh, of course, understood none of this. To his horror, he was dropped back into the cold, no-smell-pretty, poope-place-munstah-having can. He only felt a little better when the yicky-milkie-place, now cold to the touch, brushed against him. Latching on, he began to suckle as his can was placed into a pocket.
~
Quentin hummed to himself as he walked along, suddenly not minding the cold. The can in his pocket seemed to radiate warmth. It’d been so worth it to take the detour and check the Foal-in-a-Can vending machine. A perfect Dashie! For two bucks!
Had he not been riding the bubbly gambler’s high, he might have noticed the way the weight of the can suddenly disappeared. Had he taken better care of his coat, there might not have been a hole in the pocket. Had he not been humming, he might have heard the soft thump as the can landed in the snow.
~
Mel didn’t hate fluffies, even if she had every right to. As much as she would have liked to pretend it was for moral reasons, it wasn’t. Hating fluffies just felt like hating earthquakes. They were technically a disaster, as she knew all too well, but…it’s not as if they knew what they were doing.
Of course, that was all a load of nonsense. After all, she hated mosquitoes, and those are much less aware and much less of a problem than fluffies were. Maybe it was the way the colorful little creatures bumbled through life, or their too-big eyes, or just familiarity. She didn’t know.
Not that it has to make sense. Hatred rarely does, so why should apathy be any different?
~
Mel hunched her back against the wind as she made her way back from her part-time job. The snow had thankfully stopped, but the wind still seemed to cut through her tattered coat and into her bones. Keeping her hands deep in her coat pockets, she tried to ignore the throbbing numbness.
Snow crunched under her boots as she made my way between pools of light from the streetlamps. The snow may have stopped, but a overcast sky and new moon made for a dark, cold night. Shivering, and only mostly from the cold, she picked up the pace. There was something primal in her that didn’t like walking alone through the snow and darkness.
A brilliant neon extravaganza shone between two lampposts. One of those Foal-in-a-Can vending machines. Mel had never seen the point, but apparently in an area as high in foot traffic as this path, the machine was profitable enough to be worth the hassle. Looking at the little tubes with sleeping or wriggling chirpy foals, she felt a twinge of something. Sympathy, maybe, for creatures that would grow up parentless like she had? Or maybe envy, for creatures that got to stay in the warm.
Putting the feeling aside, she looked down as she walked away. she’d learned to be especially careful walking through this area, since many prospective buyers would just discard a can if they didn’t get colors they liked. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On one hand, they were leaving the foals to die. On the other, she doubted the foals would have had a good life living with such a shallow owner.
On the third hand, if she stepped on one of those cans half-buried in snow, she was going to end up on her ass. Adopting a careful, shuffling gait, she slowly made her way towards the next street lamp. A few cans she hoped were empty were forced away by her boots, but she didn’t trip.
~
Babbeh had just started getting used to the yicky smell of the can again, and begun to stop shivering when he started to fall. Chirping in alarm, he flapped his wingies, but they didn’t make him stop falling. Of course, he was such a bad babbeh, even his wingies didn’t love him.
The fall came to a halt, and the relative softness of the impact was lost on Babbeh, as he slammed once more into the side of the can. This time, however, it wasn’t the gentle jostling of a can being transported with care or being extracted from the vending machine. No, this time, he felt things pop and break and the owwies were worse than anything he could imagine.
He tried to peep, but could only wheeze.
~
Mel had fallen through the cracks.
Not literally, although given her current situation maybe falling into some crevasse would have been preferable. No, Mel had been one of the people who had, even before the Fall, more or less not existed as far as the state was concerned. Through a tangled net of misfiling, errors, and people covering their own asses, none of the paperwork that would have validated her existence ever made it to the right place.
~
Mel paused, noticing a can sticking halfway out of a pile of snow. Based on the text, it was upside down, too, which was probably insult to injury to the poor foal frozen to death inside the thing. Oh, for God’s sake, she thought, picking up the can. At least throw them in the trash.
Carrying the can to the bio-waste bin, she averted her face and lifted the lid. Even frozen, the contents of the bin unleashed an overwhelmingly foul odor that the wind happened to catch, and blew directly into Mel’s face. Death and despair, rot and misery.
Retching, she let the lid drop and backed away, pulling lungfuls of painfully cold, but blessedly fresh, air. She was sorely tempted to just toss the can like the original owner, but decided not to make the path any more hazardous than it already was. Stepping towards the bin again, she held her breath and opened it.
~
Babbeh was so, so cold. The coldy-hurties were even worse than the owwies from falling, even worse than the yicky smell, even worse than the tummeh-owwies. Wheezing softly, every breath becoming more and more painful as the air in the can slowly froze, he drifted off.
~
Babbeh was so warm. He’d never felt so warm, before. It was so nice, like he was floating. Maybe his mummah had come back for him! Maybe he was laying on her back, safe and warm with his brothers and sisters! Maybe he’d get sweet, delicious milkies!
Maybe they would love him again.
~
Something made Mel pause, right before she dropped the can into the bio-waste bin. Pulling it back, she unscrewed the lid, peeking inside. Might as well get a look at the poor dead thing, so at least someone would remember it.
She gasped in surprise, seeing the bright blue foal with the beginnings of a rainbow mane. She’d been expecting puke-green or feces-brown, not something that looked like it’d come right out of a Hasbio advert. Why would anyone have thrown this foal away?
Deep down, she knew why. For some, fluffies were nothing more than stress balls, cute little torture toys. She could imagine the sick delight the can’s owner must have taken, tossing aside a foal that could have had such a good life. For them, the foal’s color mattered even less than it would to a decent Hugboxer.
“I’m sorry,” she said, partly to the foal in her hand and partly to the others buried in the snow. “You deserved better than this.”
~
Babbeh startled back to lucidity, hearing words. He couldn’t understand them, but somehow he wanted to respond. Maybe it was mummah talking to him? He’d never heard her voice, but maybe this was what mummah-songs sounded like?
He tried to cheep along, to show mummah how happy he was that she loved him again. He was a yicky, nu-smell-pretty, dummeh, bad babbeh, but he wanted to tell mummah how much he loved her. But when he tried he felt so, so many owwies in his side, and only wheezed.
He felt the can begin to jostle again, and terror achieved what desire couldn’t. He chirped desperately, begging mummah to save him, to not let the meany munstahs give him more owwies.
“Holy shit. You’re alive?”
Part Two
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Love the story so far 
lm looking forward to seeing how this plays out!
I like your writing style. Good job so far,I am intrigued.