Part One
Mel was amazed that the foal was alive. He must’ve been tossed a few minutes ago, at the most, or he would have frozen by now. Fluffies weren’t the best at handling cold, and chirpy foals like this one needed warmth, a lot of it. The can, being plastic and relatively thick, was fairly good insulation when closed, but even the moderately warm air in the can would be freezing agony to the chirpy inside.
Amazement aside, it really didn’t change anything. Ultimately, the foal’s fate really didn’t change simply because he was alive when Mel found him. Of course, she didn’t want fluffies to die, especially not chirpies, but she recognized reality. There just weren’t any options available that wouldn’t result in the foal’s death.
Mel, despite having grown up practically surrounded by feral fluffies, actually knew comparatively little about the culture around raising fluffies. Having grown up in an orphanage with very strict views on internet access, she’d never seen the online discourse around fluffies. Afterwards, she’d avoided anything fluffy-related, for obvious reasons.
So, in spite of understanding the basics of fluffy biology and care, Mel had no idea exactly what it was that she held in her hand. The extent of her knowledge about fluffy coloration was that more vibrant was better, but she had no idea that particular patterns were unusually valued. Why would she? Basing the value of a pet on similarity to a character from an old cartoon was frankly insane.
The logical conclusion she reached, then, was this: the foal was doomed. She couldn’t take the foal in; he would need too much care and an ancient and run-down wreck of a home was no safe place to raise a fluffy. Shelters also weren’t an option, as with the massive influx of surrenders after the holiday novelty wore off, they were entirely out of space. So that left two options: leave the foal to freeze or kill him quickly to minimize his suffering.
“Damn.”
~
Babbeh settled down as the jostling stopped, drifting off into a half-doze. He felt so warm, almost too warm. It was so nice, and he was so sleepy. Somewhere in his head, warning bells went off, telling him he could not sleep, but he was so tired! He just wanted sleepies!
~
So it was against her better judgement that Mel wrapped the foal’s can in her coat and started briskly walking home. Why she was doing it, she couldn’t begin to guess. Was it some deeply-buried psychological need, a projection of her own childhood longing to be adopted? Or maybe it was just a random whim that she was over-analyzing.
Regardless, as she tromped through the snow, shivering at every blast of wind, she hugged the can close to her body in the hopes of warming the foal up enough that he would survive until she arrived home. After that? Well, she’d figure something out. If nothing else, Mel was good at adapting to shitty situations.
~
Mel carefully slid the foal out of the can, nose wrinkling at the smell. Well, of course, laying on top of what was a glorified training pad soaked in his own urine would make the creature stink, but it seemed that whoever had abandoned the foal had taken out the waste removal tube before dumping the creature, so the poor thing was covered in scardy-poopies as well. The smell might have turned her away from holding the foal, but Mel had spent a lot of time around feral fluffies, since there really wasn’t a choice in Cleveland, so the smell was tolerable enough.
The foal was warm to the touch, but not nearly warm enough. She couldn’t make a precise judgement without a thermometer, but just based on the way he felt, she suspected that the damp fluff and inadequate heating in the can had dropped him into a state of hypothermia. For a moment, in fact, she’d thought the foal was dead, but shallow breathing set those fears to rest.
That meant she had to warm the foal up, and fast. Keeping the foal against her body was too slow, the poor thing would die before she warmed it enough. Warm water was an option, but she didn’t want to risk the foal inhaling water. The radiator for the ancient heating system barely put off any radiant heat, and setting the foal directly on the radiator itself would have one half too cold and the other too hot. Warm water it was.
Wait. The hair dryer! Of course! She’d completely forgotten about it, since for some reason dryers made her already frizzy hair turn into an unmanageable mess, so she never used it. In fact, if it hadn’t been left in the bathroom when she arrived here, she wouldn’t have had one at all.
Running to the bathroom, she dug through the random detritus under the sink before triumphantly pulling out the garish pink device. How old the thing was, she couldn’t begin to guess, but as long as it worked she didn’t really care. Though this would have to be a one-time thing, since the moment she turned it on, the room filled with the acrid smell of hot plastic and she could almost feel her cancer risk rising.
She carefully rotated the foal around in the stream of warm air. The stink of urine grew so much worse as it slowly evaporated off the foal’s fluff, but the could see him slowly rousing into consciousness again. It took a long time, longer than it had for the various abandoned foals she’d rescued as a child, and she knew she’d barely made it in time. Another few minutes and the foal would never have awoken.
The foal began to chirp and struggled in her hand, but was far too weak to pull itself along. The sound of the hair dryer was probably terrifying for the poor little thing.
“Bear with it,” she said, despite knowing that the words would mean nothing to a chirpy whose eyes were still closed.
~
Babbeh tried to run, tried to get away from the loud munstah that was giving him the worstest hurties ever, but he was too tired to drag himself.
He chirped and cheeped, begging for mummah, or daddeh, or the nice-mistuh, or anyone to save him. It hurt so bad! He’d been so warm and happy and now there was a loud, meany munstah giving him owwies!
All the forevers since he was born, the hurties had just gotten worse and worse! First the fall, then the poopie-place-munstah and the tummeh-owwies, then the jostling, and now this! Mummah nu wub Babbeh! Babbeh am bad babbeh? Am onwy fow huwties?
The hurties went on for more forevers, it seemed like more forevers than even the jostling or the cold-hurties or the tummeh-owwies, but eventually it stopped. Still having the worstest scardies ever, Babbeh tried to crawl, tried to find mummah. He chirped and cheeped and tried to make mummah love him again, but he couldn’t smell her. All he smelled was yicky peepee smell and poopies smell and some other yicky smell he couldn’t identify.
He began to flail his nubs in a tantrum, unable to bear the heart-hurties any more. Was he a bad babbeh? Why didn’t mummah love him? Why did he get hurties? What had he done wrong?
His tantrum was abruptly interrupted as the yicky-milky place came close to him, and he latched on, this time because of tummeh-owwies as well as heart-hurties. Mummah? “Peep?”
He suckled greedily, not caring at all about the yickiness of the milkies. He had the worstest tummeh-owwies ever, and the worstest heart-hurties, and he just wanted mummah to love him! He drank and drank and drank, until for the first time the tummeh-owwies were gone, expecting mummah to pull away again at any moment.
Finally he let go, but kept nuzzling the nice, soft milky-place. Mummah didn’t hate him? Was he a good babbeh? He didn’t know anymore. He was so confused, had so many scardies and heart-hurties, and he just couldn’t understand! Babbehs were for huggies and love and sweet, delicious milkies! Why was he only getting hurties and scardies?
~
The foal detached from the rubber nipple of the can’s feeding attachment, his belly looking healthily round instead of the shrunken state it’d been when Mel found him. He’d also leaked a little bit of waste onto her hand while feeding, but she didn’t really care. Handling the foal had left her filthy enough that a little bit more piss and shit wasn’t going to change anything.
Now she had a decision to make, one without any good options. Well, the feeding attachment probably had enough formula to last until morning, and she’d have time enough to think while trying to get the foal settled. Resigning herself to a sleepless night, Mel left the foal on a warmed towel and went to get cleaned up.
~
Giuseppe was, to put things delicately, not a very nice person at all. It was more or less a guaranteed outcome, all things considered. That being said, he wasn’t entirely a monster.
Well, he was entirely a monster, but he had a peculiar soft spot in his heart. Of course, this was never, ever shown to anyone, since he had his street cred to worry about, but it existed. People who’d known him briefly, and a lot of people only knew Giuseppe briefly, saw him as the mountain of dumb muscle that had just broken one or more of their limbs.
Giuseppe had principles, though, in a warped sort of way. While inflicting brutality on other was done as a matter of course, he made sure it was all in the name of business. He didn’t enjoy hurting people, he just didn’t balk at it. So when it came to getting those illegal gambling debts repaid without excessive collateral damage, Giuseppe was the person you went to.
He had his limits, too. Intimidation or physical violence was one thing, but there were lines he didn’t cross. All in all, Giuseppe might have been a monster, but he was one of the classier monsters, the kind that would apologize after breaking your leg or forcing you to pawn your possessions. He just wanted the money was all.
Regardless, today, Giuseppe wasn’t working. One of the perks of the hired muscle business was choosing your own hours, and for a little while at least he had other priorities. People would have to somehow survive not paying debts and going around without broken bones for a few days.
“Biggest-poopies!” Sakura wailed, as another contraction wracked her body.
“You’re doing good, girl,” Giuseppe soothed.
“Wai babbehs gib Sakuwa huwties? Am gud mummah! Meanie babbehs stahp gib huwties!” the soon-mummah whined.
Giuseppe gently stroked her side, comforting the struggling mare. It had been a long, painful birth already, and she was still bloated after pushing out four foals. It looked like she’d have another three at least.
“Nu taste pwetty,” she whined as she cleaned the fourth foal Giuseppe placed in front of her, but she dutifully licked the foal clean.
“You’re almost done,” Giuseppe murmured, offering her a tube of sketti-treat so she could get the taste out of her mouth. “Just a little more.”
~
“Pwetty babbehs!” Sakura beamed, completely forgetting the pain and struggle only a few minutes before. “Sakuwa wub babbehs!”
She carefully rotated the newborn foals, making sure each got their turn at her milky-places before snuggling them close to her. It never occurred to her that one should get more or one should get less, and besides, there was more than enough for all of them. She had the bestest, prettiest babbehs. Some of them looked like her, bright pretty colors, and some looked like their daddeh, murkier but still pretty colors. One had wingies, two had pointies, and one had both, but they were all special to her.
“That’s right,” daddeh said. His tone, while perfect for communicating with the limited intellect of fluffies, would have come across to any other humans as a jarring mismatch with his hard, scarred countenance. “You’re the bestest mummah ever!”
~
Mel nervously knocked at her neighbor’s door. This house was the only one on the entire street that was well-maintained, and the only one besides hers that was consistently occupied. The others sometimes had temporary inhabitants, mostly addicts or meth labs, but with the current weather they were all abandoned.
While he had never been anything but cordial to her, Mel always felt nervous around Giuseppe. She felt bad about it, but damn if the man didn’t look terrifying. There was also something…off…about him, especially the way he so furtively slipped through the smallest crack in the door when entering or leaving his home. That, and his house was the only one that never got vandalized.
She’d long ago added it all together and got an answer she didn’t like, so she avoided Giuseppe whenever possible. He didn’t seem to mind, and graciously accepted her mumbled excuses and hurried retreat whenever they bumped into one another at the bus stop. Apparently he was used to people being scared of him, which made Mel feel guilty, but still…
What she was doing right now was stupid as Hell, though. It was one thing to live in the same area as a mobster, and quite another to knock on their door to ask for milk. All that being said, she wasn’t comfortable leaving the foal alone for the amount of time it’d take to get to the store and pick up the supplies she needed.
Damn her soft heart. If she ended up as a missing persons case because of that foal she’d…well, she’d probably do nothing, on account of being dead and probably harvested for her organs, but her absence would definitely kill the foal, so in that sense she’d get revenge. Actually, did anyone actually harvest organs anymore? Lab-grown were cheap and there wouldn’t be any rejection, but some people were old-fashioned. Maybe they wouldn’t like lab-
Her mental tangent was interrupted by the door opening the barest crack and Giuseppe’s scarred visage glaring down at her. She took a step back, both out of instinct and so she wouldn’t have to strain her neck looking up at him. She took a deep breath.
Right, so given what she knew about him, she shouldn’t mention the foal. She’d planned this all out while psyching herself up to come here, and decided that the last thing a mobster would want was someone keeping loud, annoying, obnoxious fluffies as as neighbor. Of course, if her suspicions were correct he probably had really good sound proofing, but still…
Right, just ask for milk. She ran out, is all. Okay, here goes.
“Um…hey…so I found an abandoned foal and I need some milk for him…”
DAMNIT!
“Why?” rumbled the giant, and Mel flinched.
“Um…because I don’t want him to die?”
“Hmm.”
“Look, I promise he won’t make a lot of noise and I’ll make sure he doesn’t get out and make a mess, I just need to make him some formula and…” Mel babbled.
Giuseppe stepped out, towering over her, a pensive expression on his face.
“I heard about you,” he said. “Heard you’re from Cleveland. Why are you taking in a shitrat?”
Mel weighed her words carefully.
“He was abandoned and freezing by the vending machine. I don’t know, I didn’t really think about it, I just didn’t want him to die, is all.”
“Hugbox?” Giuseppe accused, and Mel was equal parts terrified and confused. Why did a mobster even know what that meant?
“I’m just keeping him until he’d old enough for the shelter,” she deflected, not wanting to give a direct answer.
Giuseppe slipped back inside and slammed the door. Mel sighed. Really fucked that up, didn’t I? she thought. She tried to decide if she was brave enough to knock again. It would be a terrible idea.
She was still wavering when the door opened again, and Giuseppe stepped out, holding a half-empty jug of milk. He jerked a thumb towards her house. “A foal, in there?” he asked.
“Um, yes. Sorry.”
Giuseppe pondered this for a minute, then appeared to reach a decision. He began walking towards her house, the difference in their stride meaning she had to jog to keep up. “Wait, what are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking,” he said, and refused to elaborate further.
Mel really didn’t want to let him into her house, but also didn’t want to take the foal out of the only warm room in the place. Show me a sad case and suddenly I’m a suicidal idiot, she reproached herself, opening the door.
Against every ounce of common sense, every instinct, and the entirety of her better judgement, she led the hulking man to the bedroom. With a grunt, he took in the room. “Too cold,” he said.
“What?”
“Too damn cold,” he repeated. “Not good for foals.”
Mel, having finally decided that she’d already taken things so far beyond too far that it really didn’t matter at this point, snapped back. “Well, pardon me for being too fucking poor to afford a better place.”
Giuseppe snorted. “Better take him to a shelter now,” he said. “Better for him.”
“Why do you even care?” she retorted.
“Hmm…” he mused, lifting the foal out of his little nest with surprising gentleness in his huge hands. Mel couldn’t help but notice the callused knuckles and wondered how many teeth she’d have by the end of the day if she kept being an idiot.
“You know what you have here?” he asked.
“A foal?”
“These colors,” Giuseppe elaborated. “Worth good money.”
Mel pondered this. If she kept the foal until he was on solids, and Giuseppe was telling the truth, well…she could really use “good money” right about now. “I can’t keep him,” she said, regretfully. “Money aside, I can’t care for a chirpy foal right now.”
“So sell it,” Giuseppe said, pointing out the obvious. “Breeders pay well for fluffies like this.”
“How do you know this?” Mel asked before she could stop herself.
“Debtors,” Giuseppe explained in a single word, and Mel felt a chill as her fears were confirmed.
“No, I…” Mel began, trying not to stutter. “I don’t want to do that.” She tried to come up with a reason that would resonate with the mobster. “There are too many damn fluffies already, not going to help someone make more for a quick buck.”
“You know,” Giuseppe said, the growl suddenly gone from his voice. “In my line of work you see a lot of liars. You get really good at telling when someone’s lying. And you,” he jabbed her shoulder with a huge finger. “Are a bad liar.”
Mel tried to come up with something to say, stunned by the tonal whiplash. “What?”
“So, why do you not want to sell him, really?”
“I just…I don’t know. I just can’t imagine what it’d be like for him, never getting to know his kids, never getting to have a family. It seems cruel,” she said, opting for honesty.
“Take him to a shelter, then. He’ll find a family fast with those colors.”
“I don’t know,” Mel was torn. Of course, a shelter was the best option, but still… “Would they want him, or just a rare fluffy to show off? He’d probably just end up with a breeder anyway.”
“He’ll die,” Giuseppe stated flatly. “You can’t leave a chirpy alone.”
“I know. I just…maybe it’s better for him to only live a little while where he can be happy and loved than to grow up miserable?”
Giuseppe sighed. “Fine. Follow me.”
“What?”
“You want to keep him. Just admit it. But I’m not going to let you kill him over it. So follow me.”
Giuseppe took off with his fast gait, still holding the foal cupped in his hand and the jug of milk in the other. At this point, Mel had no idea just what the Hell was going on, so just went with it and followed him. Once more she found herself standing on his porch.
“Tell anyone about this,” Giuseppe warned. “And you die by inches.”
Part Three
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Mel really doesn’t have a clue, does she? She doesn’t want to use warm water because it would leave the foal damp; so warm the foal up then dry him afterwards.
She also doesn’t even think of keeping it warm with her own body heat - it’s how you warm up hypothermic and frostbitten people in survival situations.
Your fluffies seems to have a fair amount of built in programming - despite never having known his mother’s touch, he instinctive knows what one is and whether she’s a bad one because he’s a good babbeh and doesn’t deserve hurties.
The last two points are big red flags for the foal being a massive brat, if not a smarty in the making, which is kinda of amazing given that his eyes haven’t even opened yet.
Most fluffies wonder if they’re being punished because they’re being bad - this one knows he’s good without any justification or prior knowledge of what good behaviour is, and that all the punishment is unjustified.
Based on that, I see Mel’s decision to not snap the foal’s neck coming back to bite her (or more accurately, shit all over the floor, walls and her).
The body heat thing is about chirpies needing higher temperatures than human body heat, much like how house cats have warmer bodies than humans. Human body heat would slow, but not stop or reverse, hypothermia in a chirpy.
Fluffies do have a lot of programming in my headcanon, and in the foal’s case it’s conflicting with what he’s experiencing, which is why he alternates between thinking he’s good and that he’s bad. Whenever he experiences positive stimulus he thinks it’s because he’s good, and whenever the stimulus is negative he thinks he’s bad. Also, I’m anthropomorphizing him a lot, because there’s really not that level of rational thought going on, mostly just a bunch of random emotions and impulses. Unfortunately, what the chirpy is actually experiencing would read more like “Pain. Fear. Cold. Warmth. Fear. Pain. Hunger. Pain. Fear.” etc, which completely fails to convey his backstory.
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So far so good. Seem like the foal might just survive after all. Mel seem ill fitted to take care of him at the moment.
Ramblings
One little negative thing that happens
Okay so I’m overexaggerating a bit considering what happened to the little guy, but it’s always funny and intriguing how fluffies in most headcanon generally act when something slightly negative thing happen to them . It’s either “X nu wub Fwuffy”, “Fwuffy am gud fwuffy”, or some variation of the two.
This programming quirk can be seen as annoying to most since most fluffies don’t even know good from bad and the act of stating the above is entitled in some sense.
With regard to humans being unable to heat up a chirpy, heat loss doesn’t work that way. Say the chirpy runs naturally hot at 40C - what’s going to cause the chirpy to lose more heat, exposure to ambient temperature of 15C (either to the air or under a towel) or being held against a warm body of 36.8C?
In addition, the human will have insulating layers on, trapping both the chirpy’s body heat and their own, warming him up even more. If warming things up didn’t work that way, then survival tricks like sharing body heat wouldn’t work - even wearing clothes or sleeping under a blanket at night wouldn’t work.
If you don’t believe me, there are heat transfer equations that you can use to tell you precisely what the heat loss rate would be.
With regard to negative stimulus making the foal think he’s bad, there’s sections in the story that directly contradicts that, for example:
He was a good babbeh! Why didn’t mummah love him? Was she a bad mummah? Why did he get hurties? He was good!
Negative stimulus (hair dryer I believe), but still thinks he’s good and blames it on his mummah.
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Alright. I edited it, taking your suggestions into account.
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Just for clarification, the body heat comment was just that warming via body heat was a viable option - Mel not considering it is entirely plausible and the entire section was fine as it was.
Not wanting to risk a small foal accidentally inhaling water is a perfectly reasonable compromise.
The changes you’ve made regarding the babbeh’s thoughts do make him a lot more sympathetic rather than an incipient smarty in the making, so since I assume that was your intended goal, well done. 