Well, my fwufftobuh failed. Darn. Hit a bit of a creative block on day 9, coupled with some IRL obligations and a short vacation with some pals. And finally getting around to finish The Witcher 3 I guess… Well, I’ll just have to proofread and rename the stories I have already written.
This one, for instance, should have been Day 8: Stuck.
“BIGGES’ POOOOOOPIEEES!”
Marble woke up to a scream she had heard more times than she could count. Literally. For a moment, her sleep-addled mind thought she was still in the warehouse with the herd. Taking in her surroundings, she quickly dismissed the idea. The room she was in was way smaller, but far more suitable for a fluffy. Small nightlights gave off a faint glow. Tiny, fluorescent stars dotted the ceiling. The floor was soft and fluffy beds and blankets laid around, water dispensers positioned near them. A litterbox was on the opposite side of the room.
Marble and her family were being kept in the veterinary office’s fluffy pen, where both the clinic’s patients and the homeless fluffies slept together (as long as they weren’t contagious or behaved poorly). Being highly sociable creatures, fluffies enjoyed being close to as many members of their species as possible. A total of ten fluffies were in the room that night.
It quickly became apparent that Marble had not been the only one waking up to the loud noise.Tomato, Jay and Candy were hugging each other, asking their larger sibling for reassurance and protection. Spike had thus begun the arduous work of calming down the babbehs, while Marble tried to figure out who had screamed.
Near the fluffy family laid Ada, the brown unicorn foal and her adoptive mother Lily, a light purple Alicorn with black mane and tail. Marble had immediately felt bad for the poor thing, as she was missing an eye and had a crooked hind leg. Lily never spoke about it, though. She also was rather hard of hearing, so she was still snoring soundly despite Ada’s attempts at waking her up.
Nope.
Then there were Peach and Lotus. The former a light orange unicorn filly with golden tail and mane, the latter a forest green pegasus colt with a purple mane and matching tail. He had a broken leggie because a metal monster had recently hurt him. Peach was completely fine, but she had come to keep Lotus company, as the colt was really jumpy, especially around other fluffies and loud noises. Of course, this meant that at the moment he was screeching in fear about “munstahs” and “wunnews”.
Not them, either.
This left the last and, in hindsight, most likely, culprit: Donna, a monocolor maroon earthie dam. Her owners had left her the previous day, as they hadn’t been able to find a babysitter in time for their sudden work-related travels.
After tasking Spike to tend to the smaller foals, Marble got up and trotted over to the bloated fluffy, who was whimpering about “babbehs” and “huwties” a short distance away from the litterbox.
The mare knew all too well what Donna was going through, so she did what was common practice in the herd: she’d pose as the dam’s nurse. Said practice mainly involved giving huggies to make the hurties go away, but also help guide the babbehs out and grab them to avoid them injuring themselves from the fall. Such practice had saved many a foal back at the warehouse. Some nurse mares also went the extra mile and cleaned the foals from the afterbirth themselves, especially if the mother was in too much pain to do so. Marble reckoned this would be the case, as it was common with first time dams.
She didn’t have to wait long.
“Screee! Babbehs comin’! Wai babbehs gib owwies tu mummah? Babbeeeeeek!”
In the dim light of the pen, Marble could make out the shape of a small head plopping out of Donna’s special place. She guided the little foal out, safely grasping it. A red earthie.
Quickly, she started the cleaning process.
“Nu taste pwetty, bu’ am gud babbeh…”
Marble had barely finished giving the small earthie lickie cleanies and placing it in the warmth of his mummah’s fluff, when the maroon fluffy bellowed again.
“OWWIEEE! Wai babbehs huwt Donna? Am gud fwuffy!”
Marble repeated the operation. Once, twice, three times, for a beautiful white unicorn foal, a squirming tiny black pegasus and another earthie, this time with a stunning bronze fuzz, respectively.
During the process, the new mummah had kept whimpering in pain, something that Marble had by then learned to phase out.
Until Donna released a blood-curdling scream.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE! DONNA HAB SU MANY HUWTIES! BABBEH STOP GIBE HUWTIES! PWEASE NU MO’! NU WAN! BAD BABBEH! REEEE!”
She started squirming, kicking and waving her front legs like crazy. Something was very wrong. Upon closer inspection, Marble saw a bloody lump of fuzz stuck in the dam’s special place. Another foal. She had to do something, but what? She thought back to the herd looking for a solution, but to no avail. The only way was to rip the newborn out, but that would obviously kill it. However, doing nothing was also not an option, as Marble knew it would die anyway if it didn’t come out on its own.
Oh, how she wished the humans were there. They would surely know how to help!
Sighing loudly, the sullen mare got ready to perform her grisly task: why oh why, Donna had to have the biggest poopies during dawkie time?
Then, something clicked in Marble’s head.
She remembered a time before the herd had settled in the warehouse. A former domestic runaway had joined the growing herd, lamenting about the lack of a litterbox to make good poopies in. Obviously, being the only former domestic fluffy, he was the only one who knew what a “wittahbox” was. In his quest for relief, he stumbled upon a patch of sand near a river. Thinking it looked quite like what was in his old litterbox, he sniffed it to make sure it was safe, but ended up inhaling some, which tickled his nosie. Of course, the combination of powerful sneezing and barely contained poop had been… explosive. The poor stallion had left the herd out of shame shortly after.
With that anecdote in mind, Marble reasoned that babbehs coming felt like having the biggest poopies. So why shouldn’t it work? In the mare’s mind it made perfect sense. But she was going to need help.
“Wiwy! Come hewp fwuffies!”
Initially reluctant to abandon her scared daughter, who in the meanwhile had managed to wake her up, the alicorn was let in on Marble’s plan. As she positioned herself in front of the screaming Donna, the impromptu nurse got ready.
The maroon dam didn’t even realize what was happening, due to the agonizing pain she was in, until a tail was shoved in her face. With no way to defend herself from the assault, she soon felt weird, as if…
Donna never really finished that thought, because a loud sneeze interrupted her musings, followed by a sharp pain in her lower body, soon replaced by a dull aching.
While Marble had initially expected the foal would fly out like the stallion’s poopies had, it simply slid out a couple inches, poopie place first, allowing her to gently grab it and pull it out…alongside something else. A bloody placenta, with a large tear in it, which was quickly set aside: Donna would soon have to eat it in order to regain her strength and feed her children.
“cheep…peep…”
The small foal she was holding voiced its discomfort at still being covered in the smelly afterbirth, shivering lightly. Marble set off to clean it, when she saw something odd. The foal had an abnormally large horn for its age. Most unicorns had tiny nubs on their foreheads, whereas the little yellow foal had a larger one, not unlike the tip of a pencil: not sharp enough to hurt a fluffy, but still able to get stuck in the placenta. Donna’s wild thrashing probably caused it to lacerate her placenta.
Once the foal was safely nestled in the newly appointed mother’s warm fluff with the others and the maroon earthie had, somewhat reluctantly, eaten her disgusting meal, the feeding had begun. Each foal was picked up, ogled and praised by the new mummah before being placed on her teats. The white unicorn and the pegasus where the first to eat, followed by the earthies. Problems arose when the yellow one was presented to her.
“Dat am bad babbeh! Gib huwties tu Donna! Gu 'way meanie babbeh!”
And with those words, the little yellow baby, a female, was swatted away from her mother’s teat, tumbling backwards onto the soft floor.
Marble was horrified, but no matter how many times she and Lily tried to talk Donna into feeding her child, she had been adamant. The foal had made her birthing experience harrowing and thus deserved no milkies or love.
Meanwhile, the diminutive unicorn was growing desperate for nourishment and warmth. Her furious peeping had been drowned by the screaming contest that had erupted between Donna and Marble. The loud noises, on top of the mounting feeling of dread caused by the pain in her minuscule stomach was proving too much for her. She felt cold and her movements became gradually more sluggish. The floor was colder than her mother’s soft fluff. Maybe she would just go to sleep for a bit…
In the meantime, Spike had managed to calm his siblings from growing restless over the mares’ screams and the fearful peeping of the newborn foals. It was in a rare moment of silence, when both mares were catching their breath, when he noticed that the yellow foal, who had been placed by her mother to feed before being unceremoniously swatted away, had stopped moving altogether. He bolted towards her, hoping it was not too late.
She was barely breathing.
“MUMMAH! POINTY BABBEH NEE’ MIWKIES AN’ WAWMSIES!”
Marble didn’t even have to think about it. She was the only fluffy with milkies besides Donna. She snatched the now motionless unicorn and brought her to her own teats.
“Pwease widdwe babbeh… pwease wakies. Nu go fowebah sweepies. Dwink miwkies, gwow big an’ stwong. Pwease…”
The yellow chirpie remained still for what felt like an eternity. Marble closed her eyes: she was about to burst into tears, when she finally felt something latching onto her. The weak suckling soon became greedy gulps as the tiny unicorn used her stubby nubs to force the divine milkies out. There wasn’t much left from her own babies’ dinner, but it was enough to sate the poor foal. With a small burp, the yellow babbeh detached herself from the mare’s teats, her belly lightly bulging from the lifesaving substance. She soon was snoozing away, thoroughly satisfied and safely nestled in Marble’s fluff.
The fluffies would have a lenghty talk with Veronica the next morning about their night. A portion of sketties would then be dispensed for the nurse, although she had to promise not to do anything of the sort again if a human was available. Donna still refused to care for the meanie babbeh who had hurt her, despite the young vet’s attempts at getting through to her. Worse still, since the mare was not enlisted in the daycare program, she couldn’t be punished for refusing her foal. A drastic measure had to be taken.
Marble was obviously overjoyed when Veronica tasked her with caring for little Lemon.