Ok, I had to break this one down into two so it wouldn’t be (hopefully) too long. The mare is the same from here!
BOOOM!
Another sky-monster roar shook the mare’s nest. It looked like they wouldn’t be done fighting anytime soon. Her father had once talked about them. The loud booming noises were simply them giving each other sorry hoofies, while the sky-water was their special friends’ tears from seeing them fight.
“EEP! Munstahs!”
“Scawy!”
“Nu wike! Mummah, hewp babbeh!”
“Nu cwy babbehs, am safe hewe. Sky-munstahs am weawwy faw, gib each uddah sowwie hoofsies, nu huwt fwuffies. Mummah wub babbehs, babbehs wub mummah, gud babbehs nu cwy ‘bout munstahs, am bwave an’ stwong…”
The mare, a light brown earthie with dark brown mane and tail was huddled against her trembling children: a purple unicorn, a gray earthie and a bright red pegasus. Just like her, they didn’t have names, but unlike her, they soon would. For most fluffies, only a fluffy mummah, a Smarty or a human could bestow such honor upon them.
Names were powerful and revered amongst fluffies, moreso when it came to ferals. To them, it wasn’t just a simple way of addressing a particular fluffy. It was a way of making them unique and worth remembering, especially when it came to ferals, due to their high mortality rate. Names allowed fluffies to remember a departed herdmate, special friend or child better than “insert color here fluffy” ever could.
However, the mare had never been given a name. Her mummah had died giving birth to a healthy litter of five squirming foals, in an alleyway swept by the chilling wind of the cold times. She could faintly recall the taste of her mother’s milkies, kneaded from an increasingly cold teat while her father wailed for his beloved to wake up. One of the babies had outright refused to drink from the stone cold milkie place, dying of starvation shortly after.
Luckily for the survivors, their father had managed to convince a feral mare living in a nearby condemned building to feed his surviving babies, promising to bring her nummies. Sadly, during the travel from their old nestie to the new one, a foal was taken away by a kitty-monster, never to be seen again.
All of this she had been later told by her daddy, but some dark times, in her sleepy-pictures, she’d swear she could still hear her sister’s famished death rattles or her brother’s frenzied peeps getting further and further away.
Life had been harsh but manageable for the group of ferals afterwards. Their father, a domestic runaway called “Cwap-Bukkit”, brought back to the nest whatever he could scavenge, saving the first pick for their adoptive mummah. While the house itself was cold and dark, their nest was warm enough for them. Love and hugs were never in short supply, so long as they didn’t use their sire’s name when he was within earshot, as it deeply angered him, though the young fluffies did not understand why. Her brother had been given sorry hoofies more than once over a slip of the tongue.
Then the sad times had come. One dark-time sky-ball later, her purple pointy-wingie sister had been taken away by a meanie human who had found them while looking for “aweecowns”, whatever that was. Her father had tried to bargain and plead with them not to, but to no avail. He even tried to stop the human by latching onto her leggie, but he had been kicked against a wall as if he was nothing but a tiny buggie-monster. He collapsed like a bag of trashies, his eyes wide open and a dribble of boo boo juice trickling down his nose.
Her own father, the strongest fluffy she had ever known, given forever sleepies in such a callous and uncaring way. That day she had learned that fluffies couldn’t fight humans… and huggies didn’t make everything better.
The months passed and, when their adoptive mummah took the longest sleepies, she and her brother left the safehouse to join a herd. The Smarty wanted to leave the “seetee”, claiming it was too dangerous for fluffies without human daddies. The days went by, until, just outside the city, the band of multicolored animals stumbled upon a big field of plants bearing lots of red nummies, as numerous as the stars in the darkie times sky. The herd couldn’t believe its luck. They had already lost a few members to tummy-owwies and monsters, maybe their luck had finally turned. Or so they thought.
The herd claimed its prize, but a short time later, a monster human had ambushed them, using his loud magic sorry stick to give the fluffies forever sleepies. She and her special friend, a red wingie stallion with a white mane, had been the only ones to escape because instead of eating, they had retreated behind the cover of a bush to have special huggies. The stallion had to keep her quiet as they both wept bitter tears, forced to witness their friends run around in a panic, some of them hiding behind their own hoofies, not realizing everyone could still see them! Worst of all, she had to watch her own brother gasp for air after the monster man had hit him with his human magic, before he finally ended his suffering by reducing his thinkie place to a gory mess. Thus, she had learned two more valuable lessons. No fluffy herd can take a human’s land, no matter how numerous, and that hiding in a bush and making no noise could make the difference between life and death.
After the human had left, they had surmised the “seetee” wasn’t such a bad place after all. They walked back the way they had come from, until they got lost and stumbled upon a forested area within the city. After finding a small glade far enough from where the humans walked, the stallion had dug a hovel under a tree. Well, technically he had simply enlarged a rabbit hole, but it was the thought that mattered. The following weeks, all had gone well. Her babies had finally come, a healthy, albeit small litter of two chirping babies. She and her special friend were over the moon. Each bright time, the secluded glade rang with the happy chirps of the foals, her loving mummah songs and many requests for hugs and love.
Until one day, her special friend had decided he would surprise his mate by bringing home some better nummies than berries and grassies. Saying he’d go drink from the running water near the hovel, he had instead ventured into the dangerous human side of the park. There, he had eventually spotted two young humans sitting on a large blankie, surrounded by delicious looking nummies. The tantalizing smell alone was enough to make the stallion salivate profusely, but he waited under a bush for the right moment. He knew that taking food was not right, but he was afraid that if he asked, he wouldn’t be able to get near them if the humans turned out to be hostile, not to mention the possibility of them being monster humans and giving him big ouchies.
So, he waited…