“Alright, next up is… Karma! Come on, Karma!”
“Otay, mistah Tommeh! Babbehs, stay wif daddeh, mummah gut tu haf baffsies.”
“Chirp! Wub mummah!”
“Wub mummah! Peep!”
“Mummah wub babbehs tuu!”
The gold and silver mare, Yin-Yang’s special friend, the only one in the herd with those colors (until the birth of her two foals, a week and a half ago), a rare mutation, is gently transported into the tub, as the previously bathed fluffy, an orange stallion named Ginger, joins the other cleaned, towel-dried fluffies, who have gone back to performing any chores they were doing before bathtime commenced. Blueberry, the second one bathed, stayed behind to oversee the process.
Meanwhile, where the dozen or so fluffies still needing to be washed wait their turn, Truth, one of the oldest stallions in the herd, his fluff now a light gray, regales Austin and Mercury, Yin-Yang and Karma’s children, with tales of his youth as a strapping young colt, when his fluff was still sunshine yellow. When he was full of piss and… well, piss at any rate. When the world was a much better place. Foals these days, they just got no respect for their elders! Always playing ball on the damn… uh… always playing ball where other fluffies are trying to walk! We didn’t act like that, no siree! If we did, we caught a hoof to the chops! The chops, whippersnappers!
Other than the vague notion that the hoomins, the closest things to gods the feral fluffies know, live somewhere beyond the verdant Garden of Eden the herds here call home, this forest is their entire world.
“…An gween weafy nummies deez bwite times am nuwhewe neaw su gween as wen Twuth was cowt, oh nu, dey wuz su gween, Twuth neawwy nu cud stan it, an dey wuz yummiew, tuu…”
It’s been two weeks since Pierre’s meeting with the Fondas. Two weeks since the two gods and their angel descended from Mount Olympus in their divine chariot, cast out from Paradise, and began living amongst the mere mortals, bestowing blessings unto them. Tommy and Maria, despite preferring to stay on the move, have settled in nicely.
It wasn’t actually much of a punishment, staying with Blueberry’s herd, helping them out, living in this beautiful forest. Getting in touch with nature, after so long on the road. Tommy has started walking around barefoot again. He feels his feet have been imprisoned for far too long.
Pierre kept his word, so the Fondas did too. He’s already supplied them with a generous variety of Flufftopia brand fluffy toys, which were distributed among the herds in the area. Blueberry’s herd graciously declined most of them, as Woodstock had already donated a fair amount of toys to his herd, so, besides maybe an extra ball or a couple more blockies, they were set. Toys which, by the way, had spent the last seven years in the Fondas’ Mothership, and the scent of their favorite pastime still lingers on them.
And Pierre has also been generous enough to supply the Fondas with Flufftopia brand Überfluff fluffy kibble, and Bestest Babbehs kibble for the dams, Bestest Bed Friend blankets and stuffy friends, and anything else they needed, besides his veto on anything related to chemically altering one’s mind. Anything that can’t fit in the Mothership is stored in the cabin where one of Pierre’s Remote Bodies resides.
One of the other things Pierre has indirectly supplied Blueberry’s herd with, incidentally, are a few units of one of his brilliant inventions. Spherical lights, recharged through solar panels. They can be rolled out of the warren during the day to charge, and rolled into the warren to illuminate it at night, can be turned on and off at will by tapping them with a hoof or finger three times, and are extremely durable. It only took Blueberry’s herd a day to figure it out. Not yet available at Flufftopia. Pierre only just worked out all the kinks. Blueberry doesn’t realize it, but his herd has joined FauCorp’s field testing department.
Tommy, true to form, found one of the several dealers in the nearby town twenty minutes into his first visit.
And yes, he is still supplying the Fluffy Cartel with brownies. Blueberry’s iron grip, so to speak, on the forest’s drug market remains unchallenged, thanks to his friendship with the only supplier in the area.
Blueberry has, by dumb luck and the inherently benevolent nature of most fluffies, proven to be a much more successful drug dealer than any of his human colleagues, without becoming a violent sociopath, like many of his human colleagues. Hey, drug lord of the forest he may be, he’s still the same old lovable Blueberry. He’s still being a good smarty, and a good father now, too. He’s not gonna be lonely at the top.
He does occasionally break the Number 1 rule of drug dealing (“Don’t get high on your own supply!”), but he’s got it under control, and he waits until the babbehs are sleeping.
And he still doesn’t get why Tommy keeps calling him Pablo Escofluff.
Right now, it’s bath day for the herd. Before Tommy and Maria were sentenced to aid the herd, they cleaned themselves in a slow, shallow stream fifteen minutes (at fluffy speed) from the warren.
Fluffies instinctually fear water, but they also instinctually desire to be clean. If they are too dirty for too long, the latter can override the former. Usually, as the stale meme goes, it ends with the fluffy drowning.
But Blueberry’s herd is more cautious, and usually finish their ablutions without any casualties. Though the Bone Fluff has had to pick up a few ghosts of waterlogged fluffies.
Now, the herd is carefully bathed once a week by Tommy and Maria, in the tub they bathe Woodstock in, with eco-friendly soap handmade by Tommy, who uses it himself frequently. For the foals, there is a smaller tub, that hasn’t seen that much use since Woodstock outgrew it.
Hey, the Fondas may be hippies with no shame living in a van, but they still have standards. Tommy even makes several different kinds, with different all-natural scents, and lets the fluffies take their pick.
They do this only once a week, because the herd has gotten a bit big, and it takes most of the day. In fact, Blueberry’s herd has already become the biggest and most successful herd in the forest, even before he first met the Fondas. Most of the other herds have fallen into the same traps and basic mistakes that many herds do. A few of them have been genocided, the smarties leading them on crusades into the nearby town, or towards any human visitors of the woods, and meeting their ends at the hands of people who don’t take any shit from smarties. Blueberry’s herd has learned that asking humans politely works a lot better than making demands, or refusing to take no for an answer.
Word of Blueberry’s herd has already reached the town. Most people were amused, some were impressed, and the three known abusers in town were en route with an assortment of tools, raring to have some fun with the herd, before a hooded mystery man, seemingly appearing out of thin air, convinced them that it would be a very bad idea to do what they were planning to do to the herd, and that it would be a very good idea to move to the other side of the country and never harm a living thing again. One of them still winces whenever he hears a wishbone snap. The mystery man has not been seen since, despite the continuous insistence of the town’s resident cliché loony old wackjob, who claims to have occasionally seen the mystery man talking to a robot-man from the future with an army of flying death machines. These claims have been disregarded by the rest of the community as the ravings of a schizophrenic, senile old man. Yeah, they’re still a bit backwards out here. Tommy makes sure he doesn’t go into town with Maria. And sheds a tear every time he has to.
The little Animaniacs are almost fully grown. Yakko, the eldest, is the smartest of the trio, and may yet prove to be even smarter than Blueberry himself. Blueberry thinks he’s perfect smarty material, but isn’t pressuring Yakko into it. As Tommy has told him, “Little dude’s gotta find his own Way.”
This is why Tommy doesn’t lament his current predicament. This is where his Way has taken him. Who is he to question it?
Dot, the middle child, is a precocious one, and Tommy suspects that once she reaches sexual maturity, she’ll be quite popular among the stallions of her generation. It’s a good thing she’s got her brothers looking out for her.
Wakko, the youngest, is a gentle, mellow dude. He has become close friends with Woodstock, partaking of his cosmic wisdom, and they’ve shared a bite of a brownie together many times. But, and this is important, while he is slow to anger, he does not like it when someone messes with his family, or his herd, and can be ferocious when it happens. Blueberry thinks he’ll make a great toughy, and Yin-Yang agrees.
Blueberry does not think that what parts a fluffy has on their head or their back should decide what their role in the herd is. He thinks the world is ready for more earthie smarties. Tommy praised him for being so openminded.
Currently, Wakko is not sitting with Blueberry, Muffin and his siblings, Yakko and Dot having gone right after their parents. He volunteered to be the first one bathed, and then promptly sat down next to Woodstock, who had saved him a bite. They are now both slumped together and have spent the entire time giggling at all the pretty bubbles.
After Maria dries Karma off with a soft fluffy-safe towel (donated by Pierre, $29.99 for a pack of four at Flufftopia), the golden fluffy trots over to those who have already fought the good fight for personal hygiene, calling out to her babbehs.
“Mummah see yu suun, babbehs!”
Tommy carefully lifts the two foals up, placing Austin in the foal tub, on a table, and Mercury next to the tub, sitting on a small pillow. ($4.99 at Flufftopia. Comes in twelve different colors. Why no, I’m certainly not being paid to shill for them. Er, moving on!)
Truth starts complaining about his story being interrupted, and then picks up where he left off, confusing the poor fluffy who wasn’t paying attention and doesn’t know what Truth is now rambling on about to him.
Before lathering up the golden and blue colt, a decision has to be made.
“So, whaddya wanna smell like, ya little nugget?”
After holding several different pieces of soap up to his nose (and making it clear to Austin to only sniff, not num), the million dollar colt makes his decision.
He’s going with orange this week.
He’ll try the lavender and ylang-ylang soap next time.
It was a tough call.