From his very first breath, something felt wrong.
In an individual breeder’s pen in a mill rack, in the middle of a cold night, a mare gave birth all by herself. She wasn’t on foal watch and knew that it wasn’t right. She begged for her babbehs to stay in her tummeh, but the intense pains and contractions took control away from her. Labour was far too short, too urgent.
What should have been lung-clearing peeps and cheeps to help mummah hear him, the first newborn foal’s cries were ones of pain. Formless and invasive, the pain made him shriek and seek his caregiver and her milk all the more intently— he was desperate for comfort and for the horrible sensation to go away.
A loving tongue on his dark fluff should have been heavenly, but it felt like glass on his skin over his tiny leggies and he bawled hard enough for his exhausted mother to stop.
“Huuuu! Babbeh, pwease! Nee’ wicky cweanies, nu cwy! Mummah hewe,” cooed the still-exhausted, very rotund dam. She was a perfect example of their morph, jet black fluff with white rings around her eyes, white lashes and pale blue irises creating a pretty mask. She held her peeping, shuddering little chirpie gently between her hooves and licked his little face. No cry. She licked his tummy. No cry. She licked his front legs… and there was the screeching.
“Babbeh… huwties?” She asked gently, nuzzling her fluffy cheek to her fuzzy, still-damp little baby, until another labour pang made her shriek in turn.
Her other babies hadn’t fared much better. Two and three were born silent. The fourth cheeped softly, burbling away into itself while the fifth’s cleft palate gave it trouble latching on and drinking. A sixth finally slid out, spine warped in a dramatic curve. She cleaned each one dutifully and made sure the ones that breathed could drink, but the fifth kept leaking milkies down her teat and squeaked in displeasure as it tried to lick them up and swallow instead. The two dead foals laid by her head, cleaned and beautiful, pressed together as if cuddling.
She sighed and gazed at them longingly. One was white and one was grey, formed as perfectly as her hurty little baby but cold. Little mouths suckled weakly at her milkie-places and she made sure that the baby with a twisty back could drink too. Its latch was weak. Her little hurty babbeh whimpered non-stop as it nuzzled into her neglected fluff to stay warm.
Hurty babbeh was a black earthie colt with a white mask, just like her. The second filly was black with no mask and burbled contentedly in the little fluffpile. The cleft lipped unicorn colt was black and had white hoofsies but no mask and the twisty-backed white Pegasus’ wingy stalks jutted at odd angles, black socks stretching up its legs. Confusingly, it had one very small special lump… but no no-no sheath. Just a little slit.
Mummah was worried. She curled around her babbehs and waited in the dim light for morning to come, singing in a hushed whisper:
“Mummah wub babbehs, babbehs wub mummah, no huwties babbies, sweep an’ feew bettah soon…”
——
“Ah, fuck. Jules! Hey, Jules! Panda’s popped already!”
A rough shout across the breeder’s floor woke Mummah up and with it, her chirpies.
“Hewwo Mistew Dan-ee. Mummah hab babbehs but hab huwties, huu huu,” Panda whimpered. “Two hab foweber-sweepies.”
Danny sighed. Panda was a good, meek girl but she was struggling and Jules wasn’t exactly making scrupulous decisions with his designer lines. He opened the front of her breeder pen and peered in— sure enough, she’d curled up as far away from the dead chirpies as she could and despite the number of live foals, the pile of them next to her belly was suspiciously small.
“Can I see all your babies please, Panda?” Danny asked. Jules always told him he was too sentimental and needed to just do what he had to, but he felt genuinely sorry for Panda. Her once glossy, black fluff was greying from stress and her ‘special friend’… well, it was her grandfather. Her sister, Oreo, had died in labour only months ago and Jules just couldn’t find another black and white Fluffy stallion that didn’t produce bizarre colours.
Panda looked sadly at her peeping babies, then back at Danny. She nodded.
A gentle hand stroked over Panda’s head and she leaned into Danny’s kind touch. He smoothed down her long mane and her velvety ears, then down her back.
“You’re a good girl, Panda,” he assured her, as he carefully scooped her foals up.
“Pwease be carefo’w, babbehs vewy vewy smaww,” she said and laid her head back down. Once Danny got her foals into a box, he returned for her deceased ones. “Mummah wub ‘oo too, sweepy-babbehs. Mummah sowwy.”
Danny’s heart ached for her. He put the dead foals in another container, then closed Panda’s pen and carried them all off for examination. They chirped and peeped in protest of being separated from their mother and with even just a cursory glance, he could tell they were suffering already.
He won’t let them off easy though, will he?
In the medical room, a scrawny older man in soiled overalls with a patchy beard smoked a rolled cigarette over a battered laptop.
“How many?” He rasped once he heard Danny approach, not even looking up.
“Six, but two dead,” Danny said plainly, eyeing his uncle warily. “The others… they’re kind of fucked up.”
Jules sighed through his nose and tapped at a spreadsheet.
“How bad?”
Danny put the boxes down and Jules peered in.
“Shit… could’a sold these two,” Jules muttered as he turned the dead foals over with his pinky finger. “The others?”
“Cleft palate.”
“Fuck.”
“Scoliosis and indeterminate gender.”
“Fuck.”
“Uhh… last two look alright. One’s the carbon copy of Panda.”
“Thank fuck.”
Danny was quiet a long moment, while Jules typed. He looked at the little inbred creatures, who huddled together and peeped in fear, smeared in scaredy-poopies and piss, confused and terrified. He stroked each one and turned their cheeps into coos, offering at least some comfort.
“Get the good ones ready for pre-preorder pics,” Jules said, snapping Danny out of it. “Then give ‘em back to her.”
We can’t keep doing this to her. Each litter is getting worse and she’s miserable, it’s not fair.
“… yes, sir,” Danny finally managed.
“Somethin’ on your mind, son?” Jules asked, voice low. A challenge.
“… no, sir.”
“Thought so. Get on with it.”
——
!!COMING SOON!!
TWO FANTASTIC SKELETON FLUFFIES! 1M 1F! SEE CHIRPIE PICS HERE!
Danny felt empty as he typed the words out on the mill’s socials. He posed as the front of the operation, an ‘ethical breeder’ with a handsome, boy-next-door face that Fluffy fanatics couldn’t help but trust. His high quality photography of chirpy babies curled up among dramatic props sold the fantasy and potential of them to potential rich suckers, enough to command hundreds of dollars per sale. They could follow the foal from birth to their arms, the waiting list for catchily-named colour variants yawning on and on— just like an exclusive brand drop.
He knew goths in high school and how seriously they took their aesthetic, so he targeted them with their panda colour, renaming it for appeal and photographing the little shit factories on a lavish vampire hunter’s desk, red velvet tablecloth to make their colours pop and make them comfortable alongside a Fluffy skull, black silk roses, rosary and cross. Older foals posed on stakes and a hammer, played with a bottle of ‘blood’, peeked out of the skull.
It was genius.
He just hated it.
They sold inbred, mill-farmed, disabled Fluffies. Under another name, they supplied Fluffmarts and pet stored. Under yet another name, they supplied bait shops, reptile breeders and abusers. Danny shook every single one of their hands and he died a little bit more each time.
——
Hey. I want the skeleton colt. Will pay double to get to top of list, cash.
Jules shrugged his shoulders when Danny showed him the message. Why the fuck not? It’s her money, the list was a lie anyway.
——
Panda was worried. Very worried. Her bestest babbeh, a colt who looked exactly like her, was struggling to walk. His squeaky little hoofsies were so tender that barely even squeezing them made him sob and taking his weight was difficult— walking around was even worse, as his knees didn’t seem to stop when they were supposed to! When his mummah stood up, her leggies didn’t keep bending when her weight was on them. He watched her closely and tried his best to copy her form, as difficult as it was.
Meanie-man Jules made him walk as much as possible. Said he needed to ‘build some muscle’ and ‘toughen up’. Under Jules’ orders, Panda’s poor little hurtie-babbeh had to do three laps of the breeder pen without falling down before he could have his milkies. If he fell, he had to start all over again! Every night, he ended up crying into his mummah’s fluff about the pain in his leggies as they spasmed involuntarily and ached so badly. Yet he still somehow felt as if he were lucky.
His sister couldn’t talk. They were the same size, but she couldn’t express herself at all outside of chirping like a baby. All her time was spent snuggled up next to mummah, except when Jules forced her to walk as well. Her leggies were weak and her lungs wheezed, her mane never came in… sure enough, she was a sensitive babbeh. Panda did her best to encourage her to walk in significantly smaller increments, but the little filly was always exhausted.
His definitely-brother had trouble eating and drinking. Milkies ran out from his lip where it split, so he had to knead it out from mummah’s breast then lick it up. It was difficult to understand what he said, so he just stopped talking too. The rest of his body seemed fine and he ran and played better than the others! He slowed himself down in order to keep pace with his hobbled siblings and nuzzled them, cooed to them and gave gentle licks in place of garbled baby-speak.
His maybe-brother was all twisted up. They found it hard to walk around and often made sickie-wawa and bad poopies. It was like they were being squeezed from the middle, they said, and struggled to know when they would feel that way— the poor thing was so embarrassed all the time despite mummah’s gentle assurances and their siblings’ unconditional love.
When Danny took Panda away for her post-pregnancy health checks, she sobbed into the young man’s shoulder about her ‘good widdle dummeh bebbehs’ and how hard they tried yet how much they hurt. All he could do was comfort her, tell her she did a good job and how kind and sweet her babies were, but Jules wasn’t having any of it. A sensitive filly was going to make him a small fortune from an abuser, that goth chick wanted the one with shitty legs, he could stitch up the cleft palate, but the other one was fucked. There was no hope of selling that one outside of abusers.
She was ready for babies again. Danny wanted so badly to say she couldn’t have any more, but she’d only be put down. Not until she had a healthy filly that could viably take her place… and her time was ticking down.
——
“Listen up, you little shit,” Jules growled down at the colt in his hands. It was the pre-sale meet pep talk and everything hinged on this little guy’s performance. “When you see this lady, nothing hurts. You smile through it. You smile so fucking hard, she falls in love with you. You’re gonna run and play like your life depends on it, because if she doesn’t take you? I’ll kill you myself.”
The little colt peeped in fear, shivering in Jules’ work-roughened, grubby hands. He smelled of nicotine and Fluffy shit and Panda’s baby knew he wasn’t bluffing— he’d seen this man stamp Fluffies into paste down in the general pens when they caused trouble for others, just to make an example.
“Y-Yes, Mistew Jools. Babbeh will wun an’ pway, huu…” the colt whimpered, then forced himself to smile as the vicious man looked down.
“Thought so.”
He handed the foal off to Danny, who took him over to the decoy building. Folks weren’t so suspicious of a nicely-kept house, with a mother fluff that was perpetually at the vet so that she couldn’t be viewed. He put the little skeleton fluff into a tabletop pen and swapped the toys out for a softer ball than usual and a bed with a hot water bottle underneath to help soothe the colt’s aches.
A gentle hug and some scratches later, the colt was snuggled down and waiting for the viewing when his new mummah’s car pulled up the driveway.
The woman who got out was exactly what Danny expected. Black hair back in a ponytail showing off an undercut, smudged eyeliner, dark-painted lips, no bra and a fitted band shirt with painted-on jeans. She was shapely and strong with a light layer of fat, in a healthy sort of way. She’d make a good breeder.
… Danny had been around mares for too long and not enough human women.
She took some retro-looking glasses out of her handbag and approached the door, where Danny greeted her. She had a short, black manicure and soft hands, said her name was Ariadne and left it at that. He led her to the kitchen to read over the paperwork and she took her time with it, totally stony-faced. There was no small talk, so Danny fidgeted as he leant against the kitchen island they used for paperwork.
“So what’s the catch?” She asked out of nowhere.
“Huh?”
“This kind don’t come up often. Black and white are tough to breed for,” the woman explained as she looked up from under thick eyelashes coated in layer after layer of mascara to make them spidery. “And you let me skip the line. Nobody reputable does that.”
Danny laughed it off, but she could see he was getting nervous.
“No catch, ma’am! With such a price tag, I’m confident you’ll give him the home he deserves. Any abuser wouldn’t be chasing a skeleton,” he bluffed.
“… No, they wouldn’t,” she mused. “And he’s ready now?”
“Yes, he’s just started weaning and is litter trained.”
“That’s very young,” she probed, examining Danny with cold, pale eyes.
“He’ll bond to you tightly in this phase, I guarantee it.”
That was sufficient; Ariadne nodded and proceeded to tick down a list of boxes. Once they were done, he led her into the sitting room with the coffee table pen and couches to sit down at… and watched as Ariadne’s disaffected goth air cracked completely.
“Nyu mummah?” The colt asked, sweet and innocent as could be, looking up from his warm nest with giant eyes just as pale as Ariadne’s. They were the spitting image of each other. Her hard brow softened and her lips curved into a smile as she approached and crouched to lift him as instinct rose his legs for uppies.
Pain shot through the colt as she lifted him from the armpits and cradled him against her soft chest, but he forced it down with a peep and cooed into her breastbone instead.
“Hello, darling,” Ariadne whispered down at the guinea pig-sized colt. “That’s right, I’m your mommy now.”
Utter relief came over Danny as he watched this hardass goth chick completely melt for a ball of black fluff. This little guy, despite it all, was probably going to be okay. He hoped. More than anything, he wanted him to be okay.
“Your name is Bathory. Can you say it for me?”
“Ohh!! Baff-oh-wee wub nyu namesie!” The little colt cheered, sounding it out as carefully as he could. “Mummah smeww so pwetty!”
Ariadne kissed the top of his head and Bathory giggled, hugging her as tight as he could. The joy of the moment was just enough to help him ignore the dull ache in his little limbs, which grew by the moment.
