Before The Storm - Part 3: Love Is Strange Ch. 1 [By BFM101]

Chapter 15: Alone & Afraid

It was almost dark when Travis awoke.

His head was still pounding from where he’d hit it against the ground, he was lucky it was still summer so the dirt was soft enough to take most of the impact, though that didn’t stop it from hurting like hell. He tried to stand up but his vision was woozy and his bruised body aching, surprisingly nothing felt broken but he still took his time to try and stand.

As his senses slowly returned to him, Travis realised he was in a flower bed, not like any he had seen before but their tall stalks – coming just above his head when he was standing – had kept him covered whilst their scent had masked his body. In fact right now the only thing Travis could smell over the flowers was the blood in his mouth, he spat out a red glob and carefully stepped outside.

In the low light of the setting sun, Travis couldn’t be certain of anything, but he couldn’t see any other Fluffies, nor could he smell any. Fearing for the encroaching dark, Travis made the snap decision to move, he had to find better shelter before the dark-time came, and right now he had no idea where that was.

Seeking safety in the light, Travis set his path towards the sun in the hopes that if he could see it, it would stay with him longer. With his body still aching, his vision still blurring up occasionally and the stench of blood still stuck to is nose, Travis made his first step on his lonely journey.

“Huu, mistah bwite-baww, pwease come bak.”

Travis pleaded fruitlessly with the sun as it got lower and lower in the sky, he had been walking for a fair while now but had no recollection of any of the samey looking trees and tufts of grass. He might have been walking closer to Big Mummah’s, he might have been walking further away, for all he knew he might have been heading straight back to The Herd.

His mind shivered as he thought of The Herd, he never believed Fluffies could be that cruel until Crowley burst into his life, now he had the wounds to prove it, both mental and physical.

As though triggered by the memory, Travis felt his back legs give out from under him as a sharp pain shot through his anus, while it had been several weeks since Crow enfed him Travis still felt the hurt and the humiliation of being the older Fluffy’s play-thing. The scars had healed but Travis was scared he’d never be 100% right ever again, even with Crow now dead Travis was still scared.

Ignoring the pain in his poopie-place as best he could, Travis pulled himself over to a low branch on a nearby tree. It wasn’t much but the leaves covered him well enough, allowing Travis to curl up in the most minuet safety he could manage. Of course that didn’t make it easier on him, for the first time in his short life, Travis was well and truly alone and he felt that hit him hard as he tried to close his eyes to go to sleep. Where there should’ve been a comforting headrest of his mother there was just hard roots, where there should’ve been the warmth of his siblings, Travis felt only the cool spring breeze on his Fluff.

The days were getting warmer, but Travis still shivered, partly from the lack of heat, mostly from crying as he wept for his family.

“Huu, miss mummah, miss Iwis, miss Tom. Miss Bet-see mosh of aww, wai sissie hab tu stay wiv mummah?”

Travis kept himself up all night with those questions? Why did Betsy stay with their mother? What was happening to them both now? Were they even still alive? What happened to Tom and Iris? Did they escape? Were they captured? Would he ever see them again?

Eventually Travis did fall asleep, but more out of sheer mental exhaustion than anything else.

He charged at Crow, his horn lowered and ready to strike. Crow threw a hoof at him, he expertly dodged under it and thrust his head up…

Only for Crow to spin out of the way and bring a leg down on the back of his neck.

He crashed to the ground, he lost all feeling in his body, he was paralysed.

“HEWP! NU CAN FEEW WEGGIES! NU CAN MOBE!”

“Heh heh.” Came to the disgusting chuckle as Crow moved behind him. “Dis gun be ee-see nyo.”

He looked behind him and saw the young stallion’s erection moving directly towards him.

“NUUUU!”

“AHHHH!”

Travis woke with a yelp and a jump, instinctively cowering into a ball and shitting himself in fear. He kept his head covered for several moments waiting for Crow to start enfing him only to realise the enfies were never coming. Crow was dead and Travis was alone.

Crying to himself a little more, Travis wiped as much of the scardie-poopies off his bottom as he could using the grass, but try as he might a little bit of the stink stayed with him. Not the stink of poopies, but of shame, of being unable to control himself or his thinkie-place.

Briefly he wondered why he was having bad sleepy-pictures now and not when he was with The Herd. Perhaps being alone was putting him more on edge now that he didn’t have the comfort of his family.

Thankfully Travis had been asleep long enough that the sun had risen, he tidied himself up a little more before chewing on some clean grass to quench his hunger hurties and moving on, heading in roughly the same direction as last night.

Travis didn’t know how long he had been walking for but the sun was almost directly overhead when he heard it, the first noise that didn’t come from the trees or the birds. It didn’t even sound natural, it sounds mechanical and more than a little frightening.

It sounded… like a vroom-vroom munstah.

Travis was fortunate living with Big Mummah that she was able to teach him about being safe in and around cars so he knew he was relatively safe, but that didn’t make him feel any less frightened. Moving slowly, Travis approached where the noises were coming from, keeping himself low to the ground to improve his chances of hiding. As he came to a clearing in the trees he saw something that he’d only seen in pictures and on TV.

A smooth black rock, spanning the entire length of the world in front of him, too large for Travis to cross in one run. He’d heard Big Mummah talk about this, she called it a ‘road’, it’s what vroom-vroom munstahs went on and was to be avoided as much as possible.

As if on cue, a car drove past Travis, eliciting another yelp and shot of poopies from the terrified young stallion. Trusting the judgement of Big Mummah, Travis moved away from the black rock and continued his journey alongside it. It wasn’t long before he found where the black rock led to.

Travis stood gobsmacked at the sight in front of him, it was like the Tree-Place only instead of trees, there were building, so many buildings of glass and stone and metal, all of them reaching high-enough to touch the bright-ball. Travis almost fell over trying to see the top of one of them.

And HUMANS! Misters and Ladies of all shapes and sizes and colours were walking between the buildings, some of the smiling together, some of them talking to themselves with some weird kind of toy in their hands. Travis had never seen so many humans in one place before, there was only one place this could be.

“Twavis in da sit-ee.”

Travis had heard Big Mummah talk about The City before, she had to go there a few times for nummies and other supplies, but her descriptions did the place no justice. It was even more immense and horrifying and wondrous than Travis could’ve imagined. Looking over the sea of people, his first instinct was the run down and try and find a good human to take him home.

But as his legs started to move, he stopped. Travis had only known two humans in his short lifetime, the first was Big Mummah who he still loved and cherished despite fearing he’d never see her again. The second was Francis, who he hoped to never see again, but even then, according to Crassus most humans would’ve treated Travis and his family even worse than Francis did.

His heart was telling him to run, to plead for a human to be his new mummy or daddy, but his gut was saying otherwise, stay hidden, stay safe, he couldn’t tell what humans were loving and which were monsters yet.

Reluctantly, Travis listened to his gut and stayed hidden as he approached the city, as overwhelming as everything was; he still needed to find food.

Thankfully his path towards the alleyways and alcoves was met with little resistance, by keeping quiet Travis was able to avoid most humans although he saw a few of them side-eye him with disgust. He had no idea why since he’d never met any of them before, but he tried to ignore them as he approached his first alleyway.

Having never been to The City before, Travis had no idea what to expect in the alley, he just chose it because it was a quiet place away from the humans. So when he slipped into the darkened alcove, he was pleasantly surprised to see plastic bags overflowing with food.

“Nummies?”

Curious, Travis took a few steps towards the open bag, a lot of the waste of plastic, cardboard, but some of it was food, mostly spoiled and off-putting, but Travis could make out a few piece of stale bread and some slightly brown fruit, nothing he couldn’t ignore for the sake of his hunger.

“Nu gud nummies, bu Twavis hab tummeh-huwties.”

Travis lay down on the trash heap, making sure to stay on the plastic as much as possible to avoid the smelly waste or whatever that wetness was that seemed to be seeping out of the pile. Taking a piece of the bread that he could reach, Travis slowly started to nibble on it, it hadn’t gone rock solid yet, but it was still a tough piece to bite through, especially for a Fluffy that had only stopped drinking milk not that long ago.

But after a few bites, Travis found himself somewhat comfortable as his sore stomach gradually vanished. He was so comfortable in fact he almost missed the rustling coming up behind him, he turned just in time to see a massive grey stallion rushing towards him.

Travis was just able to roll out of the way of the sorry-hoofies, but got his already dirtied Fluff even filthier from the wet, sticky rubbish.

“Wha dummeh duin wiv Weon’s nummies?” The stallion demanded, his immense size had him towering over the young Travis.

“Huu, Twavis sowwy, nu knyo dey Fwuffy nummies. Hab tummeh-huwties an…”

“Nu cawe. Dese am Weon’s nummies, am for speciaw-fwiend an babbehs, nu dummehs wike yu.”

From behind Leon, Travis was able to see a red mare, visibly pregnant, and three foals not much younger than him, all staring at Travis with hate in their eyes. One of the children, a noticeably fatter pink filly, blew a raspberry at him and yelled to her father.

“Gib him foweba sweepies daddeh, dem awe famiwy nummies.”

“NUUU! Twavis gu, pwease nu gib foweba sweepies.”

Leon snorted and raised his hoof up, ready to smash it down on Travis’ little head. By the grace of a well-timed bowel movement, Travis let out another blast of scardie-poopies, distracting Leon for just a moment and allowing Travis to get to his feet and run away. He scampered out of the alley-way, almost getting stepped on by some angry humans, and raced through tears and heartache until he found another alleyway with a dumpster.

Travis hid himself underneath the massive piece of metal on wheels and wept, he hated this, he hated being alone, he hated being scared, he hated almost going forever sleepies for an accident.

“Huu, nu faiw. Wan mummah bak, wan gu home, wan be wiv famiwy gain.”

“Hewwo?”

Travis jumped in fright for the third time today as he realised he wasn’t alone. He spun round and saw there was another Fluffy with him, more than that it was a female.

And more than that, she was very , very pretty.

“Hewwo?” She said again. “Who yu?”

Travis sniffled. “Am Twavis, nu knyo udda Fwuffies wive hewe, wiww gu nyo.”

“Wai Twavis gu? Angew nu mind Twavis be hewe.”

“We… Weawwy?”

The mare, Angel, nodded enthusiastically. “Yeh, be nyu fwiend?”

Travis was hesitant, he was still on edge after the last two days of violence, death and anger that seemed to follow him, and having just been scared off by the first Fluffies he’d met in The City he was wary about others living here.

But as he looked at Angel, her cotton-white Fluffy impossibly crisp, her sun-yellow mane glistening in the sunlight along with her dazzling wings and her near golden horn, he felt something unusual. A comfort, looking at her he felt a safeness emanating from a warmth in his heart.

And strangely, from his special-lumps as well.

“Ok, Twavis be Angew fwiend.”

Chapter 2

23 Likes

Oh wow Travis got a new “fewn” hmmm. :thinking:

And Angel is a good colored fluff, a runaway perhaps?

5 Likes

Hopefully not ironically named.

So far so good, a nice easing into things :slight_smile:

Thank you @BFM101

4 Likes

A Ptsd is showing its ugly face. Poor Travis but at least he now has a chance.

2 Likes