“My god, what’s that smell?” The landlord opened the door. Anna pushed past him and into the apartment, she made it through the kitchen with Fluffmart bags on the counter, the living room with a stack of instructional videos next to the TV, and down the hallway to the source of the offending odor.
It wasn’t death, just the smell of an overflowing litterbox with the telltale signs of being eaten in desperation. Fluffy bowels were notoriously bad at digesting and at best absorbed only half the nutrition of any food on the first pass through. Feral fluffs often left behind turds held together with grass like primitive mudbricks. Although highly frowned upon both by humans and fluffies, the feces was half it’s weight in nutrition and consuming it could sustain a fluffy at least for a second pass.
When the SRA was passed, Hasbio forced all Fluffmarts to include a line in all adoption forms that allowed them to seize fluffs back as automatic surrenders in the event of neglect or abuse. She had done a number of wellness checkups early on where she would show up just to find a fluffy in a baby crib or bathtub, completely caked in shit. This generally stopped quickly as she hoped owners had begun taking better care of their pets while secretly knowing that the careless ones had simply gone over to backyard breeders with less stringent adoption policies operating under the table.
By pure luck Anna had a gut feeling after her follow up call; Elizabeth had stopped by the store weekly even when she didn’t need anything just to look at toys for newborn foals, she had even shown Anna a veterinary sonogram of Maybell’s foals.
She searched Elizabeth’s full legal name online, technically a breach of company policy to privately access customer information. She would worry about the consequences if they came up later. She found the headline, “Woman in Coma After Collision with Drunk Driver”. She scrolled through the article to make sure it wasn’t just someone with the same name. There was no photo in the article thumbnail. There was a line in the article about the empty fluffseats that initially alarmed bystanders and that was enough.
Elizabeth’s insurance had kicked in automatically and the deposits to her bank account could have kept the monthly rent payments going until the five-year lease ended. It that had happened, the landlord would have found a pile of moldy skeletons.
As she rounded the corner she saw the fluff pile. The foals were moving, woken by the sudden noise. The pink alicorn mare seemed to be moving weakly too. A quick glance at their food and water bowls confirmed it. They must be starving and dehydrated. She went back to the kitchen and thanked the landlord as he stood in the doorway. She told him she would handle the smell and not to worry. She grabbed a few bottles of water and came back to the safe room.
She pushed the child gate open and left it open for ease of walking back and forth. She quickly filled the water bowl with a bottle and dumped the rest of the bottle into an empty food bowl. She set it next to the fluffnest bed and began moving the foals one by one to the water. They all asked her who she was and what her name was. She answered them but didn’t really give them any attention. “Please drink babies. You need wawas.”
She grabbed the pink mare next; the fluffy was was limp in her hands. “Wisabeff mummah?” Maybell coo’d. It was the first human touch she had felt in a month but was not enough to rouse her from her exhausted state of delirium. She placed her face in the water and let Maybell take a few laps before pulling her away.
Too much water right now could kill a starving fluffy, but she needed to keep her alive. She was surprisingly bloated. Anna worried she had developed colic from dehydration and trying to eat things that weren’t food to stop her tummy hurties.
Next was Nimbus. His breathing was so weak she had to hold her hand in front of his nose to feel the air flowing in and out. His ribs were clearly visible. He must have let the mare eat all his food. Somewhere in the depths of his sleep he smelled her hand. She wore a perfume that he remembered, and images of the Fluffmart flooded his delirious dreamstate.
She scooped some water in her hand, and with the other, pried his dry mouth open. She let some water drip into his mouth to rehydrate his tongue and gums. His tongue slowly but instinctively smacked at the water. “Good boy” She sighed quietly with relief.
He still had enough energy to move. That meant he would at least make it to the vet to get an iv drip and a more thorough inspection. Any number of issues could be caused by starvation. Organ shutdown and failure being at the top. A descending list of conditions from severe malnutrition included brain damage, bowel impairment, chronic depression, and certain genetic conditions induced by stress. Each had a much cuter branded name for the purposes of marketing treatments.
“miss….ah…nah” He managed to mumble from his delirious sleep. Her eyes welled with tears. She held them back and continued. She tried not to get too attached to the store stock, but the long-term store residents tended to linger longer in her mind. She was surprised he even remembered her.
The fact that poor selling fluffies became attached to staff, particularly management, and subconsciously treated them like mummahs and daddehs was something that corporate explicitly trained for to prevent managerial burnout and turnover. Nimbus was the only alicorn that had made it more than a month before being sold so he stood out clearly in her mind.
She went back to the kitchen and dug through the Fluffmart bags on the counter. She found what she was looking for, foal formula, canned sgettis, a 6 pack of milk bottles, and a can opener. First she poured some bottled water in a coffee mug and placed it in the microwave. Then she popped the lid of the sgetti can open and dumped it on a ceramic plate.
She contemplated heating the sgettis as well but then figured room temperature would be least likely to upset the mare’s stomach. She still didn’t know why Maybell was backed up.
She grabbed the scalding water from the microwave, quickly dumped it in the pack of baby bottles and cooled it down with another bottle of water, scooped formula in and began shaking them up. “Nummies?” she turned around and was greeted by the sight of a silver Pegasus colt with a matching mane, followed by a purple earth filly tripping over its legs as it rounded the corner behind her brother.
“Please go back to your momma, I’m sure she’s scared and worried where you went.” The two foals turned their head away from Anna in shame. This was their first proper scolding, and they hadn’t done anything wrong. They were starving she was sure, and only came towards the direction that they smelled food from. She still needed them all together and didn’t want to accidentally trample them. “I’ll bring you nummies if you wait by mummah.”
Their faces brightened up and they began tripping over themselves as they raced back to their mummah. “bwuddah, Sistah, nice wady am bwing nummies tuu mummah!” They chirped from around the corner. Anna gathered up the bottles and the plate of sgettis and began quickly walking back to the safe room. As she rounded the corner to the hallway she saw four weak and underfed foals desperately trying to climb over the bottom of the open toddler gate’s frame.
The Grey one had remained inside. That was to be expected, the dull colors always got fed the least. She helped nudge them over with her flats before stepping after them and pushing the gate back closed with her knee. It didn’t latch but the foals shouldn’t be strong enough to pull it open against the retaining spring.
She knelt down and with some skill, one handedly propped the bottles across the edge of the fluffbed and gently herded the foals to their respective meals. They sucked greedily at the bottles. Anna set the plate of sgettis down on the other side of the bed. “No babbies, that’s for mommah.” Quickly shutting down their interest in the smell. Maybell’s nose began to twitch as she smelled the bestest food.
Maybell began to force herself awake, standing on her wobbly legs, eyes half open, she mumbled “sgettis?” Anna guided her head towards the plate. The reality that there was a human and that they were saved had not sunk in yet and she stumbled over to the plate essentially falling face first into the canned noodles.
Maybell was still for a moment but then made the telltale movements of a chewing fluffy. Tail limply wagging in happiness. With the risk or a fluffy drowning in sgettis abated, Anna turned back to Nimbus. She grabbed the last bottle and scooted over to him. The yellow foal pulled away for a moment, noticing the extra bottle in Anna’s hand. “wewe am Sistah? Am gone miss miwkies!”
“Is this not all your family little filly?” Anna felt a sense of dread as she gently pressed the last bottle into Nimbus’s mouth. He weakly began to suckle. The fluffy ball of yellow looked to her left and then right sweeping her neck to take in the entire room. “Piwk sistah wike mummah am nu hewe!”
Anna was staring at the litterbox for movement, pink, not brown that was good. “Don’t worry, I’ll find her. Drink your milkies. Ok?” The yellow filly looked up at Anna curiously “Okay funny mummah!” Anna looked over to the toybox, maybe she fell in. She got up and walked over to dig through it. No filly. She stepped out into the hallway, “hello?” She scoured the apartment.
Fortunately, there was nowhere for a foal to hide so it was quick work. She even checked for holes under the cabinets and inside the couch. She returned to the room. Nimbus had stopped drinking and had thrown up a little. He was breathing still and hopefully the little bit he consumed would restore some blood sugar until he made it to the vet.
Anna looked down at the bloated mare. She had heard rumors before, both online and from friends who gossiped about her line of work during girl’s night. The number of places the missing foal could be was whittling down to one.
