In the morning Felicity was more amenable. A bit too amenable, if anything, from the way she was shivering and talking about “wowstest huwtehs” and “wowstest dawkeh scawwehs”. Mark suspected that the beating and the night in the dark were the worst punishment Felicity had ever experienced. Maybe he’d been too tough on her, he was used to only having to really crack down on ferals who’d been hardened by their earlier life, not spoiled domestics.
There was no response to their appeals to find her owner, and Felicity wasn’t very helpful. She talked about her “daddeh”, but couldn’t give his real name, or say much about where she’d lived with him. She’d grown up in a high-scale breedery, with parents, siblings and friends who were all “gud cowwa”, and all the fluffies and humans she’d known had praised her for being pretty and made it clear to her that when she was occasionally naughty she was acting like a “poopy fluffy”, which was the worst kind of fluffy possible. Poopy fluffies were the colour of poop, and they were bad and ugly and naughty and dirty, and they lived in cold, dirty places where everybody hated them.
When she’d gone to live with her daddy she’d spent almost all her time in a safe-room with lots of toys, and TV, and her daddy would bring big pretty stallions to give her special huggies. As Seema had thought, she’d had at least two litters, but she didn’t seem comfortable about talking about her foals. Matt suspected that they’d been taken away while still quite young, and she wasn’t willing to remember how badly she’d felt about it.
Once she was back with the other fluffies in the shelter, though, her behaviour still worried Matt, Sarge and all the other volunteers. She wasn’t fighting any more, but she still had a tendency to arrogantly demand things from the volunteers, which got her a couple more sorry-stickings or hair-drier treatments from Sarge. She wasn’t making friends with any of the other fluffies, even the ones that were moderately in-demand colours. Matt thought that she probably only felt comfortable with other designer fluffies, which weren’t in the shelter for obvious reasons. Occasionally she’d lie on her bed and cry, muttering quietly about “poopeh fwuffehs”, which the other fluffies carefully ignored.
“What worries me”, Harry said one morning, “Is what happens when she gets really big. She’ll need someone to give her food and water and clean her shit off her, and none of the others really like her enough to do it. And we won’t have enough time to do it properly. Even Daisy and Buster don’t like her.”
Buster was a huge, phlegmatic purple gelding who had instantly been appointed Toughy Friend by Sarge when he was given to the shelter, after his owner’s sudden death. He was far too innocent and good-natured to have made it as a real feral toughy, but he was big enough and calm enough to intimidate or pacify shelter fluffies who were being obnoxious or freaking out.
Even Felicity’s misanthropy, though, couldn’t dissuade Sally. Sally was a lime-green unicorn mare with an iron self-satisfaction and determination that verged on smarty-syndrome, but in whom it manifested as a near-obsessive desire to see everybody around her happy and well-provided-for. She caused almost all the other fluffies to lose their temper with her at some time or other, but she was too sweet for any of them to hold a grudge. Her cheery determination and relatively bright colour eventually cracked Felicity’s ice slightly, and Sally seemed genuinely proud of being the one fluffy who could get Felicity to talk and play with her. When Felicity started to swell up to immobility, Mark and Sarge were relieved to see Sally dedicating herself to keep her clean and comfortable. Sally had already had a litter in the shelter and shown herself thoroughly capable of handling it, so they knew that she would be able to help Felicity through birth and raise the alarm if there was a problem.
When Felicity finally went into labour it was in the afternoon. Matt was in the shelter office sorting out paperwork from the latest adoptions, and Dot, Sarge and Sally were overseeing the happy event. Suddenly, Matt dropped his pen, as he heared a wail of pure horror and despair, followed by a confused uproar of human and fluffy voices. He ran out of his office to the birthing room.
“Felicity tried to kill her babies”, said Dot, almost in tears herself. Felicity was lying on her side sobbing, with Sally and Sarge pinning her down.
Sarge was talking to Felicity with a gentleness that Matt only heard out of him in the most dire situations. “Why Fewicity wan stomp babbehs? Aww babbehs am gud babbehs, hab wawm howseh an wotsa nummehs, gon gwow up big an stwong. Fewicity gon hab nuff miwkehs fow aww of dem.”
Matt looked down at the four chirping newborns crawling towards Felicity’s teats, two pegasi and two unicorns, all healthy-looking. And all different shades and two-tone patterns of brown.
“Fewicity am shit-factwy!”, Felicity wailed through her tears.
“Shit factory?” said Dot.
Matt explained. “It’s what arsehole designer fluffy-breeders call mares who have ‘bad-coloured’ litters.”
It was the following morning. Felicity had spent the whole night under sedation, while Daisy fed and cared for her foals. It took a lot of sobbing, repetition and questions, but Matt finally got the truth out of her. She’d had two litters for the home-breeder who’d owned her, but due to some quirk of fluffy genetics, all of both litters had been brown. Her “daddy” had shouted abuse at her the first time for wasting his time and money, and told her that if she didn’t have good-coloured foals next time he’d kick her out. Felicity didn’t know what had happened to her foals, Matt assumed that her “daddy” had killed them straight away. After the second brown litter, Felicity’s “daddy” had screamed at her, calling her a “shit factory” over and over again, then done something very painful to her neck that made boo-boo juice come out.
A while later, Felicity’s “daddy” had brought a dirty brown feral stallion into the safe-room, and let the stallion give her bad-enfies no matter how much she begged. Then he’d told her that she could live on the streets with the rest of the shit, and thrown her and the stallion out of the house. She’d run away from the stallion and tried to find a human to take care of her, but her feelings of betrayal had turned to rage as they ignored her.
Sally and Buster spent the rest of the day telling Felicity that she could have her babies back, that there was nothing wrong with dark fluffies, and that the humans who’d told her that there was were meanies who’d been lying to her. Finally she agreed to try.
Felicity sat up on her rump in a warm, cushion-filled box. Daisy gently brought a peeping brown foal to her.
“Hewwo Fewicity, dis am yu babbeh. Babbeh gon gib yu aww da wub, make bestest happehs.”
Matt watched as Felicity looked at the foal, conflict all over her face. Daisy put the foal to her teat and it began to suckle.
Felicity visibly tried to relax, but the foal, feeling her tenseness and not hearing a song, let go of her teat and began peeping worriedly. Felicity began to cry.
“Sowweh! Sowweh! Nu can wub poopeh babbeh”, Felicity cried. Matt felt a mixture of sadness and anger, that turned to sadness as Felicity’s eyes lost focus in a way that he’d only seen a few times, but always sent a chill down his spine.
Felicity stared at nothing and began to quietly mutter, over and over again, “Wan die”.
This story basically explores my personal ideas about anti-“poopeh” attitudes in fluffies and what causes them.
