Part 11
You’re a pink earthie stallion and you don’t have a name. Neither does your special-friend, a gray unicorn mare. You used to be sad about that, sometimes, but starting today it doesn’t matter. Because today you’re a daddeh!
You live in a little patch of abandoned land between two warehouses. The owners of each warehouse believe the land belongs to the other, but due to an incident with a barrel of industrial cleaning solution and a shotgun, the two are under court orders to never talk to each other, so the situation will never be resolved. Not that you know that, or could understand it if you did. All you know is that nobody comes here, and it was a good place to make your nest.
You’re very tired, and very hungry. Your special-friend hasn’t been able to help gather food for several weeks now, and you’ve been giving her most of what you find for the tummeh-babbehs and for milkies. You wouldn’t have it any other way, though. The hunger and exhaustion don’t dull your happiness, and you treat them like a badge of honor for being such a good special-friend and daddeh.
But right now it’s time for you to sleep. It’s been a long day, but now that there’s food and the babbehs are born, you can take a break, for a few hours at least. It’s been a long time since you’ve slept, and you are torn between being happy to have the chance and wanting to spend more time hugging your newborn babbehs. There’ll be more time for that later, though. So you drift off to sleep.
…
You wake up to a kick in the face. It wasn’t the way you were expecting to wake up, and as your eyes blur with tears and your mouth fills with boo-boo juice you can’t seem to make sense of what’s going on. Fluffies, a lot of big, strong, scarred fluffies are milling around in your nest, eating the meager stockpile of food and tearing the place apart. You jolt to your hooves in confusion and terror, only for your legs to be kicked out of under you.
Then the real horror begins. You close your eyes, gritting your teeth and trying not to hear your babbehs’ confused chirps and your special-friend’s sobbing. You try not to make a sound, try to be strong and not make their terror any worse. After what seems like forever, the munstah herd seems satisfied and begins kicking you, demanding that you and your family leave with them. You try to fight at first, but a bitten-off ear and a stabbed-out eye convince you to give up.
For days, weeks you follow the herd, not as a member but as a punching bag and toilet. The herd doesn’t seem to care how disgusting you are when it comes to getting their urges out, either, and both you and your special-friend are brutalized the same way, many times a day. Luckily, your babbehs are spared from that, only receiving the occasional kick.
You want to run away, but you can’t. They keep your babbehs separated from you and your special-friend, and they’ve made it very clear what they will do to them if you escape or die. You can hear them growing weaker as they peep and cheap, begging for milkies. Sometimes, if you do a good job entertaining the herd and keeping them clean, they’ll let your special-friend give the babbehs milkies. They give her more food than you, enough to make easily enough milkies for all the babbehs, but when she is allowed to feed them it’s only for a short while, never long enough, and they keep four of them hostage while allowing her to feed one as a time. They don’t intend to give you the opportunity to take the babbehs and run or put them out of their misery.
Slowly, you watch your babbehs turning from healthy, puffy foals to gnarled, horrible things, fluff falling out and limbs twisted. You wish you could give them forever-sleepies so they didn’t have to hurt so much, but you can’t do that. You only see one at a time, and giving one forever-sleepies means condemning the rest to…that. You can’t help them.
So you follow the herd, and endure, waiting for your babbehs to go forever-sleepies, only hoping for their sake that it’d be soon. Eventually, you stop wanting to escape, and just want to die, but you fight that back. You can’t slip away into the wan-die loop and let your babbehs be turned into enfie-babbehs. You can’t. You have to hold on.
Then, one day, it happens. The herd finds a replacement for you and your special-friend. It’s the sole spark of comfort you’ve felt in a long time, and you feel a mixture of guilt, relief, and hope. Hope not for yourself, but that the new victims don’t have babbehs. At least spare them that.
The herd pushes the gate open, and enters the clean yard. You watch as they begin beating the orange stallion, but the white mare escapes into the house. That makes you feel a little better. Still, you force yourself to watch as punishment for being happy that another fluffy would go through what you did.
That changes when you realize the herd left your babbehs behind. You see them writhing on the grass, and you feel revulsion and joy intermixed. You and your special-friend can finally help them rest now, then you can slip away, let the misery finally end. Die, and be done with this nightmare.
But before you kill them, you spend a few brief moments with your foals and special-friend, murmuring reassurances to them, trying to make their last moments a little less full of terror. You become so fixated on them, on the last time you’ll ever be together as a family, that you don’t hear the human voice, don’t hear the snapping sounds and the screaming.
You don’t even notice the human until she’s right in front of you. Surprised, you look around and see the munstah herd laying on the grass, wailing and trying to push themselves towards the gate, shrieking all the louder as their ruined front legs are dragged along the ground. Had she done this? A tiny flicker of fear, buried deep in your psyche, sprung to life, but you ignored it.
The nice lady, and in your books she was the nicest of nice ladies for what she’d done to the munstah herd, regardless of what she did to you, knelt down. You’ve never been good at reading human expressions, but she doesn’t seem angry. If anything, she seems to be looking at you with pity and sadness.
“You can leave now,” she says, but you just stare at her blankly, then glance at your babbehs. How can you leave with them like that?
“They’re dying,” she says, stating the obvious. You nod. “Do you want me to give them forever-sleepies?” You nod again, and her gaze seems to sharpen a little. You try to say something, to ask for what you’ve been yearning for, but you just can’t. She seems to realize what you mean, though.
“You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you? I can help you, find you a safe place to stay, maybe you two can make a new life.” You shake your head. “I see. Alright, that’s your choice to make. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.” You nod vigorously, and close your eyes.
You hear the snapping sound, and know your special-friend can finally rest. Then, strong but gentle hands grip your head, and you feel them twi-
…
Buddy stood there somberly. He didn’t doubt mummah’s story, because he’d seen it play out far too many times before. He’d been lucky, in a way, being large and strong enough to not make a good target. Even so, he knew the kinds of depravity that many herds fell into after generations of fighting to survive in a bleak world. They deadened their hearts to protect themselves, but a dead heart can easily become frozen and cruel.
“Buddy undastan’. Nyo wai mummah gib hewd fowebah-sweepies, bu’…wai gib bigges’-owwies, wai nu gib fowebah-sweepies kwik?”
“Because they hurt you. Because I was angry, and I needed to vent that anger. I won’t say it was the right thing to do, but leaving those fuckers to suffer isn’t something I regret. To let you see them reduced to less than nothing so you wouldn’t be so scared. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing?”
“Buddy…nu nyo. Buddy tink am bad tu gib mowe huwties, but Buddy nu nyo if Buddy am gud nuff to nu gib.”
“Oh, Buddy, I thought you would have learned by now. Sometimes you shouldn’t be the good person. Sometimes doing the right thing will just get you hurt because your kindness isn’t deserved.”
Buddy considered this, but it didn’t really make any sense. Surely being good was always the good thing to do? Mummah seemed to notice his confusion. “I know, it doesn’t seem to make sense. You want to be good, and I love you for that, but being good, showing kindness and restraint, has a price. You let yourself be hurt again and again wasting mercy on creatures like that herd, and sooner or later you’ll be so hurt that you’ll break. When I saw what that herd was doing, I was so full of anger, and I knew that if I just bottled it up it would fester, and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t risk lashing out at you or Snowball, so I did what I had to, got rid of that anger. Maybe not in the healthiest way, but it was quick, and that herd deserved it, and you two don’t.”
That made a little more sense, but Buddy still didn’t like it. He didn’t like the idea of there being a munstah inside of the mummah he loved, but…it made sense, in a way. He’d been so angry about what his old daddeh had done that he’d lashed out, hurt mummah and Snowball. If he’d been in mummah’s position, if he’d been so terrifyingly strong and they so weak, would he have been able to hold back? It was a scary thought, but he understood mummah’s point. Her power over him and Snowball let her protect them, but it also meant she had to be so careful, had to walk on eggshells, could never let herself vent her frustration on them. Although he didn’t blame himself, it made Buddy sad that there was nothing he could do to make that burden lighter.
There was still a question he needed answered, though. Something he didn’t want to ask, but had to know. He tried to think of the best way to ask, hoping not to make mummah angry. Finally he mustered the nerve to ask. “Mummah, wai Snowbaww gib babbehs fowebah-sweepies?”
Mummah sighed, seeming both annoyed and resigned. “So, she told you?”
“Snowbaww hab sweepie-time-tawkies.”
“Of course. Well, I can’t blame her for that. She killed them because I made her do it.”
“WAI?” Buddy shrieked, horrified. Why would mummah do that? Why would she hurt Snowball like that?
“Because she didn’t want to. I know you didn’t see those foals up close, but they were dead, Buddy, they just hadn’t stopped suffering yet. Snowball saw that, saw what they were going through, and asked me to give them a chance. But there wasn’t a chance I could give them. So I had Snowball kill them, to teach her that sometimes there is no solution. She needed to learn, and you know that.”
“Nu am faiw.”
“Of course it wasn’t!” Mummah snapped, and for a moment Buddy cowered, but her voice calmed. "Of course it wasn’t fair. I know it wasn’t. I made her like that, and now she has to hurt because of it. But she wants to be a mother, Buddy, and she can’t be a good mother if she’s so focused on being a good fluffy that she’d let a doomed foal suffer! None of this is fair. You’ve hurt too much and she’s hurt too little, and you’re both paying the price.
“But let me ask, Buddy. Is it fair that I’m always the one who has to do the dirty work, make the hard decisions?”
“Nu am-”
"Stop. The answer is it doesn’t matter, because I chose to carry that weight when I took you and Snowball in. If I didn’t want to have to do these things I could have just ignored fluffies in general. We make our choices and we pay the price, and fairness doesn’t come into it. That’s the thing about fairness, Buddy. It’s a myth. Nothing’s fair, ever. We can try to change that, but there’s so much we can’t control that our efforts mean nothing.
"What can we do to make it fair that one fluffy can be born healthy and safe with a loving family, and another born in a filthy alley with legs that don’t work? We can’t fix every problem, so do we just make more problems so the lucky ones can have their fair share? Do we drag everyone down because we can’t lift everyone up?
"Buddy, something I hate is the belief that things can be fair. Should they be fair? YES! Of course! But they can’t be. They never will be. Yet we feed this myth to each other, pretend like we don’t know the truth. We look at the world as it should be and not at the way it is. It’s like building a house on quicksand!
"Listen, I’m a cynical piece of shit sometimes. I say things and do things that are cruel, or vindictive, or just plain spiteful. But I do it because I will not lie to myself about the way the world is. I refuse to indulge in these fairy tales, and I try so hard to make other people see the world how it is. Because if you think about how things should be you will always be disappointed, and you have nobody to blame but yourself for that pain.
"You know Knight and Hope’s family? I’ve known their mummah for a long time, and something she always does is blame herself, because she looks at the ideal and compares herself to it. She’s trying her best, I believe she’s a good person, but she tears herself apart because she’s not perfect. She’s fighting a war she can’t win against the way the universe works, and it hurts to watch.
“I made Snowball kill those foals because is was unfair, because it hurt her. Was it a kind thing to do? No! But it helped her build some understanding, and it gave her something important. When she has babbehs, what will you do if one is born sick and won’t survive?”
“Buddy…Buddy wiww…” Buddy faltered at the thought. All this time he’d been thinking about his lost babbehs, and he’d somehow forgotten how they’d been before his old daddeh had found them. Yes, his old daddeh had been a munstah, had hurt Buddy and the babbehs for no good reason, but…his babbehs had been dead from the moment the situation arose. Would he have had the strength to finish it quickly, to minimize their suffering? He didn’t know. “Buddy nu nyo.”
“You can’t know. That’s something that you can never know about yourself until it happens. But now Snowball can give the babbeh mercy and blame me for it. She doesn’t have to blame herself, and I don’t have to put that burden on you. I can’t guarantee I’ll always be around to handle these things, so you and Snowball need to be able to, even if it hurts.”
Mummah looked away, and Buddy could’ve sworn he heard her sniffle. "I can’t always be the strong one, Buddy. I can try, but I can’t bear every burden. I can’t know if a foal is born too sick to live like you can. There are things I can’t do for you, for Snowball, so the only thing I can do is make sure you’re strong enough to take care of it.
"I want to protect you two, even if I know it’s already too late fix all the pain you feel. If Snowball didn’t want to be a mother I’d gladly let her live her fantasy for the rest of her life, but not hurting her now, not letting her toughen up, isn’t something I can do. What would happen if Snowball, the way she is now, had a stillbirth? What if one of the babbehs died and there was nothing we could do? I don’t think she could handle it, and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
“I know I’m being cruel, and maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I’m doing my best. No matter how hard I try to protect you something will always slip through the cracks, but I can minimize the damage by making you two able to handle it yourselves. I’m trying to help her grow up, and it’s hard when fluffies were never made to grow up. That childlike innocence is precious, but not when she has children of her own.”
“Mummah nee’ huggies?”
Mummah sniffled again, then chuckled. “That’d be great, thank you.”
Buddy lay on mummahs lap, wrapping his front legs around her as best he could. Occasionally he felt drops landing on his fluff, but he didn’t look up. Mummah tried so hard to be strong, she wouldn’t want him to see her cry. Right now, Buddy thought, the one she was being the most unfair to was herself.
“I’m sorry, Buddy. I know I’m doing a piss-poor job of this. I just wanted Snowball to have the childhood I never did, but I don’t know how we’re supposed to grow up. Everything fell apart so fast, one day I was a child and the next I had to be an adult. I wish I knew how to be hopeful, wish I could be a bit less paranoid, but the part of me that knew how to see the world that way died in a ditch.”
Part 13
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The unrelenting simplicity of the Fluffy thought process, you either die naive or live long enough to see yourself become a munstah.
It’s a harsh lesson for Buddy and Snowball, and one I fear they haven’t yet fully comprehended, but it’s a necessary one to protect them from how cruel the world can be.
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Let’s face it, the human thought process isn’t nearly as distant from that as we like to think.
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Oh God no, if anything we’re even more naive and stupid.
Fluffies see the world in black and white, munstahs and mummahs. There is not inbetween because why would there be, why would someone who loves you hurt you in the worst way, why would the meanie give huggies? That’s what they see because that’s all they know.
Humans are fundamentally aware of the moral grey scale, but most of us actively choose to avoid it, preferring the pigeon-hole everything into either good or evil to help safeguard us from how complex and immoral the world really is.
Fluffies don’t understand because they don’t know, humans know but refuse to understand.
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Yes.
But, acknowledging your mistakes is a good start, at the very least.
Not using the fact the world can sometimes suck as an excuse to just give in to crap behaviours is the next step.
Neat part tho.
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On this episode of “Bleakly Pessimistic Nihilist, Hopelessly Naive Optimist and Some Poor Shmuck Stuck in the Middle.”
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I was going to ask who is who, but I fear that’s not really important, is it?
I’d say Buddy isn’t really a pessimist or nihilistic so much as in a really bad place. As for Alice, a lot of it is a mixture of self-justification, “oh shit my pets almost got murdered,” and “I accidentally raised a dumbass who doesn’t know how the world works, time to cram 5 years of learning how bad things can get into a week and a half.” Snowball is super sheltered and genuinely can’t understand what the hell’s going on most of the time.
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I guess Buddy is kind of deserving of the “Poor Shmuck stuck in the middle” title.
He is also the only one of the trio I wouldn’t punt across the street for being a dumbass.
You mean “let me walk towards the menacing people” and “torture is okay if they started it and I’m really angry” aren’t reasonable?
Yeah, Buddy is really the only one in the group with a (sort-of) healthy mindset, even if he is having trouble moving on. Alice is too aggressive and pessimistic and Snowball is a product of her overcompensating for that way too much to the point where the poor fluffy literally doesn’t know better. She does usually do a good job of keeping it from affecting the fluffies too much, but that kind of hyper-cynical mindset will cause issues in the long run no matter how much she holds back.
“There is no hope, fuck it all, no sense even trying,” makes sense for someone from in a war zone who refuses to seek help, but it really doesn’t do anyone any good. She can be genuinely compassionate, as seen when she first took Buddy in, but that all evaporates really fast when she’s under stress/reminded of her past.
Then there’s poor old Buddy trying to figure out what to do being ping-ponged between these two morons and their equally unrealistic but polar opposite worldviews.
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This made me chuckle out loud.
And so did this.