Cochrane’s Farm
Chapter Eleven
Breakfast was eaten cold that morning, but Steve wasn’t one to complain. The couple showered and got dressed before going out to check on the fluffies.
Seraph had begun his morning routine of running in circles in his pen, occasionally jumping and flapping his wings in a futile attempt to fly. Candy and Orchid made a fluffpile together—the latter still had streams of dried tears matted to her cheeks, but she slept peacefully. Grapefruit and Cherry—the two other mares in the pen, who were both uncomfortably pregnant—slept as best they could. Cherry’s airborne legs twitched occasionally. Probably dreaming of running, Steve thought.
Steve and Katie walked over to the pen shared by Wizard and Pineapple, the herd’s two unicorns. Both new parents were awake, but clearly exhausted.
“Speshuw-fwend nee num mowe kibbwe. Nee haf mowe miwkies fo aww babbehs.”
“Nu, speshuw fwend! Nu wan num mowe kibbwe. Mummah awweady num aww Mummah kibbwe an awmos’ aww speshuw fwend’s kibbwe. Nu can num ‘nuff kibbwe fo ‘nuff miwkies!” Steve was surprised. Pineapple was normally the stronger of the pair, but looked to be on the verge of tears.
Katie spoke first. “Wizard, what’s wrong with Pineapple?”
sniff “Speshuw-fwend teww Wizawd dat speshuw fwend nu wan num mowe kibbwe, bu’ speshuw fwend nee num kibbwe fo make miwkies fo babbehs! Wizawd an speshuw fwend haf…fowe an fowe babbehs, bu speshuw fwend onwy haf two miwkies-pwaces, an miwkie-pwaces nu haf nuff miwkies fo aww babbehs—“
“Hold on, Wizard. I think I have an idea. Steve, c’mere for a minute.”
“See, the thing is, we’re not sure if Orchid can even have babies. This wouldn’t be the same thing, but it may be the best we can do.”
Steve furrowed his brow. “I’m still not sure. You were the one who talked about how territorial the dams can be. What if Pineapple flips her shit thinking that Orchid is taking away her foals?”
“We don’t. But watching you deal with this herd has shown me that taking orders from ‘daddeh’ supercedes a lot of fluffy behaviors that don’t come from hard programming. It may be worth a try—let’s talk to Pineapple and Wizard first. If we can at least get them to say they agree to it, then we’ll talk to Orchid. And she’ll probably be an easier sell.”
sigh “I guess it’s worth a try. You’ve been around fluffies for longer than I have, so I’ll take your advice. And this at least gives us a chance to not have to hand-feed starving foals.”
Katie was right. The unicorns agreed that having a “hewpah-mummah” was the best way to keep all of the foals fed without Pineapple having to gorge herself on kibble. Pineapple seemed reluctant at first, but she was turned when Steve told her that it would “make daddeh very happy”.
“And Pineapple—the foals will always know you’re their ‘mummah’. They know how you smell, and Orchid smells different from you,” Katie added.
“Dat gud, daddeh-speshuw-fwend. Mummah awways be mummah fo babbehs, even if babbehs dwink odda mummah’s miwkies.”
Steve decided to get the bathtub out for Orchid. She hadn’t had a full bath since before she got pregnant—he had given her the recommended sponge baths since then—and she still had some shit and afterbirth stuck to her fluff after the miscarriage.
“Nuuuuuu, daddeh! Wawa am bad fo fwuffies! Nu wan baff!”
“Settle down, Orchid! Daddy needs to get you clean!”
“Owchid nu smeww pwetty—Owchid nu DESEWVE smeww pwetty! Nu am gud fwuffy. Am mummah-nu-mowe! Huu huu…”
“Orchid,” Katie said sternly, snapping her fingers as Steve tried to hold the mare’s rump in the bathtub. “Orchid, listen to me: you are a good fluffy, and daddy loves you. In fact, daddy wants you to be his special helper.”
The purple earthie settled immediately. She cocked her head at Katie, and then shifted her glance between her and her “daddeh”. “Daddeh wan Owchid be daddeh’s speshuw hewpa? What daddeh wan Owchid do?”
Steve loosened his grasp on the fluffy. “Orchid, you know that Pineapple has lots of babies, right?”
“Owchid kno. An Owchid nu haf nu babbehs. Owchid haf wowsest heawt huwties.”
“Shhhhh…I know,” he said as he scratched the mare’s head. “Now, Pineapple doesn’t have enough milk to feed all of her babies. Can you help Pineapple and Wizard feed their babies?”
“Owchid…gif miwkies tu Pineappuw babbehs? Bu’ what if Pineappuw nu wan Owchid gif miwkies tu babbehs? Owchid nu wan heawt huwties AN wowsest owwies.”
“We’ve already talked to her. She wants your help. And daddy wants your help—you would make daddy very happy.”
“Otay, daddeh. Daddeh gif Owchid baff, den Owchid be hewpa fow Pineappuw fwend.”
Steve washed the last of the fluffy’s tears away first. The monochrome purple fluffy sat on her haunches as the humans scrubbed the dirt out of her fluff, and then stood up again while ‘daddeh’ scrubbed her hindquarters. He lifted her out of the tub and ‘daddeh-speshuw-fwend’ dried her with a towel, teasing her fluff so that it puffed out all over.
“Fankoo, daddeh an daddeh-speshuw-fwend. Owchid am happy an smeww pwetty ‘gain!”
Steve gradually reintroduced Orchid to Pineapple. This is going to be a big change for all of them. Pineapple stood up and the two mares sniffed each other, exchanging greetings. The pair hugged.
“Fankoo, Owchid-fwend, fo hewp mummah wif babbehs.”
“It otay, Pineappuw-fwend. Owchid nu haf babbehs. Am mummah-no-mowe.” She began to sniffle as she remembered her stillborn foals.
“Nu cwy, Owchid. Aww babbehs am daddeh’s babbehs aftew aww. Am aww hewd babbehs.”
Oh my god, THANK YOU PINEAPPLE! Steve thought. That’s one mare I won’t have to fight come weaning-time.
Katie brought the purple earthie’s bed to her new quarters, setting it down a few feet away from the one the two unicorns shared. Wizard started carrying foals over to Orchid, placing the first two gently on her ballooned teats and two more in her fluff.
“Dewe. Now speshuw-fwend gif miwkies tu…fowe babbehs, an Owchid-fwend gif miwkies tu…fowe odda babbehs. Aww babbehs haf ‘nuff miwkies, an speshuw fwend nu haf num mowe kibbwe.” sniff**sniff Wizard shuffled over to Katie, who crouched beside Pineapple and was soothing the yellow unicorn to ensure that they would avoid a last-minute freak-out.
“Umm…speshuw fwend. Mummah wan mowe nummies now.”
Wizard continued to sniff Katie until his horn apparently ended up somewhere it didn’t belong.
eep “Wizard! What are you doing?”
“Am sowwy, daddeh-speshuw-fwend. Yu smeww diffwen’. How time tiww babbehs?”
Katie’s face flushed as Steve stifled a laugh.
“Don’t you laugh! I told you they have a strong sense of smell!”
Once Steve had settled down—mostly from taking an elbow to the gut—he and Katie walked over to the foal pens. Candy’s three foals, who were nearly a month old now, had completely transitioned to kibble and were nearly full-grown fluffies.
The two fillies giggled as they chased their gelding brother around the pen. They quickly caught the fat, brown earthie, and all rolled around together in a fluffy, giggling ball.
“Wow, they’re getting really big!”
“Yeah, the brown one faster than the others. Probably because he was fixed.”
“That tends to have that effect. Have you really not named them yet?”
“Eh…no. Should I have at this point?”
“When the heck were you going to get around to it, Steve?”
“Yeah, I know, you’re right. I’ve just had a lot of other things on my mind recently. Hmmm…” Turning to the foals, who were now staring at the man they had known as “daddeh” since birth, he pointed at the white alicorn with the red mane, “How about…Bonbon!”
The alicorn’s eyes lit up, and she fluttered her wings. “Bonbon wuv nyu name, daddeh! Babbeh am Bonbon!” She raised her little hooves in the air to “dance” in celebration.
He turned to the brown earthie gelding. “I think you look like a…” He knew what the gelded colt looked like to other fluffies. “Your name is Chocolate.”
“Fankoo, daddeh! Fwuffy am Chokwit!” The brown colt jumped excitedly, cheering his new name.
Steve looked at the last foal. She was a white earthie filly with a pink mane. “Hmmm…Katie, what do you think?” He cast a glance at his girlfriend. “Snowflake, maybe?”
She cringed. “Eh, no…how about something else? That name’s a little played out.”
“How about you name this one?”
“Really? You’re sweet. Hmmm…” Katie looked at the last unnamed fluffy. She thought hard.
“I think I’ll call you…Marzipan!”
The white filly gasped. “Mummah am caww fwuffy Mawzipan! Fankoo, mummah! Mawzipan wuv nyu name!”
Katie’s cheeks reddened again as she tried to tell the foal she wasn’t her “mummah”. This gave Steve another chuckle.
“Better give it up, ‘special-friend’. You dug the hole too deep.”
Two days later, Grapefruit gave birth to five foals. Each was a pegasus—four fillies and one colt. The colt was orange, like his mother, but had his father’s black mane. Each of the four fillies had a different coat color—one was black with a pink mane, one was monochrome orange, one was monochrome pink, and the last was blue with a white mane.
Steve cleaned the afterbirth and feces out of the pen, while Katie showed the little colt to Seraph. The stallion was overjoyed to be a “daddeh”.
”Huwway! Sewaf am daddeh! Sewaf wiww be gud daddeh fo babbehs! Wiww sho babbehs how wun, an pway wif baww! An den, Sewaf wiww sho babbehs how fwy!”
“Katie, I think there’s something wrong.”
She hurried back to the mare pen to see Steve holding the blue filly in front of Grapefruit. The dam pushed at the man’s hands with her hoof.
“Nu, daddeh! Nu wan dummeh babbeh!”
“Goddammit, Grapefruit! Don’t make me get the sorry stick!”
“Nuuuu! Sowwy stick am bad fo mummah! Am gud mummah!”
“Ugh, that’s it! You are going to feed all of your babies, or you won’t get to have babies at all!” He tried to force the chirping foal onto Grapefruit’s teat, but the mare started bucking with her legs.
“Steve! Wait just a minute.” Katie knelt down beside the dam, placing her colt on her open teat. The “nyu mummah” settled, allowing the orange foal to drink her milk.
“Here, give me the foal and go mix some formula.”
Knowing better than to disagree with Katie, who knew fluffies better than he did, he stomped over to the utility closet. He grabbed a pre-mixed bottle of “Nyu Babbeh Foal Formula” from the shelf, shook it, and carried it in where his “resident expert” stood cradling the foal.
The foal hungrily sucked from the rubber nipple for a minute. Then, with no notice, she retched up the formula.
“Shit. That’s why Grapefruit rejected her, sweetie.”
“Why?”
“Hasbio programmed fluffy dams to love all of their foals, figuring they could sort out the ones they didn’t want later. But one thing they programmed in that would make a mother reject her foal was a type of…I guess you’d call it a smell.”
“I don’t really smell anything.”
“People can’t. But fluffies have a stronger sense of smell than we do. And the smell we’re talking about is one that allowed mares to self-sort any foal that was…”
“That was what”
“Any foal that was defective.”
Steve stood there, stunned. He couldn’t see anything wrong with the little blue filly, who fluttered her wings weakly in Katie’s hands. “How do we know it’s defective?”
“I know it’s hard, sweetie, but the dams just know. And you saw for yourself that she couldn’t keep down the formula. I think we’re going to have to say goodbye to her.”
His heart sunk. Am I really cut out for this?
“She may linger for a few hours, but she won’t last without being able to eat. You want me to put her down for you?”
Steve shook his head. “No. This is my farm, and these are my fluffies. I owe it to them to do what’s best, no matter what.”
Nodding, Katie handed him the foal. He turned and walked out the side door of the barn, grabbing the little garden trowel he had left on the shelf two days before.
chirp
He looked down at the tiny winged creature in his hands. She had started trying to suck one of his thumbs as he walked to the edge of the treeline. He hugged the foal gently, not wanting to distress her further, and then he took the fragile body in one hand. With his other, he grabbed hold of the head.
crack
The pegasus foal was dead. Even the small amount of force Steve used had nearly removed her head from her body. He laid the corpse on the ground and dug a tiny grave.
“Huggies make everything better?” Katie stood in the barn with her arms wide as the downcast man walked back in. He gladly took his petite lover up on her offer, and held her close.
“There’s nothing wrong with being upset. You’ve come to love your fluffies—it would probably be wrong if you felt nothing when they suffered.”
“Yeah, I know. But I haven’t cried since Dad died. Why start now?”
Katie frowned. “That’s no way to live. I sure couldn’t live with that. When you love something, you open your heart to it. Opening your heart leaves you vulnerable, and means you have to be willing to be hurt.”
“I love you, Katie.”
“I love you, too.”
Cherry’s birth, which came the day after Grapefruit’s, was much easier on everyone. She, too, gave birth to five foals—three unicorns and two earthies—all fillies. Steve carried Wizard over to see his handiwork, and the shy blue stallion was pleased.
“Am aww gud babbehs, an Chewwy am gud mummah.”
The red earthie dam thanked Wizard, who Steve carried back over to his pen. As he set the blue unicorn on the ground, Orchid trotted to him.
“Daddeh, Owchid am soon-mummah ‘gain! Owchid an Wizawd haf speshuw-huggies, an Wizawd gif Owchid tummeh-babbehs!”
Katie, who had been checking on Candy, clapped and cheered for the purple mare. Steve reached down and scratched his stallion behind the ears.
“Good boy, Wizard.”
