Cochrane’s Farm
Chapter Fifteen
The sky was dark the next morning, and the clouds were heavy with rain. Steve lay awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling and stroking Katie’s soft black hair. She had offered to spend the day with him, saying that the two lectures she would miss were on topics she already knew anyway. He tried to convince her that her studies were important, but conceded that he wanted nothing more than her company.
Candy’s violent death shook him. A few months ago, he thought of fluffy ponies as a gimmicky children’s toy—unnerving in their ability to talk like humans and only good for plot material for his books. His perspective changed when the pink pegasus arrived on his farm. He hadn’t had anyone to talk to on the farm aside from his mother’s sporadic (albeit too common for his liking) visits. And he was surprised that he found them to be entertaining—although not particularly intellectual—company.
Besides, taking in Candy and the fluffies had led him straight into the arms of the angel who now shared his bed.
Thank you, Candy…
When Katie woke up a few minutes later, they walked downstairs for breakfast. The rain poured steadily as Steve flipped bacon on the stove. Katie, dressed only in one of her lover’s old t-shirts, leaned against the counter and nursed a cup of tea.
“Sweetie, I know yesterday was really tough for you, but you seem particularly lost in thought at the moment.”
Steve sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just—well, you know that I don’t have too many friends. Until I met you, I really didn’t get out that much.”
Katie nodded. “You really love your fluffies, and it’s hard to say goodbye to a close friend. But as far as not having many friends, you sell yourself short. You have a great personality—I’ve seen how well you interact with other people. Heck, my dad liked you from the first time he met you!”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. He asks about you all the time. Of course, he always jokes about how surprised he is that I’m with a guy.”
“Huh? Where does that even come from?”
“Come on, now. You know I was never the kind to bring guys home. Plus, there was the whole abstinence cult I got into in high school…”
“Oh, right. And you were a really good soccer player, too!”
She flashed a playful grin. “Now, don’t you start!”
Steve moved beside her and squeezed around her shoulders, watching as the rain continued to fall in sheets on the backyard. The deluge washed away the remaining carnage from the feral herd’s destruction. Katie broke the silence a minute later.
“You know, when I was a little girl, my mom used to say that rain was God’s way of showing us that he shared in our tears.”
He grunted, and then thought for a moment. “Katie, would you still be with me if I gave up on fluffy breeding?”
“What? Of course I would! I mean, I like fluffies, too, but you’re the most important thing in my world!”
“Do you think I should, then? Quit fluffy ponies, I mean.”
She shook her head. “No, not at all. I think you’re really good at it. Are you concerned about getting too emotional?”
Steve shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe so. Look—I have actually cried over these things getting hurt and killed. Doesn’t that make you think less of me?”
“Oh, sweetie. I saw my dad cry lots of times—and not just over mom dying. He cried when our pets died, or when Kathy or I got really upset, or when the Panthers lost the Super Bowl. It’s different for you, because you lost your dad when you were so young. I’ll bet you’d have seen him cry, too. It’s ok to get emotional sometimes when bad things happen. Remember what I said about opening your heart?”
“That it makes you vulnerable?”
“Uh huh. So don’t ever feel like you have to close yourself off to me. And I’m sure you’ll change your mind about the herd when we go see them this morning.”
Surely enough, his attitude brightened when he heard the excited chatter coming from the barn. All of the fluffies were inside, afraid that the “bad sky-wawas” would get them if they ventured out. Still, they had enough space to play indoors, and the barn provided Steve and Katie with a much needed cheerful atmosphere.
In the first pen on the right, Orchid sang to her babies and told them all how good they were (including the little brown gelding). Steve wondered how Orchid would handle his taking her foals once they were weaned, since these were the first babies she had raised by herself. Marzipan, fat with foals of her own, sat on her bed humming to herself.
Cherry, Grapefruit, and Bonbon were all very pregnant, and the two older dams happily extolled the virtues of babies to their young “pointy-wingie soon-mummah fwend”.
Wizard and Pineapple had their hands—er, hooves—full with their six older foals. The yellow unicorn dam was already immobile with her next litter of “tummie-babbehs”.
“Dummeh babbehs nee’ num kibbwe soon! Soon-mummah am sweepy aww time…speshuw fwend—come pway wif tawkie babbehs su soon-mummah can take sweepies!”
The blue stallion seemed even more tired than his mate. “Come on, babbehs. Nu mowe miwkies fow ‘oo. Come stack bwockies wif daddeh.”
Steve chuckled. Never been any question as to who wears the pants in that relationship. He heard a few weaned foals playing in the pens at the end of the barn—he tried to never get too attached to any of them. The ones in the sex-segregated pens would all be off to new homes by the end of the week.
“Mummah? Daddeh?” Seraph, the black pegasus stallion called out to the humans. He had a look of concern on his face.
Katie bent over the wall of the pen. “What’s wrong, Seraph?”
“Sewaf twy show Chewub how make speshuw huggies wif enfie bawks, bu’ enfie bawks am makin’ siwwy sownds!”
“Hmmm…well, that is a problem. Daddy, would you get the ‘enfie box’ out and check it? Sounds like we need to fix it for our extra special stallion,” she said, scratching the black pegasus behind his ears.
Steve nodded, and picked up the cardboard box, careful to grab the funnel and tube from the side of the pen as he did. He carried the box over to the utility closet, and Katie followed behind him and closed the door.
The woman lifted the lid off, revealing a legless, gelded pony with white fluff. He was still wrapped in his “special friend’s” goldenrod-colored pelt. The fluffy glared at Steve with his bright blue eyes, which were reddened by tears.
“Well, hey there, little buddy. Got something to say?” Steve chuckled, as the smarty-fluff struggled to speak despite the tube in his mouth and the rubber bands that Katie wrapped around his snout.
The man picked the unicorn up by his horn, swinging him back and forth. “You know, Seraph tells me you aren’t performing your…duties…in a cheerful manner. I’ve been pretty good to you, you little shithead, especially after what happened: I let you live, I kept your ‘special friend’ close by, and I even gave you the chance to have special huggies every day! What do you have to say for yourself?” He yanked out the feeding tube and removed the rubber bands.
“ ‘Oo…dummeh…MUNSTAH! Gif back Smawty’s weggies an wet Smawty gu! Nu am mawe! Nu wan poopie-pwace owwies! Smawty gif yu fowevah sweepies!”
Steve shook his head and tut-tutted the impotent fluffy. “Now, now—that’s no way to behave. You came onto my land, shat all over my property, and killed two fluffies in my herd. Payback’s a bitch, huh?”
“Dummeh mawe wun ‘way fwom Smawty’s hewd wif Smawty’s babbehs in tummeh. Hewd nee babbehs fo’ nummies when cowd times come!”
Katie, who had heard quite enough, reached around Steve and grabbed the unicorn around his mouth. She punched him in the face, knocking out several of the teeth she hadn’t removed the day before to place the feeding tube.
“Listen here, you little faggot: we don’t owe you anything! I swear to God I would kill you right now if I couldn’t think of a way for you to continue to suffer. Steve, hold his mouth open.”
Steve obliged. Man, she’s kind of scary when she gets mad. Katie reached into the nearby medical kit and pulled out a scalpel. Careful not to cut her boyfriend’s hands, she reached the knife down into the smarty’s throat and made a couple of quick scrapes. The fluffy’s body stiffened—without legs, he couldn’t run. And now that he had no vocal cords, it would be much harder to scream.
“Now, look at me, shitstain. This feeding tube’s going back in. You will have all of the ‘nummies’ you could possibly want, because I want you to live for a good long time. And until the day your asshole finally gives out and you die, you are going to be Seraph’s little bitch. Got it?”
The broken gelding didn’t respond. Resigned to his fate, he didn’t struggle when Katie put the feeding tube back in, and didn’t make a sound when she “accidentally” sliced off the end of his tongue with the scalpel. Steve put the unicorn back into the box—but before he could get the lid back on his girlfriend had pinched off the smarty’s horn as a final insult.
“That ought to do it. What did you put in his feeding tube last night?”
“I watered down some kibble and shoved the mush down the funnel.”
Katie shook her head. “Nah, no more of that. Only spicy liquids from here on out. How about that bottle of Sriracha that you said your cousin left in the fridge the last time he stayed with you? I know you don’t use that nasty stuff.”
Seraph seemed pleased with his “enfie bawks” again, and he proudly showed his barely-mature colt how to mount the “pwetty mawe”. He needed very little encouragement, since Katie had sprayed enough of the estrus bottle into the smarty’s ass for some to be leaking out.
It was getting close to time for lunch, so Steve and Katie walked back to the house. All of the fluffy manure on the garden meant that lettuce had started coming up early this year, so they made themselves fresh salads to eat on the back porch.
“I’m glad that you’ve decided to stick with the fluffy business, Steve. There needs to be somebody out there who’s willing to put out the effort into making the little critters into loyal pets.”
Just then, Katie’s phone rang. Steve pondered over his romaine lettuce while she talked excitedly. She helped me to figure out the “how” of raising fluffies from the start. Now, she’s given me a reason why.
For love.
“Ok. Thank you so much. I will. Bye.” She hung up the phone and set it down on the table. “Oh my god, Steve! Dr. Garrison just offered me the research assistantship starting in August!”
“That’s great! I am so proud of you.”
“I told him I needed a couple of days to think about it. If I take the job, I can’t work at FluffMart anymore—and the stipend wouldn’t pay as much towards my rent.”
The man thought for a moment. Yeah. We’re ready for this. “You could…always move in here?”
Katie’s eyes widened. “What? Really?”
“Well, I was just thinking: you spend a lot of nights here already, it’s not really that far from campus, and—let’s be fair—I can’t exactly charge you rent.”
Katie’s mouth dropped open, and she stared off into space for a moment as if to piece together Steve’s offer. Then she turned to face him with a smile on her face and tears forming in her eyes, and she threw her arms around him.
“Of course! Oh my god, there is nothing I could want more!”
Katie didn’t wait until the research assistantship started in August to move to the farm. She packed her things and moved in with Steve two weeks later, but agreed with FluffMart that she would continue to work there to cover her apartment rent until her lease expired in July.
Cochrane’s Farm became a well-known fluffy breeder throughout the Charlotte area. Sure, you could get cheap fluffies at FluffMart or Foals-R-Us, but if you wanted a quality, hand-raised fluffy pony, you could join the bidding process on the farm’s website. If you wanted to see the foals before buying them, you could schedule an appointment to tour the farm with either Steve or Katie.
Steve kept writing children’s books, and was unsurprised to see that his drawings at this point were almost exclusively of fluffies.
On a country road outside of Charlotte, there is a driveway. You cannot see the two-story white farmhouse from the road, as it is completely obscured by pine trees. If you take the driveway up to the house, you can see a large white barn off in the distance, separated from the house by a grass-covered clearing. In the barn is a herd of fluffy ponies, each of whom is raised with loving care by the farm’s owner. Only the first pen on the left remains unoccupied. There is a bed made of raggedy towels in the corner, and high on the wall hangs a picture of a pink pegasus dam with a red mane. She beams directly at the camera as her five foals—one a white alicorn—lay sleeping on her back.
THE END OF COCHRANE’S FARM
Thank you for reading!