Coffee was a good mare, a charming alicorn of chocolate hues and her personality was sweet as the confectionery itself.
Coffee was among the star breeding mares at Deacon’s Farm, a fluffy mill that produced only the highest quality fluffies in both appearance and behaviour. It was of course protocol to snuff out any personality defects present in fluffies of poor genetic stock and rearing, such as sensitive baby syndrome (otherwise referred to as SBS), the dreaded Smarty syndrome and the utterly reviled Bitch-mare syndrome. All of which were tackled with extreme prejudice. After all, what was the point of having a beautiful and well bred fluffy if its personality was worth less than dirt?
Coffee had earned her self a position of extreme privilege due to her positive relationship with the owner of the establishment, Mr. Derek Deacon, after a fateful encounter three weeks prior. And so Coffee was granted a playpen all to herself and her rotating litters of beautiful and well behaved foals. Coffee was a grateful mare and never asked for much… until her first sensitive baby was born.
He was a beautiful shade of lavender like the stud that fathered him, yet his body carried over an interesting trait from Coffee’s great grandmother. That being his body was speckled in the faintest fleks of silver amongst his coat, especially around his hoofs. Although he was stunning to look at from the moment he was born, even before his deep purple mane and tail had come in, as the days passed coffee could sense that something was very wrong with her special little guy, terribly wrong, even. And fear had dug itself deep within Coffee’s mind that caused her countless (by fluffy standards) sleepless nights as the days moved on from their birth up until two weeks time.
Eventually the rest of her litter would open their eyes and begin speaking their first words, yet her one child, the slightly chubbier and quiet one would continue to feed none stop, drinking her precious milk greedily without a care in the world. Her sensitive baby also refused to play, explore or even interact with his siblings. In fact he acted as if they didn’t exist, as though Coffee herself didn’t even exist, only her teats and the continual fountain of white gold that he would partake in.
She had attempted to move the pretty little blob aside to help feed the rest of her brood, though any attempt of her young to try and approach and even gather a mouthful of sustenance was met with the shrill moaning and flailing of their unconventional sibling.
“Pwease widdle bebbeh, nu cwy, Mummuh Cowffie nee tu gib da uda bebbeh’s miwkies tu!” she begged her sensitive offspring, but unfortunately the little purple glutton would not relent, he had absolutely no understanding of the world around him, all forms of touch against his skin would send him into a tizzy where he would peep, chirp and gurgle loudly for hours on end. It was only him and the comfort of the sweet alabaster nectar that came from a pretty sounding and sweet smelling creature that would coo for him, day or night, which retained his sense of calm.
Coffee was terrified, she had heard the rumours that the other fluffy mothers had spoken of in the adjacent pens in the row. That bad mothers who make bad babies are taken to a scary tower in the mill and never seen again. Coffee had many nightmares about the tower, although she had no idea what went on inside. It was the fear of the unknown that played upon her innocent and child-like mind.
Inside every pen and in the center of every room in the mill that allowed fluffies to walk about and mingle, there was a large glowing red button at the perfect height for a fluffy to touch, or a human to tap with their foot in an emergency. The button in question would alert nearby staff to come and survey the situation, whatever it may be. From fecal and urine-based accidents, to breaking up the fights and arguments amongst bad behaved fluffies and the collection of foals who have begun to exhibit the signs of personality defects, taken away and not ever to be seen again.
To say that Coffee was terrified of her special foal being taken for the crime of his condition would be a remarkable understatement. Because she was aware that he was greedy, but she was also aware that he knew no better, he was just… Sensitive.
As the days passed and the staff would make their rounds, Coffee had taken to hiding her special baby under a pile of wood shavings. She knew what she was doing was wrong and against the rules, she knew that if she were caught she would lose all of her privileges and be confined to a sorry cage, or even worse… the tower. She knew that she was SUPPOSED to press the red button in her pen, wait for a staff member to appear and inform them about her child, but she just couldn’t do it.
To keep her unique child from wailing loudly and alerting the staff to his existence, Coffee had taken to designating her left teat exclusively to him, as to purchase his silence with a creamy bribe, but the drawback was the severe lacking milk production for her other six offspring. Rationing had become a serious concern as her other six beautiful children were shrinking before her eyes and there was nothing she could do to stop it as the days marched on.
Coffee looked down at her left teat, at the gelatinous and stumpy blob and bit her lip. Her child’s avarice was causing harm towards his arguably more deserving siblings and his mother, siblings that he didn’t even know existed and a mother that was nothing but a breathing, cooing and singing milk bag as far as his limited mind could comprehend.
Coffee kept up the twisted game of hide the foal from the humans that would visit her pen and take notes. Even as they chastised her and called her a “problem mare” for seemingly refusing to feed any of her children.
Coffee hated herself for what she had done, she truly was a bad mother as far as she was concerned. The straw finely broke the camel’s back however when her pale blue son toppled over from exhaustion while mid play with his sea-green sister, his ribs visible and his breath labored.
She didn’t want to, as she got up and waddled towards the red button that glared at her from across the pen, its crimson eye staring deep into her fluffy soul, judging, accusatory. Tears welled up in her eyes and stained the brown fluff of her cheeks as she stopped dead in front of the luminescent semisphere and lifted her shaking left hoof, slowly inching it towards the smooth and round surface. She whimpered a tiny “sowwy bebbeh…” as she put her hoof forward and made contact.
As soon as she pressed down, the luminescent white light above her pen turned deep blood red and sent a primal chill down her back. She was a traitor to all of her children now, an unforgivable fuzzy Judas, but she had to make a choice, one foal vs many… Being forced to make such a decision cut her deep within her motherly Instinct, but the lesser of both evils was apparent.
The sound of sneakers against vinyl flooring approached from the right as Coffee reared herself up on her stubby hind legs and threw her little hoofs over the railing of her pen so as the better speak directly to the staff member and plead her case.
“Hello Coffee, is everything alright?” Billie said as she kneeled down to just above eye level and put her latex gloved hand over the sobbing mare’s head to comfort the obviously miserable creature.
“C-…Cowffie am s-su sowwy… Madam. Cowffie bin wying an hidin extwa bebbeh… himb am s-… S-… SENSITIBE!” she cried at the end, bursting into tears as a rock of guilt and fear hardened itself in her throat.
“oh… I see…” Billie said as she pulled out her work tablet and made a video call directly to Mr Deacon himself.
“Mista Deacon is going to be very unhappy with ya. For all the time that you’ve been here, Coffee, you’ve never been a bad fluffy, we were getting scared from a moment when we saw how thin ya foals were getting but I think it would be best if ya explained it yourself…” Billie sighed. She knew what would happen to Coffee if she broke Mr Deacon’s heart, is she had betrayed his trust and demolished the spotless reputation that she had cultivated for herself, but rules were rules and protocol had to be kept. If she were any other mare she would most likely be on her way to the tower, but Billie wanted to give it a try.
The screen and camera of the work tablet was turned towards the mare as the image of Mr Deacon’s profile icon bobbed in front of her before suddenly vanishing and being replaced by the live feed of Derek, sitting in the back of his limousine on the way to a meeting.
“Mista Deacon, I think Coffee has something to say to ya…” Billie said to break the ice.
Immediately the mare confessed everything, she confessed to the poor rationing of her milk, to the crippling fear that the mysterious tower brought her, the sensitive baby and most of all her guilt for keeping this secret and breaking the rules. She begged and begged for the life of her foal and even offered herself to go to the tower in exchange for his life being spared, all the while peppering her explanation with the deepest heartfelt apologies as her face became sodden in salt walter and liquid snot dripped down the front of her muzzle.
When she was finished Derek sighed loudly before he calmy, kindly requested for the SBS foal to be shown to him.
“o-o-otay… Mista…” Coffee whimpered shamefully as she walked over to the pile of shavings, brushed it aside and grabbed her troublesome youth by the scruff as it began to peep and chirp rapidly in panic before she returned to the tablet and presented her living shame.
Derek’s eyes lit up as soon as he saw it, as despite its condition he was a magnificent looking foal, his glittering coat and luscious mane was a sight to behold, the silver specs almost created a gradient as they clustered heavily around the little guy’s stubby hooves. And surprisingly the intense beauty of the creature’s colour palette created an odd but somewhat charming contrast with the vacant walled eyes and dribbling mouth.
Derek sat in silence as he thought for a moment, first looking at Coffee, then at her foal, then back to Coffee. He repeated this process several times while he thought and every time his eyes returned to Coffee he could see the waters of a desperate mother beginning to well up intensely upon her eyelashes.
“Coffee…” he said in a disappointed tone, “what you have done is very bad. You put the lives of your children at risk because you didn’t trust us, and for that reason we’re going to have to take away a few of your privileges, such as your designated spaghetti night, your teddy, your blocks and fluffy tv… you’ll get them back when you have earned them. We will of course have to take your ‘sensitive’ baby away from you, as well” Derek said with heartfelt disappointment. “BUT…” he suddenly added while clearing his throat, before Coffee could break down into a state of guilt fueled sobbing, “I’m not going to send you to the ‘scary tower’… because at the end of the day you did what was right and you told us the truth. I am going to have you sent to the on-site veterinarian, Miss MacFeely, to find out why you made a ‘sensitive baby’ and then we are going to try and find your son a good home… I’m fairly certain there is at least one person out there who wants an SBS fluffy with beautiful colours like him” he added with a reassuring smile.
“otay… Tank yew mista Dee-kan… Cowffie wuv yew…” she whimpered gratefully.
A day later the on-site vet would discover that Coffee was entering middle age and due to lost paperwork she was being continually bred passed her prime years. And so it was decided that Coffee would get something of a “promotion” as she slowly had to earn her way back up the good graces ladder.
Coffee would no longer be visited by a stud and her feed would be replaced with a specific type of fluffy brand kibble that was designed to produce lactation even out of pregnancy. The mare would now be designated in the facility as a “nurse mare”, in which she would have the great honor of helping raise and feed the foals of mothers who had passed in childbirth, who couldn’t lactate themselves or were simply no longer around for a myriad of other reasons.
Coffee took to her new role quite well and smiled as every day she got to watch the most beautiful and friendly foals grow up big and strong, all because of her.
Meanwhile Derek was now in the process of returning to the farm after another boring and soul crushing meeting. His phone vibrated in his blazer pocket and he answered it with gusto, he was just happy to speak to anyone who wasn’t an investor.
“so… about Coffee…” Billie said.
“I know, we shouldn’t have put her through all that” he replied swiftly.
“I mean, we have cameras coming out our bloomin’ ears over here. The bloody security guards had caught her red han-… Err, hoofed on day two, why didn’t we intervene sooner? I thought this whole Big Brother’s 1984 thing we had going with the fluffies was there to keep loyalty in them anyway?” Billie questioned.
“that’s part of it, Billie, but Coffee is special and she proved it. She probably thought in her heart of hearts that she wasn’t being watched at all times, somewhere in the back of her subconscious, unlike all the other mares in east wing. But true loyalty and true quality of character comes from what you do when you think you’re not being watched” he replied confidently before hanging up.
Coffee was a good mare.
-the end-
Follow up story for Coffee can be found here.
Semi-prequel revolving around Derek can be found Here.
