The next morning, Richie awoke to the sound of two things.
The first was Mr Giuseppe banging his stick on the ceiling again.
The second was the cause of the first: Tulip squeaking her lungs out in the safe-room.
Richie darted in, not out of concern for Tulip, but for his own sake, and found Tulip bouncing up and down in the middle of the safe-room.
“DADDEH DADDEH DADDEH DADDEH DADDEH DADDEH DADDEH DADDEH!!!” She squeaked like a hyperactive toddler. “TUWIP HAB EGGY-BABBEH! TUWIP BESTEST MUMMAH! HAB BESTEST EGGY-BABBEH! WOOK WOOK WOOK WOOK WOOK!!!”
Sure enough, just as there had been last night, there was now a single white egg sitting on Tulip’s bedding.
“Well look at that.” Richie said before yawning. “Guess you finally laid an egg after all.”
“Yus! Mummah Tuwip wub eggy-babbeh!” Then she paused, thinking of something. “Daddeh… how wong 'tiw eggy-babbeh come out of eggy?”
Richie went quiet for a moment, pretending to think.
“Hm… I’m not sure, but it can take a while. You know what you have to do until then though, right?” He asked. Tulip looked at him, blank-eyed, prompting Richie to sigh as he began to explain a further lie.
“Well, you’ve got to stay with it at all times. Do you understand that, Tulip?” Richie asked, looking her dead in the eye. “This is very important. Your baby is in that egg, and it needs you. So you’re going to have to keep that egg with you no matter what. If you go to eat, you bring the egg. If you go to the litter-box, you bring the egg. You must never let that egg out of your sight, or else your baby might not make it. Understand?”
“Otay daddeh!” Tulip said, nodding vigorously. “Mummah Tuwip pwotect eggy-babbeh no mattah what!”
And with that Tulip curled up with her egg and did the usual mama-fluffy thing of singing a tuneless nonsense-babble song to it, which boiled down to nothing more than ‘mama love eggy-baby’.
The next few hours, however, very quickly changed that.
Tulip soon realised that an egg does not necessarily make for a fun playmate. She couldn’t feed it, nor could she play any games with it. Plus, since it couldn’t move on it’s own, any time Tulip wanted to go somewhere, she had to stop and nudge her egg along in front of her with her snout, or one of her hooves.
Being that the egg was of such an odd, round shape, that meant every nudge sent it rolling off in a curving direction, forcing Tulip to stumble after it to course-correct it… which sent it rolling away on another curving path, usually undoing some of the progress she’d already attempted to make with it…
By the time she got her egg from the safe-room to the lounge, she was exhausted.
Richie, however, was having plenty of fun at her expense.
“Tulip, breakfast time. Don’t forget your egg!”
He smiled as he heard a pattering of hooves which, at the mention of the egg, suddenly halted and receded, then gradually returned with a quiet grunt every few seconds. Sure enough, some minutes later, Tulip entered the kitchen, panting for breath, as she carefully nudged her egg forwards, only to see it roll and spin gaily across the smooth tiled floor of the kitchen.
“Eee! Eggy-babbeh, nu!” She wailed, scrabbling to catch up to it, her hooves slipping and sliding across the floor as she tried to chase after her egg. Richie watched as it rolled gently to a halt, only for Tulip to crash face-first next to it, wheezing and sobbing in anguish.
About an hour after Tulip had eaten, it was time to use the litter-box, which Richie had thoughtfully placed in the bathroom, next to his own shitter.
Which, of course, meant another stumbling, wobbling, constantly changing route from the kitchen to the bathroom, as Tulip waddled along, prodding and rolling her egg every step of the way, being sure that no matter how frustrated or tired she got from pushing it around, she never once jabbed it too hard, lest she injure the delicate baby currently growing inside it.
Richie watched as Tulip struggled her way across the lounge, getting about halfway from the kitchen to the bathroom when her guts let out a loud, aggressive, deeply worrying gurgle.
She looked at the bathroom, only a few seconds walk away… then back at her egg. She could run to the bathroom, make it to the litter-box in time, and make good-poopies like every good fluffy should… but that would mean leaving her egg behind, and that would make her a bad mama!
Alternatively, she could keep pushing her egg, and reach the bathroom in maybe… an hour’s time, at which point she’d have made bad-poopies all over the lounge floor.
Tulip’s complex thinking was shattered by another squelching groan coming from her guts. She didn’t have long.
“Daddeh, pwease hewp mummah Tuwip!” Tulip begged. “Nee’ hewp gettin’ eggy-babbeh to wittah-boks!”
“What do you mean, ‘help’?” Richie asked with a sneer. “You’re the mother of that egg, Tulip. It’s up to you to take care of these things. I can’t help you, it’s not my baby in that egg, it’s yours.”
And with that he went back to ignoring her, as Tulip frantically tried to push her egg along the floor, her face screwed up in pain as she clenched her sphincter as tight as possible.
“Pwease nu bad-poopies… pwease be gud eggy-babbeh… gu wif mummah Tuwip… pwease eggy-babbeh! Pwease stop wollin’ awa- NU, EGGY-BABBEH! COME BACK!!!”
Her babbling was interrupted as the egg once more deviated from it’s course, causing Tulip to scamper after it as it rolled away from the bathroom door, her guts giving another alarming rumble.
Then, with a sudden ripping sound, Tulip’s clenched anus could take no more pressure and was forced apart by a small fountain of lumpy turds, bursting out of her rear as she squealed and cried and begged them to stop.
Richie watched it all, trying not to laugh. Oh sure, he’d have to scrub the shut out of the carpet and that’d take some amount of time, but Tulip’s anguish was absolutely hysterical. Tears poured down her face as her egg rolled a few inches away from her, her rear pointed high in the air as the kibble-based turds rained down onto the carpet from above.
Finally, with one last raspberry of a fart, Tulip’s tirade of turds came to a halt, and the only sound left was Tulip sobbing, having broken one of the most sacred of fluffy pony rules… she made bad poopies.
Richie scooped her up, grimacing at the mass of wet brown smears across her ass, as he carried her through to the safe-room, picking up the egg along the way.
“Tulip, I’m very disappointed in you.” He said, as Tulip continued to sob. “You said you wanted babies, you were supposed to be ready for them, but now you’ve got one, and look at you, misbehaving like that, you’re just like a baby yourself.”
“Nu! Nu am babbeh! Am mummah nao!” Tulip argued through her tears.
“Then start acting like one!” Richie said, plopping her down on her bedding, letting her filthy ass smear brown smudges all over her sheets. He placed her egg next to her, and she immediately latched onto it, pulling it close to her fuzzy belly.
“You and your egg can stay in here for the rest of the day.” He said. “I’ll bring you dinner later, but that’s it. No toys, no TV, nothing. You’re going to sit here and think about what you did, and maybe you’ll try and be a better mother before long.”
“Pwomise, daddeh…” Tulip mewled from within her bedding, as she snuggled up to her egg. “Pwomise to be gud mummah, pwomise tu make gud poopies next time… pwomise…”
True to his word, Richie fed Tulip again at dinner-time and checked in on her again some hours later. She was fast asleep in her bed, snuggled up to the egg… it would be a cute picture if it wasn’t for the fetid stink of old turds that was thick in the air.
Richie had spent the better part of an hour scrubbing the carpet, and during that time, he’d come up with another idea to make sure Tulip never wanted to have babies again.
He crept into the safe-room with the carton of eggs in his hands, the same cartoon he’d gotten Tulip’s ‘eggy-baby’ from in the first place, with five still remaining inside. As Tulip snored and babbled in her sleep, Richie opened the carton and took out one egg after another, placing all five of them on the floor near Tulip’s bed, right behind her rear. As before, it looked just as if they’d simply plopped out of her at some point.
With his work done, Richie smiled and left the room, eager to see what the next day brought.