“Huuuuu, sumbuddy sabe babbeh pwease…”
The lamentations of the brown colt echoed down the alleyway as he trudged alone into the night. The nice warm nesty place he’d lived in with his family lay behind him. He’d returned in hopes of finding his mummah’s hurties healed and her life restored, but he’d found her where he’d left her. Skull caved in by a boot. She’d been pleading for mercy from two hoomins who were holding daddeh down and…taking his teefies…
They’d come out of nowhere. Younger hoomins with thin not-fluff on their facies. “Nuuuuuu! Nu huwt speciaw fwend!” Mummah had been howling at them to stop. They were hurting him! He needed his teefies! The foal had no idea why the hoomins would do such terrible things, but his mummah seemed to.
“Dummeh hoomins! Wai huwt fwuffies? Nu bodda hoomin! Nu eben ask fow nummies! Ou jus gibbin huwties fu nu weason! Hatechu!” The taller hoomin turned and mummah had sat back, eager to hear his explanation. It came in the form of a bootheel to the frontal lobe.
She died instantly. The foal would never forget the sounds. His mother’s body slowly gurgling to a halt, left driverless when her brain was obliterated. His brudda and sissy cheeping in terror. They were only chirpies, and he was almost a real colt! He felt he should have saved them. But how could he? Sure he was bigger than them, but he could barely carry one. Let alone both of them. They’d have all died. Instead of just the chirpies.
He shuddered. He didn’t see their bodies here. He’d fled when his mummah was killed. Daddeh wasn’t getting back in the fight and he had no other moves. It looked like once the hoomins had pulled all his daddeh’s teefies out they’d…left some. As he approached his father’s still corpse he understood. They’d shoved them into his throat. He’d choked on them. The few on the ground were merely what little he’d managed to dislodge.
They’d left him there. The drag marks and dried blood indicated that he’d survived long enough to pull himself the four feet to his special friend before he died. His tear stained cheeks buzzing with flies, any beauty in this moment was as dead as the both of them.
Brown Babbeh had waddled to safety like his mummah always told him to do. “If munstah huwtin’ famiwy, babbeh nee wun way. Gunna wantu hewp, bu nu can. Babbeh stiww tuu wittwe.” That always gave him heart hurties before. He hated thinking about it.
Now it felt even worse. He’d fled. He’d survived. Now what? He could eat real nummies, but he didn’t have any. Hadn’t learned how to get them. Didn’t even have his mane or tail color yet. His teefies were still small and kind of weak. Thinking about them made him think about daddeh, and he got sad and cried again.
He waddled over to his dead parents and curled up between them. His father’s mangled mouth and blood caked snout formed a nook with his mother’s flattened brainpan where he cried himself to sleep.
It wasn’t fair. They were good fluffies. Hoomins were just meanies, and he didn’t even know why! His last thought before drifting off was that someday things had to be better than this.
They never were. While he slept, a stray dog picked him up. Before he could wake up, his head was severed and devoured.