“NUU, NUU TAKE SISTAH!” He cried “PWEASE TAKE BWUDDA TOO!” The human lady looked down at him and made a face of disgust. She had black not fluff on her head just like his mane how could she hate him. “Sistah, pwease akse niwce wady to take bwuddah too.” His vision was obscured and he felt a hoof press down top of his mouth stopping him from speaking. It was the color of his mummah.
Mummah why? He thought. “Siwwy cowt suu eshitud dad sisdah ged nyu mummah! Fwuffy fowged mannahs!” He heard his mother say to the nice lady. The lady looked down at his sister in her not hoofs. “Do you want to be with your brother or with me?” the human lady asked her. Sistah made a face like when she couldn’t remember what came after three.
“Fwuffy wub bwudda! He am bestes at hiwde an seek!” He sighed with relief. The lady would give her back and they would get to stay a family. “Buwt, fwuffie wub nyu mummah suu much!” She raised her hooves as wide as she could as if to hug the human lady. “Ok then, let’s go. I think I’ll name you Pinkie.” His sister cried with joy “Dank yuu! Pinkeh wub nyu namesie!”
Wuh? He looked up at her from behind his mummah’s hoof and sad wawas began to pour from his face. The lady made sure to keep his sister turned away from him as she walked away. He tried to wriggle his way out from under his mother’s hoof. He needed to cry out to his sister. He needed to change her mind. His mother held him down even tighter. Then he felt wawas fall on his face.
He turned his eyes to look up as his mummah, she was looking down at him sad wawas were falling from her eyes too. His heart felt the biggest hurties ever. He was making his bestest prettiest mummah cry. He stopped fighting her. She felt as he gave up resistance letting go and falling down on her son to hug him. “Mummah am sowwy! Nowd am yuu fawt dad yuu am bwown babbeh!” He didn’t understand, did she pity him? “Fwuffy am gud babbeh, nuu wike mummah wid bwokeh weggie an nuu gud tawkehs!”
“Bwown babbehs awways ged nyu mummahs wast.” She sobbed out. “Nuu undasdan. Babbeh am gud fwuffeh. Am nuu faiw fow babbeh…” He finally understood her heart hurties. His mummah had never gotten a new mummah either. They both hugged one another and cried until they had no energy remaining.
Anna had to keep track of all the litters in the store and the last sibling of the most well adjusted brown foal had just been sold. It was not company policy to encourage a customer to reconsider their choice, but she felt a pit in her stomach at the thought of what she would be greeted with if she went back to check on Pinkie.
Most brown foals stared out as attention whores desperate for the same treatment their siblings received and by the end were broken, desperate, and submissive towards humans to be adopted as their aggression towards other fluffies increased. She knew that it was the bond the brown one shared with his sister that kept him from acting out like some of the other brown stock had already begun.
In fact, it was the bond between siblings that kept the pink filly, now sharing the name of her surrogate mother, from getting sold earlier. Most customers could not stand to break up such close siblings but would not stand to adopt a brown foal at the prices fluffmart asked. Especially with the rumors of feral ‘poopy’ herds that had begun to circulate on social media.
She turned the register over to the clerk, it was now company policy that only managers handled live fluffy sales, fluffies were as regulated as alcohol now and having an untrained minor sell a fluffy to an abuser could result in the store being fined out of business.
She walked back across the store to the third row. They miraculously had sold out of all their normal stock early. Probably because so much more of it was unsellable. The whole row was now seven brown foals. That would make sorting easy at least.
She reached the pen with Pinkie. Looking down at the pathetic sight she saw two fluffies hugging with tear-stained faces. Neither were moving and she wondered for a moment of they both died of heart break. She heard a faint huu from one and saw a leg twitch from the other. At least they were breathing.
She walked over to the food isle and grabbed a can of premium skettis, walking back to the pen she cracked the can open and dumped it in Pinkie’s bowl. She would pay for the can herself. Sketti day wasn’t for another week, but they deserved it. Looking down at the mare, she was barely holding back tears herself.
Unless they could be retrained as nurses, mares were removed from inventory as merchandise and added as a long-term depreciating asset. They could get about six years out of a mare before she was too old to keep producing milk and they were marked defective. They needed to keep Pinkie functional, there was only one way that defective fluffies left the store.
The next day they condensed the remaining brown foals into two pens and moved most of the mummahs into their own pen. Pinkie was kept with her brown foal and both the unicorn and the pegasus were moved in with her. The extra foals helped calm her a bit. The remaining four brown foals were moved into an adjacent tank without a mummah. Dividers were put between the pens so that the mare pen, foal pen, and Pinkie pen could not see each other.
Anna did this for their wellbeing. No matter how much the mares were conditioned, they still had a subconscious aversion to brown foals and the stress of seven in their row was putting them on edge.
The four solitary foals were lost cases behaviorally and she was waiting for John’s sign off to move them to the last chance pen early. Two toughies, a smarty, and a sensitive baby that the toughie would not stop giving sorry hooves to. Sensitives could normally be marketed with excess mares, but they weren’t going to find a sellable nurse willing to dote on a single brownie.
Pinkie herself would become distressed further if she saw the abandoned foals through the glass. They contemplated letting her watch them all but taking care of seven nearly two-month-old foals would put a toll on her physical and mental health. She was their star mare and this specific batch of litters had completely destabilized the entire store.
She kept her trio happy for the next week until the next sketti day and they all ended up in the last chances bins. The next two weeks passed uneventfully for the store. The last few batches of foals had only one foal each after the nightmare batch. It was one more day until John would box them up and send them to “Skettiland”.
Anna pulled Pinkie aside to ask her to say goodbye yet again. She rubbed behind her ears to reward Pinkie for being such a good mummah.
Then the impossible happened. Somone came in and bought a brown foal. It was the pegasus filly. Then the unicorn colt. Towards the end of the day some people came in looking for a brown colt with a white mane like the trotting star from a viral video that they had seen, by luck one of the toughies had a light blond mane and was close enough for them.
Watching all this happen, even he felt a spark of hope and called out to the humans walking around the back rows to pick out a litter trained foal. Then closing time came.
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Are you excited for the next chapter? Next week: The Condemned