Chapter 5:
You are Fluffy Care Technician Sophia Clarke. Your phone is ringing, and you frankly don’t want to deal with this shit. You’ve just had to pillow a bitch mare, and her “sowwy poopies” was like sniper fire. You’d never seen a fluffy fire crap with such precision.
Picking up the phone, you prepare for the usual: Somebody on the abuser blacklist looking to buy, a pillowing, a spaying, a neuter, a baby with smarty syndrome.
“Technician Clarke? It’s Theo, I have something here you might wanna see.”
You start paying attention. You remember this guy, and his 4 fluffies. A Feral and her foals. Well behaved, rather intelligent.
“What’s going on? Is there a problem?” you ask.
“Well no, not really. One of the foals opened her eyes and has begun speaking.” he answers.
“Impossible. Don’t call this line for jokes, it’s not fun-“
“I’m serious, don’t believe me? Listen for yourself!” He cuts you off, and you hear the phone moving.
“Miwkies!” you hear. “Wub! Chirp! Huggies! Mummah!”
The unmistakable voice of a new Talkie foal.
“….When?” you ask.
“Like 3 hours ago, Hazel woke me up to see her. It’s the tri-color, I named her Neapolitan.”
“Good name. Sit tight. I’m making a house call,I have to see this in person and I don’t want you moving the foals more than necessary. “ You say, putting his address into the computer system. “GPS says 20 minutes, I’ll be there in 15. By the way I gave you a discount last time because they’re well behaved, this time, you’re paying full price.”
You hang up and change out of your soiled scrubs into actual clothes as quickly as possible, and practically run to your car after informing the other technicians where you’re going.
A foal, speaking in 4 days? This is not normal. You want to see this first hand, and find out why.
— — — —
You are Theo.
You’ve been pooped on 3 more times. Once by Neapolitan, and then by the brown colt foal 2 other times. Each time, Hazel has pleaded your forgiveness, and you’ve let her know it’s fine. Frankly it’s not, you’re getting sick of it, but you know none of the foals can help it. Neapolitan has been being put into the litterbox by Hazel every time she begins to look like she may need to go, which does seem to be helping.
Neapolitan herself is relatively alert, but still only parroting words she’s heard you and Hazel say. For the moment, the foals are sleeping, and you’re performing the other great task you’ve assigned yourself: Educating Hazel.
The format is simple: She points to a thing, you tell her what it is. Upon doing that, you generally have to explain roughly 10 other things. You’ve just finished explaining what “carpet.” is.
She understands it as “Magic human grass, but not for eating, only for walking on.”
Good enough.
“Daddeh.” She says, pointing a stubby leg at the TV. “What am dat?”
Oh this is going to be fun.
“That is called a “TV”, Hazel.” you answer. “It’s used by humans to show us moving pictures. Let me show you, you’ll understand it better that way.” You offer, standing up and turning it on.
Hazel stares, enchanted at what she’s seeing. Humans, talking to each other in this small, glowing box. How? They were talking about….something she didn’t understand, then the moving picture changed. Now it was a creature Hazel had seen many times in her forest home, the Skinny-Legged Friend, one with sticks on it’s head, walking peacefully.
“Am….am they acuwawy in box?” she asks, her eyes wide. “No, it’s just a moving picture. The deer isn’t actually in there.”
“Deew?”
“The animal there.” you answer.
“Oh! You mean Skinny-Weggies fwiend!” she says, understanding.
“Yes, we call them deer. The TV can show you lots of things.” You say, clicking through channels. News, Cops, Commercials. Hazel stares, mystified at how just one thing can be so many other things.
“Daddeh, am those things happening wite now?”
“Some of them, yeah. Other ones happened before now.”
“Did any happen aftew now?”
“No, Hazel. That’s not possible.”
“Oh.”
You smile at her curiosity. Teaching her about the human world is a lot of fun. She thinks for a moment, then speaks again.
“Daddeh, if Teebee have hoomans, do teebee awso have Fwuffies?”
“Yes it does, there’s whole channels, the different kinds of moving picture, that are all about fluffies, all the time.” You tell her. You know at least 3. FluffTV, Fluffy Channel, and Fluff Broadcasting. Each one had different line ups of shows, catered to the tastes of fluffies.
You’d heard FluffTV was the best of the bunch, having dedicated shows like “Da Twiwight Pwace”, “Babbehs!” and “Fwuffy Weading Wessons.”
“Can Babbehs watch sometimes?” She asks.
“Sure, once they open their eyes. Well, besides Neo, at least.”
The fluffpile shifts slightly, but none of them wake up.
“Thank you for teaching Hazew hooman things.” She says. “Is TeeBee Metaw?”
“No, it’s glass, and plastic.”
“What am Gwass?”
“Glass is a hard, but fragile thing humans make windows, cups, and the TV screen out of. It’s very pretty most of the time, and you can usually see through it. If it breaks, it makes a very loud sound, and is very sharp and dangerous.” You explain.
She nods along. “Is wike Ice?”
“Uh….yeah, but it doesn’t turn into water. It’s Forever-Ice.”
“Hoomans have so many things….” Hazel murmurs.
The doorbell rings. She perks her ears up. “Wat dat?”
“That’s a doorbell, Hazel. It means somebody is here to see us. I’ll be right back with them.”
— — — —
You are Neapolitan. You wake up and yawn when a weird noise fills your ears, you look up, and Momma is still there. “Chirp! Mummah!” You say. All your words are ones you’ve heard her, or the not-fluffy she called “Daddeh” say. You’re starting, slowly, to understand how to put them together and say things. “Wub Mummah!” You say.
You momma squeals in delight and picks you up, hugging you and giving you lickies. “Wub Bwuddah! Wub Sissy!” You say. “Das wite babbeh, dey am bwuddah and sissy! Dey wub you too!” She says, lifting you up and laughing happily. You wave your tiny legs and peep happily.
You see the not fluffy come into the room, with another not fluffy. This one has long yellow not-fluff on it’s head.
“Here she is, little Neapolitan.”
“Daddeh!” you squeak, in recognition of him. That’s daddy, your momma always calls him that! “Wub Daddeh!” you manage.
“She’s picking up speech pretty fast.” The other not-fluffy says, sitting down to look at you. “Amazing. I’ve never seen a fluffy develop this fast.”
Her voice, for it must be a her with a voice like that, is pleasant to you. You look at her “New Fwiend?” you ask.
“Yeah, I’m your friend, my name is Sophia, I’m here to help your daddy take care of you.” She says.
“Wub fwiend!
“Hazel, may I see her? Just for a minute?”
“Yus, nice wady, be cawefuw pwease, Babbeh am stiww so wittew…” she says, holding you out to your new friend.
She gently takes you in a warm, soft hand, and begins to carefully prod at and examine you. You giggle and chirp, it tickles.
“Hehehe, Wub!”
“She’s….not having any problems. But……this is very, very strange. It could be genetic, but I’m not sure what this is, Theo.”
Your momma pipes up. “Is Fiwwy foaw!”
You can hear daddy laughing hysterically.
“I…… Yes, Hazel, yes she is.”
“So…heheh….what do you mean by genetic?”
“I’d have to know more about Hazel’s parents to be sure. Hazel……what kind of fluffies were your mom and dad?”
“Gud fwuffies!”
Daddy is laughing again, you start laughing too.
“This is not going anywhere productive, I can tell already……” she hands you back to your momma.
“Neapowitan am gud babbeh?” You ask.
“Yes, you’re very good, sweetheart.” your new friend says petting you on your head. You chirp and coo happily, you like being held and petted.
“Nice wady, am sumting wong with Mummah’s babbeh?” Hazel asks.
“No, I don’t think so. She’s just very quickly developing.” The lady not fluffy stands up.
— — — —
You are Sophia.
“Theo, can I talk to you for a sec?” you ask, motioning outside of the room. He nods and follows you.
“Okay, listen. There’s like 3 or 4 things that could be happening with Neapolitan. It could be Alicorn DNA in her family somewhere, it could be extreme smarty syndrome, it could be rapid onset growth disorder, or it could be super-mare syndrome.” you say.
“How bad are those?” He asks.
“Alicorn DNA would be good, Super-mare would be good. ESS would be very, very bad. ROGD is fatal in a span of weeks.” you say. “Pretty sure it’s not ROGD, she’s not growing rapidly, just developing intellectually, so that’s good, we can probably rule that out.”
“What should I watch for?” Theo looks worried, he clearly loves this little creature.
“If any part of her starts to grow disproportionately, or she starts to have a massive growth spurt quickly.” You tell him. “For ESS, if she becomes rude, defiant, and aggressive towards her mom and siblings.”
“For the other ones?”
“Super-Mare syndrome is something we won’t know until she reaches Hazel’s age, so about 1 year old. If she starts growing especially large, it’s that.”
“And the last one?”
“No way to tell, unless you want to take the risk of asking Hazel about “Wingie Pointys”, which I wouldn’t suggest. If she thinks her foals are them, she might become afraid of them.” you say.
You’ve seen it many times. Good mares becoming terrified of a tiny chirpy at the suggestion it might have “Monster baby-ness”. They didn’t kill them, they simply panicked and refused to go near them, absolutely convinced the harmless foal would eat them, or their other foals.
Best not to do that, when everything else was going smoothly.
“Just……keep an eye on her, make sure she’s healthy. If I don’t hear from you about her, we’ll say it’s good, yeah?”
“I can do that. Hopefully there won’t be any problems.”
You nod, and then smirk “Now……that will be 50 for the consultation, 100 for the house call, and an extra 20 for diagnostics.
Theo’s jaw drops.
“Relax, I’m fucking with you. It’s only 85 bucks.” you tell him. The sheer relief on his face makes you laugh.
You’re starting to like this bunch.