-Every day, she crosses a bridge to go back home. The thing about this old bridge of bricks is that she has to drive her bike on the road and the cars tend to go fast. It’s basically a trial for any cyclist, that’s why people avoid the place. Plus, when you look down, you can see the trains cemetery. And because people are pussies for the most part, they think there are murder hobos and junkies. It might be, but it would not be much more than regular folks. Anyone can easily have access to it with the ladders at the beginning and the end of the bridge, or, further following the cliff, to a smooth slope.
-It was September, and she didn’t know why, the global warming or a particularly dry summer, but the sky was pouring down the kind of heavy rain able to flood basements and carry away trash cans, small dogs or any kind of light items left on the sidewalk. The plastified ground unable to absorb a single a drop of liquid more. She managed to ride the way down the bridge in an outrageous effort but had to put foot to ground pass some point when she realized that she might just kill herself trying to cross the gap between town and home. People in cars maybe didn’t even notice her in her black raincoat or think that they drove to fast for this amount of water. The only resort left was the ladder.
-She walked next to her bike, cursing to the front wheel bent during the impact. She didn’t expect it to be so high and thought that the grass on the wall may slow the fall. At least it was a little bit warmer in the pit as the wind was half broken by the trains. And now it stopped howling, she could hear the panic babbles of fluffies in the distance. The empty wagons might be a welcoming home, after all. It grosses her out a little bit. From what she could hear, they would be at least two dozens. They would probably all die or get split as the autumn grows colder and the food rarer anyway, but it saddened her somehow to know that they still would ruin the rare green areas of the agglomeration. The only use they might have is they can produce meat and hides.
-It has been three days since she walked through the train cemetery. And she thought about to use fluffies to do a farm. Of course it was illegal but at least it would be fun the time it would last, she thought. And with the new weird alternativ with clay and algae to feed the creatures, it would be less destructive than feed them real food. So she visited different trains, different wagons. The floor was soaked to the point it would be easy to stay stuck in it for a fluffy or with a bike. But since she broke hers, it wasn’t a problem anymore. The weather was quite gray, with a thin drizzle filling the air. The ex-freight trains were spacious enough to store things : food, tools, furniture ; but it would have been too dark for a fluff to survive. After two or three hours of wandering, she pick a coupling short 4 passenger wagons next to two freight ones. All the windows were in good shape, the chairs were still here and, more importantly, the doors would be shut tight and only opened with the emergency chains. No fluffy would be able to open it and it was perfect.
-By the end of her tour, a couple of fluffies were following her suit. Some came to beg her to adopt, feed, take care of them, others left when they realized she just ignored them. She let them roam next to her even when she began to order her wagons. The “first one” would be for the breeding herd, the “second one” for the “veterinary cares” and the last ones for the meat fluffies. She thought that auto-regulation by their own kind might work a little bit. At least, to maintain a certain number of individuals.
-She dedicated a lot of her free time to it. She has been visited by some intrigued people who lived their life in the cemetery. For most part, they seemed enthousiast about it, joking about the fact that she could give them meat and things like that. But they didn’t do much. She worked alone on bringing a garden hose into the wagons. She took it from a small house on the cliff : the old lady who lived here had a big water cube which collected the rain for her flowers, but the brambles invaded the garden a long time ago. Anyway, it had a natural pressure and she just got an adjustable handle which allowed her to have a “high pressure water” at disposition. The first wagon was now ready to welcome fluffies. The floor was covered in silt from the outside, passed to the torch to kill any parasite eggs that might be sleeping inside, and she put the old chairs on the ground. She filed all the sharp edges she could find, on the floor, the walls etc. Water bottles were disposed on the wall at different places thanks to wires attached to the armature of the train as well as little plastic bowls collected on garage sale. Blankets, a few toys, nests here and there. She also marked a “litter box” in one of the corners but was not fooled, she knew that it may not be used as it should and the entire room would be soiled in no time. Finally, some fluorescent stickers were put on the ceiling.
-It was November by now and her first fluffy was a pregnant mare which needed a roof above her head to be safe. It stayed and watched her often as she prepared the wagons and happily babbled about how it would have a good home, a good Mummah and other fluffy tropes. Somehow it was right. It was a rough greenish earthy mare, eaten by worms but not by fleas or scabies. She bathed it and put some insecticid in its collar just to be sure and forced it to swallow the dewormer pill. It whined and struggled but quickly calmed down as she was introduced to its new safe room. A whole new environment to explore !
-Soon after the first one, another one presents herself at the door of the “vet wagon” (the headquarter of the train), begging to be adopted. It was a female, pregnant as well, followed by a grape of foals of two ages. Everyone was eaten by scabies. She did the only thing she thought was right. Due to the fact that they would survive long outside and the fact they were “useless” for her. She decided to kill them all. She couldn’t take the risk to contamine her first mare. And was not a big loss of opportunity because another wave of beggars followed it. She picked up all females with no scabies or fleas, seeming to be sociable (from herds) which already had foals and seemed to know how to take care of them. At the end of the day of collecting her “breeding herd”, she got three erthie mares, only one was not pregnant, one pegasus, pregnant too, and two unicorns, too young to bear offspring but useful to help the other mares. Plus they would learn from the older … at least she hoped.
-She finished the first of the “meat wagon”. It’s pretty much the same thing than the “breeding wagon”. It “was time”, the first batches of foals were already here. Five foals which will reach the age of 3 days. Even if she planned to let the first generation of meat fluffy grow with their mothers, she was relief from having “homeless” fluffies. By the way, three days was the good age for neutering the males. She took the four blind colts, assuring their mother it would be ok, that she’ll just “fix” them. The mother wasn’t quite sure but let her take the foals. Once the door of the “vet wagon” closed, she gelded the colts the simpler way she knew : like pigs. With a warm up clamp, she quickly pinch and turn the testicles out of the foal body. Naturally they were chirping and squeaking the pain out of it. She did a fluff-pile while petting them, hushing, bringing back a simulacre of comfort. She succeeded, and they looked like nothing ever happened to them. Their mother didn’t seem to take notice of the change when they were returned to it.
-Days passed by, and she finally got a first generation of meat fluffies. But instead of collecting them, she decided to take them in the meat wagon. They were told that the breeding wagon was now too small for them all and some had to go. She told the mothers that their foals would be adopted by loving houses, and it was the natural course of life. The colts were told that they will live with their brothers in another house and they’ll have to raise their younger brothers which would be too many for their mother to take care of, and that’s why they put them in their wagon. And the fillies, if none of her relatives wanted one, she simply killed them.
-Here, in the vet wagon, she could do pretty much everything she wanted. The room was isolated from the outside by curtains. Nor the sounds nor the smells could be perceived in any other wagons. It was the perfect place to transform the products. The poor fillies were slowly understanding that something was wrong but it was only when the first one was killed in front of them that they realized. The first victim was tied to its hind legs by two ropes attached to the ceiling, head to the floor. She cut the hide on the legs, hind and front, making “high socks”. The confused “bad upsies” suddenly transformed into “wowst owwies” and confused apologizes for a fictive mistakes from it. Then, with her sharp knife, she connected the two wounds of the hind legs by cutting between the base of the tail and the anus, previously corked. Next she cut the throat of the fluffy and, in doing so, she connected the wounds of the front legs, taking care of excluding the head. It’s in bloody panic gargles and screams from its siblings that she stripped the hide in one movement, letting the corpse naked. There was not much to eat on it, but she emptied it anyway : well cooked, in soup, it may be edible despite all the little bones. The hide was really thin, and fragile, but the velvet on it was really soft. She wondered what she could do with it.
-She found a stallion outside, it was good according to her criterias. She let it in. The mares were first intrigued, but soon enough, they began to fight for it because it wanted only one “special friend”. She didn’t plan that. She had to take it apart from the group to explain that it had to hump all the dams, because it was the new “smarty”, and it had to found a new herd. It didn’t seem too enthousiast about it, plus, something she didn’t plan once again was the fact that one of the first breeding mares decided to be the “smarty” of the herd. So, to solve the problem, she decided to remove this male from the group. She knew by working with a pack of dogs, that remove some elements to force another one was a bad idea, so if it was working with this configuration, she wouldn’t change it. So instead of thwart the smarty, she decided to take it aside and explain to it what she wanted it to do : to let everyone in the wagon have babies with the stallion that she would introduce. After arguing with it, they agreed on bringing a stallion for each dam to copulate, sorry, to “give special huggies” once, and then never see it again.
-The second generation of colts were removed from their mothers after two weeks, when the dams were able to have a new litter and when the foals were barely weaned. The young ones, gelded at three days, were then put in the meat wagon, with their older siblings. She explained once again that they had to educate and take care of the young colts, just in case. It has been so long since they were put in their new house that they lived a perfect idyll, one month was long for a fluffy. They were three months old as February reached its end. They would be good to be collected in one more month. She would pick a few of the oldest, and leave the rest to teach the new. And in doing so, a turnover would be established. Same fate for the fillies, but this time, it would be completely useless to try to do something with their flesh. The hides were even thinner and she had no idea what to do with it.