ICED by Gardel


art by @jberg360

Inside an old rabbit den in the frozen ground a pegasus mare was screaming as a small IR camera watches…

“Nu! nu wan num wastest babbeh!”

"…chi…chirp…*kaf*"

“Dummeh mawe! num babbeh ou get foweba sweepies!”

“Nu…NU NU NUUUUHUHUHUUUUU!”

“Dummeh! if mawe nu numb babbeh den smawty will”

"…chirp…chi–EEEEEEEEEEE!"CHOMP

“NUUUUUUUU! BABEEEEH!”

CRICK

CRACK

GULP

“Dewe! nao smawty hab nummies fo’ gib enfies an gib mowe babbehs for nummies!”

It’s extremely rare to see fluffies survive winters, or as they call the season “cowd times”

Thing is they weren’t designed to do that, they weren’t even meant to live outside a house in the first place, hence why you often see ferals leaving bloody hoof-prints after walking over pebbles, cement or asphalt.

“Huuu! why fwoow gib wowest ouchies tu fwuffy’s hoofsies?” -said a stray stallion with its inflamed soft hooves, the Hasbio logo scratched and worn-out from walking on surfaces other than carpets or wood floors as it was designed to.

Or have pieces of their hoofs being ripped off when walking on ice…

EHHHH! HAF-HAF! REEEEEEEEEEEEE! RIIIIIIP! - yelled the purple mare as each step on the frozen concrete took a piece of it hoof flesh off, unable to stop for doing so means freezing to death.

The fluff is just for show, developed in labs to be soft to the touch and hypoallergenic. It has almost zero-insulation since that created troubles with the pigmentation that give fluffies their trademark colors and since it was going to live in a climate-controlled environment the geneticists simply didn’t bother giving the fluffies a proper winter coat, rather choosing to prioritize the looks as per demands from the marketing dept. The ability of the fluff to absorb humidity is infamous, its not rare at all to see stray mares during winter whose foals froze solid to their backs.

“Hu-hic-huuuu! y babbeh nu chiwpe nu moaw? nu can weach babbehs…” -said the tiny bony earthie mare, its tiny foals in her back having absorbed enough moisture from her fluff to freeze solid into bean-shaped technicolor lumps.

Owners didn’t complain, though many did sue Hasbio over how easily flammable the fluff was, another unintended consequence of the pigments. The lawsuits didn’t get far since Hasbio went bankrupt soon after the Georgia incident that turned fluffies from a premium biotoy into a GMO plague of epic proportions.

Fluffies that don’t die from infected broken hoofs, that by sheer luck managed to avoid fluff-control units, angry home owners, voracious home pets, wandering abusers and aren’t hunted down by virtually every vertebrate animal out there (and even some invertebrates too) do make it to the end of the year.

And that’s when things turn from bad to simply horrible.

“Wewe gween gwassies? y aww dis wite wawa?”-said the stallion after walking out of the hollow tree trunk that made its small herd’s home.

“Huuhuu babbeh am cowd!”

Millions of years of evolution have made animals living in snow-prone areas able to survive through winter.

Those that didn’t simply went extinct.

Even the smallest squirrel knows it shouldn’t breed during winter, that it must find a nest and stockpile as much food as it can.

There was no evolution in fluffies, no natural selection at work.

They were made practically from scratch in a few years inside state-of-the-art labs.

Their brains are full of encoded instructions for their fake talking skills and “cute” behavior programmed by engineers following instructions from marketers.

Nowhere inside their wallnut-sized skulls there’s knowledge about how to forrage, how to prepare, how to adapt.

How to survive…

Studies of feral fluffies using IR cameras inside dens show that come winter survival is really a matter of dumb luck.

There is no formula for success, even the strongest stallion that turns cannibal and eats all the foals first will eventually starve as he runs out of foals or other fluffies to eat.

“Sma…smawty…hungy…nee nu-numeh foal, nee nummies, nu-nummed mawe, nummed to-toughies…huuu w-wewe nummies? we-wewe b-bwight baww?” -said the skeletal smarty minutes away from dying.

It is often that domestic pets such as cats or dogs will enter a fluffy den during winter and kill all the adults and foals inside it out of sheer boredom, then return to their warm houses. Some biologists see this behavior as an improvement since for example domestic cats used to kill wild birds for fun. Now they kill fluffies instead and some bird species are growing in number back again.

"CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP!"

“Hush babbehs! nu make noisies or meow-munstah gib wowest owies!”

HIIIIIIIS

“NUUUUUUUUU!”

“CHIRP CH-SCREEEEEEEEEEE!”

So you are probably asking yourself if winter practically kills all ferals and strays then how come those are still a problem? why don’t they go extinct in the wild?

Easy: a fluffy gets thrown out a home every hour of every day.

“Bu-bu y mummah nu wike cwistophew nu moa?”

Be it owners getting tired of their fluffies…

“Nuuu! pwease daddeh miwanda nu ask fo sketties ou toisies ou teebee nu mow! jus wan be back in housie pe-wease-eeee!”

…buying a new one with this season’s trendy colors thus discarding the “old” unfashionable one…

“Huuuhuuu sowwy fo nu be twendy nu moa! Candy twying!” -cried the unicorn designer mare as its owner dumped it in a random alley

…or simply getting rid of unwanted foals from a mare that got knocked up…

“Chirp! mu…mummah? wewe mummah? mi-miwkies? hungy…”

…new stray fluffies make it to the streets every day.

Mills usually get rid of excess inventory by simply setting it free…to die on the streets.

Industrial-size biowaste bins aren’t cheap, those cleanup bills tend to add up and so mills simply illegally dispose of their useless stock. Those discarded mill fluffies then join the ex-domestics that were thrown away and existing urban feral populations.

“Wa mista em-plow-ee du wit fwuffies?” -asked the brown pegasus stallion barely out of its colt stage.

“You are free shitrat, off you go now” -replied the FluffCo “breeding specialist” that led this small herd of rejects to the alley behind the warehouse.

“…”

“For fucks sake…SCRAM RETARDS!”

Door slams shut

“Fe-fwee?”

“Weawwy?”

“Yay fwuffies nu hab to wive in smaww nu smew-pwetty cagie-boxies!”

“Nu mow bad enfies!”

“Nu mow meanie hoomin munstahs!”

“Nu mow sowwy stick!”

"Nu mow-"GURGLE"huuu…tummeh owies…wewe nummies?"

“Fwuffy nee nummies too…”

“Nu nummies dewe or hewe…onwy twashies…”

“HuuuuhuuuuHUUU! PWEASE MISTAH EM-PLOW-EE FWUFFY WAN GU BAK!”

Those who survive (hint: not those thrown out during winter which die almost instantly) and get to breed their foals will become the new generation of ferals which will breed again every 2-3 weeks for months well into autumm.

And then the cycle ends/begins again.

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A remastered oldie, but I got a new story coming.

Hope you like bleakbox mixed with existential horror!

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I can’t be the only one that thought of this when seeing the image
I apologize for TikTok, I dont use it and only saw this clip from a Click video

Otherwise, the misery is amazing, crying for someone who doesn’t care nor will help them fuels my non-existant soul

I love this, so tragic!! The picture reminds me of that old pic of dead frozen horse from the 1900s

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Ice hockey time.

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I’m glad you’re still writing these stories, man. You’re one of the authors who inspired me to join this site.

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Let me know if you want me to do an illustration for your upcoming story. I’d love the opportunity.

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Good eye, that’s the image/story I based it on.

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