Over the next few days, the weather turned and grew cold and grey and scary water fell out of the sky. Jellybean sat huddled in her nest shivering and dreading the rumbling in her tummy telling her she needed to drag herself out into the cold and wet again soon to find nummies. The sky wawa was coming even harder now and it seemed to come from all directions. Worse, she had to walk through a puddle of yicky mud as she left her nest, soaking her fur brown and stinky. Traveling very far had become difficult for her, so the immediate surroundings of her nest had grown littered with her feces, which now mixed with the mud she must walk through. She had to go further from her nest to find any nummies, she had eaten and shit everything in the immediate vicinity to a barren waste.
After what seemed to Jellybean to be the longest forever, she managed to find a patch of clover and began eating the flower nummies first then moving on to the leafy nummies. No matter how much she ate, her tummy hurts always seemed to keep rumbling.
âTummy babehs coming soonâ she said to herself, âJewwybean nee eat pwenty nummies fow make good babehs.â
She ate her not-pretty tasting nummies until her jaw and legs hurt and she felt the tiredness coming over her again. She made her way back to her nesty and tried her best to shake the water off herself, but it just seemed so hopeless and she resigned herself to another night of cold and damp shivers alone in her sorrows. She was tired enough that the sleepy time pictures didnât come when she closed her eyes this time, but she was miserable enough regardless.
Bright time came before it felt like she had rested at all.
Jellybean pulled at her fluff with her teeth again and again, and nosed the tufts into place in the straw and fluff nest she had built for her soon babies. It hurt really bad when she did it, and it gave her saddies to pull out her pretty fluff, or her used-to-be-pretty fluff, at least she thought it used to be pretty once, hard to remember now - it was matted really bad with dirt and twigs tangled in it and even when she gave herself lickie cleanies, it never seemed to get pretty again. Moving too much was painful for her now, her tummy swollen with tummy babies, and she had grown fat by eating as much as she could whenever she mustered the strength to go and forage.
She wasnât really hungry, but some impulse within her that she couldnât refuse made her stagger out and eat.
She started singing mummah songs to her tummy babies, her voice didnât sound as pretty as the mummahs on fluff tv, but it made her feel better. Besides, her tummy babies had never seen fluff tv or heard the so-pretty mummahs and their so-pretty singing. That thought gave her really big sadies - her babies would never get to see fluff tv like she did at her old daddyâs housie⌠she had loved watching the tv so much, so many laughies and happies and seeing all the pretty fluffies having fun and hugsies⌠she never laughed or had fun or hugsies anymore⌠things were so easy when she had a daddy.
She started thinking about how many laughsies and hugsies she would have with her tummy babehs when they came out, and this mad her sadies go away.
âAm gon be bestes mummah to bestes babehâs eba!â She said to herself. She felt them moving in her tummy at the sound of her voice.
"Babehs wub mummah, babehs be hewe soon an mummah gib bigges bestes huggies eba!" She cooed to her bloated belly.
She felt the urge again to go and get nummies, she didnât want to, she was full and her body was overweight from excess fat and the tummy babies, and her leggies always hurt so bad when she walked now. Nevertheless, the instinct drove her to her feet and up, out of her warm nesty, and into wet, icky clearing by her hole.
The sky wawa had stopped but the ground was still soft and mushy with mud and her poopies. Her hoofs sunk into it and made it even harder on her strained muscles.
Suddenly another impulse came over her.
Yicky poopies am bad fow babehs! Nee cwean howsie fow soon babehs."
She tramped around the entrance to her nest, her tiny feeble brain trying to devise a way to clean the yicky, nasty poopies and muck for the babies.
She tried to dig and push it with her hoofs but it did not do much good. Then she realized the only way to get rid of it was with her mouth.
She scooped up mouthful after mouthful of the fetid muck and carried it as far as she could stand to hold it in her mouth then dropped it behind another tree a few yards away from her den. It tasted so bad!
She wanted to spit it out the moment she grabbed a mouthful but her maternal instinct insisted and she could not resist. She got the brown treacle all over her muzzle and chest fluff as she spent the better part of a day cleaning it from her nest before exhausting her self and realizing she could do no more - and she still needed to find nummies and eatâŚ
âMoufy taste so yicky and badâ she cried to herself âsmell yicky to an no go way.â
The grass had done little to remove the lingering taste of shit and her teeth had grits from the mud that she couldnât get rid of no matter how much she drank from the pond.
Even though she hated the bath times her daddy had made her do, and a gut-wrenching fear of the water from when her daddy threw her and Carrot in a poopies bag, she forced herself to wade in neck-deep in an attempt to âsmell prettyâ again for her babies.
âJewwybean nu smeww pwetty, mebbe Jewwybean babehs nu eben wan Jewwybean tu be mummah becaws am stoopi poopie fwuffy huuuhuuuuuuuu.â
She shook around in the water, then, exhausted, drug herself back into her nest and spent the next hour trying to lick herself clean the best she could.
She was cold and soggy and her fluff still tasted like poopies and other not pretty things. She cried herself to sleep trying to remember the flavor of skettis and milk, or even kibble food that her daddy gave her back when she was a good fluffy.
That night her sleepy-time pictures came again, they started the same as always, it was dark and she could hear the sound of scratching and pained breathing coming from all around her - so loud! Then everything was topsy-turvy, she was spinning and falling in the darkness forever. Then the loud crash and cold water all around, she struggled and tried to run but her legs tangled and pushed against plastic in the water. Just as she thought she would never get free and would take forever sleepies, she pushed out of the darkness into murky blue-green, water all around and a bit of light far, far above. Same as always she tried to run to the light but it was so far away. But this time was different, as she broke free of the darkness, she looked down and there were five little fluffies - her babies!
They flailed and struggled and started sinking to the darkness below. She reached for them - âHAFTA SABE BABEHS!â - and tried to clutch them in her legs but they kept slipping away, no matter what she did. She felt her lungs burning and looked up at the light, it was so far away, and she had to get to her babies first, she knew if she could just⌠Her breath gave out and she felt the burning of water entering her lungs and wanted to scream but couldnât.
Just then she woke with a start to an agonizing sharp pain in tummy and it felt like every muscle in her body was squeezing at once. She couldnât breath. She fought in a gasp of air and let out a pained groan⌠âAhhhhhhhhrrrrrrghhh! BIGGES POOOPIES!â
To be continued
