Good question, and not entirely sure. As-is, natural colors are more common. Partly from the founders of the herd, but then also party by self-selection. The way I imagined it is once an earlier smarty figured out the pretty colors were liabilities they started killing those foals. As others said during the earlier parts, no sense wasting resources on them. This skewed the numbers in a way that would make @Thk proud.
The only reason there are no Alicorns is, well, if they’re supposed to be rare then there’s no reason for them to show up here. Its not an Alicorn story.
I was using I think @KerosineCannibal’s growth chart (super helpful btw), and favoring the lower number of young mentioned for ferals. I assume that’s based on nutrition and other factors like stress, predation, etc. Fewer foals, better protected versus as many as possible and assume the humans are helping.
For whatever reason Jade and Bark’s litter were throwbacks, each one being pretty colors. They’ve not had one since. They’re still intimate but certain activities are favored over others as they don’t lead to tummy babies (I’ll leave it at that). Its also how the herd controls its birthrate, particularly when it gets closer to cold times. The 4th of July is a useful benchmark in that regard (arguably “last call” depending on how the weather has been), as is New Year’s Eve. It was an idea I liked in other stories with smart ferals - no special huggies so close to cold time.
Sadly Little Mama lives in an apartment with her mother and it doesn’t allow pets. Its why Mike had Vanilla. I actually had a lot more arguments planned out going over the financial state she was left in due to Mike, but decided against it. He’s drinking to numb and isn’t coping well, so no need to heap more on him. The sad thing is he passed muster before when they got Vanilla. Life throws everyone curve balls.
I predicted that jade was rehoming the foals. I didn-t expect the cesspit or the trow down of Vanilla’s corpse. With was a wonderful bittersweet story and I like how you tied in the title at the end.
If you don’t mind, can I ask for elaboration: did you see the gut-punch coming? Did it make sense? Or was it a cheap-shot? Did you feel it served a purpose in the narrative? Or was unnecessary/gratuitous?
I didn’t see it coming, I did think Vanilla’s owner was gonna look for her but I just thought she won’t find her and maybe get one of the hole babies instead.
It made sense, the girl was looking around her house/neighbourhood, and it makes sense that Cabbage would be around, either to reminisce his time with Vanilla or check on the babies.
Maybe it’s a bit of Hollywood ending but eh it made sense, and made me have the feels, it’s good.
Maybe if they couldn’t find anyone to even take them to a shelter, they’d scare them off and move out of the area. The babies would have to fend for themselves a form a new herd. Their chances of surviving would be low but at least they would have a chance.
Or maybe to increase their survivability, the smarty would get a volunteer from the herd to “save” the babies and become the new Smarty of the pretty baby herd to show them how to survive and increase the chances of them making it, even if it is only by a little bit.
Possible. I think any type of environment would require different skills. One story idea I had was a baby trade between urban, suburban, and wilderness fluffies based on colors and type. Getting by as a country fluff isn’t the same as a city one after all.
That sound like something from one of the Fall of Cleaveland Tie-in stories. Bowser’s herd would trade unicorn and Pegasus foals for earthies because they were a very brute force kind of herd.
Lol yeah I’m a fast reader, and I got hooked and wanted to finish as soon as I started. And yeah, the chapters are a great length and everything flowed together very well!
I was completely blindsided by how the brightly coloured foals were ultimately dealt with. And thankfully it wasn’t in a gruesome fashion as I feared but still heartwrenching for the herd to have to give them up. That was one heck of an emotional rollercoaster. Felt so sorry for little mama who lost her beloved Vanilla in the midst of it all. Did I misinterpret or was Vanilla in fact Jade’s son?
Correct! Vanilla was indeed one of Jade and Bark’s children. She was an interesting challenge to write as she had to be very pragmatic whether she liked it or not. Every cold-hearted thing she did made her suffer along with the others. Its hard being a good smarty friend.
Jade was a very strong matriarch and it hurt seeing her have to set up the stone-cold facade of a smarty to handle the heartache of what had to be done.
Was looking for something to read and after a bit I realized i’d read this series already and forgot to mark it. ~Chuckle~
From what I remember I enjoyed that my assumptions / expectations were subverted a few times along the way. I was also lucky to catch it when the series was finished so I got to binge it which was nice.
