Tom was walking home from work when he noticed a family of fluffies. It’d been quite some time since he’d seen one, as a particularly harsh blizzard had mostly eradicated the local feral population. Tom wasn’t the type to be super upset about fluffies returning. They were a nuisance sometimes, but strangely enough he always found their chattering, and especially the chirping of the foals, soothing.
It was a pretty typical fluffy family of the sort that wouldn’t be likely to join a herd. A mare and three foals, one brown, one pink, and one dark green. Apart from the pink one, they’d probably be treated poorly by the more vicious, and therefore more likely to survive, feral fluffies. He wasn’t surprised to see there was no stallion present, as during daylight hours he’d probably be out looking for food, assuming he wasn’t dead.
One thing about the fluffies stood out to him, though. While the mare and two of the foals seemed well fed, unsurprising considering the lack of competition over food, the pink one was much thinner, looking almost malnourished. He’d have expected the pink foal to be more well fed given her desirable color.
He decided to intervene. Walking up to the fluffies, who seemed only slightly perturbed by his presence, he crouched down to talk. This wasn’t a good idea, of course, but he never liked the dynamic of towering over them while he talked. Hell, half the time they lacked the neck movement range necessary to see his face when he stood over them.
“Why is the pink foal so much skinnier than the others?”
“Dat am poopie babbeh. Onwy nums poopies.”
It all made sense now. They’d likely been treated as worthless by other fluffies with more vibrant colors, and now they were taking in revenge in the only way they could. Barbaric. Tom had never been fond of the concept of scapegoats.
“No. I’m taking the foal away if you don’t give her milk like the others. Actually, I’m taking her anyway. You’d just stomp on her until she threw it up as soon as I left.”
“Nuuuuuu! Nu taek babbeh! Babbeh nee’ mummah!”
“No, she doesn’t. Not if you’re going to starve her and torture her like that.”
“Bu’ fwuffy wub babbeh!”
“I fucking doubt that. I’m taking her, no matter what you say.”
The mare cried and begged, but unsurprisingly didn’t actually do anything to stop Tom from taking the foal. Typical of a fluffy who was only pretending to care. She did follow him all the way home, however, standing outside his door, tapping away with soft hooves and yelling as loud as she dared. Fluffies who made too much noise didn’t last long.
“Come on,” Tom said, though the chirpy foal couldn’t understand him. “I’m going to get you some milk.”
“Cheep! Cheep!” the foal cried out, probably terrified.
Tom sighed as he prepared some formula for her. People always forgot about how fluffies could easily be just as cruel as humans. The only difference was their limited capacity to inflict that cruelty on others, and how tempting of a target they made for humans.
He tried asking on Hugbox forums what to do about the situation, thinking maybe he could return the foal to her mother if he could somehow convince her to treat her as well as she did the other foals. To his disgust, however, the forum seemed more interested in cheering on the mother than caring about the foal. “Justice,” they called it. Somehow, the reversal of roles made this shit okay?
…
A few days later, and Tom was confused. Rosebud wasn’t gaining as much weight as he’d expected, even being fed as much as she could hold. In fact, she seemed to be getting skinnier by the day. He’d had her checked for parasites, but she didn’t have any, which was frankly surprising after the life she’d lived. But Tom couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, and day by day she withered away.
…
“Cheep! Cheep! SCREE-!”
Tom jolted awake, realizing he’d dozed off sitting in his chair holding her. He knew what the cut-off screech meant, though he hoped it was only a part of his dream. He checked, though, and his fears were confirmed. Rosebud had died.
How, though? He was giving her more than enough food, food that was many times more nutritious than the…the slop she’d been getting fed before. She should have been thriving. No, she should be grossly overweight by now! How the FUCK did she starve?
…
Not long ago
…
The desperate mare held her foal, starving and chirping, and wracked her limited mind for options, struggling to come up with a solution she hadn’t tried, but none occurred to her. She hugged the foal, preparing to see her die. Food. She had to find food soon, give the foal more milk, so maybe she’d survive.
“Cheep?” her green foal crawled towards a puddle, drawn by the smell of milk, made foul though it was.
“NU! Nu am miwkies fow 'ou! Nu num!”
“Cheep! Chirp!”
“It am otay. Mummah fin’ nummies, den pink babbeh nu hab tummeh-owwies nu mowe.”
For now, she needed to find food. They’d been chased away from their old nest, so she had to find food for the pink foal before it was too late. But if she moved the foal would die! She thought frantically, and although her solution was absolutely wrong, it just so happened to be lucky.
…
Present
…
“I don’t understand! She was somehow fine before, but as soon as I took her in she kept losing weight! I was feeding her five times a day, for God’s sake!”
“Huh,” TIna, his friend who worked at the local shelter, seemed confused. “Five times a day means she should’ve been a ball by now.”
“I don’t get it!”
“Could be a formula aversion of some kind. A little actual milk would be better than a lot of formula in that case.”
“She wasn’t getting milk, though.”
“Hmm…”
“She was getting fed shit, Tina.”
“So that’s it.”
“What is?”
“Enzyme deficiency. Fluffies get a really bad variant of it sometimes. Basically can’t break down food at all. Fortunately, normal fluffies can…process…food enough for the deficient ones to survive.”
“She starved because she wasn’t eating shit?” Tom was incredulous.
“It happens. Fluffies don’t take a lot of nutrients from the food the first time through anyway, but they can break it down enough for the next recipient to get a lot more out of it. It’s why they produce such good fertilizer and why they eat so much. It’s actually where the term ‘poopie fluffy’ is thought to have originated, since it sure as Hell wasn’t something Hasbio did. Fluffies didn’t really explain it well enough for the first few generations and now they just base it on color.”
“Thanks. I just wish I’d known, wish there was something I could’ve done.”
“Not your fault.”
“It IS my fault. I killed her. I starved her to death. Look, I have to get something done. Bye.”
“Tom, you-” but he’d already hung up.
He had to do something. Something he dreaded. Walking slowly to the back door, he opened it, revealing the mare sleeping on the steps. He’d let them stay in the back yard, mostly because to drive them away and keep them away he’d have to kill them, and he didn’t want to have that on his conscience.
The mare woke up when he stepped out. “Munstah hoomin! Gib babbeh baek!”
Tom lowered Rosebud into the mares waiting embrace. He winced, but waited for what was coming.
“NUUUUUU! WAI? WAI MUNSTAH HOOMIN GIB BABBEH FOREBAH-SWEEPIES?”
Tom wanted to apologize, wanted to explain, but knew there was nothing he could say. Nothing to explain how his bias and unwillingness to understand had murdered this poor fluffy’s daughter. How he’d instantly jumped to a conclusion, and assumed he knew better, he was better, than her.
“Huu huu huu! Babbeh am gu fowebah-sweepies! Fwuffy nu hab pink babbeh nu mowe! Huu huu huu!”
The other foals began to chirp and cheep in distress from their mummah’s sobbing. Tom wished he could comfort them, but in the fluffies’ eyes he was always, and deservedly, a monster. Turning away he returned inside, sat down in his chair, and cried. Cried for Rosebud, who he’d barely known, and for the family he’d forever shattered.
[Justice! She’d have done the same! Serves her right! Repeat ad nauseum.]
28 Likes
Good twist. Though I’m not sure I’m a fan of the premise that fluffies feeding foals shit could be a good thing. Just because koalas do it doesn’t make it ok.
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A lot of animals do it. Even humans, when birthed vaginally, benefit from being exposed to poop in the process. Even adult humans sometimes end up having to repopulate our gut bacteria by taking a capsule filled with someone else’s poop. It’s gross, yeah. But nature is frequently disgusting even when functioning optimally.
9 Likes
Good read. It’s hard to twist expectations, so bravo on trying this one! I never would’ve thought of it 
2 Likes