There is a certain… irony about fluffies. On the one hand they are the softest, weakest, stupidest and most brittle creatures about, but on the other hand they somehow still manage to breed at an incredible rate and infest even large cities with their feral herds.
Led by smarties, these herds roam the streets, hide in alleyways and behind shops and they knock on peoples doors asking for - or demanding - food and shelter. Of course there are also fluffies travelling alone or in small, family-sized groups. These are much more common and also usually friendlier than their herding counterparts, telling people about their struggle for Survival instead of making ridiculous demands.
Most of these fluffballs don’t survive. Especially during the Winter, or ‘cowd time’, you can walk around the city and find dead fluffies everywhere, frozen to death, starved, eaten, fallen from ledges, drowned in puddles or simply abused and left do bleed to death. They don’t really pose a threat so they’re mostly left to rot and attract even more fluffies, repeating the cycle of death over and over.
That is also visible today.
Smiling, you walk down the street, humming as the light autumn breeze makes you zip up your coat tighter. You had been working towards this day for weeks, preparing your cellar and stocking up on supplies. Having a fluffy is great, you think, but you really miss abusing them so you had formulated a clear plan in your head. Of course you don’t want to abuse Fireball so instead, you are going to get a second fluffy, a mare preferably, that you can abuse. However, since you don’t want to just directly abuse the fluffy, you’ve decided to go on a more… psychological approach.
Your goal is to get the mare to believe she is going crazy by alternating good treatment and bad treatment on a daily basis, loving her on some days and tormenting her on the others, pretending not to remember abusing her when she asks on the nice days.
You stroll through your neighborhood a bit more before finding a fluffy lying in a little alleyway between two apartment buildings. A pegasus. When it hears you it perks its head up excitedly. It clearly hasn’t been out on the streets for long.
“Hewwo nice mistuh! Wingie fwuffy am in hewd buh nu can find hewd anymowe… Be nyu daddeh?”
You pick it up and a quick inspection reveals it is, in fact, a mare, crotch-tits and all. “Fwuffy wub gud upsies! Wub nyu daddeh! Daddeh bwing bestest fwuffy tu bestest housie nao?”
Despite their simple nature, you admire fluffies. You admire their carefree, simple minds and how they live life following only their instincts.
Even if those instincts lead them to their deaths.
“All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once.”
-Terry Pratchett
Click
You stop.
Then, a second later, you leap up, kicking over your stack of blocks accidentally. Daddeh is home! Istinctively, you run to the gate in the doorframe as usual and patiently wait for him to come up the stairs. He doesn’t though.
You wait a bit longer, maybe he has to put some shopping away? When he still doesn’t appear, you slump onto the floor.
Does daddeh still love you? Have you been a bad fluffy? Did daddeh forget you exist? You panic, every thought in your tiny little brain revolving around what would happen if daddeh never came back. If you were stuck here, trapped inside your own saferoom. Then, you hear something. Daddeh is coming up the stairs!
Wait. No.
He’s going down the cellar stairs. You’ve only been in the cellar once and it was horrible. It reminded you of the farm way too much and it was very dark and scary. What could daddeh possibly want down there? Having completely forgotten about your predicament, you stroll over to your blanket nest and curl up into a very tight ball.
It’s dark.
Very dark.
Suddenly there is a click and you are bathed in a filthy yellow light from a small ceiling lamp. You look around cautiously and you realize that you have no idea where you are.
Just a second ago your new daddeh had brought you into his beautiful house and now he had carried you down here where it was dark, gloomy, it didn’t smell pretty and there was just generally a very scary atmosphere about.
“Whewe daddeh bwing fwuffy? Nu wike! It am dawkies an nu smeww pwetty”
You feel your daddehs hand stroke you and you immediately relax.
“I’m sorry, I know the cellar is scary but it’s surely better than being outside right? Besides, I’m always there for you!”
“Otay, fwuffy am bwave an stay hewe in scawy pwace”, you say even though you don’t feel very brave.
Daddeh carries you into a big room that is well lit. There is a nest made of blankets, a strange box and some toys.
Oh and food and water as well of course.
“You ever use a litterbox before?”, your daddeh asks. You strain your thinky-place, trying to figure out if you’ve heared that word before. When that proves unsuccessful you simply say “Nu”
Daddeh then puts you down next to the strange box and you stretch your stubby leggies after being in daddehs arms for so long.
“This”, he says, “is a litterbox”
“Wittewboks”, you repeat, trying your hardest to make daddeh proud.
“From now on, if you need to take a shit…”
“Wha?”
“If you need to make poopies, you do that in the litterbox, okay? That way the house stays clean”
“Otay!”
After inspecting the litterbox, you realize you haven’t made poopies since this morning so you step over the edge into the box. The litter feels weird under your hooves. You then sit down and squeeze hard, shitting out a decent amount of poopies into the box.
Beaming, you look up at daddeh who smiles back at you.
“Wook daddeh! Fwuffy make gud poopies in boxie!”
She really is an enthusiastic fluffy.
Too bad you’re going to try to break her in as many ways as possible.
You tell the mare you have some stuff to do and head upstairs to Fireballs saferoom.
“Hey Fireball, you ready to go outside?”
Fireball jumps at the gate enthusiastically.
“Yus daddeh! Fiwebaww wub outsies!”
The wind had increased since you had picked the mare off the street and you watch as Fireball chases the leaves falling off the trees. You smile and for the first time in what feels like centuries, you feel that fuzzy warmth in your body that you get with true happiness, gleefully watching your fluffy run around without a care in the world. You stop walking and lean against a lamp post. It is truly the perfect moment, just you and Fireball enjoying the last rays of sunlight. You close your eyes and the moment rushes over you, flowing like thick melted chocolate, seeping into the cracks of your mind and drowning you in true, blissful happiness. You stay a while, leaned against the lamp post, pushing away all the bad things from your brain and sucking in the sounds from the streets, the wind, the trees and that one owl, hooting somewhere with no purpose other than to add to the idyllic evening scene.
It doesn’t last long however and you can feel the moment fading away again, bringing back all the bad feelings that it pushed away, dissappearing as fast as it had arrived.
Too fast.
You wince as your brain is flooded with bad emotions, drowning you under fleeting images of memories that are somewhere in your subconsious mind, pressed to the surface by the wave of negative thoughts.
You clutch the lamp post as the world begins to spin, churning your stomach like stew in a pot.
Suddenly, and with considerable force, your dinner travels back up your esophagus. You are powerless to do anything, bending forward as your body forcefully expels your last meal which lands on the sidewalk with a splat.
Breathing heavily, you sit down, shivering at the cold air and watching Fireball frolick on the curb.
He’s way too invested to have noticed your panic attack and hangs his head in disappointment when you tell him you’re going home.
You’ve had more than enough of this day.
THE END of Part 3
So kids, the moral of the story is you can’t have nice things in life