(author’s note: this story deals with imagery/rhetoric evocative of eating disorders. If that isn’t a place you’re comfortable right now, maybe give this one a miss.)
You are a fluffy. Not just any fluffy, though; you are the luckiest, happiest fluffy you know. You’re a colt, almost a stallion, with pretty beige fluff and a mane and tail so dark brown they’re almost black. Your hoofsies are chestnut-colored (that means a kind of reddish brown). You have a pretty horn in the middle of your forehead, which makes you a unicorn, and special. You’re not sure what color your eyes are, but your mummah says they’re pretty, and of course, you believe her.
Your mummah is why you’re the luckiest, happiest fluffy. She came and adopted you from the “Last Chance” bin at the meanie Fluffmart where the worky hoomiies and other Fluffmart fluffies were so mean to you, and said that you were going to get forever sleepies because of how ugly and poopy colored you were. You knew that wasn’t true, but no matter how many times you told them, they didn’t believe you. The worky hoomies took you out of your meanie nu-see sorry box after you being stuck in that little place for su many forevers, and told you that no one wanted you and they didn’t want to waste any more munnies on giving you even the stinky kibble that you’d been eating. They put you in a big sorry box with other sad fluffies and told you that if you didn’t find a new mummah or daddeh by the end of the bright time, you were going forever sleepies. You were really hungry, and you cried, and hugged the other sad fluffies, and tried really hard to find a new mummah or daddeh, but they all ignored you or even made fun of you!
Then the nice lady who was going to be your mummah came in, and she was suuuuuu pretty and smiley, and she walked all around the Fluffmart but she stopped by your meanie sorry box and looked right at you! Well, you and all the other fluffies there, but it was you she talked to. She said you were a pretty fluffy and did you want a new mommy, and you did! You were su excited you nearly forgot how to talk, but then you bounced up and down and told her how much you were going to love her, how good your hugs were, and how good a fluffy you would be for her, and she could clearly see you were telling the truth, so she bought you and took you home!
And her home was as beautiful as she was! It had lots of windows and doors, and inside you had your own little safe room off of Mummah’s room with su many toysies and stuffy friends you couldn’t even count them all! Everything was colorful and smelled nice, and Mummah gave you a name! She called you “Honey” - because you were so sweet, she said. You were overjoyed, and you played and chattered and made good poopies in the litterbox and followed all of Mummah’’s rules (which was easy most of the time, since they were pretty much “keep your saferoom pretty-smelling and yourself safe and in the saferoom”). Mummah had to go to work every day, but she always came home and played with you and brought you really yummy nummies! You had never had fruit nummies before, or vegetable nummies, but you really loved them, and Mummah always gave them to you. If you were really good, you got squashy sketties with sweet red sauce, but even if you were just okay, you got fruities for desert - with honey on them, which confused and upset you the first few times, because you didn’t want to be nummies, and Mummah had to reassure you, a lot, that this was what your namesie came from, she wasn’t going to put YOU on fruity nummies and num you!
You got it eventually.
Mummah was the prettiest mummah ever, so the fact that she thought you were such a pretty fluffy made your heart su happy. She was tall, with creamy light brown skin and a thick frizzy mane almost the same color as your hoofsies. Her eyes were green like you were pretty sure grassies were, and she had the best smile with lots of happy bright white teeth. She wore makeup painties on her mouth sometimes, which made her smile different colors, but the teeth were always the same. Sometimes she put other makeup dusties and painties on, and you liked to watch her do that too; you could see her “gettin ready for work” table, as well as her “workout area”, from your safe room’s gate, and you loved to watch her do whatever. She called you a little perv whenever you watched her put on or take off her not-fluff, but you were just so confused and fascinated by the process that you never tried to figure out what that meant, and anyway she laughed when she said it, so it couldn’t be anything bad.
The nicest thing about your mummah, aside from the way she always took time to play with you and ask about your day after she came home from work, was that she also always ate with you, often the same things. She said she was a Vee-gen, and that she loved animals su much that she would never hurt one. You thought that was very nice of her.
One day, after standing in front of the mirror and peering at herself thoughtfully, your mummah announced that she was going on a die-et. You asked her what that was, and she said it meant she wanted to not be as big and heavy, so she was going to eat less and better food. Personally, you thought she looked perfect— if anything, hoomies always looked so skinny without fluff that you secretly worried about them a little— and you told her that, and she laughed a little hollowly and said you were sweet, but she couldn’t fit into one of her favorite “dresses” anymore, and so she was going to do this; that it was healthier and she would feel better at the end of it.
You announced that you were going to do a die-et too, then, puffing up your little chest. If Mummah was eating less to have better tummy feels, you would do that too! She got su happy you were going to die-et with her, and called you her favorite little fluffy, and you could have just burst with pride.
Your excitement dulled a little over the next few bright times; not eating a lot was HARD. Your tummy rumbled, and sometimes you felt grumpy or sad. But you and Mummah were eating the same things, and the same amounts- usually a few pieces of fruit with a tiny bit of honey drizzled on top, with some kind of stinky (NOT that you would ever tell Mummah) “tee” that tasted like green-brown dirt water… you imagined. So if Mummah, who was su much bigger than you were, could do it, you could too! You ate your meager breakfast, and your meager dinner, and you smiled at mummah as you did and told her how much better you were feeling, and she smiled and hugged you (still the best thing ever) and agreed. Plus, you didn’t have to make as many poopies, which was kind of nice. You also didn’t have the same overwhelming desire to run around and stack blocks; most of the time, you curled up in front of the tablet by your beddy and watched the parade of good-fluffy videos that Mummah left for you while she went to work, hugging a stuffy friend or a blanky. Sometimes you would get up and hoofie a ball around or try to stack your blockies, but you could swear they were getting heavier, you got tired so quickly.
Mummah kept looking in her mirror and pinching parts of her body, frowning. You thought there wasn’t a lot of Mummah to pinch up, and you didn’t like her giving herself hurties like that, and told her so, but she shook her head, said it wasn’t enough. She needed more die-et. She told you you didn’t have to have more die-et, but if Mummah, who was the best mummah in the whole world, had to do more die-et, you would do it with her. She said you were her bestest fluffy, and you cheered, though not as loud as you used to, even though you loved Mummah su muchies still- it was just hard to get up enough yellies to really give a good cheer, and you felt a little bad about that.
The new die-et introduced two new things, in exchange for a lot of the fruit that you had so far been having in your meals. The first was a mirror, which was kind of cool, although you were a little worried, because when you looked in it, you were so chubby even with so little food. Had you been tu heavy before? It was kind of a nice thing though, because it was almost like having another fluffy to play with- lie around watching your tablet with- while Mummah was at work. The other thing was a silver circle with a little screen on one side that Mummah called a “scale”- so you and she could see how healthy you were getting together! You had no idea what the numbers meant on it, just that there were usually three of them and a little one, but Mummah said you were making such gud progress every time you and she “weighed in”. She said she was so proud of you- unlike herself, and she would huff at her “scale”. You still thought she was the most beautiful mummah ever, and ate your single piece of honey-drizzled fruit and drank your yucky “tee” without complaint every morning and night.
You had no energy left to play; sometimes, you just slept, barely waking when Mummah got home. You got angry sometimes at the “fat” that made your Mummah so unhappy, and yelled at it to gu away and leave her alone! Very occasionally you got angry at Mummah- if she gave you a very small piece of fruit or woke you up from a good dream- and said meanie wordies to her, but then you were sorry and cried and told her how sorry you were, and she was still the nicest mummah in the world and never got angry at you. You thought she got angry at herself, but she never got angry at you.
You always made good poopies, but you only made them very rarely now, which was probably good since your daily litterbox trip to make gud peepees took so long and was so tiring now that it was most of what you could spend the day doing aside from sleeping.
You wished Mummah felt better and healthy. She would measure parts of her body, still pinching up skin, glare at herself in the mirror, sometimes say mean wordies to mirror Mummah. You wanted to cry when she did that, but you forced yourself to just tell her she was beautiful- and she still was- and that you loved her, so that maybe she would finally believe it and everyone could stop die-et-ing.
Instead, she shook her head every time you said those things, and called you sweet but said she had see-places and could look in her mirror.
Sometimes you wondered if mirror Honey hated you the way mirror Mummah clearly hated Mummah. You stopped wanting to be in front of your mirror.
It still wasn’t enough. You had no idea how Mummah still could go to work; it was all you could do to drag yourself to your litterbox now, and Mummah had had to move it closer since you started doing more die-et. Now you and Mummah only had a little of the yucky “tee” with a teeny bit of honey in it for each meal. You spent most of your time sleeping to the comfortable noise of your tablet, waking only for mealtimes. You didn’t want to complain, but the lights of the saferoom started hurting your eyes and giving you headaches so bad you cried, but when Mummah turned them off for you, you were scared when you were awake and cried with pain and fear and hunger. Mummah thought long and hard about this, and finally went to a fluffy doktor who gave her meddysin to give you, as well as a special feel-better beddy that had higher walls, thicker padding for your sore joints, and a sort of litterbox in the back for your daily peepees that took them away and kept your beddy smelling nice. There was a sort of shade over the top of the beddy so you could still get a little light and not be scared, and speakers so you could still listen to the good fluffy videos.
You had to drink the meddysins from a little cup, and they were hot and painful on your throat going down, but they did make you feel better- sleepy, kind of silly, and you could hear the colors of your saferoom from the outside of your beddy, which was nice because you missed them. Between the lack of things to look at, the constant sleeping, and the silly feelings, you didn’t really have a good sense of time; your memory was struggling a little, but that was okay. You still had the bestest mummah in the world. Every bright time (you guessed) she peeked in on you in your little beddy and asked you how you were doing, and you told her you felt suuu healthies, mummah, hoping she did too and you could both go back to eating normal food. You dreamed about normal food. You dreamed about playing. You dreamed about making gud poopies. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d even had the stupid yucky tea, but Mummah wouldn’t have forgotten, so you must have. At some point you couldn’t place, the sounds from your tablet had become the mummah song- just a constant “Mummah wubs babbehs, babbehs wub Mummah.” You thought there were other words, but you couldn’t remember them anymore.
You couldn’t remember a lot of things.
You knew you loved your Mummah, though.
You wished she felt better.
You wished you felt better.
You-
wished-
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Dina peeled back the flap on the modified storage box and sighed.
“Finally,” she said, gently removing the withered little body inside. The now-stunted little stallion’s fluff had shed as he starved, saving her the hassle of shaving, and his skin was waxy and jaundiced. His bones protruded through his skin, and his closed eyes were sunken into his head, brows faintly upraised as if confused. Well, all fluffies were generally confused. Sentimentally, she patted the taut-skinned skull. Then she carried him to her aggressively dehumidified pantry and laid him in a little cedar box with a little slot for a card, which she now slid in as well, that had today’s date, unicorn colt, honey method.
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“How do you do it?” Elise asked Dina at work the next day. “I’ve never had jerky this sweet, or this tender!”
“It’s made with love,” Dina replied, smiling, her mind on the little chubby earthy filly she’d bought yesterday from the Last Chance bin, who looked just like a little chestnut Clydesdale. Who would ever want such a little cutie euthanized, just thrown away like garbage? Not when there were owners who would love to take good care of them. She popped a little bit of Honey into her mouth and chewed. He really had been so sweet.