The scene is a familiar one. A crowded fluffy shelter, with rows of cages lining the walls and a rainbow of fluffies filling those cages. Happy Hearts Fluffy Shelter, held together by tape and tax-deductible donations. This was where Sprout lived.
Sprout’s name fit him very well. The energetic foal was a nice leafy green, small and bouncy and full of huggies and wub. A little tuft of yellow hair stood straight up on his head. Someone had found him when he was just a blind chirpy, alone under a park bench for reasons unknown. He had been small and scrawny then, but now had a nice layer of baby fat to waddle around in, thanks to the careful care of the shelter and his adoptive mummah, Rosie.
Rosie was old. Older than any fluffy could possibly hope to count. Every part of her body seemed to droop a bit. Her emerald green mane was now frizzy and sparse. Her once luscious red fluff now looked almost pink, having faded after a hard life of pumping out litter after litter of foals in a breeding mill. One volunteer joked that she looked like a stuffed animal that had been run through a dryer.
Rosie’s teeth had all fallen out, leaving her smile nothing but gums. She could be a bit harder to understand than fluffies usually were, and sometimes she drooled. Sprout didn’t care about any of that though- he thought Rosie was the most special mummah in the world.
He thought it was extra special that she had to feed him with a little bottle of formula, instead of milk from her own teats. None of the other babbehs at the shelter got fed like that! Rosie’s hooves shook a bit sometimes when she held the bottle for him, but that didn’t matter- those same shaky hooves would very gently tap on his back to knock out any burps he got from the milk bubbles, which made him giggle. A burp was a funny noise!
Sprout really liked funny noises. If Rosie farted when she used the litter-box, he considered it the height of hilarity. He’d roll around and giggle until he farted too, which would just make him giggle even more.
Sprout would also learn that he could make a similar sound. All he had to do was stick out his little tongue and blow! After that, Sprout would always playfully blow raspberries at the shelter workers whenever they passed by the pair’s cage. Every now and then, one that wasn’t entirely dead inside would even pause in their work to blow one back. That was exciting!
There was an even better game than blowing raspberries at the nice hoomins, though. It was a game that Rosie called ‘Nummy Tummy.’ It was a simple game, but Sprout was a simple little creature, and he thought it was very, very fun! How did it go? Just like this: Sprout would roll over on his back and wiggle his tiny little hoofsies in the air, pleading-
“Nummy tummy! Mummah! Nummy Spwout tummy!”
When he did this, Rosie would lean over and gently ‘num’ on his pudgy belly with her toothless gums, just like Sprout was a tasty little treat. It tickled! When she was done,
“Ou’m beses’ nummy babbeh ebs,” she’d then tell him. Her words just sort of tumbled out of her lips at her age. “Taybse suuu pwebby!”
Sprout would give himself the hiccups laughing, wriggling around on his back like an overturned turtle. Nummy Tummy had to be the greatest game in the whole wide world!
Seeing Sprout giggle and hiccup always gave Rosie the giggles too. She often told Sprout that he was the funniest widdwe babbeh ever!
“Siwwy babbeh! Ou’m gib’ Mumbah bigges’ heawpt happies!” she’d coo, saliva dribbling from the corner of her lips. She always meant it, too. Rosie had been forced to shit out several batches of beautifully colored chirpies during her time at the mill, but she’d never been allowed to care for any of them herself. They’d always been whisked away from her, thrown at the tits of some milkbag while she was thrown back into the breeding rack. Sprout was the greatest joy of her small life spent sitting around in cages. To her was the prettiest babbeh in the world. Nothing could have ever convinced her otherwise.
It was closing time. Erica, the shelter’s manager, was putting away a clean stack of kibble bowls when she caught a long-time volunteer passing by out of the corner of her eye.
“Putting them together was a really good idea, Ashley. Rosie’s become a whole new fluffy.”
“I know,” Ashley took the compliment without fuss. “Lucky she’s still all there in the head and can work the bottle.”
She set down the basket of dirty towels she’d been carrying on the counter, nodding over at the pair playing in the crate. Rosie’s heavily lidded eyes were sparkling despite her dismal surroundings as Sprout babbled about nonsense, snuggling into her chest fluff. The two women couldn’t hear it, but both could tell by the way the mare gently bobbed her head from side to side that she was humming a mummah song to the little green foal.
“I wish I could take her home with me.”
“I know you do.”
Ashley volunteered at the shelter every weekend. She liked fluffies, she really did. But she’d loved Rosie from the moment the old worn out mare had been dumped on the shelter’s doorstep. She couldn’t bring her home, though. Her landlord didn’t allow her to have pets or biotoys. The lease was strict. For now, Ashley was stuck in a government subsidized apartment, and Rosie was stuck in a stainless steel cage. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Erica gave Ashley a pat on the back and asked her to wrap up for the night so they could close up. Ashley grabbed the basket of laundry to drop in the washer on her way out. She stopped by Rosie’s cage to say goodnight like she always did. Reached a few fingers through the bars to stroke her faded fluff. The old fluffy was falling asleep. Sprout’s babbling was slowing down too, and he’d often have to stop to yawn.
“Sweet dreams, you two.”
The next morning, there was a lot more hustle and bustle in the crate room than usual. A lot of excitement was bubbling up among the technicolor creatures held captive inside, many of them babbling to each other, trying to figure out what was going on. Why were hoomins hurrying in and out like that?
The excitement was centered around Rosie’s cage. Inside, Sprout was wailing. Confused, scared. He was chirping again, even though he’d been talking for a little over a week now. He was still curled up next to an unresponsive Rosie, shivering. Her fluff wasn’t warm anymore. It was cold, and she was still. She wouldn’t wake up.
The old mare’s heart had finally given out during the night. She’d gone forever sleepies, Erica tried explaining to Sprout, using the term that fluffies seemed to understand.
Rosie had been a shelter favorite since her arrival, and anyone who had been there for any length of time and gave a shit gathered in the crate room to say goodbye. It wasn’t often to see a fluffy that had grown that old. They were gentle when they removed the shivering, sobbing Sprout from her body, careful when they pulled her stiffened corpse out of the cage.
The young woman who currently held Sprout was extra gentle when she ran a finger down his back, trying to soothe him. She was a newer volunteer, unfamiliar to him. Sprout hugged her thumb anyway, his eyes wrenched shut. He was hiccuping again, but this time it was from crying, not laughter. He wished he was hugging his Mummah, but he wasn’t going to reject the warmth of the hand surrounding him.
While Rosie was being disposed of, Sprout was being carried over to a cage on the other side of the crate room by the same nice young lady who had comforted him earlier. Her name was Eliza.
“Let’s see, who doesn’t have too many babies already…”
Standard protocol for orphaned foals was to simply place them with another nursing mare (there was never not one in a fluffy shelter, after all.) Happy Hearts was full of them, so Eliza took her time, looking for the mummah with the lightest workload. The room was a cacophony of noise. Nearly every fluffy in there with them called out as they passed by, begging for love and attention, or asking when their mummahs and daddehs would come back for them. A few even screamed mean, angry things at them. Sprout whimpered.
“Don’t listen to the Downers buddy, it’s alright. We’re gonna find you a new mummah…”
Sprout’s tiny baby brain couldn’t process so many new factors so quickly. Finally, though, Eliza stooped down in front of a cage on the very bottom row. He could see that it was darker inside this cage than the cage he and Rosie had been in previously. That was scary!
“Here we go, she’s only got two,” Eliza muttered to herself, before cheerfully addressing the fluffy huddled at the back of the crate as she unlatched the door. “Hey, Soot, good news! New baby! Say hi to your new mama, Sprout!”
Sprout was gently placed inside, and the crate door was shut behind him. Eliza then walked away. She still needed to change out the piss-pads in the pillowfluff room before she checked for bedsores. She didn’t think much else about Soot and Sprout.
What was there to worry about, after all? What fluffy didn’t ever want more babies?
Soot was grey and intimidatingly large in Sprout’s eyes. The feral mare had been brought in just yesterday, along with her two equally grey chirpies. The teeny little things were currently suckling from her teats, loud and eager. Sprout’s tummy growled as he watched them feed. Rosie would have given him his bottle by now. Sprout sniffed. He still didn’t quite understand why she gone. He was a growing baby though, and he still needed milk. He instinctively waddled over to Soot’s teats to wait in line for breakfast. If Soot was his new mummah, he supposed he’d have drink from her like his new siblings were doing.
Soot supposed differently. She smacked him away none too gently with a rough hoof. Sprout tumbled backwards. That had hurt! He landed against the vertical bars of the crate door, curling up and covering his face with his tail instinctively. That had really hurt too. He realized he was wet- urine was puddling up underneath him.
“Ou no steal miwkies fwum Soot’s gud babbehs! Dummeh pee-pee babbeh ‘tay ‘way!” the furious mare told him, snorting at his backside.
Soot had never been a pet fluffy. She had been born in a garbage pile on the streets, and had spent her whole life rooting through garbage on the streets. Every drop of milk she made for her offspring was precious- who knew when her next meal would be? Scary hoomins had dumped her in an unknown place, and put her on an unknown feeding schedule. How dare this strange babbeh just show up out of nowhere and try to steal milk from her own babbehs?
Sprout laid there shivering in his own piss puddle for several minutes before he gained the courage to peek out from behind his hooves. Soot’s chirpies had finally had their fill, and the two were now wriggling and worming their fat little bodies against their mummah’s warm fluff, cooing and peeping happily. Soot licked their faces clean before cooing back at them softly.
Sprout had the worst heart hurties. Mummah was forever sleepies. New Mummah didn’t seem to like him. He was hungry, and his tummy continued to gurgle as he thought hard. What could he do?
Miraculously, an idea managed to bloom inside his pea sized brain. Mummah had always told him he was the funniest babbeh in the world. Maybe if New Mummah saw how funny he was, she’d love him too!
Sprout rose up, clumsily shaking off droplets of pee from his hooves. He waddled just a bit closer to Soot and stuck his tongue out, looking the mare right in her eyes.
Pbbtt! Pbbtt-pbbtt-pppbbBBBBTTTTT!!
Sprout almost made himself giggle with that one, even with his heart hurties. He’d just blown what was probably one of his bestest raspberries ever! Mummah would have laughed so much at that! New Mummah was definitely going to love him now.
Soot stared at the foal in front of her with indignant shock. Not only was this little milk thief trying to starve her babbehs, he was now giving her sass?
Soot didn’t raise bad-mannered babbehs, and she wasn’t going to put up with someone else’s. She smacked him away once more, back against the bars. A little harder this time, to make the point clear.
“Dummeh miwkie theif go ‘way! Wude babbeh no get any miwkies!”
Sprout cried. He even suckled his hoof for a moment. He had even more owwies now, and he’d landed right back in his pee puddle, which was already growing cold.
He wasn’t being funny enough, clearly. He had to try harder. He thought really hard again. What never, ever failed to make his old Mummah smile?
Sprout picked himself up once more. Waddled a bit closer to Soot, this time at a snail’s pace. Already, the big grey fluffy was staring him down, her cheeks puffed out threateningly. Her own little dustball babies were tucked behind her now, out of his sight.
Sprout took a brave breath, and rolled over on to his back. He wiggled his little hoofsies as quickly as he could, pooching his belly out as round as could be.
“Nummy tummy? Nummy tummy!”
Sprout giggled cutely too, to really sell it. His tummy had to be irresistible, so that New Mummah would want to play. Then she’d see what a funny, good baby he’d be! She’d give him love and milk and make his heart hurties go away, he just knew it!
Soot stared at the foal writhing around in front of her. Stared at his chubby belly, still only barely flocked with fluff. She leaned over, sniffed it. Then she pressed her mouth to his tummy. Just like Mummah had!
Sprout squealed. It was working! His tummy really was irresistible! He giggled, stretching his leggies out towards warm grey fluff.
Suddenly, his giggles turned into shrieks. Unlike Rosie, New Mummah still had her teeth. She used them to tear open the soft flesh of his belly, pinching and pulling, before tucking right into his insides.
Sprout started making a lot of noise. Most of it was screeching. He screamed for his old Mummah. Peeped and chirped for her help, he even farted as Soot used her hoof to hold him in place.
It wasn’t a funny sound anymore. None of the sounds around him were. The worst sound was the wet smacking noise New Mummah’s lips made as she ate him alive, right there on the floor of the dark little cage they were in. Even when he could no longer hear the other fluffies yelling and babbling in the background, or his own screaming, he heard that. It would be the last thing he’d ever hear.
Later, Soot’s little chirpies would suckle happily from her teats once more, surrounded by her warmth and her mummah song as their bellies filled with fresh milkies. With unopened eyes and ears, they were blissfully ignorant of the bloody scraps of Sprout that Erica would have to wipe off the bottom of the crate soon. All they knew was that their Mummah loved them very, very much.