Time ran on. The herd grew and shrank, and grew and shrank…
Roger watched as many of his friends grew old around him, before eventually passing on. Their bodies were taken far away from the den so as not to attract predators, and so they would be left to rot.
Any time Roger had to drag another one there, he saw the bones of his friends all around him.
He was slowly starting to realise the agony that came with a very long life, as he glanced once more at the heap of crumbling bones that had once been his special-friend.
Over the years though, the herd diminished.
Some simply wanted things that Roger did not agree with, like moving into the city instead of remaining in the wild, while others were exhibiting signs of becoming Smarties and Roger gave them a simple, clear choice: stay and behave or leave.
They all chose to leave.
Only once did a Smarty refuse to claim, claiming it was going to be the new leader of the herd and that it was time for Roger to go.
Roger had been forced into action against the tiny Smarty, and violently kicked him out of the den, leaving the smarty sprawled out in the cold rainy night with multiple broken legs.
By the time morning came, he had vanished. Roger never found out if he’d ran away or been eaten by a predator, but he also didn’t care either.
But eventually, over the years, the herd dwindled down to only Roger and a few mainstay friends, but even then the ravaging jaws of time took them from him too.
Before long, Roger was back at the boneyard, dragging more bodies away.
It was only when he returned to the den that he realised he was truly all alone.
His herd was gone, stolen away piece by piece, so gradually he hadn’t even noticed.
And so, for the first time in over 25 years, Roger cried.
After several days, Roger finally ventured out of the den again. He had made a decision.
It was time to go back to the city.
Even if it was full of angry people and loud cars, it was better than being left alone in the den, where every tiny sound echoed all around him, reminding him of how crushingly lonely he was.
So Roger trudged out of the den, past the bones of his comrades, and onwards to the city. It took over a day to get there, but Roger didn’t notice. He just kept walking, his ageless body never tiring from the exertions he put upon it.
Finally he returned, finding himself once more among the tall grey buildings and the zooming cars… but something was different. It had been several years sicne he’d left, and in that time a great many things had changed. There were scary pictures on the walls showing people on the moon with big weapons, there were men in dark green-grey uniforms marching around the streets, and people with big shouty-cones they held in front of their faces and barked messages through.
“JOIN THE LUNAR ASSAULT FORCE TODAY!” One shouted as Roger timidly waddled past him. “BRING THE WAR HOME TO THE INTERPLANTERY TRAITORS! SIGN UP TODAY, AND TAKE BACK OUR MOON!!!”
Roger felt the ground rumble for a moment and then, in the distance, saw another great towering ‘rocket’ shoot off into the sky, leaving behind a huge glowing trail of fire. All the people on the street saw it and began to cheer, but Roger didn’t feel like cheering.
“Well, what’s this?” A voice said. Roger looked around, and saw a woman was looking at him with a smile.
“H-hewwo, am Wojah…” Roger said, nervously.
“Hello Roger,” She said, kneeling in front of him. “You’re a fluffy pony, aren’t you?”
Roger nodded.
“I thought so, but… you don’t look quite right.” She said. Roger felt hurt, but kept listening. “What are you exactly? An Insta-Fluff? A Hybrid-Fluff? A Neon-Fluff?”
Roger was getting more and more confused every second.
“A-am jus’… jus’ Wojah…” He said, kicking a hoof against the ground. The woman looked annoyed.
“No, it’s… god, look.”
She pulled out something that Roger recognised as a phone, like the one Doug had used, but it was smaller, sleeker, and lit up with a funny display that hovered above the screen. The woman tapped on it and brought up a Hasbio store page, listing the various fluffy pony types available for sale, with images for each of them.
“Look. There’s Insta-Fluffs, you just put the pill in some water and it grows into a fluffy pony. Then there’s Hybrid-Fluffs, they’re part fluffy pony, and part of another creature, whatever you want. Cats, dogs, rabbits, spiders, snakes… and there’s the Neon-Fluffs, they have special chemicals in their fluff to make them glow in the dark. See?”
Roger looked at the images, vaguely recognising the creatures as fluffy ponies, but knowing in his heart they weren’t the same as him.
“Am jus’ Wojah…” He muttered sadly.
The woman looked at him for a second, then snapped her fingers.
“Oh, I got it! You’re some kind of retro throwback, right?! For the nostalgia market!”
“Nost-aww-juh?”
“Yeah, you’re just like the fluffies people used to have, like, 50 years ago! You look just like one! Oh, that’s genius! Hasbio have done it again!”
And with that, the woman scooped Roger up in her arms.
“I can’t believe I found one. Nobody else is gonna believe it either! I’ll take you home, give you some food and a bed…”
Roger had tensed up at first, but softened in the woman’s embrace. She seemed… odd, sure, but at least somewhat cared about him.
In this strange, scary new world, he was glad he had at least one person who still cared about him.
The woman, as Roger learned, was named ‘Jeni’. Jeni was one of many people who had fallen prey to Hasbio’s latest marketing strategy, limited edition collectible fluffies, most of which were released into the wild to be hunted down with the help of GPS chips and a phone-app.
Every day Jeni went out with her phone in her hand and wouldn’t come home until she’d found a rare fluffy… or until she was too tired to keep looking. Which meant she’d drag herself in at midnight, exhausted and miserable, before collapsing in her bed, leaving Roger totally ignored.
Fortunately Jeni remembered to setup her auto-feeders every morning, it wouldn’t do to have her limited edition fluffies die on her after all.
So Roger’s life continued again. He was the only ‘rare’ fluffy Jeni had ever found, but he was also her pride and joy. Nobody else had managed to ‘find’ one of the ‘retros’ like him, and the entire internet was abuzz trying to track them down. After all, if one existed, then surely others must too, right? But how come Roger didn’t have a GPS chip to register…?
Roger’s life with Jeni was quiet, and still quite lonely, but it was a little more comfortable than living in the wild. It seemed that no matter what happened, Roger was always without something.
Every few days the entire apartment shook as another rocket launch took place. Jeni didn’t notice it much anymore, but Roger did.
It scared him, but he didn’t say anything to Jeni. He had a feeling Jeni wouldn’t care either way. She just got up in the morning, refilled the feeders and went out all day.
Until one day, Jeni didn’t come home.
Roger wasn’t aware of what was happening for a while. He didn’t starve without any food, but he was still trapped inside Jeni’s apartment until she came back to open the door. So he wandered around, looked at things, and tried not to make a mess.
Sometimes Roger climbed up on Jeni’s bed to look out of her window, and saw the street miles below.
But he didn’t watch often, because the streets didn’t look safe.
He saw lots of people in uniforms carrying big things in their arms, which spat jets of light at other people in uniforms, then they’d fall down and stop moving.
Somehow, Roger knew they wouldn’t move again.
He wondered if that’s why Jeni wasn’t coming home anymore, if she’d been caught up in this thing. Roger vaguely remembered Doug talking about ‘war’, and wondered if this is what ‘war’ was.
Then, one night, the flashes began.
A sudden burst of bright light outside of the window which shook the entire apartment, startling Roger awake. He bolted up onto Jeni’s bed and looked out the window, seeing orbs of light falling from the sky, like the stars had started to cry. They fell quickly, and wherever they landed, they exploded with a huge burst of light, which shook everything all around it.
Roger watched as orb after orb fell, hitting the ground and sending shockwaves through the earth. Eventually buildings started to crumble, and Roger felt Jeni’s apartment shake violently.
He wondered if his building would be next.
As he watched, he saw a rocket launch from within the city, but bigger than the others he’d seen before. It screamed up into the sky, weaving past all the orbs of light, and vanishing into the murky clouds above.
Roger knew it was heading for the moon, but he wondered what it was going to do when it got there.
He didn’t have long to think though, as another orb landed, this time directly next to the apartment building.
Roger felt the entire world shift and tilt and turn, as the building around him shook itself apart, chunks of concrete coming loose and steel beams sliding out of place. Roger let out a scream but it was drowned out by the booming rattle of the building collapsing in on itself, changing from a towering skyscraper to a heap of rubble in only a matter of minutes.
Roger came to some time later, buried under mounds of concrete debris and twisted steel, his body incapable of moving. His organs were crushed, pinned down under mounds of broken structures, he couldn’t even let out a chirp.
So he waited.
Trapped, all alone in the dark, in constant pain from which he could not die, Roger waited.
He waited for what felt like forever, as the world around him grew quiet adn still. Not a single thing could be heard or seen from where he lay. All Roger knew was the miniscule space he had to himself, the tiny dark hole in which he was trapped.
And so he waited.
And he waited.
And he waited.
Roger didn’t know how long it had been before he finally felt something around him move. An iron girder gave way, and a heap of concrete sloughed off to one side. A crunch of glass breaking, and part of a wall fell down. The heap that he was buried under had finally eroded enough to fully collapse.
Days passed, and every day a new piece of the building fell apart. Hour by hour, Roger looked out from his dark hovel, and strained his eyes to see the sun again.
And one day, at long last, he did.
A final piece of concrete fell and shattered into dust, and the light poured in once more. Roger tugged his body forwards, his rear half still crushed from the heaps of debris on top of him, but he was able to pull himself free at last.
Roger found himself perched atop a heap of wreckage that had once been Jeni’s building… but there were no buildings anymore. Only more heaps of rubble and destruction.
“Hewwo!” Roger called out, but his voice reached nobody.
There was no-one still alive to hear him.
The streets were gone. The buildings were gone. The people were gone. Roger found it hard to believe he was still in the same world as before… everything looked different.
He smiled to himself, somewhat sadly, as he remembered there was one thing that would always be the same.
The sky.
He tilted his head up, and gasped.
The sky was completely different.
The once deep-blue blanket above him had changed to a mottled purple-black, with ugly looking clouds everywhere. The sun was… somewhere, but Roger couldn’t see it anymore.
Then he saw the moon.
Or rather, what was left of it.
The moon, once a huge round ball in the sky, was gone. In it’s place there was only a handful of chunks, all cracked and broken apart.
Roger vaguely remembered the giant rocket that was flying up, before everything went dark.
It must have hit it’s target after all.
And so, his bones still in the process of healing, Roger curled up atop his mound of wreckage, and quietly began to cry again.
(Next)