Gumdrop quickly learned to ration the grass nummies. They came about once every three bright times, and she could quickly go through them if she wasn’t careful. A mouthful of grass here, a withered rose there, she only ate when hungry, but never enough to be full. She learned quickly after she spent two bright times hungry again.
But eating had also introduced a new issue. The mare promised herself to never make bad poopies again. She realized just how much she had taken her litter box for granted, as now a pile of her own poopies populated a full corner of the drain. It slowly grew and shrank each day as it mixed with the foul sludge consumed it, pervading the drain with miasma. The sludge, or “meanie, icky wawa” as she referred to it in her head. It had begun to scare her. She refused to touch it, managing to maneuver a few of the larger branches that had been washed in the drain to form a rickety bridge to her mound of shame. But even still, the sludge lapped at her hoofsies, seeking her, tasting her fear.
It peered at her, a black void with a rainbow shimmer of oil. Had it been any other situation the myriad of colors would be mesmerizing to the pony. But the lack of anything else to do in the hole left her with nothing left to do but think. And when fluffies think in the dark rather than sleep, their thinkie places play tricks on them.
Waking terrors had begun to grip the pony. She imagined the sludge reaching up to grab her while she slept, dragging her and her tummeh babbehs to join it in the void, of oily black tendrils gripping her, reaching, seeking, infiltrating into her mouthie and nosie places. The taste of that foul mixture still haunted her. Even the thought of the taste brought on sickie wawas that only fueled it with more energy, more liquid. She had begun to drag sticks and trash to build up a wall between her nestie place and the pool.
Her warm, comfy nestie. Relatively. It was warmer and comfier than the rest of the drain was. She had rationed a good amount of the grass to make soft bed in the corner, as far away from the poopie mound as possible.
Most fluffies do not spend too much time building a nest. An overturned garbage bin, a rotting cardboard box, an abandoned animal den, as long as they had companions to form a fluff pile with they were content. The time spent making a nest would be better spent playing or gathering nummies anyways.
Gumdrop didn’t have a fluff pile. Instead, she had nothing to do but build. a base of soft sand she had painstakingly picked the gravel out of, fast food wrappers she had dug from the mound and torn to bits, bits of fluff pulled from her one good side. She had done her best. The soft grass she had fussed and fussed and fussed with, trampling it, smooshing it around, doing whatever she could to be as comfy as possible.
“Mummah am make BESTEST nestie to have BESTEST BABBEHS!” The mare idly hummed her Mummah song to her babbehs. She could still move, but her tummeh and milkie places scraped the ground as she walked, wearing away a bald patch in her fluffy coat and chafing her exposed teats.
Gumdrop did not look good. Her coat, once lovingly brushed daily and washed weekly with special shampoo and conditioner, now formed large mats and clung tightly to her body. Large bald patches had appeared from her plucking it to make the nest, to say nothing of the web of scar tissue covering her bare right flank. Her hoofpads were chapped and bled easily, and though her degloved hoofsie had begun to regrow its thin purple sheath, it was cracked and splintered.
While her welts had long faded, the scars from the buggie munstahs remained. Her gnawing had left gaping wounds that wouldn’t close, a clear, sour liquid dripping whenever a scab cracked. It is only by a miracle that she had not developed an infection, let alone necrosis and gangrene.
By far the worst wound was that to her leggie, the self inflicted osteotomy having left her back right leggie useless. Without a cannon bone, the leggie had been left to hang limply at her side, atrophy pulling dissolving muscle tissue to redistribute nutrients to the rest of her body. But Gumdrop didn’t mind. All things considered, the mare was doing alright. But she was so very, VERY bored. And so, she sang.
“Mummah wub’ babbehs,
Babbehs wub’ Mummah,
Becaws mummah make da best miwkies su babbehs gwow up big an stwong!”
The mare idly sang, feeling a rush of endorphins each time a babbeh kicked in her tummeh. “Teehee, babbehs am gonna be da bestest at wunning!” She did her tappy dance for the first time since she had become trapped, bouncing her front leggies to a drum only she could hear.
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“Be nyu daddeh?”
Frank looked down at the fat purple unicorn who sat on his step. Even by fluffy standards this pony was portly. Frank sighed and ran his hand through the thinning hair on his head. “Sorry buddy, no can do. We don’t have the space or the money to take care of a fluffy.”
The fluffy cocked its head. It could scarcely comprehend the concept that someone didn’t want to add huggies and love to their life. “Pwease?” It mewled, fluttering its eyelashes in a way that Frank found quite honestly adorable. He hated turning them down, but if he accepted every fluffy that knocked on his door he would have over a thousand mini ponies kicking around his house. “Sorry.”
The fluffy sighed, its short orange mane flopping down. “Okie, Sowwy tu boff-er ‘ou.” Frank still felt a pang of guilt over rejecting the pony, watching as it slowly waddled back down onto the sidewalk. He couldn’t help but wonder where Gumdrop was, and if she was trying the same thing.
Meanwhile, the fluffy, a young stallion named Shocktop by a drunk, wondered why he could smell a mare, a soon Mummah at that, when the human said he couldn’t take care of fluffies. But the cold times were approaching, and he had no time to wonder, he needed to find a nice, warm housie and a nice, nyu Mummah or Daddeh. He had lived outside one winter, and he would not suffer through that again.
Especially not the storms.
——————————————————
Gumdrop idly batted her one toy against the wall. To call it a toy would be a gross overstatement, it was a wad of fast food wrappers that she had tightly packed together around a rock into a misshapen ball. Its odd shape made it bounce back to her in funny ways, the mare giggling as the ball rolled in a circle in the sand. When she went home she would definitely take this ball with her. Home. Her eyes began to well with tears.
“Huuu….. miss mummah.”
The mare began to cry, the channels her tears cut the only part of her face that remained clean and pink. She couldn’t stop it. She had lived in a nice housie that was warm when she wanted it to be and cool when she got too hot, a bowl that was filled every day with nummies, a different bowl that filled weekly with sketties, a safe room with a soft floor that felt nice against her hoofpads, a litter box. Oh how she missed her litter box. It was only now that she She promised to never make bad poopies again once she made it home, even the secret ones she made under the couchie seat when she was too busy watching ‘teebee’ to go to the litter box.
“Yew awen’t gowing home”
Gumdrop couldn’t move. She tried, she strained desperately, but her leggies wouldn’t respond, they wouldn’t even let her cover her eyes. The miasma grew chokingly thick. “Bad fwuffies nu’ can gu homesie. Bad fwuffys go foweva sweepies.”
“NU AM BAD FWUFFY!” The mare screamed, voicelessly. The voice responded all the same. “If nu am bad fwuffy, y in sowwy bawks?” A thin tendril of inky black grew from the water, slithering towards the paralyzed pegasus. “If nu am bad fwuffy, why make bad poopies?” But there was no litterbox! She couldn’t make good poopies even if she wanted to!
The tendril grew a not-hoofsie, clad in long, sharp talons that tore down the fragile wall that separated her from the icky wawa, icky wawa that now glared at her with gleaming purple eyes. A sharp toothied mouthie grew, smiling with sick delight at the young mares fear, reveling in her pounding heart, her chestie place tightening so much it hurt to breathe. Then the wawa began to rise. It flooded over the embankment slowly, creeping along the floor until the mare was ankle deep, then knee deep, as it lapped at her stomach, the munstah began to cackle as Gumdrop silently screamed.
“BAD FWUFFIES NU DESEWB BABBEHS!”
And suddenly, it was gone, and Gumdrop woke with a start. It was night now. A slow trickle of water ran down the wall into a styrofoam clamshell, illuminated by a sliver of moonlight. The pool of sludge was quiet, shards of her lavender bone floating idly through the murk. Gumdrop fell to her side sobbing. She was scared. She missed her mummah. She missed her nightielight. She missed her safe, warm bed. She felt the rough texture of her hoofs new keratin sheath against her tongue as she suckled once more, peeping and chirping like the babbehs she was soon to have.
“Piiiiip. Peep. Chiiirp.”