Part Two
With a sigh, Wayne set the large bag of kibble in the cabinet, feeling a twinge in his back. He missed being young. Oh well.
“That’s the last of it,” he said, sitting down in his armchair. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Bjorn replied. “Where should I put this?”
“This” was a strange animal carrier. Instead of a cage-like front, it was solid plastic all around, save for small holes.
“Sorrybox,” Bjorn explained. “Gentle way to punish fluffies. Like it or not, you’re going to need it eventually.”
“Oh. Put it wherever. I still haven’t figured out where anything goes yet, so it really doesn’t matter. Are you sure you can spare this stuff?”
“Yep. My business tends to be fairly seasonal. Less feral fluffies wandering about during fall and winter, so I get fewer calls and less new stock. Speaking of new stock,” Bjorn glanced towards the saferoom. “Have you gotten them all chipped yet?”
“No. Do I need to?”
“Well, technically it’s not a requirement, but if they ever get lost and fluffy control picks them up it’s best if they’re chipped. I chip all mine, since it’s cheap enough to do in bulk. Easier than searching all the shelters in the area and hoping fluffy control didn’t just incinerate the missing fluffy.”
Wayne shuddered. “They do that?”
“They’re not supposed to, but it does happen.”
“I guess I should do that, then.” Wayne shook his head. “This gets expensive quick, doesn’t it?”
“I mean, raising animals always has costs. I could always just take them to my shop, get them all checked for parasites and chipped, and get Sandy her shots. I got my fluffy technician license for my side gig. Should be cheaper.”
Wayne gave Bjorn a flat look. “How much?”
“A case of beer and the next time we hang out you don’t get to complain about your liver.”
“Deal.”
“Alright, I’ll hold you to that. And it better not be Coors again. This will take a while though since I’ll be doing a full checkup. I should be back in a couple of hours.”
Bjorn glanced over at Sandy as he pulled into the parking lot of the retrofitted warehouse he used as a hybrid store and fluffy clinic. He’d been hoping this would work out the easy way, but it wasn’t looking that way. Made sense, considering the filly had been feral her whole life.
He shivered a little as he pulled the carriers out of his van. Damn, but it’d gotten cold fast this year. Bad for business. There wouldn’t be many feral fluffies left in the area after tonight.
Bjorn’s Barn was divided into three major areas. The viewing area where he showed off his for-sale fluffies to potential customers, the technical area where he did all the actual work, and, by far the largest part, the pens. Bjorn set down the carriers in the technical area so he could go by the pens and make some preparations.
Lotus and Oak both greeted him as he pulled them out of the general pen and placed them into the new-arrivals room. The pair were both quite intelligent, as fluffies went, and also had some of the best temperaments among the fluffies he’d found. He’d given them a job they were suited for, since given Lotus’s infertility they couldn’t do what was normally expected of the fluffies he wasn’t interested in selling.
“Nyu babbehs?” Lotus asked, and Bjorn nodded.
“Not staying, though,” he clarified.
Lotus looked a bit sad at that. She always liked new foals, being fiercely protective and nurturing by nature. Bjorn always wondered if she was compensating for never being able to have babbehs of her own, but he had enough tact to not mention it.
Leaving the two, he first examined, vaccinated, and chipped Sandy. After finishing and letting the filly adjust to the new environment, he left her in Lotus’s care and examined and chipped the two newborns. Then he stood outside the door and waited.
After the crying had stopped, he entered the room once more to find Lotus hugging a hiccuping Sandy. Oak looked up at him and shook his head. I know, Bjorn mouthed, hoping the stallion would understand. His point seemed to get across.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a surprise, all things considered. Bjorn couldn’t blame Wayne for not noticing, given his inexperience, but Bjorn had immediately seen through the filly’s charade. He’d hoped that once Wayne wasn’t around she’d drop it, but she hadn’t. That was what the new arrival room was for.
It was a bit of a necessity given his unusual practices. If he stocked feral fluffies, a lot of them were going to be traumatized in one way or another. The problem was, they would hide it from him no matter what. As their “nyu daddeh,” there were things they just wouldn’t share with him, not at first.
Fluffies feared being rejected, and as a result they would hide their pain as much as possible until they were comfortable with their new owner. Unlike with humans, it wasn’t so much a fear of appearing weak as seeming defective or too needy. Given how many were rejects already, it was no surprise that they would hide anything they thought might make them unappealing.
Oak and Lotus’s job was to find out if fluffies were in a well enough state to be able to integrate into the pens. Unlike most breeders, who in Bjorn’s eyes were either eye-rollingly amateurish or outright sadistic, Bjorn rarely had to interfere with the normal functioning of the pens. Of course, the price he paid for that was making sure that no elements were introduced into the pens that could upset that balance.
Much to the surprise of nobody, fluffies tended to have more and healthier offspring in a safe, comfortable environment. While it may be cathartic to humiliate or traumatize fluffies that produced poor quality foals, it did absolutely nothing for the quality of future litters and only made the mares more likely to miscarry or kill their newborn foals. Turns out, letting fluffies run around loose in a wide-open, safe environment had far better results than leaving them stuck in some cage and feeding them slop.
Bjorn also didn’t really care about which fluffies bred with which. Given his entire stock was from feral herds, there was no way to tell which had good genetics and which didn’t. If anything, the pens were more like a huge fluffy colony than a traditional breeding setup. This had downsides, of course, mainly space requirements, but he’d lucked out and acquired the warehouse cheaply when its owner had gone out of business.
Leaving fluffies to self-govern was a terrible idea according to most breeders, and Bjorn suspected that would indeed be the case. If they were stressed, hungry, hopeless, and bored, anyway. As it was, having Oak serve as the de-facto smarty and keep things orderly had worked for him so far.
Regardless, Bjorn’s suspicions had been confirmed. Well, it had been practically a certainty given what he knew of Sandy’s past. He’d have to have a talk with the filly, and another with Wayne. If Sandy had been part of his potential stock he’d have gone with euthanasia, but that wasn’t an option.
Sandy stood on the exam-room table and trembled. The distance to the floor below was terrifying, and that was part of the reason, but she’d also exhausted herself venting everything she’d been hiding from the humans. The nice mare had reminded her of her own family, and that had broken the floodgates.
“Sandy,” daddeh’s friend said, and she jolted out of her thoughts, noticing that she’d started tearing up again and flinching. “You can tell Wayne.”
“Teww daddeh wut?” she asked, knowing the answer but taking refuge in pretending to be stupid so she wouldn’t have to flat-out lie.
“Sandy,” daddeh’s friend sighed. “You don’t have to pretend to be okay. Wayne’s not going to stop being your daddeh if you tell him.”
Sandy looked at him incredulously. Of course daddeh would abandon her if he knew! He wanted her to take care of the babbehs he actually cared about. She was just a tool. She was okay with that, but she also knew that the moment she wasn’t useful he’d throw her away. That’s how the world worked. Nobody got anything for just existing.
“Nobody wants a broken fluffy,” Bjorn said, and Sandy shuddered. “More or less how it is, isn’t it?”
“'es,” she whispered.
“Do you believe your daddeh will abandon you if he knows how much you hurt?”
“Nu wan tu,” she said.
“But you do. I see. Well, not like I can blame you, honestly. I wouldn’t keep you.”
Sandy burst into tears. She knew it! She was worthless! Nobody loved her. Nobody would ever again. She was just a broken dummeh munstah poopie babbeh!
“So I’ll make you a deal.”
She blinked in confusion. What was he talking about?
“You tell Wayne the truth. The entire truth. I promise he’ll understand. If he doesn’t, then I’ll let Lotus adopt you. She’s been wanting foals that don’t have to leave when they grow up. Might as well be you.”
Why was he contradicting himself? Was he trying to make her scared and confused? He seemed to notice her turmoil.
"I was being truthful when I said I wouldn’t keep you if I were Wayne. I don’t think you’re ready to be raising foals, and I don’t think Wayne can provide the kind of care you need right now. That being said, I wouldn’t just throw you away, and neither would he. Ideally, you’d be staying with a whole new family, but things just haven’t played out that way.
“I get it. You’ve seen things, and a big part of you can’t trust humans just yet. That’s fine, it’s hard for us to be that vulnerable too. So I’m just going to give you an out. There are a lot of fluffies here, so one more doesn’t really make a difference. Though I would prefer if you didn’t scare them or tell any of them what happened besides Oak or Lotus. All I ask is that you be honest.”
“Pwomise?”
“Promise.”
Part Four
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Ok, I’m really interested in seeing how things go.
Bjorn seems like a good friend, so if he says Wayne will keep Sandy, I believe him. He also said that he didn’t think Wayne best suited for it, though, so I really want to see how it turns out.
Smart idea to not right off kill feral fluffies en masse. Sedate them, grab the food colors and then send them to the fluffy version of hell