Part Six
“So, what do you want to do now?”
Anne pondered that for a moment, and realized she didn’t have an answer. Lately, her life had been defined by things she didn’t want, rather than what she wanted. She didn’t want to die, didn’t want to hurt anymore, didn’t want to think about the past, or about the future. But none of that would let her decide what to do next.
“Nu nyo,” she replied.
“Well, there are a few options. I could always let you stay here, but you’d have to stay apart from the other fluffies for a while. Sorry, but I can’t risk you breaking down and saying something that they shouldn’t hear. I’m sure Lotus would be happy to take care of you. Then, of course, there’s always your sister’s daddeh.”
“Anne nu nyo. Nu nyo wut make huwties wowse. Am scawed.”
“Anne,” Bjorn said gently. “You’re going to have to make a decision sooner or later. The longer you stay like this the longer you’re going to hurt. You have to move on, eventually.”
Anne latched onto his words, happy to have any excuse to be angry, and excuse to feel something but hurt for a little while. “Wut 'ou nyo?” she spat. “‘ou nu undastan’! Dummeh!”
She flinched back a little, her short life on the streets having been a harsh teacher when it came to showing what happened to fluffies who sassed humans. In spite of herself, she half expected Bjorn to hurt her more, but he just snorted.
“Of course I can’t understand,” he said. “I’ve never been in anything like your situation. I can’t know the pain you’re feeling, and that’s why I’m the right person to help you.”
“Wut?”
“If I was hurt like you are we’d just hurt each other,” he explained. “Hurt people lash out, sometimes in little ways and sometimes in worse ways. I know better than to think I’d be any different.” He patted her head with a huge gentle hand.
“That being said,” he continued. “I’m not going to make your decisions for you. You’re scared about the future, I get it, but you need to start taking charge of your life. You can’t control most things that happen to you, fluffies really can’t do that, so you need to do what you can. You’ll be less scared if you’re the one in charge of your life.”
Anne considered this, before finally reaching a decision. “Wan-” she said, before being cut off by Bjorn’s phone. He looked at it for a moment, then sighed and lifted it to his ear.
“What’s up, Wayne?” he said, then froze. “She WHAT?”
“She tried to bash her brains out,” Wayne repeated, a little agitation creeping into his voice despite his best efforts. Sandy was asleep in the saferoom, and now that things were less hectic his panic had turned into a sense of frustration. What the fuck was he supposed to do about this?
There was a pause, then Bjorn replied. “Well fuck.”
“What do I do?”
“I don’t know. Is she okay?”
“She’ll live,” Wayne shook his head. “Vet said it was dumb luck. Her horn deflected the edge of the incubator. If she’d hit dead-on she’d have lost an eye or might’ve driven her horn into her brain.”
“Any idea why? Besides the obvious.”
“I went to work for a bit today. She couldn’t take being alone at night and during the day, she said.”
He heard Bjorn sigh. “Well, that’s pretty straightforward.”
“Bjorn,” Wayne began, the hesitated. “I’m beginning to see why you said what you did. About the newborns.”
Bjorn snorted. “I don’t make a habit of bullshitting.”
“What do I do?” Wayne asked, mostly to himself.
“Realistically?” Bjorn said. “You could always just put them all down. I wouldn’t at this point but it’s always an option. Giving them up for adoption is a possibility, but there’s no way Sandy’s getting a new home with her coloration and issues.”
“No.”
He could almost hear Bjorn grinning. “Then either stay home for a few weeks until Sandy isn’t a wreck or get another fluffy to keep her company. Probably be for the best if the chirpies have a real mother and father figure too.”
“I can’t house more fluffies,” Wayne said, thinking about the guestroom-turned-saferoom. “There’s not enough space.”
“Nah, fluffies don’t need much space. They get anxious if they’re too far apart, so even with a lot of space they tend to group up. You could probably fit six, maybe seven in that room.”
“Don’t they need space to get exercise?”
“Just let them go outside when it’s warmer. Fluffies tend not to be very active if they can avoid it.”
Wayne considered this. Didn’t this mean he was right back where he was before he got Sandy in the first place? Sure, he could always try to find another feral fluffy to serve as a nursemare, but look where that’d gotten him last time. He groaned.
“So back to square one,” he said, and Bjorn chuckled.
“Not quite…” he said. "Lotus and Oak would love to be able to raise some foals of their own, and I found a filly recently that I may have to rehome. I could let them stay with you. I’ll have to get back to you on the last one once I know for sure.
“As for the other two, well…their job has been getting to Lotus lately and while Oak puts on a brave face I can’t tell he’s pretty burnt out too. I probably won’t be getting new stock for a while so it’s as good a time as any to train up replacements.”
Wayne was stunned. Bjorn was willing to give up two trained fluffies so readily? “Are you sure?”
“Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor,” Bjorn admitted sheepishly. “Having those two hanging around would just make things awkward for the new screeners. Best to make a clean break.”
Anne jumped up from where she’d been being aggressively hugged by Lotus while Bjorn was on the phone. The mare had been incredibly happy to see her when she’d been dropped off in the new arrivals room once more. Anne wasn’t sure why.
“Wan see sistah,” she said, a little annoyed at having been interrupted before. She saw him nod, seeming not at all surprised.
“I figured,” he said. He turned to Lotus. “Lotus, you’ll be going with her.”
Lotus froze. Confusion flashed across her face before it settled into a mix of sadness and fear. “Wai?”
“You’re not in trouble,” Bjorn reassured her. “You’ve been screening new fluffies long enough.”
“Did…did Wotus du bad job?”
“No! Nothing like that. I can tell it’s been getting to be too much, and I think it’s about time you raised a family of your own.”
Anne realized the implication before Lotus, who was seemingly stunned. “Wotus am nyu mummah?” she asked.
Sandy was dozing, half-dreaming, clutching her stuffy-friend close. She’d pretended to fall asleep, not wanting to be alone but not wanting daddeh to see her like this right now, but exhaustion had dragged her to the edge of sleep. She sniffled a little from time to time, tears suffusing the fluff around her eyes. Sandy am wowst babbeh ebah! she accused herself.
Flinching away from the present, she clung to memories of the past, trying to let herself get lost in them. She found herself latching onto one of her most recent good memories, one of playing with her older sister, the day before everything had fallen apart. Her legs twitched as, in her mind, she ran, ignoring the unpleasant feeling of the concrete below her hoofsies, enjoying the innocence that would be shattered so soon after.
Subconsciously she retreated deeper and deeper into half-dreams, half-memories. She clung to them, wishing they’d never end even as part of her wept, knowing that she’d never be able to go back. It felt so real. She could almost hear her sister’s voice, almost smell her. If only she could stay.
“Sandy!” her daddeh’s voice called, and she jerked fully into wakefulness, despairing and bitter at being pulled from the dream. She blinked, trying to clear the tears blurring her vision. She sniffled, her nose running from her unconscious sobbing.
She turned away, curling up into a tight miserable ball on her nesty. Of course, the one time in so long she had a pleasant dream, and daddeh woke her up. He never woke her up from nightmares. She grew more bitter, even though she knew it was unfair of her.
Daddeh was talking to her, but she ignored him. Still half-asleep, the words were garbled and meaningless anyway. Why wouldn’t he just let her go back to sleep? If she could just go back to sleep maybe the dream could continue. Maybe she could pretend not to be alone for just a little while.
Then something slammed into her, making her gasp for air. Flinching back, betrayal chasing guilt in her mind, she huddled, expecting to be hit again. She deserved it. She was a bad, worthless babbeh and even now was ignoring daddeh.
Then her breath came back, and with it a familiar smell. Her eyes widened, looking up at the blur that’d struck her. Purple and blue. The smell. The warmth embracing her.
“Sistah?”
Bjorn chortled at the absolute shock on both Wayne’s face and Sandy’s. God, it’d been worth not telling him Anne’s identity beforehand.
“I might’ve forgotten to mention,” he began, before Wayne’s expression set him off into another fit of giggles.
“Bjorn…” Wayne began, then stopped and just shook his head. “How?”
Bjorn managed to stop laughing. “Luck,” he said.
“Sandy said they all died.”
Bjorn grew a bit more somber. “The others did.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Well,” Bjorn explained. “Until earlier today I didn’t think she’d make it. I didn’t want to raise hopes for no reason. After that, well…”
Wayne stared at him flatly. “Very funny.” His voice betrayed no hint of amusement, but Bjorn noted the edges of his mouth twitch.
Sandy and Anne were a whirlwind of emotion. Joy at the reunion, sorrow over their shared loss, and a bit of optimism that maybe there was something more to life than pain and grief. It was bittersweet, but for the first time since their lives had unraveled, there was perhaps a little less bitter.
Sandy, as afternoon turned to evening, finally felt the storm of conflicting emotions begin to ebb. As tears of joy and commiseration stopped falling, she extricated herself from her sister’s embrace, feeling a more pressing matter of a much more physical nature. With it, came a realization.
“Anne wan see safewoom?” she asked, as she made her way to the litterbox.
“'es!”
Sandy led her sister around the room. In reality there wasn’t anything that would’ve been difficult to figure out, but…now that they were reunited, against all expectation, she found herself wanting to brag about all the things she-they had now.
“Wittahbox am fow gud peepees an’ poopies,” she explained. “Bad peepees an’ poopies nu am in wittahbox. Gud fwuffies nu make bad poopies an’ peepees. Dis am baww, am fow pwayin’. Bwockies am fow pwayin’, tuu. Stuffy-fwiend am fow huggies wen hab heawt-owwies. Nesty am fow sweepy-times. Bowws am fow nummies an’ wawa.”
That concluded the short tour, except for something she wasn’t sure she wanted to be around right now. “In-cuu-bay-tow am fow hewpin’ wiw’ chiwpy babbehs,” she said, trying to explain something she didn’t fully understand herself. She tried not to look at the slight stain on one of the corners of the incubator.
Her musings were interrupted when her stomach growled. With everything going on, she’d forgotten to eat anything since last night, and now that she’d settled down a little her body was making its displeasure known. Loudly.
Wayne struggled with the infernal contraption that was allegedly a can opener, finally managing to get the lid off the can of what might charitably be called spaghetti. Apparently it was better for fluffies than the real stuff, and they couldn’t tell the difference, but it smelled just a bit off to him. Well, he wasn’t going to be the one eating it, so his opinion wasn’t really relevant.
His return to the saferoom was met with much joy as the smell of the not-quite-pasta preceded him. He felt relieved when he noted that the sisters seemed to be doing much better, seemingly having taken to Oak and Lotus quite well. It made sense, all things considered, the pair being the closest thing to positive interactions the sisters had had with other fluffies lately.
He carefully measure out a fair amount for each of the fluffies, making sure to let them know that spaghetti was only a sometimes food. It was probably warping Anne’s expectations a little to get it the first day here, but this was a celebration. He could worry about that later.
The night grew long. The stuffy-friend lay abandoned on the floor, disregarded as the poor replacement it had always been as the sisters slept in the comforting warmth of their new fluffpile.
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Happy to see this story continue
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Yay for Anne and Sandy