Part Seven
Oak wasn’t having a good time. While he was big, and strong, and brave, he was still a fluffy, and being a fluffy meant certain things. For one, it meant that sleeping alone on the floor instead of in the fluffpile, even with the nightlight, was terrifying. Oh, and also uncomfortably cold.
It was self-inflicted, but that really didn’t help. Being noble and selfless is all well and good, but it didn’t stop his teeth chattering or hooves numbing. It also didn’t stop his imagination from running wild with all the worst monsters it could conjure up.
Worse than that, though, was the isolation. The cold and dark were only problems at night, but the isolation was more or less constant. It was beginning to gall, but he wasn’t about to complain. He’d known what he was getting into.
~
Lotus was not having a good time. While finally having the chance to have babbehs of her own was something she’d wanted for so many forevers…well, this wasn’t what she’d imagined.
Not that she was saying they were bad babbehs, she wouldn’t dream of that. They were just…very difficult. For one thing, she was dealing with two chirpy foals that were a little stunted, probably because, in spite of his best efforts, new-daddeh hadn’t known how to care for them. That was just a minor issue compared to the big problem.
Lotus was kind, caring, and compassionate, in many ways the perfect mare to be a mother. She was also, however, a fluffy that’d spent much of her life screening other fluffies for suitability in the Barn. This had resulted in certain avoidant behaviors, and since neither of the two fillies under her care would have made the cut, she was finding it almost impossible to develop any attachment for them.
She would have bitten her tongue off before admitting it, but she didn’t love either of the fillies. It wasn’t their fault, and she didn’t let it get in the way of giving them the care they needed, but she just couldn’t do it. Too many times she’d gotten attached to damaged foals, only for them to be taken away and euthanized. Even though she knew it wouldn’t happen this time, the gnarled mass of scar tissue around her heart was too thick.
Lotus wasn’t a bad mother to the pair, by any means, but she could tell they’d noticed the coldness. Try as she might, her best attempts to pretend to love them lacked the genuine warmth that she expressed towards the chirpy foals, and she could tell it bothered them. Hell, it bothered her more than she could express, had she had anyone to express it to.
Worst of all, though, she was having to do it all almost on her own. She didn’t blame Oak at all for staying as distant as he could, not after what had happened the first time he’d tried to help. He was trying his best, and she could tell this was all just as hard on him as on her. It still didn’t help at night when she just wanted her special-friend’s embrace.
~
Anne was not having a good time. After the initial surge of joy at reuniting with Sandy, things had quickly turned sour, and she couldn’t help but feel that it was all her fault.
Her new mummah didn’t love her, she could tell, which wasn’t surprising. The very first thing she’d done after meeting the mare had been to break her heart by saying literally dying was preferable to being in her care. She hadn’t meant it like that, of course, but it was what she’d done.
Worse, she’d driven a wedge between her new mummah and her new mummah’s special-friend. That, at least, wasn’t entirely her fault, since Oak, who she couldn’t bring herself to call daddeh, had distanced himself without being asked after the first…incident. Still, she heard mummah sniffling at night, and knew that she was causing her a lot of pain and loneliness.
Things had first gone bad the night after their reunion. While the chirpy foals and Sandy and their new parents had snuggled up, Anne had felt reluctant, pretending to play with blocks until finally new-daddeh had turned off the lights. Ignoring her misgivings, Anne had joined the fluffpile.
Then it’d all gone wrong. It wasn’t his fault, and she never blamed him, but as soon as she got too close to Oak she wasn’t in the saferoom anymore. She was back on the asphalt, hearing the smarty’s heavy breathing above her, feeling the pain, feeling like she’d never be clean again.
She hadn’t even been aware of crawling away from the fluffpile, but if Sandy hadn’t tackled her she probably would have drowned herself in the water bowl that night. After that there had been a lot of crying, Anne had screamed things she regretted, and then she’d spent the night in new-daddehs room while Sandy pleaded with her to not hate her anymore.
~
Sandy was not having a good time. She didn’t know why, or how, everything had fallen apart so quickly.
New-mummah didn’t love her, that was clear, in spite of everything she’d tried to do to make herself not seem like a bad babbeh. New-daddeh was avoiding her, which was understandable after what had happened with Anne. The chirpy-babbehs were, well, too young to really care about anything but warmth and milkies.
What hurt worst was what had happened with Anne. Even the next day, after her sister had tearfully apologized, Sandy still couldn’t quite look at her the same way. There were meany-words, then there was what they’d said to each other.
She hadn’t really understood what was happening, that night. Anne hadn’t wanted to join the fluffpile, even after Sandy had overcome her own misgivings about being near new-daddeh and tried to lead by example. After daddeh turned off the lights, though, that’s when everything went to poopies.
Sandy hadn’t understood what was going on when Anne began flailing, kicking her away as she tried to hug her sister. She’d tried to get an answer, but all she got in response were panicked chirps, like a tiny babbeh. Then Lotus had started to panic and new-daddeh had started to panic and the chirpy-babbehs had started to panic, too.
In the end, Sandy had to stop Anne from giving herself drowny-hurties or forever-sleepies! Now, she knew she hadn’t handled it the best, and that Anne’s leggies still had the worstest hurties, but Sandy hadn’t known what to do! So she’d pinned her sister to the floor and screamed at her to wake up.
Daddeh had come running to the saferoom, looking worried and confused, and then the fight had started.
Sandy didn’t blame daddeh for not knowing what to do, since nobody else had, either. Lotus had frozen, trying to comfort the chirpy-babbehs. New-daddeh had backed away into a corner, trying to make himself as small as possible, which was probably the best thing he could have done in retrospect. Sandy, though, had said things she regretted.
Daddeh had tried to help, of course, but whenever he tried to say anything either Sandy or Anne would just scream over him.
“WAI SISTAH TWY GU FOWEBAH-SWEEPIES?” Sandy had shrieked, which had been what jarred Anne out of her stupor.
“Wut?”
“DUMMEH ANNE AM WOWSTEST SISTAH EBAH! WAN GIB SANDY MO’ HEART-HUWTIES!”
That had not been the best response, she knew, but Sandy had been in a blind panic at the thought of losing her sister again. She couldn’t go back to being all alone again, without anyone who actually loved her.
“Anne am wowstest sistah ebah?” Anne had snapped, incredulously. “At weast Anne nu weabe sistah tu hab wowstest enfies ebah an’ fowebah-sweepies!”
“Dat nu am faiw! Wut wud Sandy eben du?”
“Stop it, you tw-”
“Anne nu nyo! Mebbe nu be dummeh cowawd poopie munstah babbeh?”
“Nu am Sandy’s fauwt! Nu wan be nu-pwetty babbeh! Nu wan be munstah babbeh! Nu wan be scawdy babbeh! Mebbe if owd-mummah nu wub Anne mo’ den Sandy Sandy nu wud be scawdy-babbeh!”
“Owd-mummah? OWD-MUMMAH? SU SANDY NU EBEN CAWE ‘BOUT MUMMAH NU MO’?”
“Stop fighting.”
“Dat nu am wut Sandy sae! Dummeh Anne onwy bestest babbeh 'cuz am pwetty! DUMMEH!”
“An’ munstah-smawty onwy fin’ famiwy ‘cuz Sandy am woud dummeh babbeh an’ wan mo’ nummies!”
“An’ dummeh Anne desewbe bad-en-”
“BOTH OF YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!” daddeh had roared, and all the fluffies in the room had practically fallen over in shock.
“Right. Anne, you’re sleeping in my room tonight. We can deal with this tomorrow when you’ve both cooled down. Lotus, keep an eye on Sandy for me.”
Sandy, however, realized what it was she’d been about to say before she got cut off, and shrieked. “SANDY AM SOWWY! NU TAKE ANNE! ANNE PWEASE NU HATE SANDY!”
But daddeh hadn’t been interested in leaving her sister there, so Sandy had sat by the safe room gate all night, crying and begging her sister not to hate her anymore.
~
Wayne wasn’t sure what the fuck he was supposed to do. He hadn’t been naive enough to think that there wouldn’t be problems. He just hadn’t expected the shit to hit the fan so hard or so fast.
He’d just put the fluffies to bed and gotten into bed himself when the screaming started. Apparently Anne had tried to drown herself in the water bowl after some kind of PTSD flashback. Then the two fillies had gotten into a screaming match.
Wayne still wasn’t the best at understanding fluffspeak, and the two had been screaming which didn’t help, but as far as he could tell they’d both gone way too far. So he’d had Anne sleep in his room, or at least try to, while Sandy cried by the saferoom gate all night. And he really meant all night.
Fortunately, he’d gotten over his shock in time to shout down Sandy before she’d finished saying something that would probably have done irreparable damage to the pair’s relationship. Even so, both of the fillies were hurting, guilty, and avoiding each other. The problem was, Wayne had no idea how to handle it.
Had it been back at the research station, he’d have chewed the pair out and forced them to reconcile like adults. That being said, the fillies were A: not adults, B: never going to develop that level of maturity, and C: in far too delicate of an emotional state.
So, apart from getting a water bottle instead of a bowl and having Anne sleep apart from the others for the time being, he had no idea how to approach the issue.
~
Bjorn was in the basement tending to the only profitable section of the Barn. Walking along the suspended fluffies, he carefully checked the feeding tubes, IV drips, and checked each fluffy’s pupils for a response with a flashlight. Seeing everything was satisfactory, save that #1, #7, and #18 were nearly spent, he started to leave.
Bjorn didn’t like the necessity of what he did in the basement. That wasn’t to say he intended to stop, but the suspended, unresponsive fluffies were, frankly, creepy. Creepy, but also very profitable and performing a very important service.
Bjorn was no fool, and had long ago realized that making money from raising fluffies meant making them suffer. Not for reasons of discipline, just logistically. Because raising a fluffy to be happy, healthy, and well-behaved was expensive, and all but the rarest of them wouldn’t net a positive return on investment.
Shelters, of course, bypassed this issue by being non-profits and receiving various grants. Government funding and donations helped a lot, and volunteer labor helped more. Even so, shelters tended to resort to generous application of euthanasia to keep spots open and deal with the more…extreme cases. All of that to keep their residents in what could almost be called tolerable living conditions.
Breeders tended to go one of two different ways. Those without high-quality breeding stock usually went for the mass-production strategy, which meant each fluffy had to be very, very cheap to produce, and so would get the worst of the worst in terms of food, interaction, and housing. On the other hand, those pursuing quality over quantity usually culled the vast majority of the foals they produced since they just weren’t worth keeping around, causing immense distress to their breeding stock.
In short, unless you were lucky enough to find truly spectacular breeding stock, the kind that could guarantee at least half of their offspring would rake in big bucks, trying to be a fluffy breeder and hugbox at the same time was a fool’s errand. Bjorn had known this long before he’d opened the Barn, and the business in the basement had been developed and perfected long before he’d created the main pens. All of that, just to barely break even on the Barn.
Shutting the basement door behind him, he flipped the lights off. The inhabitants wouldn’t care, and keeping the basement dark served two purposes. First, none of his fluffies would try to go into the basement on the off chance the door was somehow open and they were wandering the halls. Secondly, and more importantly, it saved money.
Making a note to try to find three new viable inhabitants for the basement, Bjorn closed up shop. Taking care not to jostle the box of vials, even if they were well-packed and quite safe from shattering, he loaded the box into his van. Time to do what paid the bills.
~
Wayne finally made up his mind. As much as he disliked constantly pestering his friend, and as much as his pride urged him to deal with the problem himself, it was time to call Bjorn. Again.
Wayne was beginning to think he’d made a mistake in adopting the fluffies. Any of them. Well, that wasn’t fair. Oak and Lotus were perfectly behaved, and the chirpy foals weren’t really able to cause problems if they’d wanted to.
The problem was the filly sisters. Although they’d sort-of reconciled over the last couple of days, things hadn’t gotten much better otherwise. Sandy had gotten into the habit of curling up in a corner and muttering, although what she was saying he couldn’t make out, and Anne had flat-out refused to use the litterbox.
The first few times she’d made a mess he’d been understanding, listening to Lotus explain that this was all too new for the filly, even if he suspected that Anne knew better. After that, however, he’d felt obligated to start punishing the filly for it, since she clearly knew what she was doing was wrong, based on how she tried to hide the messes.
This was where he’d made a big mistake. Not wanting to isolate the pair from each other, since isolation had been what made Sandy attempt to take her own life, he’d opted for the sorry-stick instead of the sorry-box. He’d had to use it once on Sandy, so he knew what to expect: begging, crying, shrieking, and then she’d move on like nothing happened.
That hadn’t been what had happened with Anne, though. Although she’d accepted that she was going to be punished, as soon as he brought out the sorry-stick, she’d ran. So he’d given chase, caught up to her in two steps, and gently held the filly down and given her three light taps across the rump.
He’d expected her to cry and apologize for making a mess and say she was a good fluffy, not to go absolutely fucking catatonic. Wayne had been so shocked and worried that he’d just dropped the sorry-stick and brought the filly over to Lotus to ask what was wrong. The mare, of course, had immediately panicked and everything had gotten out of control again from there.
So then he’d been stuck cleaning up not only the messes Anne had made, but also the mess Lotus had made and the mess the chirpies had made when the mare dropped them. Worse, he had to do all that while Sandy was screaming and begging him not to hurt her sister any more, which was stupid because he hadn’t even hurt Anne in the first place.
Anne had snapped out of it about half an hour later, only to start shrieking at the top of her lungs. He couldn’t understand most of it, but “fowebah-sweepies” and “bad-enfies” and “munstah” had all been repeated at least a few times. What that all meant was a mystery, but he had a theory and he didn’t like it.
He suspected holding the filly down had caused her to have another flashback, and with the sorry-stick striking her rump, it’d probably been even worse than the one two days ago. So Wayne was reluctantly assuming that Anne thought she was going to be raped again and presumably killed. After about an hour of soothing by Lotus and Sandy, she’d eventually calmed down a bit, though.
Calmed down a bit didn’t mean calm though. It just meant that instead of wailing like, well, like a filly being raped, she was just laying in a sobbing heap repeating “Nu wan!” over and over. The problem was, neither the fluffies nor Wayne had any idea of what to do to help.
~
“Jesus Christ,” Bjorn muttered, inspecting Anne.
“Well,” he sighed, handing the foal over to Lotus and standing. “That’s not good.”
“Obviously,” Wayne snapped, clearly over-stressed. “What can we do?”
“Not much,” Bjorn admitted. “She’s too young for sedatives. We could give her some anyway, but it’s a coin flip as to whether she’d survive. Other than that, maybe therapy, but it’s dubious how effective that is on fluffies.”
“How do you handle when your fluffies are like this?”
“I don’t,” Bjorn shook his head. “I put them out of their misery before they drive the rest into a panic.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Wayne glanced down at Sandy, who had retreated to the corner again and didn’t seem to be listening. “I can’t do that to Sandy.”
“Nu gib Anne fowebah-sweepies!” Lotus interjected.
“Then I guess all you can do is wait it out, if she doesn’t go wan-die or find some way to end it herself, anyway.”
“Damn it,” Wayne muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Sorry,” Bjorn grimaced. “Also, Wayne?”
“What?”
“What is Sandy doing?”
“I don’t know, she’s just started doing that since they fought.”
Bjorn walked over to Sandy who ignored him, and listened. “Wayne,” he said, struggling to keep his tone level. “Have you listened to what she’s saying?”
“No, I…” Wayne replied, walking over, then froze. “Oh, fuck no!”
“Hatchu, Sandy. Aww 'ou fauwt. Hatchu, Sandy. Aww 'ou fauwt. Hatchu, Sandy. Aww 'ou fauwt. Hatchu, Sandy. Aww 'ou fauwt. Hatchu, Sandy. Aww 'ou fauwt. Hatchu, Sandy. Aww 'ou fauwt.”
Eyyy! Hype to see another chapter of this, i have to know if these foals can recover.
Unless resetting via ECT is an option in MuffinMantis’s head canon, it’s probably simpler to follow Bjorn’s initial thoughts and euthanise the pair.
Anne is extremely self centred, which is understandable as she’s still a foal. All she cared about was her pain and hurt and wasn’t willing to suck it up to make Sandy happy that her sister was even still alive - she even preferred death to being in the care of Lotus.
That tells me she simply doesn’t have a survivor’s mentality, making it hard to believe that she would have the mental fortitude to endure the long hard work of therapy and healing needed to overcome her trauma.
While believing that she died before she changed her mind on wanting to die, now she’s using her victimhood for her justification to hurt Sandy.
Sandy is similar, just hurt and lashing out without any restraint or thought to the consequences. The survivor’s guilt has been redirected into hatred for her sister only a single night after re-uniting, so there’s little hope for fixing things.
Meanwhile Bjorn and Wayne have a level of compassion, understanding and tolerance worthy of a bodhisattva, making them kinda boring human characters.