SENECA MOUNTAIN
Chapter Two
David woke up ten minutes before his alarm was supposed to go off. He spent his unwanted spare time mulling over what had happened the night before. Just how the hell did a fluffy pony get into his room? He had seen the hole—it was no bigger than a softball. Unless the creature was smaller than the lab fluffies his class vivisected yesterday, there was no way it could have squeezed its fat ass through the opening.
But the idea that a tiny foal would wander into his room on its own, without him hearing a parent yelling for it when it screamed seemed unlikely. The boy was no expert on fluffies, but he knew that one old enough to talk (and, for that matter, eat solid foods) was just too damn big.
By the time David’s alarm sounded, he made up his mind that he wasn’t going to tell Mr. McClain—yet. He figured he could set up a makeshift trap and catch the biotoy himself. Surely that would sate his curiosity enough, and then he’d take it out and set it free near the edge of the forest.
His relationship with his family might be strained, but they were generous enough to send him “care packages” every few weeks with toiletries, snacks he could only find at home, and other sundries. He hadn’t yet tossed out the last box, so he set it up in the middle of the room, propped up by a drawing compass. He tied the compass to a string, the other end of which was secured to a candy bar. It was crude, but he thought it might do the trick.
He looked at the clock. Shit, I’d better get going! Fortunately, he had shaved yesterday and didn’t need to do so again this morning. He took a shower, dressed in his school uniform, and headed to the cafeteria for a quick breakfast.
“I need someone to solve for the value of PR…Mr. Hess, please step forward.”
Ben had a “deer in the headlights” expression on his face. He had been going over a cheat sheet for the Latin test later that day, which he had tucked into his Geometry textbook in the hopes that Mrs. Filali wouldn’t notice. But whether she noticed his lack of attention or not was irrelevant—his unfamiliarity with the subject at hand was about to be found out.
David, too, was worried over his Latin, but he was equally concerned by his inability to grasp the material in Geometry. He didn’t know what had happened between Algebra last year (in which he had done well) and Geometry this year, but he couldn’t afford to fall any further behind—not with the units on proofs coming up next quarter.
It was bad enough that the empty seat in front of him and to the left occupied so much of his attention. Maddie Cohen hadn’t shown up to class this morning. Fortunately, her roommate had.
Ellie Stevenson sat to David’s right in class. She wore both her curly blonde hair and her socks short, which Crowder and Hess called “a missed opportunity”. The boy leaned out of his desk and whispered to her.
“Hey, Ellie!”
Visibly annoyed by David’s distraction, she glared at him and mouthed, “What?”
“Where is Maddie?”
The girl’s features softened, noting that he was asking a serious question and not merely wasting her time. “Sick. Think she’s got the flu that’s going around. Oh, yeah! She gave me this to give to you.”
Ellie handed him the vivisection workbook that he would need to finish the fluffy project this afternoon. Shit, he thought. He had almost forgotten that there was more work to be done on the vivisection, and now it was all on him. On top of that, he still owed his lab partner an apology for flaking out on her the day before.
The rest of Geometry was hopeless. So were English, Art, and French after it. David struggled to focus on the tasks at hand, until he arrived in the Biology lab after lunch.
“Ah, good to see you again, Mr. Owings,” Mr. Simmons said. “I heard that your lab partner won’t be with us today, so go grab your tray off the rack and pick up where she left off.”
The freshman found his foal, which somehow still managed to breathe in spite of having an open chest cavity. He was amazed at the tiny creature’s resilience. As he carried the tray over to his workspace, his teacher patted him on the back.
“You ok, David?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You can do this.”
Mr. Simmons’ confidence in the boy gave him the push he needed. He set the tray down, opened his dissection kit, and leafed through the workbook to the last question that Maddie had answered. Huh. And I thought all girls had pretty handwriting. His classmate’s barely legible scribbles made it hard to determine where he should start, but soon, he was ready to diagram.
“Dad-deh…haff”, the foal gasped. David could see her heart twitching in her open chest. “Pwease gif ba–hack–babbeh hug…gies…Haf wowsest huwties…”
Ignoring the foal’s pleas, the student set about his work. He took his scalpel and severed the liver, and then pinned it to the tray. The fluffy’s eyes widened in horror as she saw yet another part of her that was supposed to be inside come outside.
“Huuuuuu…wai daddeh nu wuv fwuffy? Am bad fwuffy? Fwuffy neva hack am bad ‘gain! Fwuffy pwom—pwomise!”
The beast was beyond tears. Her eyes—as well as her exposed internal organs—had dried overnight. David was confused as to how she was still alive.
“Those of you who still have living fluffies, and I think there are four of you, are probably wondering just how that’s even possible. Part of it is, I spritzed each of them with water twice before I left the school yesterday, to help keep the little buggers moist. Part of it is because fluffy ponies have an exceptional ability to clot blood. They can sustain injuries that would cause most animals—humans included—to bleed out, and yet they keep on going.
David continued to cut out internal organs, per the instructions. His subject’s eyes narrowed as she resigned herself to her fate. She still watched every step of the process, and the young man wondered what the creature thought of him. Did she hate him? Did she wish she could mete out revenge, and do the same things he had done to her? Or was her mind just overwhelmed by the cold, callous manner with which he carried out the grisly task?
“Ok, are all of the groups with still-living foals up to the point of having just the heart and lungs left?” A couple of the students said they weren’t, so Mr. Simmons continued, “Well, hurry and get caught up. Once you all are done, like Hartman and Stanley are, and like Owings is, then I want everybody to gather around a tray with a live fluffy.”
Before long, fifteen students all hovered over David’s shoulder, curiously ogling the gutted fluffy.
“wan die…wan die…wan die…wan hyack die…”
“Not a moment too soon, huh, Mr. Owings? It looks like your foal has finally hit the dreaded ‘wan die’ loop. Ok, now, sever the heart and set it on the tray.”
David cut out the fluffy’s heart and plopped it down on the tray next to its cut-open stomach. The foal barely twitched, having long since given up on any hope of salvation. The students marveled at the still-beating organ as its last blood trickled out.
“…wan die…wan die…wan die…”
“Can anyone in the room tell my why the heart is still beating? Yes, Mr. Craig.”
The basketball player, who stood directly behind David, answered. “It’s because heartbeat isn’t controlled by the brain?”
Mr. Simmons clapped his hands. “Exactly! The heart has two nodes that keep the heart beating: one which triggers an electrical impulse, and another which regulates the signal. A human heart can beat for days on its own power, even after the brain is dead.
“…wan…die…wan…die…wan…die…”
“Now, everyone back to your seats and finish your exercises. When you’re done, dump all your waste in the trash cans, sanitize your tools and workstations, and you’re free to go. You can finish your follow-up questions in your workbooks tonight, and turn them in tomorrow.”
David, pleased at being singled out in a positive way, cheerfully finished his work five minutes later. His vivisected fluffy, which finally had breathed its last, was thrown with all the others in the big trash can at the front of the room. At the bottom of the heap of corpses was a still huu-huuing foal with prolapsed intestines—the one Ben Hess had squeezed too hard yesterday. The shower of “tummeh-sketties” and “foweva-sweepies munstah-fwuffies” pushed it over the edge.
“wan die…”
The Age of Pericles took a backseat to Latin study for David during the next period. By the time he took his test, he felt his hard work had paid off. At the very least, he felt as though he hadn’t failed.
He walked back to the dormitory with a spring in his step. All in all, it had been a pretty good day—he wasn’t failing Latin, he was praised for his work in Biology, and it was a beautiful day outside. You know, maybe he would take his uncle’s advice and get some fresh air.
Those plans changed when he got to his room and saw the cardboard box in the middle of his room. Oh, right. The trap. It looked like the trap had been sprung, so he quietly stepped past it to his desk and set his bookbag in his chair. Then, he knelt down next to the box and carefully placed his hand on the flap. Before he could lift up and peek under the edge, a thought crossed his mind.
What if there’s a fucking rat under there?
But a moment later, as if on cue, he heard a sound from inside the box.
“Huu huu…nu wike dawkies! Pwease, sowwy bawks, wet fwuffy owt!”
David grinned. Huh…I caught it. He knew that fluffies were slow, not very smart, and would eat damn near anything, but he figured he would have to re-bait the trap a couple of times, maybe wait until nighttime…but sure enough, there it was. He threw aside the box, and the little ball of fluff attempted its escape.
“SCREEEEEEEEEE! Nuuuuuuuu! Nu huwt fwuffy!”
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, grabbing the fluffy by its torso. Shit streamed out of the frightened beast’s anus. He turned its face toward his and examined its features. It was smaller than the weanling foals in the biology lab, and yet it had a fully grown mane and tail to match its fluff. Turning it to the side (since he didn’t dare face its hindquarters directly), he could plainly see its tiny balls. He turned it back around to face him and stared into its deep, green eyes. There was still one thing he didn’t understand.
“Pwease, nice mistah,” the fluffy begged, “nu huwt fwuffy. Pwease put fwuffy downsies an wet fwuffy gu! Onwy wan’ nummies fo tummeh-owwies!”
“Uhhhh, fluffy,” he said awkwardly. He hadn’t talked to a fluffy since…his family had owned one. “I didn’t think that baby fluffies could talk. Don’t you have a…uh…‘mummah’ or a ‘daddeh’ somewhere?”
The tiny fluffy puffed out its cheeks indignantly. “Fwuffy nu am babbeh! Am big fwuffy stawwion!”
It was all David could do to keep from laughing his head off. A big fluffy? Hell, this thing was the size of a koosh ball—he could probably punt it clear across the quad if he wanted!
“Ok, ok then. I’m sorry I offended you, ‘big fluffy stallion’,” he replied. “Would you like some foo—er, uh, ‘nummies’?”
That seemed to placate the offended creature. “Yus, nice mistah! Fwuffy wouwd wike gud nummies!”
He gently set the tiny pony down on the tile floor and started to search through his snack drawer. Eventually, he settled on giving it one of the granola bars from the last variety box his parents sent. He never did like the ones with the raisins. Maybe the fluffy would.
David unwrapped the granola bar and put it on a napkin to keep from getting the floor sticky (he’d already have to clean up the shit and piss the thing had made when he trapped it). The diminutive yellow stallion shuffled forward, sniffed the snack, and then hungrily devoured the sweet oaty treat.
“Fankoo fo’ gud nummies, nice mistah! Wan be nyu daddeh?”
Damn, these things get really clingy really fast. He wouldn’t mind having a pet in the room—if the thing stayed this small, he could keep it in a cage. It would be about like having a talking guinea pig!
But even though the school allowed students to keep fish, small reptiles, amphibians, and rodents, there was a strict rule prohibiting fluffy ponies. And who could blame them? The last thing a highly-respected college prep school needed was overly fecund pets and shit-covered dormitories.
“I can’t keep you here in my room. I could get in trouble for that,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what—any time I have extra ‘nummies’, I’ll leave them next to the hole you came through, ok?”
“Otay, nyu daddeh!”
“No, I’m not your ‘new daddy’,” he replied. “You can call me David.”
“Daddeh Dafit!”
“NO!” he exclaimed. He didn’t mean to yell quite so loudly—the small fluffy got so scared that it pooped on the floor again. Feeling remorseful, he apologized again.
“I’m sorry, fluffy. I shouldn’t have yelled. But…can we just stick to ‘David’ or ‘nice mister’?”
“Otay, den. Fwuffy caww ‘oo nice mistah!”
The boy smiled. “Ok, but what should I call you? Do you have a name?”
“Nu, fwuffy nu haf namie.”
David thought hard. He wasn’t sure that giving it a name was the best idea—naming it might make it get clingy, meaning it might try to live in his room, causing him to run afoul of the disciplinary committee—but if it was going to keep showing up, he didn’t feel like he could just keep calling it “fluffy”.
“How about Butter?”
“Fwuffy…haf namie? Am Buttew?”
The teenager shrugged. “Why not? You’re bright yellow, and it seems wrong for you to not have a name of your own.”
Butter ran forward and grabbed the boy’s leg with both front hooves. “Fankoo fow nyu namie, nice mistah! Buttew wuv ‘oo!”
Laughing nervously, David wondered if he’d made a mistake.
Once David had cleaned up the mess and convinced the fluffy that it couldn’t stay in his room (mainly by telling it his roommate was a “scary monster”), he found out that it hadn’t been living in the walls for long. Butter, as he had decided to call it, had sought shelter from last night’s rainstorm and rested uncomfortably on part of the wooden wall frame.
“Den Buttew haf tummeh-owwies an gu wook fow nummies! An dat am when Buttew fine gud nummies an fine nice mistah!”
“Hmmm…well, I won’t tell anyone if you want to keep living in the wall, but it’s going to start stinking in here if you shi—uh, poop in the room or in the wall. Can you still find your way out into the grass?”
“Yus, nice mistah! Buttew kno whewe da howe am…Buttew wiww make gud poopies in da gwassies, an haf sweepies in da waww nestie!”
“Sounds good to me. Oh! I have an idea.” David went over to the bathroom and grabbed a handful of cotton balls out of the cabinet. “Do you think you could build a more comfortable nest out of these?”
The yellow stallion nuzzled at the soft cotton, and then his face lit up. “Dis am make softest beddie, nice mistah! Fankoo!”
“Good. I’ll put it over here next to the hole, and you can take it whenever you like. I’d like to sit here and talk some more, but I’ve gotta work on some homework.” In addition to finishing the lab book from the vivisection, he had a quarterly exam on Friday in History for which he needed to study, and had a ten page paper due in English that same day. So he spent the next hour finishing the post-lab questions before heading over to the cafeteria. All the while, Butter hummed happily to himself about his “nyu softie beddie.”
David sat down at a table with Ben and Josh, who bemoaned their poor performance on the afternoon Latin test. They gave David a hard time when he said he believed he had done well, but the conversation changed entirely when an unlikely diner walked through the door.
Several teachers lived on campus as dorm parents, but Mr. Simmons rented a house just outside of White Sulphur Springs and drove to the school every morning. He wasn’t married, and had reportedly been asked to serve as Dean of Men (which would have given him an extra stipend, plus an on-campus apartment), but he deferred. The Biology teacher said he “liked his privacy”.
Ben Hess, who would befriend anyone, flagged down the teacher and invited him to sit with them. The man acknowledged his student, and took a seat across from the three boys.
“What’re you doing here, Mr. Simmons?” Josh asked. “Don’t you usually eat dinner at home?”
“Yeah,” the teacher replied. “My power’s out, and I haven’t run to the store for anything worth grilling. Besides, I get a certain number of meals here for free every month. So, here I am.”
The three boys and their teacher talked for nearly an hour before Ben and Josh begged off—apparently, neither had started on the English paper that was due on Friday. David finished his turkey wrap, but then lingered at the table while Mr. Simmons ate his spaghetti.
“Mr. Simmons, I have a couple questions about…fluffies.”
The teacher pondered for a moment while chewing, and then responded. “Fluffies? Whaddya want to know?”
The student knew he had to be careful. While he trusted the Biology instructor, he knew the man had a particular animus towards biotoys. Besides that, he couldn’t have anyone knowing he harbored one in his room.
“I…uh…saw something in an old magazine the other day—don’t remember which one—about fluffies that were…I don’t know…somehow smaller than regular ones. They weren’t foals, or anything. They were just fully grown fluffies the size of foals.”
“Oh yeah, ‘microfluffies’,” Mr. Simmons said, before taking another bite of his pasta.
“Those are a thing?!?” David asked, feigning surprise. Of course, he didn’t know there was such a thing until one showed up in his dorm.
“Well, they were a thing. But yeah, some company came in a couple years after the fluffy release and figured out how to make miniature ones—like you said, the size of a regular fluffy foal. The process was a bit different than selective breeding used to make ‘miniature’ dogs and horses. We’ll talk more about selective breeding and genetics next month.”
“And they were all the rage for a while. Especially in big cities, with people who lived in tight spaces and didn’t have a room to devote to a demented toddler of a pet. And people who didn’t have outdoor space, or weren’t inclined to deal with a regular fluffy’s waste output. I mean, who could blame them?”
David nodded. “So, when you say they were popular…”
The teacher shook his head as he swallowed the last of his breadstick. “Not anymore. Not for some time. See, you’ve heard all about the damage that feral fluffies can do, and about how they’re at best an annoyance and a public nuisance. Being from your part of the country, you’ve probably seen some of it, even though you’re too young to remember the megaherds. Well, feral microfluffies can be a pain, too, as lots of apartment dwellers and real estate investors found out.”
“I mean, we’re talking feces piling up and piling up, and before you know it the wall frames are rotting. Not to mention spoiled food, potential diseases, and general annoyance. Imagine having your headboard up against a wall and having to listen to a whole herd of the little things babbling on about the same things that any fluffy does!”
David nodded again. Butter probably wasn’t going away now—not without forceful intervention—but he needed to keep tabs on things to make sure that dozens of them didn’t try to colonize the inside of the walls.
“So, you can imagine what happened after that—New York was the first city to pass an ordinance banning the sale of micros, and most major cities weren’t far behind. With the big markets gone, the big retailers stopped selling them. You might be able to find them in some of the more laissez-faire parts of the country—Tennessee, for sure, and maybe the Dakotas and some other states out that way—but only at some of the little boutique stores.”
“Interesting. Thanks, Mr. Simmons.”
“No problem. And, I know I said this before, you did a really good job in the lab today. As long as your workbook is in good order, you and Miss Cohen will have done well. By the way, have you talked to her yet about yesterday?”
“Well, no, with her out sick, I didn’t have a chance to—“
“Take the lab workbook over to Carlisle and give it to her.”
“What?” David gasped. Carlisle Hall was the girls’ dormitory. David and all the boys lived in Boreman Hall. “Sir, even if I get over there before they lock the doors, they’ll never let me in…”
sigh “You’re allowed in the common rooms, Mr. Owings,” the teacher sighed with exasperation. “Did you really not know that?”
The boy shook his head. For the past two months, he had gone from his dormitory to the cafeteria to class, with frequent detours to the library. Going into the girls’ dorm had never crossed his mind.
“Pfff, the old Dean of Women told me she had to take the broom to male students trying to stay in Carlisle. Well, I’ve given you a pretense to make your apology. You can thank me later. But don’t show up in my class tomorrow if you don’t have the guts to do what needs done today. Did Ms. Wilkinson tell you all what Spartan mothers told their sons leaving for the Peloponnesian Wars?”
“Come back with your shield, or on it?” David asked as he rose from his seat with his empty tray.
Mr. Simmons pointed at him, confirming that the student had answered correctly. “One of my all time favorite quotes. Go out and die proudly, Mr. Owings. Kiss and make up with Miss Cohen—kissing optional.”
David flushed red as he exited the cafeteria. His teacher must have noticed, as the boy could hear his laughter until the door closed behind him.
“Fankoo fow da not-sketties, nice mistah! Dey gud!”
“You’re welcome, Butter.” David had used his microwave to cook a Cup-A-Noodle for the microfluffy, and it seemed to really enjoy the instant ramen. “Did you get your nest all set up?”
“Yus, nice mistah! Buttew make da softes’ beddie wif da softie bawws dat nice mistah gif. Buttew eben gu owtside an make gud poopies in da gwassies!”
Ok, didn’t really need to know that. “That’s good, Butter. Hey, I’ve gotta go out for a little while. I guess you’ll be asleep when I get back.”
“Weww, Buttew am tiwed,” the fluffy said with a yawn. “Am gu sweepies in da soft nestie soon.”
“Ok, then. Bye.”
“Goobai, nice mistah!” The tiny stallion stood up on its hind legs and waved its hooves at David as he shut the door.
When he opened the door to the outside, the cool night air felt like needles on his exposed face. The mountain nights usually are twenty degrees colder than they are a hundred miles in either direction, and David felt the difference acutely. The last of the fall colors clung to the leaves, but a frigid night would probably be the leaves’ last stand.
The teenager took in the sights all around as the sun slipped behind Seneca Mountain. Both dormitories were on the same side of the quad, but were themselves separated by a broad, green expanse upon which grew a number of ancient oak trees. Legends said the trees were planted by George Washington himself as he passed through to survey the Kanawha Valley—but, of course, every town in West Virginia tells a similar story.
David nervously walked up the steps to Carlisle Hall and tried the door handle. It was not yet eight o’clock, so he opened the heavy door with relative ease and stepped into the entryway. On one side of the mudroom, there was a rack and bin for visitors’ coats and shoes, respectively. Wanting to make a good impression, the boy hung up his blazer (as he was still inexplicably dressed in his school uniform) and inserted his shoes into one of the pigeonholes in the bin. He clutched his Biology workbook under his left arm and walked forward into the lounge.
The lounge area in the girls’ dormitory was better kept than that in Boreman Hall. The couches and tables were all pristine, though covered with so many throw pillows that David was unsure how anyone could sit down. A large television—the only one allowed in Carlisle Hall, and identical to the one the boys used—hung on one wall. On the opposite wall were shelves filled with books and board games. The back wall was full of windows, which displayed a picturesque view of the broad, green valley below.
In addition to being David’s history teacher, Ms. Wilkinson was also the Dean of Women. She lived in an apartment in Carlisle Hall, acted as a sort of “dorm parent”, and helped the girls with life in general. She sat on one of the lounge’s plushy couches talking to a sophomore girl—the grin on the latter’s face (and the lack of tears) indicated to the boy that he had likely not walked in on a sensitive conversation.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Owings!” the cheerful young teacher said. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, hi, Ms. Wilkinson. I was hoping I could deliver this notebook to Maddie Cohen. It’s for Biology class.”
The woman and female student both looked at each other, smiled, and then the teacher turned to David. “Of course. I need to get back to my apartment and grade some papers, anyway. Emma, would you be so kind as to tell Maddie that David Owings is here to see her?”
“Sure,” the girl with shoulder-length blonde hair said. “She lives across the hall from me—David, right?”
“Yeah. Ok, thanks.”
Ms. Wilkinson took a left at the hallway towards her apartment, and the girl named Emma went down the hallway on the right. David stood awkwardly in place.
He looked over the board games on the shelf, recognizing several he had at home. The shelves were stocked with three different versions of Monopoly, a Rook deck, Bananagrams, Apples to Apples, and a dozen other games that looked as though they were as old as the building. Heck, all the boys’ dorm had was a set of core D&D rulebooks. Come to think of it, Josh and Ben had gotten themselves into a Saturday night D&D game. Maybe he could talk the players into letting him—
“Hi, David!”
The boy nearly jumped out of his skin as the familiar voice brought him back to reality. He turned to see Maddie Cohen standing at the entrance to the hallway in plaid pajama pants and a red t-shirt with “CORNELL” written across it in white. His first thought was how cold it was tonight, but then he shook it off and attempted to not look like an awkward dork.
“Uh, hi Maddie. I, uh, just wanted to let you take a look at the lab workbook before it gets turned in tomorrow.”
“Thanks! You know, from what I heard, you probably didn’t need to bother. Everyone I’ve talked to says you were great today.”
“Really? I mean, uh, yeah. Mr. Simmons said I did a good job. That’s got to count for something, right?”
“Mmhmmm,” the girl said as she leafed through David’s work. Maddie Cohen wasn’t an ugly girl—she had thick, straight, black hair that tumbled past her shoulders, and deep brown eyes. But her somewhat large nose, thin lips, and braces kept her from meeting the standards of traditional beauty.
“Hmmm…I might change this answer here about the vocal cords. What do you think?”
“Sure, no problem. Uh, Maddie?”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to apologi—I’m really sorry about running out on the lab yesterday.”
The freshman girl turned her head to face him and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I figured you got sick. Honestly, I thought I was gonna do the same when I made the thing poop into the sink. That smell was awful!”
“Yeah, yeah it was,” he replied. “By the way, how are you feeling today?”
“Better. It’s not that nasty flu that’s been going around, thank God. I’ll definitely be in class tomorrow, if you want to go back now before it gets too cold out.”
But…it’s already cold in here… Hoping he had raised his eyes before his classmate noticed, he responded. “Yeah, I probably should. Hey, are you wearing contacts?”
“No,” she said, brushing her hair behind her ear. “I’m just not wearing my glasses right now. That’s why I was holding the workbook about three inches from my face. I can’t see a thing.”
Thank God. “Oh, I didn’t know. Well, I’d probably better get going. I’ve still got another five pages to go on that English paper. You?”
“Finished mine last weekend. Thanks for bringing the notebook! I’ll finish looking at it in my room…once I can get my glasses back on.”
“Yeah, that might be easier. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Ok. Bye, David.”
“Bye.”
David watched as Maddie started back down the hall and then he walked out into the cold night air. All the way back to the dorm, he prayed silently that he hadn’t come off sounding like too much of an autist.
In spite of America’s successes with the Apollo program, the Soviets were the first to land a remote controlled probe on the moon. Lunokhod 1, a seven foot long rover with eight wheels, traveled around the moon for almost a year. It sent photographs and soil sample analysis back to earth until it lost contact with home on September 14, 1971. Its exact resting place was unknown until NASA rediscovered it in 2010.
Motivated by Maddie’s declaration that she had finished her paper on HIV research days ago, David was able to hammer out four pages about the space race over the next three hours. He decided the conclusion could wait until tomorrow night, despite the fact that his roommate Eli would be back from the soccer tournament.
That left him with an even bigger concern—how was he going to hide Butter’s presence from his roommate? The little yellow stallion could spend most of his time in the wall or outside around the edge of the building, but what if he came in looking for “nummies”?
“God, I shouldn’t have started feeding him, should I?” He gave the matter a lot of thought, and decided that feeding the microfluffy was probably better than letting him scavenge throughout the building, where a less-sympathetic student might stomp him to death.
But why did David feel responsible? Mr. Simmons had said that the things were considered pests, and it’s not like he could full-on keep it as a pet. Maybe the best course of action would have been to plug the hole in the wall with a box or a book, and to have forgotten about it entirely.
While he wallowed in his indecision and wondered whether he had made a huge mistake, he thought back to memories of home…
“Daddeh Dafit! Daddeh Dafit! Vawentine am su ‘cited tu see ‘oo!”
“Not now, Valentine. I need to study.”
“Bu’ Vawentine am dancie-fwuffy! Wook, daddeh Dafit—Vawentine am make dancie!”
“Later, Valentine.”
That’s right. He had shunned the fluffy pony so he could go “study” in his room. He still remembered the pegasus’ exuberance—how she danced on her hind legs and fluttered her tiny wings to get his attention. And he remembered how dejected she looked when he told her he didn’t have time for her. It was the first time in months that he remembered those moments so clearly—usually, his mind went straight to the traumatic events in the bedroom. That was when the realization hit him:
All I had to do was show her a little bit of love and care, and nothing bad would have happened.
The self-rebuke seemed to chill his very soul. Nothing that happened from that fateful day to the time he came to the mountains would have happened if he had just taken a few minutes to throw a rubber ball for her to chase, or let her babble on about her day, or…or something.
But it was too late. What had been done was in the past, and couldn’t be rewritten. Valentine was gone for good, and probably dead. Her life had probably ended because of the pain and terror he inflicted upon her. All because he was too busy for a few moments of kindness.
David cried. He cried in a way that any teenage boy would die of shame if anyone saw. The tears flowed freely from his cheeks, and it was all he could to to move the library book in front of him out of the way so he didn’t smudge the pages.
“Nice mistah…haf saddies?”
The boy was able to control his sobs for long enough to look down and see the earthie microfluff sitting on his hind legs with his front legs stretched out.
“Buttew gif huggies? Huggies make evewyfing bettew!”
He wasn’t sure about “huggies” making anything better, but he didn’t want the tiny creature to think otherwise. While Butter hugged David’s neck with its little marshmallow hooves and nuzzled against his chin, he resolved to give the fluffy the best life he could.