Dylan woke up early. Since he started working on the farm, he’d been getting into the habit of getting up either at or a little before sunrise. At this time of year, that meant around five in the morning. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the first thoughts that forced themselves into Dylan’s head were the events of the previous evening. The recollection immediately soured his mood and Dylan picked up his phone, texting Emrys to tell him he was taking a mental health day. With that done, Dylan rolled over and went back to sleep.
His second wake up occurred at roughly ten in the morning. He got up, showered, dressed, and made coffee for himself. Carrying his mug to his computer, he sat down and started browsing. The first order of business was checking up on the latest from the webcomics he followed. The second was to do some online shopping. There were a number of things on his mental wish list that he looked over, checked the prices on, read the reviews for, and jotted down on a notepad while finishing his coffee.
Once he’d compiled a satisfactory list of things, he decided to head out and do some physical shopping. He needed to get out of the house for a while. Dylan drove to the FluffMart closest to him, a few blocks to the south and a few more to the west, not far from the local Home Depot he occasionally hit up.
After crossing the parking lot and stepping up onto the sidewalk in front of the FluffMart, Dylan noticed a fat, orange, earthie mare with a white mane and tail loitering outside the sliding doors of the store. She sat a little way off, in the shade of the store’s awning to avoid the warm spring sun, and she perked up when she saw him, wagging her little tail and calling out. “Hewwo nice mistah. Pwease spawe some nummies fow a fwuffy down on hew wuck?”
Dylan’s automatic panhandler response kicked in. Lowering and shaking his head, he avoided eye contact and muttered while walking through the sliding doors, “Nah, sorry.”
“Dat am otay. 'Ou hab nice bwight-times!” the reply from behind came before the voice was drowned out by the hum of the store’s air conditioning unit and piped-in music.
Only when he had walked past the checkouts and found himself standing in the central aisle of the FluffMart did he fully realize that he’d just passed a panhandling fluffy. A panhandling fluffy. Dylan shook his head. She had to belong to an employee or something. Pushing the encounter from his mind, he walked towards the back of the store, ready to begin his typical back-to-front shopping pattern.
In the back aisle, near the fluffy beds and temporary playpens, Dylan started to walk and peruse the assorted products. Just as he reached the end of the aisle and turned a corner to walk down the next, he was interrupted by a clerk. The man was a short, fat, twenty-something with long, dark, greasy hair and a shitty beard. Clad in the standard FluffMart employee colors, his shirt bore a number of buttons, one of which was a nametag that read ‘Tim’.
“Hello, can I help you find anything?”
“Uh, hey. Yeah, I think so. I might have foals coming to stay with me for a while. Not sure for how long. I need some stuff to take care of them. I’ve got a list.” He said, producing his crumpled sheet of notepaper.
“May I?” Tim asked, taking the list from Dylan and giving it a look over. “Okay. We carry a bunch of this stuff. How old are the foals and how many of them?”
“They’re all chirpies. Four are just coming up to talkie stage. The other eight are probably a week or so younger than that.”
The clerk looked up from the list of items, over the frames of his glasses. “That’s a lot of foals. Okay. Since we’re in the food aisle, we can start here and I can show you a couple of different options.” Tim handed Dylan’s list back and guided him past the shelves stocked with canned food and skettis. “Here’s where we have our formula, but if you’ve got chirpies on the way to becoming talkies you’ll probably also want a bag of soft kibble to help them transition to solid foods. It’ll save you a trip back once their teeth start coming in.”
“Okay. Anything you recommend?” Dylan gestured to the shelves upon shelves of bottles and cans and bags.
“It sort of depends what you’re raising them for. Are they pets, food, or…” He let the question hang.
“Pets. Definitely pets.” Dylan hastily replied.
“Okay, cool. I’m not sure what your budget is like, but let me show you some of the more popular stuff,” Tim began. He walked Dylan through the aisle, pointing out various brands and explaining their pros and cons. In the end, Dylan decided to go with a middle of the road formula and similar grade of kibble. He wasn’t so sure about the upper tier stuff. Especially since some of it started to drift into weird organic, vegan, gluten-free territories and Tim suggested most of it was to part the gullible from their money. Fluffies didn’t tend to be that picky. The kibble was decent enough and ticked all the appropriate nutritional boxes. He grabbed a small bag, figuring he could always buy more and adjust diets later.
With food procured, Tim walked Dylan through the store, checking his list and pointing out Dylan’s pre-selected items and occasionally suggesting better quality products. Dylan had to grab a shopping cart to carry the increasing number of items. He had incubators, auto feeders, blankets, and a small mountain of other items he’d selected himself or were picked up thanks to Tim’s advice. In the end, he found everything he needed and quite a few things besides.
When he was ready to hit the checkout, Dylan gave Tim a nod. “Thanks for all the help and the advice. I guess it’s probably part of the job, but you seem to know a ton about raising foals.”
Tim nodded, “Yeah, I’ve been doing it for a while. You tend to pick up some stuff along the way. Glad to help out, man.” He started to walk backwards a few steps, likely to return to what he’d been doing prior to Dylan’s arrival.
“Cool. You must really love fluffies.” Dylan pressed.
Tim offered Dylan a weak smile and a shrug, spreading his hands. “They’re okay. My snakes really love 'em, though. You have a good day, now, and good luck with your foals.” With that, Tim turned and walked down an aisle and out of sight, leaving Dylan standing there.
“Oh.” He said to himself, slowly putting two and two together. “Ooohh…”
It occurred to Dylan that he’d been so focused on bio-pet ownership for so long that that he hadn’t thought about the normal pets that people still kept aside from the occasional dog he’d see being walked on the street. Now that he thought about it, it made complete sense that someone who owned snakes would breed fluffies as a cheap, renewable food source for them. He passed by a display tank filled with playing foals on his way to the checkout, glancing at them and feeling his skin crawl and bile rise at the thought of them, terrified and chirping, waiting for a snake to devour them. Ugh.
With that terrible mental image still floating about in his thoughts and souring the otherwise pleasant shopping trip, Dylan pushed his cart up to the cashier and started to unload its contents.
The cashier, a thirty-something woman with a cheerful disposition, starting picking up items and scanning them, going through a well-practiced line of questioning. “Do you have a FluffPoints card?”
“I do not.”
“Would you like to sign up? You can save three percent on your purchase today.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
Once all had been scanned and the total tallied, she glanced at the screen. “Your total today is two sixty-three fifty-eight. Debit or credit?”
“Debit.”
She gestured to the Interac terminal, whereupon his total was displayed.
While Dylan was inserting his card into the machine and entering his PIN, he asked the cashier, “What’s with that fluffy outside? The one begging for food?”
The woman turned and glanced briefly towards the door. “Outside? Is it an orange and white one?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably Creamsicle. Her owner lives in one of the low-rise apartment complexes behind the store. She just lets her fluffy roam around the neighborhood. Creamsicle knows she can score free food here sometimes, so she likes to hang around outside.”
“And that’s okay?”
“Sure, why not? She minds her manners, uses the outdoor litter box, and doesn’t come into the store. She’s pretty harmless.” She curled her lip in disdain, " Not like the hobos and their hustles." Relaxing again, the cashier shrugged. “There’s not much we can do. The AFP used to send someone around to pick her up and take her home but they stopped after a while. Not really much they can do with a chipped fluffy and an owner like hers aside from fine 'em.”
“They just stopped?”
“Yeah, the AFP doesn’t really care about cases like hers. Neglectful owners. I guess as long as you register and pay your fines, it’s all good. Pretty sure her owner doesn’t, though. Do you want bags for all this stuff?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Please. Thanks. What’s the story there?”
The cashier shrugged again she started bagging Dylan’s purchases. “Which story? Fluffy enforcement in the city is loosey goosey. If you’ve got one and you meet the chipping and fixing requirements, no one really seems to care about anything else. You can let them roam around and do whatever they please. If they get picked up, the worse you’re looking at is a fine. Maybe worse if you’re a repeat offender.”
“Well, that’s messed up,” Dylan replied, somewhat stunned.
“Yep. The story with Creamsicle’s owner is that she’s banned from the store. Every time she comes in, she’s usually high. She shoplifts, breaks stuff, scares people… I figure her fluffy hangs around outside alone because she thinks she’s safer here than she is at home. Sad.”
“Fuck,” Dylan muttered, running his hand along the back of his head. Sure, he didn’t get out that much but was this seriously how things worked in and around the city when it came to fluffies and their owners? Were people really that callous? How had he not seen or heard about any of this, locally? Was he just lucky? Tunnel visioned? Jesus… was Emrys right?
“Mmm hmm.” The cashier nodded in agreement with his exclamation and handed Dylan his bagged purchases. “You said it. Times are tough and people are crueller than ever. Not nearly as many kind souls out there as there used to be. Oh! That reminds me. Don’t forget these, sir.”
“What?”
The cashier pulled a bag of sketti treats from the impulse by rack near the register and slid them across the counter. “The treats you wanted for the little girl outside. You know, the ones I accidentally forgot to ring up.”
“Oh! Uh… thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. You have a nice day, now. Don’t let the Man get you down.”
Dylan nodded and walked out of the store so deep in thought that he might have looked like he were in a daze to the casual viewer. He’d been through so much and forced to confront so many harsh realities in the last twenty-four hours. Emrys and, more recently, Tim had such callous attitudes towards fluffies. Counter to that, the cashier who had rung him up had proven that there was still some goodwill towards them. What was he to think? How was he to process that?
“Hewwo nice mistah.” He heard as soon as he stepped foot outside.
“Hi there,” Dylan greeted the mare, moving away from the door and crouching down with his bags. “A nice lady inside wanted you to have these.” he said, opening the small bag of sketti treats and upending it in front of her. She waddled forward, sniffing, before squealing with delight and scarfing down the offering. She lifted her muzzle afterwards and gave Dylan the biggest of fluffy smiles, tail wagging excitedly. “Fank 'ou fow nummies, nice mistah!”
“You’re welcome. Doesn’t your mummah feed you?”
“Mummah teww Cweamsicwe tu get wost fow dis bwight-time ‘cos ob nyu daddeh. Mummah an’ nyu daddeh wan hab gud feews bu’ nu wan Cweamsicwe tu see,” She looked shiftily from side to side, then narrowed her eyes and bit her lower lip. “Bu’ Cweamsicwe see bestest hoomin enfies sometimes.”
Dylan stared. What the fuck? “Uh. Well. You shouldn’t watch human enfies. You’ll lose your see-places.”
Creamsicle gasped. “Weawwy?”
Dylan slowly nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”
Leaving the mare waving her hoof in front of her eyes, checking to see if they still worked, Dylan shook his head and walked away.
After loading his purchases into the trunk, he got into his car and started the engine. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he stared at it for a while. Taking a deep breath, he put the car into gear and started the drive home.
