One day, a man named David adopted a fluffy. Three months later, he killed himself.
Marisa doesn’t know what set him off. She doesn’t know why he went down such a loop, or why he felt it necessary to shove away everyone who ever knew him, or why he got a fluffy of all things in the middle of it. She doesn’t know why he killed himself, although how he killed himself isn’t exactly surprising. She definitely doesn’t know why it was decided that she of all people should care for the pet fluffy that she’s just now finding out he had - just because she had a job juicing up the processors at Wendy’s eight years ago doesn’t mean she can take care of what is essentially an annoying four-year-old that can legally be tortured to death.
She’s never liked fluffies, except maybe when she was a little girl. She’s never liked children, let alone brainless caricatures of children. Fluffies are annoying and stupid and they shit all over the place and kill themselves if you take your eyes off of them, and they think the world is all huggies and wub even in the face of stark opposition - even when they themselves are the stark opposition. But allegedly, if there’s any fluffy that deserves respect, it’s this one, who allegedly managed to not only call the police but explain what had happened coherently enough to be taken seriously. Allegedly.
Marisa finds it incredibly hard to believe that the glittery(!), off-smelling white thing eating a bowl of month-old carrot sticks in her barren living room is the same creature that did all that. Her name is Celestia, but she calls herself Sessie; Marisa was briefly convinced that she had been given the wrong fluffy until she remembered that pony show from the tens that David used to force her to watch and realized that no, she did have the right one. It just couldn’t even begin to pronounce its own name.
Marisa is sure the real Princess Celestia had a unicorn horn to go along with the wings, and that she didn’t look like a buttermilk biscuit with legs or have a smell that reminds Marisa of a musty cellar. Still, the little fluffy pegasus looks similar enough to her namesake to connect the two. Shimmering white fur, blue-pink-green striped mane, poofy yellow hooves that sort of make her look like an outdated cheerleader. And yes, the dead skin she sheds is glittery, all in her fur and all in the carpet she walks on. Marisa is convinced that this is a curse that David passed on to her in a final act of shitlordery.
Celestia suddenly stiffens, half a carrot stick poking out of her mouth, then inhales the damn thing, starts shuddering and gagging silently, and Marisa has to rush over and do a fluffy Heimlich maneuver to save her life. Marisa doesn’t know how to do the Heimlich maneuver on a person, let alone a fluffy, but whatever she does must be good enough because the fluffy pukes up about three and a half carrot sticks, visibly chewed but mostly unbroken.
Between almost comical gasps for air, Celestia wheezes out, “Fank yu… fow sabe… Sessie… nyu mummah.” Every movement sends flecks of glitter drifting through the air around her.
“I told you, I’m your foster parent until…” Until they find you a new owner, Marisa almost says, then thinks better of it. “…I’m your foster. Not your mommy.”
“Nyu fostah mummah!” Evidently, she doesn’t know what that means and is assuming it’s good. “Wai nummies gib huwties?”
“You’re not chewing your food, dingbat.”
“Nu am ding-bat, am Sessie!”
At that, Marisa stares at her for a solid five seconds. This thing lives in her house now.
“Nummies am hawd pointy nummies! Nee’ big num,” Celestia finally says, and Marisa is trying to puzzle out what that’s supposed to mean when the little idiot tries to slurp up the very same carrot stick that almost killed her just now.
“No! Drop it!” Marisa grabs Celestia up to get her away from it - she’ll never get used to how light fluffies are - and the fluffy makes a few concerned noises and wiggles her plush little stub legs around before deciding that this is also good.
“Heehee! Uppie-huggies!” Celestia says, not even mad about being half-yelled at and taken from her food. If this were any other animal, that little maneuver would have landed one of them in the hospital.
So… to a fluffy, carrots are hard and pointy. Marisa remembers something about fluffies having incredibly weak muscles.
“Do you really not have enough bite force to chew through a carrot?”
“Huh?”
Marisa holds back a sigh, although she’s not sure it would even make a difference if she let it out.
“Are the carrots too hard to chew?”
“Nummies am hawd pointy nummies,” Celestia repeats. “Nee’ big num,” she says, like she’s explaining to a five-year-old why choking to death is the correct way to eat carrot sticks.
“Alright, change of plans.” Marisa sets Celestia down - she immediately goes for the bowl - and swipes up the carrots before she can start inhaling them into her lungs again. The carrots are covered in glitter. Marisa is covered in glitter. She fucking hates this.
A few minutes later, Marisa is boiling some diced carrots and Celestia is at her feet, babbling her way through a sentence with no end and no beginning that Marisa vaguely understands is about her “daddy”.
“…an’ den Daddeh gib Sessie bigges’ huggies, an’ Daddeh say Sessie am gud fwuffy, an’ den…”
She’s scrolling through some slop article on her phone that seems to confirm that yes, a fluffy’s bite force is that weak - their muscles are strong enough that they can move, breathe, and shit, but no more - and all of their food should be diced into little bits and their tough vegetables thoroughly cooked to avoid these kinds of incidents. Even their homemade spaghetti should be slightly overcooked and broken into little mushy bits that are hardly noodles at all so they don’t choke on them, and Marisa scrunches her face up but accepts that fluffies are little limp noodles that can’t even eat their favorite food without having a near-death experience.
“…an’ tee-bee hab scawy munstah, buh Sessie am bwabe fwuffy, an’ den Daddeh gib Sessie eaw-scwatchies!”
Celestia is quiet, just for a moment.
“How time tiww Daddeh?”
Marisa’s fingers twitch.
She really doesn’t know?
She can’t stop herself from shooting a glare at Celestia, not that she seems to notice. She takes a quick, sharp breath to steady herself and concludes that the story about Celestia calling 911 by herself is bullshit.
“David can’t be here right now.”
“Sessie nu wan’ Dabid, wan’ Daddeh!”
Okay, fine. She went right into that one.
“…Your daddy can’t be here right now.”
“How time tiww Daddeh aww beddah?”
…
“Doctow gib Daddeh stisshes an’ make aww beddah! An’ Sessie gib huggies!”
Oblivious little fuck…
“Wha’ nyu mummah say?”
“Nothing. Go… play, or whatever.”
The timer goes off and she quickly silences it, then gets to work straining and blending the carrots. She put in enough for there to be leftovers, hopefully enough for however long she has to take care of this powdered donut of an animal.
Celestia seems to interpret “go play” as “go sit in the corner and stare at the wall”, and that’s how Marisa finds her a few minutes later, humming a little tune that sounds vaguely familiar.
“…Whatcha doing there?”
“Sessie pway pwetend!”
Okay. That checks. God, these things are so easily amused it’s pathetic. She wishes she could entertain herself by staring into a corner.
Celestia accepts the bowl of carrot puree and is finally quiet, just for a little while.
Well. Not really quiet. Marisa can’t tell whether the godawful smacking noise Celestia is making as she eats is better or worse than her babbling away in that unintelligible baby voice. And she can’t even leave the room to get away from it - she doesn’t trust Celestia to not shit on her carpet or find a way to choke and die even on liquid food.
Celestia beams up at Marisa after she’s done eating, this time with her stupid little homunculus face and chest covered in orange slop. Marisa grips the fabric of her shirt and yanks on it. It’s just carrots, she reassures herself.
“Jesus Christ, fluffy…”
Celestia looks sad for the first time since she got here, her joyful expression shattering and her eyes going big and watery like she just got told that spaghetti isn’t real and all the fluffies that have ever lived and died were just collectively hallucinating it.
“Wai mummah say bad wowdsies? Huu… Sessie bad fwuffy?”
Marisa sighs. Distantly, she wonders what would happen if someone tried to take a fluffy to church. “You’re fine, you’re fine… Get over here.”
She carries Celestia over to the kitchen sink and cleans her up with some wet and dry towels, first in silence but then explaining the best she can the importance of eating politely. She’s sure it all goes directly over the little freak’s head, and she really understands it’s on her for expecting a fluffy to be able to eat puree out of a bowl without needing to be cleaned up after. She reminds herself that she’d rather deal with a messy fluffy than a dead one.
Soon, Celestia is more or less clean, as clean as Marisa can get her. The weird sour smell is still there, but she’d probably need a full bath to get rid of that, assuming that’s not just the way they always smell.
“Yaaay! Baffie time obah! Nu mowe baffie, aww done nao, nu mowe baffie, aww done nao…” Celestia waddles around Marisa’s kitchen and sings something resembling a song about how happy she is that the bath is over, and Marisa feels a twinge of something that might be envy. She doesn’t even know that her singing barely qualifies as singing, and she probably wouldn’t care even if she did.
“Sessie dancie fwuffy!” She flaps her wings and stamps her little hooves around in a way that doesn’t look like anything, and then she sits up and starts waving her front legs up and down in a way that still doesn’t look like anything.
Marisa considers going back to her routine of rotting at her computer all day, but she’d have to take Celestia in her room with her to make sure she doesn’t kill herself, and she’d probably mistake all the wires on the floor for spaghetti and kill both of them anyway.
“How time tiww Daddeh?”
Ugh…
“I just told you he’s not coming back.”
“Daddeh am come back! Sessie sabe Daddeh an’ Daddeh gu tu doctow!”
Marisa narrows her eyes. “…You saved him.”
“Sessie gib Daddeh bigges’ huggies fow feew beddah, an’ Sessie pwotec’ Daddeh! An’ Sessie caww nine-wun-wun aww by Sessie sewf!”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Marisa says. She’d rather not think about the fluffy alone in David’s house, hugging his dead corpse like hugs could ever fix someone who tried to slice his own head off with a sword.
…God damn it.
“Daddeh gun’ come back fow Sessie 'cause doctow make ebwyfing aww beddah! Sessie sabe da day!”
“You-…” Marisa starts to speak, then decides that she has better things to do than argue with a delusional talking horse that smells like rotting leaves. “How about we talk about something else. Any games you like?”
“Sessie pway pwetend! Sessie cwose eyesies an’ gu tu happy finky-pwace where Daddeh back fwom doctow, an’ Sessie hab skettie day fow be gud bwabe fwuffy!”
Is she ever going to shut up about him?
“Nyu fostah mummah wan’ pway pwetend wib Sessie?”
“No.”
“Am sim-puw! Yu cwose eyesies an’ hab happy finkies! Wike dis!” With that, she plops down on the dusty linoleum and closes her eyes.
Marisa sighs exasperatedly and decides to indulge Celestia, just a little bit. Leaning back against the kitchen counter, she closes her eyes and imagines a world where David didn’t kill himself. Or even a world where the last words he said to her weren’t some new-age incel shit that she can only assume was a blind attempt to drive her away. She’s not a little glittery shithorse that thinks you can go to the doctor to cure death, so it doesn’t work. Still, her mind wanders.
For the way the guy treated his fellow man towards the end, he loved his pet. Biotoy? Marisa thinks he did, at least, or likes to hope he did - she didn’t even know he had a fluffy until now, much less how he was treating it. Celestia seems to love him well enough and hasn’t shown any clear signs of abuse, not that Marisa would know what that looks like. Still, she thinks that if she were a suicidal neckbeard with a talking glitter bomb living in her house, she would at least have the decency to off herself somewhere it wouldn’t find her body.
“My widdow pony, my widdow pony…” The My Little Pony song? Really?
It makes sense if she thinks about it. She’s meant to look like a character from the show, after all, and he was way in it enough that he probably had her watch it with him.
“My widdow pony, my widdow pony, my widdow pony…” The first ten notes are reasonably on key, but then she’s just repeating “my little pony” in a vaguely musical way. Marisa is thoroughly out of the game now, staring at Celestia with an awful look in her eyes that she doesn’t think she could hide even if she wanted to.
Marisa admits to herself that she truly hates Celestia, never wants to see her again. Every little thing about her, not in spite of her connection to David but because of it. As if it weren’t enough that she’s a walking reminder of his self-isolation, she’s also twice as dumb as a regular fluffy and she tracks glitter everywhere that’s going to be reminding Marisa of everything for god only knows how long even after she’s gone. And there’s that musty, sickly smell that makes her want to punt the creepy little fuck out the window and never think back.
“How time tiww Daddeh?”
“He’s dead!” Marisa snaps. “Forever sleeping! He’s never coming back! Stop fucking talking about him!”
“Nuuuuu!” Celestia tenses up at her language but manages to blink back her tears. “Daddeh am come back! Daddeh hab big ack-si-den’, buh’ Sessie hewp, an’ doctow make ebwyfing beddah! Sessie gib Daddeh bigges’, mostes’ huggies an’ wub, eben when dewe big dawkie-times an’ nu-pwetty smeww!”
Even when what.
“An’ Sessie pwotec’ Daddeh fwom cweepy-cwawwy munstahs, an’ den dewe skettie day, an’ den Sessie caww nine-wun-wun fow doctow aww by Sessie sewf su Daddeh hab neckie-stisshes!”
“Shut up.”
“Sessie sabe da day! Daddeh hab bigges’ sweepies, an’ maybe huggies nu hewp ack-si-den’, buh’ doctow make Daddeh aww-”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Eeee!”
That’s what it is.
“Fostah mummah am meanie-head! Daddeh gun’ hab saddies!”
She smells like a dead body.
How long was she there?
Where the hell did skettie day come from?
Oh god, she’s going to throw up.
“Get out of my house.”
“Eeee! Bad uppies!”
“Go.”
“Nuu! Sessie sowwy fow call fostah mummah meanie-head! Nu wan’ cowdies!”
Fuck. She needs to call Catherine.
“Just let her think that.”
…
“She’s convinced that she saved the day, and she still thinks that even after what you said to her. You can just let her! She gets hers, you get yours.”
“Jesus Christ, Cathy, this isn’t Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Well, what else are you supposed to do? Come to think, after what she went through, the fact that she’s so like that has to be the only reason she…”
…
“What were you thinking, Mari?”
“I made you come over and find her after I had a mental breakdown and threw her outside in the freezing cold, and you’re mad that I told her the dead, rotting body she was giving ‘huggies’ to for a week isn’t going to magically come back to life.”
“Listen. I’m trying not to hold what you did against you, but if you thought figuring that out as her caretaker was bad enough, try being her. If she understood what she went through the way we do, we would have had to put her down.”
“So you’re going to let her be delusional her whole life?”
“Mmm, how do I say this…”
…
“Fluffies aren’t children, they’re fluffies. I’ve told you this.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They talk, but it’s like if a dog could talk. If there was a dog that ate their owner’s body to survive, you wouldn’t expect them to know what’s wrong with that or try to force them to understand.”
“That’s-… I don’t see how this is supposed to make me feel better about anything.”
“Well… it’s all I can say for now, about the fluffy at least. If you wanted to know, there’s your answer.”
“I’ll manage as long as I never see or hear about the damn fluffy again.”
“You won’t have to.”
“Good. Thank you.”