“Stratification”
“Part 8, Interaction”
Author:It_that_watches
An uneasy companionship of fluffies stood in uneven rows, uncertain of their future, and more than a little bit fearful for their lives. Towering high above the cowering horde sat Twilight, the scary, meanie, wing-and-horn-having “not-fluffy”. The fluffies didn’t know what to make of her, as until now their interactions had been either too fleeting, or too filled with terror to remember.
What they did remember however, was that they were on her land, under the awning of her house, and that the human living there said that she was in charge.
They trembled as she gestured in the direction of the one fluffy that wished to leave this sheltered and untamed lawn, bountiful with both hiding places and all the grassie nummies they could ever want. He was afraid of her, and with more reasons than most.
“Bring it before me.”, she commanded.
Her attention turned to her “science notebook” where she marked off several pages, writing down how many of each fluffy she started with. It took a bit for her to notice the murmurs of misunderstanding rippled through the herd, stalling their apprehension of her prey. It seemed that they didn’t quite understand what she had ordered them to do.
“Wha big fwu-” She briefly stammered in panic and corrected herself, “Nu! Nu mean say fwuffy, mean tu say, wha big Pwincess mean? Dat am Cheewy, nu am ‘it’, Cheewy am cowt!”
Twilight’s needling gaze softened slightly as the mare corrected herself.
“Cheewy jus’ wan gu ‘way tu big-twee-pwace, nu wan stay!” Shouted another confused fluffy, “Big not-fwuffy say if wan’ gu dat fwuffies can gu!”
Indeed, Cheery did not want to stay. In the nights prior to today’s events, he had twice tried to alert the herd to Twilights skulking presence. She had warned (threatened) him not to tell anyone that he had seen her, and the first thing he did was try to tell a toughie. Later the same night, she tripped over him as he was sleeping alone in the shadow of the house. Their interactions had been less than amicable.
She briefly considered granting mercy to the poor fluffy who in reality hadn’t really done anything wrong and allowing his self-imposed exile. Very briefly.
“That rule applied to everyfluffy except for him. Bring him over here.”
Cheery made a break for it before the other fluffies could grab him, running as fast as his tiny colt legs could take him towards the breach in the wall. Lump the toughie began to pursue him, but Twilight stopped him before he could get very far.
“No, Lump. I need you here to keep these ones calm and uh, safe… Don’t worry about Cheery, he won’t get far.”
The mere thought of the adolescent fluffy stumbling onto the murder scene from the prior night was too much for her to resist. She just couldn’t help herself and closed her eyes to imagine what little pink bastard was about to see. As a gentle wind carried the scent of autumn through the assembly, the fluffies began to rethink their situation.
Looking up at Twilight, their inbuilt senses of danger were swirling. Though fluffy genetic memory allows them to identify and react positively to other Hasbro and Hasbio products, as well as inherently dislike non-Hasbio biotoys, she was an enigma.
She poses an unknowable variable to them, she does have both wings and a horn, but… That seemed to be a non-issue now that they knew that she wasn’t a fluffy, even if they didn’t entirely understand what she was.
Hopes for their future, and feeble rationalizations crawled their ways through their tiny minds.
“The big not-fluffy is fast and strong and scary, but if she were our smarty, she could fight off the meanies and monsters and protect us and our babies and our families, right?”
“The not-fluffy knows where our babies are! We have to do what she wants or we won’t ever see them again! They need their mummahs to grow big and strong!”
“The not-fluffy was allowed to have human nummies and go inside the housie, maybe someday the whole herd could live inside the housie too!”
“There’s a human mister living in the housie, and he gives the not-fluffy lots of love. If they were the best fluffies ever, maybe he would give them hugs and love too!”
“Fluffy never seen a place with this much nummies before, especially as the bright-times get colder. The nice mister left the grassy-nummies tall and long for the herd, he must love us!”
“The dark-times are getting darker, and colder too. If the meanie-cold-sky-wawa comes, we have lots of places to hide until it goes away! If the herd can get into the housie, there will never be cold dark-times again!”
“Only two toughies are left, and our smarty was taken away for being a bad fluffy! The herd has to stay, or the scary big-tree-place monsters will get us!”
“The not-fluffy looks different. She’s smiling, and it’s not a scary smile. Is she happy? Can scary not-fluffies even have happies? Her see-places are shut, is she having good thinkie-place pictures?”
The uneasy discourse of the already shaken herd was shattered by a keening shriek and subsequent desperate crying in the distance. Twilight’s wry smirk grew into a toothy grin as she took in the fear that Cheery must be feeling right now. There he was, already back in sight and fleeing into her great green clutches, franticly in search of a safe place to cry.
It looks like he might be headed to the jungle gym, but she didn’t have the time to focus on him right now. Also, her hungering expression was starting to unnerve them.
“Looks like he decided to come back! Smart move, I hear that the forest eats bad fluffies.”
“Cheewy nu am bad fwuffy!”, cried some idiot filly, “Chewwy hav’ bad saddies! Fwuffies nee’ hug an’ make aww bettah!”
“No. That is wrong.”
The fluffies were stunned. How could hugs and love be wrong?
“Cheery is a very good lesson, of a very bad fluffy.” She waited for them to soak in what she had said and continued. “He broke the rules and tried to leave when I said not to. Now, he is running around screaming, and not one of you is going to give him hugs or love.”
The gathering began to disorganize as the fluffies looked around wildly and muttered their misunderstandings and disapproval to one another. They flinched as she raised a wing to silence them.
“I am not heartless, little fluffies, if he wants to be a good fluffy again, he can come to me. Until I say you can though, ignore him. Treat him like he isn’t there. If you see another fluffy breaking these rules, be sure to tell me right away and you won’t be in trouble.”
Their sideways glances betrayed their beliefs.
“This is very important, because if you are nice to a bad fluffy, you are a bad fluffy too.” Twilight swayed side to side and hugged herself with her wings, softening her usually confident, commanding expression into facsimile of worry, “I don’t want any more of you to be bad fluffies, I want you to be happy! Good happy fluffies with lots of love!”
They ate it up.
Twilight’s smile melted from vicious cool to warm triumph as they began hugging on another, assuring themselves and their friends that they we good, loving fluffies, and an a few cases telling Twilight that she was already nicer than their last smarty.
That unnerved her.
Initially, Twilight had been thinking, “Wow! These things really are stupid, weak, cowards.”, but that didn’t seem to fit right at the moment. They were completely open to suggestion once their leader was removed. Matthew taught her that she should never trust humans, especially when he wasn’t around, and yet these little fuzzballs had already accepted that she was their new ruler.
Just how bad were things for these fluffies out there in the forest? Was it this worth enduring her petty tyranny if it meant they had easier access food, water, and shelter?
She shook her head to dispel the worry and focused on her impromptu census.
“Now little fluffies,” She spoke, tone soft and reassuring, “I need all of you to line up and tell me about yourselves. I’ll give you a job that I think you can do.”
“Fwuffy aweady hav’ jop! Fwuffy am nummies finder!”
“Wow! That’s amazing! Can you tell me where the nummies are right now?”
The fluffy turned its head, inching slowly in a circle as it surveyed the lawn.
“Dewe am nummies aww ova.”
He looked to her perhaps for reassurance, only to be chided.
“Yep, there sure are.” She shrugged. “Didn’t need you to tell me that though, my eyes work just fine. Most of the time, anyway.”
The rejected hopeful shrank back, no doubt having its whole purpose in life invalidated must have troubled it.
“Now, line up.”
“I will now be holding my first open court! You will approach me, tell me what you can do better than anyone else, and I will assign you a role accordingly.”
She spoke with an exuberant energy as the fluffies stared on with slackened jaws.
“Ugh.”
Twilight groaned and exaggeratedly rolled her whole head in annoyance.
“Walk over here and tell me what the last smarty made you do.” Indicating a point on the ground before her, she beckoned forward the first of many.”
The fluffies understood that order much better. Only a moment later, they realized that she was still waiting. The first fluffy to approach was an orange earthie, who looked up at her null expression with one of overflowing glee.
“Name?”
“Fwuffy nu haf namesie!”
Twilight patiently waited for an explanation as to how a creature grows up to adulthood with no name, but he just stared on, perfectly content with his answer.
“And?”
“Nu moaw.”
“You have no job or talents? Nothing that makes you special?”
“Nuu! Fwuffy awweady teww not-fwuffy what fwuff du!”
Twilight scanned her memory briefly.
“You did? I don’t remember you. Tell me again.”
“Fwuffy tew yu fwuffy am bestest nummies finder!”
“Oh, it’s you. Sorry, you just…” She found discomfort meeting his bulgingly happy eyes. “I forgot. Other talents?”
“Fwuffy wan’ be nummies finder! Get bestest bewwie an’ weafy nummies!”
“Oh. You meant, like, not grass. Okay, sure. Your job, and… and name I guess, from now on, will be Scout.” You go out into the forest and find special foods and bring them back. Did you have any other ‘nummy finders’ before you came here?”
The fluffy bounced with such enthusiasm Twilight shrank back from the growing hazard.
“YUSS!”
“Okay, Scout go find your finder-friends and wait on the lawn. Away from me. Tell them they are also finder-friends.”
“YAAAY!! SCOUT HAF’ NEW NAMSIE! WUB HAF’ NEW NAMSIE! YAAAAYYY!!”
She tracked him just long enough she was sure that he wasn’t coming back before being jumped upon by an overactive fluffy “Mother”, whose impelled surprise made her notepad slip out of her already very poor grip.
“PWEASE BIG-MUNSTA! HEWP MUMMAH FIN’ BABBEHS!”
Twilight reacted to the mares bereaved anguish by swiftly striking her off herself. She looked down at the dirt-stains the mare had left on her forelegs as the rebuffed fluffy was helped back to her hooves by her mate, a dirty green stallion.
“You NEVER touch me unless I say you can. EVER.”
Tears began to well in her eyes as Twilight continued dressing her down.
“It is no wonder your babies ran away and came to me if you can’t fucking contain your jimmies for more than FIVE SECONDS WITHOUT THEM!”
Twilight swiped up her notepad and angrily scrawled a new category: Peasant.
“You will be a lowly peasant, and your babies will not come back to you. Ever. You clearly aren’t ready for them if you can’t even-” Twilight noticed at this point that her sand pail full of stolen children had gone missing, and she began to backpedal, “UNLESS! You can… Tell me what they looked like. And give me some time to… talk to your babies… About coming back.”
“Buh- Buh b-babbehs nu am tawkie babbehs! Babbehs n-nee’ mummah fow gwow tu tawkie babbehs!”
“Well about that…”
Twilight spun around and peered through the pane glass door, spying the babies inside, being sorted into tubs by Mossy and her beloved yet overbearing father. It looked like he was separating them by age and… color. No…
Perhaps he was sorting them by litter? That would make this all so much easier, provided she actually had access to them!
“You stole my leverage!” She blurted out, loud enough for the couple to hear. She spun back around on her makeshift throne.
“Okay, so. How many and what colors.”
The stallion accompanying the mare began to talk but was quickly cut off. “Babbehs awe-”
“Mummah haf’ wotsa babbehs! Aww babbehs bud puwpow babbeh an gway babbeh am yewwow wike bwite sky baww! Wike mummah!” The fluffy began shaking off a layer of dust in an attempt to make her yellow coat a bit brighter.
The stallion covered his tiny head under his hooves. Why is he hiding? She’s the one about to get a beatdown. Twilight hadn’t forgotten her, she sharply remembered this whining fluffy “mother”. The night before, Twilight had attempted to steal her six newborns the night before, though only five had made it into her possession, she had yote one into the yard to draw attention away from herself. There was indeed a purple baby and gray baby, but of the three others only one was yellow. Only one was yellow like their supposed mother, the others being a dusky orange and a lime green.
“You are wrong, peasant.” She stated bluntly. “I don’t like being lied to. You have to do the lame jobs that the other fluffies don’t want to do. Like cleaning. And nest making. And anything else that a non-peasant tells you to do. Now get lost, ya beatnik.”
Before Twilight could shout “Next!” the stallion lurched forward as his special friend ran crying from the fluffy assemblage.
“Pwease gud Pwincess! Pwease wet babbehs cum back to famiwy!”
“Why. She’s clearly an idiot or liar. Or both. Why bother?”
The fluffy took a hesitant step forward and lowered his voice, checking to see if his special friend was still within earshot. She very clearly wasn’t. She had run to an arbitrary point of the lawn and was now yelling into the overgrown grass for her babies to come out.
“Spechaw fwend am nu gud at cowows. Dummeh, but onwy fow cowows. Ova babbehs awe puwpaw wike yu am, an’ uh…” He struggled to dredge up with the word from the hollows of his pea-brain. “Ova babbeh am… Dawk yewwow?”
The way he said that sounded more like a question than an assertion, but it didn’t sound like a lie. She looked over her shoulder for the box of peeping, and in one case beeping, foals.
“Well… I guess ‘dark yellow’ is close. But in the future remember that the color of that baby is-”
“Orange.”
“OWANGE!”
She smiled warmly at him. “So, she was just stupid. Good thing you aren’t.”
“Pwease nu say dat ‘bout speshaw fwend…”
She began scrawling.
“You get to be a noble. That means you get to boss everyone but me around, and you get to eat first. Also, you can live on the big-toy.” She gestured towards the large wooden climbing structure. “Don’t worry, it has stairs.”
“Tank yu nice-”
The stallion was suddenly thrown aside as Lump, the oversized earthie, shoved him to the ground and approached Twilight without being called upon.
“Wha’ Wump du.”
Her eyes widened at his brazen breach of the protocol that at this point existed only in her mind.
“Lump goes to the back of the line; you can’t just smack around everyone because you’re bigger.”
“Dat wha’ Wump du aww time. Smawty teww Wump tu gif sowwy hoofsies tu bad fwuffies.”
“Okay, you can be a knight. That me-”
“Nu. Wump am tuffy-fwend. Yu wet Wump stay be tuffy-fwen.”
She lowered her voice to a half-growl. “Are you shitting me right now? You will do what I tell you to do, or I’ll rip you in half.”
“Wump nu am scawdies of big not-fwuffy. Wump gif sowwy-hoofsies tu fwuffies fow nu do wha’ say, Wump gif not-fwuffy sowwy-hoofsies tu. Yu nu am speshaw.”
The shock was practically etched into her face, did this matted ball of unwanted shit just give her an order and then threaten her? She felt her spine tingle as anger set her blood to a boil and she strained to keep her voice down while pressing retort through tightly clenched teeth.
“Listen up you fat shitlord, I could kill you with a single kick and my only memory of you would disappear after washed your brains off my hooves. I could steal Star, and you would never see her again. She would be my baby and grow up thinking you were a monster. Even if I didn’t fight you, my dad would find out about this. I don’t know what dad does to fluffies he takes to work, but I know they never come back.”
Even after her full fulmination Lump’s face betrayed no emotion, though her verbal assault seemed to have its intended effect.
“Wump onwy gib hurties if not-fwuffy pwincess say so. Ow to gib staw miwkies.”
As he waddled away, she heard him mutter “Wump am stiww tuffy-fwend.”
Twilight tried shake the disbelief off her face, just as the green stallion stood back up and peered at her with teary eyes.
“You can have one baby back. If you stay good fluffies, I might let you have more.” Twilight tapped on the glass door, and having been waiting, Matthew opened it. “Which one do you want.”
He presented the concerned stallion with the container of his appropriated progeny.
The stallion hemmed and hawed, eventually settling on the one most like him, the one sharing his green colored fluff. “Remember to tell your peasant wife that she’s a bad mummah!”
The chosen foal began to coo softly as Matthew delicately separated it from its sleeping siblings, shielding it from the rush of cold air flooding into the room through the open door. Just as gently as he had picked it up, he placed it in the vibrant plume of its father’s fuzzy mane. The fluffy could not help but smile.
His shallow, tired smile faded however as his eyes passed by the retracting container bearing his other foals. He took a few steps towards the door, only to solemnly stop as it sealed shut. Twilight could almost hear his heart fracturing.
“Nice-Pwincess?”
Fluffies sucking up already? Her dream comes true!
“Yes, my loyal subject?”
“Wha?” Gawked the fluffy, not quite sure if it were him that she was addressing. She made a note on the “fluffy behavior” section of her notepad that she really did need to stop using big words around them, or at least big words she heard in computer games.
“Yes, my little fluffy?”
“Oh!” He blurted out, jostled back to reality by recognizing that he had been recognized, “Umm… Su if fwuffy am gud daddeh, can haf’ aww babbehs back?”
Twilight voiced her consideration without turning to face him, forcing him to walk back and stand before her once again. She scoffed as his cautiously hopeful face entered view.
“Not with your special friend. She lost them in the first place, right? She’s just gonna lose ‘em again.”
“Convince me that your special friend isn’t going to lose them again, and can remember all their colors, I will consider it. I’ll consider it even longer if you bring me something shiny. Now go.”
She figured that he must be flustered or confused, as he ran in the completely wrong direction to rendezvous with his mate. At least he didn’t drop the baby.
She shrugged.
“Next!”
Another, much less filthy indigent approached her regal towel-draped lawn chair. This one was a khaki colored mare with vibrant reddish hair.
“Name.”
“Tuwip.”
Twilight grabbed the appropriately colored markers and put “Twolip” down in a meagerly legible scrawl on a page she had labelled “Pop cap”. When she looked up, a group of three stallions had gathered behind her, babbling something incomprehensibly between themselves. She didn’t seem to have noticed them.
“And talent?” Twilight spoke through narrowed eyes, suspicious of the newcomers.
Tulip began to speak, and the gaggle behind her immediately snapped to attention. Tulip bowed her head down and put on a pouty, ambiguously sad expression.
“Tuwip haf’ su many saddies! Puwpow-pwincess say nee’ shiny fings, but Tuwip nu haf’!”
Her white knights needed no orders. The trio bolted in all directions, each of them yelling about how they would bring back the “bestest shinies!” and “make meany saddies gu ‘way!” Tulip waited a couple of seconds and raised her head, smiling. “Tuwip gud at make dummeh stawwions du anyfing.”
Twilight, not having any idea why they did her bidding, having never met non-lab fluffies, and having a markedly misanthropic caretaker, had no grasp on the concept of being pussywhipped. She looked at them flee into the yard searching for whatever the hell they thought they would find out there, and eventually redirected her attention to Tulip.
“Can you make them do dangerous stuff or hard work?”
Her answer was succinct enough. “Tuwip twy one time, but dey nu wan gu in wawa.”
“Cool. I wanna see that sometime. You can be a noble too, make the peasants do work.”
Tulip requested clarification, something Twilight had not expected.
“Wha’ pes-ants nee’ du?”
“Just normal herd stuff. Nummies and nesties.” Twilight reclined and shrugged. “If they run out of real work, make something up. Make ‘em stack rocks or something.”
Tulip considered what she had been told for a moment and smiled.
“Tuwip can du dat fow pwincess.”
As Twilight looked up from her notepad, she realized something. There were far fewer fluffies than there should have been, and far more in the yard than she had dismissed. Are they just wandering off? She made another note: “All fluffies not written on here are peasants or worse.”
“Next.”
Tulip nodded and meandered lazily away, replaced by a jittery blue stallion with red hair.
“You look… Extra.”
“Tank ‘oo nice big-fwuffy! Bubby wuv nyu housie an’ foodies an fwends!”
He began to approach closer, waddling up onto his back legs and splaying out his forelegs. Twilight was fairly sure where this was going.
“If you touch me, I’m gonna kick your head off.”
“Big-fwuffy jus’ nee’ hugggies! Bubbie gif’ bestest huggies!”
“No, seriously. If you get any closer, I’m gonna drown you in the pond. Back off.”
The waddling continued, and she did the only reasonable thing. She readied her back legs from her sitting position, aiming at his neck. The idea was to knock the breath out of him, hopefully putting him out of commission. If she broke his neck, then at that point it was between him and god.
Just as she was about to crush her assailant’s larynx, a fluffy still in the waiting audience began to cry and squeaked out that she needed huggies “moaw than the pwincess.” Bubby stopped inches from his possible death and spun around, waddling away from Twilight as she watched in disgust as the crying mare cried harder as she was squeezed. Eventually, she managed to stop crying.
He turned back to face Twilight. He noticed her expression.
“Why big-fwuffy nu wan huggies fwom Bubby?”
“I don’t want a disease.”
“Big-fwuffy nu wan sickies? Saddies an’ sickies gu way wif’ huggies! Aww fwuffies wuv huggies! Nu moaw hewties!”
Twilight flightily asked the rest of the crowd, and they seemed to agree.
“OKAY! GO OUT AND HUG! THAT’S YOUR JOB NOW.”
“Yay! Bubby gonna hug aww fwuffies! Wub hewd! Tank oo’ big-fwuffy!”
He turned back towards her and began to rear up again.
“STILL NOT A FLUFFY. LEAVE NOW.”
Bubby finally understood her bristling, unwelcoming stance, and waddled off into the lawn.
Twilight dry-heaved.
She counted that 6 still awaited designation.
“New plan. You, red one, grey one, and one who’s brother just died.”
The red and grey fluffies pointed to themselves, as the toughie in the back began to sob.
“You are Knights. You do what nobles say, and make sure the peasants work hard. Now go.”
She turned her attention to the three remaining fluffies.
“You. You have been patient and respectful the whole time. You get to be nobles, go find something that needs doing and order peasants to do it. If they complain, have one of the Knights smack ‘em around or send them to me.”
She turned to the mare that had previously cried for “Huggies”, and noted her completely detatched expression. She addressed her.
“Why did you do that. Why did you want him to hug you? Are you hurt? Sick? Are you his special friend?”
“Heh-heh.” She laughed warmly, as if she thought that last assertion to be a joke. “Nu.”
The mare stared, slowly blinking through her middlingly grey mane as she patted away the dirt that Bubby left on her presumably white coat.
“Bwiaw nu wan Bubby tu gif huggies tu pwincess. Bubby am dummeh nu-smeww-pwetty fwuffy, an pwincess haf smeww wike fwowews. Bubby huggies make Bwiaw feew yickie, but Bwiaw aways feew wike dat.”
Twilight was stunned. These things had always displayed some sort of emotional intelligence, but it was always blindly positive. This one struck some long-buried chord. It held disdain for another of its kind. This was not rare in the world of fluffies, but it was the first time Twilight had witnessed it.
“All you other fluffies can leave now. Spread the word to your friends that left early that I’m mad at them, and that they are peasants now. Make sure they know that’s a bad thing.”
A few silent moments passed whilst they eyed one another, the yard again a smattering of discordant noise and garish colors.
“Yu nu wike fwuffies, du yu. Nu wike huggies eifer.”
“I like hugs!” Twilight stated defensively, “But uh, only from my dad.”
She turned to face the glass door behind her and caught Matthew’s eyes. He was lying on the floor, Mossy and Muddy off to one side, and the foal containers off to another. Mossy and Muddy clutching one another and burying the sounds of their sorrow deep in each other’s fluff.
“Bwiaw wike huggies tu, ownwy fwom hooman daddeh tu. Fwuffie huggies nu gud.”
Another stretch of silence, this time broken by Matthew.
“You ready to come inside princess? It’s almost noon.”
Her eyes glided over the lawn, taking in the sight of the fluffies casting drop-shadows in the overhead sun as they played.
“Uhh, yeah dad. Just a sec.”
She picked up her notebook and filled in five of the six final fluffies that had been given their roles. She looked up at Briar who had fallen to her side, slowly clacking her soft forehooves together.
“Can I bring a friend?”
Briar froze mid action and meekly craned her miniscule neck to see that Twilight was looking at her.
“Fwiend?”