Sundae can’t help but be nervous, after being left so many different places for so many bad things to happen to her, but she likes Miss Luna. She’s nice and she smells and looks pretty. Sundae likes the dark brown humans with puffy hair like hers, they’re so pretty! And Miss Luna has pretty colors on her fingers. Boss-Mummah is pretty, of course, of she never puts colors on her fingers, and Miss Luna’s are such a bright, deep, blue! Sundae likes blue.
Sundae stays in Boss-Mummah’s shirt as she follows Miss Luna around, sipping from a glass of nice, cool, lemon-y water and asking Miss Luna about the safe rooms, and toys, TV, outside time, and what the humans do when fluffies misbehave. Sundae sucks her own nice, cool, lemon-y water out of a bottle usually meant for grownup sensitive babies, so she won’t spill any. The first big room is mostly an open space for fluffies to play together with toys and with some humans watching them, plenty of sunlight coming in through big windows. The kitchen and dining room are nearby, with a short wall to keep fluffies out of the kitchen. That’s good, because while Sundae knows how to keep from getting hurt in the kitchen, she has seen a lot of fluffies who don’t.
In the back, there are saferooms, for the resident fluffies to sleep at night, and for everyone to go if there is some kind of emergency or not enough humans. Sundae is glad that she’s here with Boss-Mummah, who will keep her safe when they’re together, and that they have their own little housie to stay in by themselves at night. They’ll see that later, the humans still have things to talk about, back in the big room.
Sundae glad to feel more heart-happies than heart-hurties to see mummahs and foals playing together in this big room. Living with Boss-Mummah and helping her and Milly make sure all the orphan babbehs grow big and strong, and seeing how much work Boss-Mummah puts into making sure that their forever-housies are good forever-housies has helped a lot.
The whole time, Dapple has been walking alongside Luna, listening and watching. Sundae is sometimes a little scared of unicorns. Not because she thinks they’re munstahs, not even alicorns are munstahs, that’s silly, but because they’re so smart, sometimes. Dapple seems very smart, but like she’s nice, too. A smarty-friend, not just a smarty.
“Sundae?” Boss-Mummah says after a while, and Sundae pulls her mouth off of the bottle.
“Yes, Boss-Mummah?”
“Will you be okay if set you down to talk to Dapple, while I go talk to more humans?”
“Papewwowk?”
“Exactly,” she says, and Sundae nods, handing the bottle to Boss-Mummah and then lifting her hoofsies to make it easier for Boss-Mummah to set her on the floor. It always makes her stomach a little swoopy, but that goes right away, and she smiles at Dapple. Dapple is taller than her, but most fluffies are, and Dapple isn’t big enough to be scary. She’s so pretty, soft, soft brown with pretty creamy socks and spots that match her mane and tail
“Hewwo! Fwuffy am Sundae!”
“Fwuffy am Dappwe,” Dapple says. “Am thewapy mawe.” She must be able to tell that Sundae doesn’t know what that means, because she adds, “Am fwen’ fow fwuffies wif heawt-huwties.”
“Sundae no wan’ tawk about heawt-huwties,” Sundae says, and Dapple gently touches her with that pretty violet horn.
“Sundae no haf tuu wite nao,” Dapple says, very gently, and leads Sundae over to some blocks and balls no one is playing with for now.
It turns out that Dapple is very smart. She knows all kinds of interesting ball games that Sundae has never played, and when foals of different ages join in, she is very good at keeping everything fair, so the little ones aren’t frustrated, and the older ones aren’t bored. There are stallions around, but none of them try to come close, and Sundae is all right with that. She can visit the fluff park with Boss-Mummah and Milly for support, but it’s still so much easier to play with other mares and with foals.
Taking a rest, three other mares come to join them. All of them are so pretty! It’s amazing, but all three are therapy mares: Candyfloss, a fellow earthie, but multicolored and designer, right down to pretty pink love hearts in her see-places; sky-blue wingie-friend Sunrise with pink-and-orange streaked mane and tail, and bright pink wingie-pointy Spike, who has a short, bright green mane that stands up, and a scar on her face. They all tell her that she’ll be meeting the therapy stallions next, but not to worry, that they’re all good fluffies.
“Sundae am scawe,” Sundae admits, leaning into Candyfloss’s side, “but Sundae no wan’ be scawe. Sundae haf speshul fwen’, befowe. Sundae wemembew stawwion can be nicie, jus’… scawe.”
All of them coo and trill, giving her soothing licks and huggies. “We can aww stay wif you,” Dapple says, “an’ Spike is a good fightew.”
“Wed Cwoud nicie!” Candyfloss protests, and the others giggle.
“Wed Cwoud hew bestest fwen’,” Sunrise explains, and that makes Sundae feel a little better. Meanie stallions never have a mare bestest friend, only special friends that are just as meanie if not worse.
“Hey!” one of the humans calls, “Side room!”
It makes Sundae jump a little, but when she realizes that a mare and a stallion were about to have special huggies, she’s so glad that the human didn’t say ‘no special huggies’ because in the mills that always meant that someone was about to get worstest hurties or forever sleepies. Here, they get shoo’d into the side room, instead. Sundae doesn’t hear any sorry sticks or screeing. She doesn’t really hear anything, which is weird.
“Side woom is sowwy-box?” she asks Sunrise, who shakes her head.
“No, Side woom is side woom. Is quiet pwace for speshul huggies!” She looks a little embarrassed, and Sundae wonders just how young she is.