You are Blueberry, a fluffy mare! You have a beautiful light blue coat, and the prettiest purple mane and the bestest wingies. You live in the nicest housie with a lot of your friends. You love talking, playing huggy tag and fluffpiles with the other mares. Every bright time Bestest Daddeh comes around and gives you nice green and orange nummies. Sometimes, when everyone’s been good and no one makes bad poopies, he gives you SKETTIES! You love SKETTIES!
You even have a special friend! He’s the nicest, prettiest, bestest, nicest special friend with a golden coat and a deep blue mane. He was so beautiful, a little smelly, but you fell in love so quickly you had special huggies after playing some huggy tag. It hurt a little since it was your first time, but he was gentle.
That’s when you knew he was the bestest special friend. Soon daddeh took you away and put you back with the mares. You cried a little for your special friend. But Daddeh says your special friend will be back again someday. Daddeh is so nice. He gave you sketti for dinner, even. Soon you had the strangest feeling in your body. A feeling you knew but didn’t understand. Soon you know what that tummy feel was! Babbhes! You are going to have babbehs!
You have been doing a great job being a fluffy mummah so far. Telling them how much you love them, singing to them, making sure you got bestest nummies for the bestest milkies, singing to them again.
But lately you are swollen. It hurts a little. Your weggies barely touch the ground and you have to almost drag yourself over to your food. Your milkie places feel so tender, you can feel them fill full. You told your daddeh you can feel your babbehs kicking inside of you. He told you they would be coming to meet you soon. Bestest Daddeh took you away from your friends and put you in a new housie.
He said you would only be away from your friends for a little while and it was only till you met your babbehs. It wasn’t as big as the old one, but plenty of room for babbehs. It had a lot of nice toys and a big comfortable bed. You still miss the fluff pile though. He told you it was for brand new fluffy mummahs. Daddeh is so smart. He put one of your friends in here, Cherry. She had babbehs before. Bestest Daddeh says she will help when it’s time for the babbehs to come out.
More bright times pass. You keep singing for the babbehs to come out and meet their mother. Daddeh always stops by to give you nice nummies. Cherry gives you hugs, plays ball with you and talks with you all day so you don’t get bored. You miss your special friend, though Daddeh says he will come back later.
One bright time just before the dark time, you feel an intense pain shoot through your body. A primal, instinctual urge is delivered directly from your brain as you scream “BIGGEST POOPIES!”. You immediately see Cherry wake up as fast as a fluffy can wake up. You panic as you don’t want to make bad poopies but Cherry hugs you and tells you “Nu poopies. Babbehs commin”. Babbehs are coming! You feel bursts of excitement outside of the pain of the contractions. You call for Daddeh as you struggle and strain though it looks like Daddeh is not here yet. Cherry assures you it’s going to be OK as she instructs you to push. Your little wingies flap as hard as they can and your legs squirm as you try to bring your babbehs into the world.
Soon after you feel something slide out of your body
Chirp
“BABBEH!” you scream out of instinct and joy
YOU HAVE BABBEHS!
You are so excited! Cherry brings it around in her mouthie for you. It’s so pretty. It’s blue. It looks just like you! It has wingies! Just like you! You are so excited you ignore the nu taste pwetties licking your new babbeh. But suddenly you feel a sharp push in your stomach. You grunt and push while Cherry runs back around. A faint cheep comes from your rear!
MORE BABBEHS!
Cherry brings it back around. It’s got a golden coat like its daddeh and pretty wings like its mummah! You feel another push, but this one is easier as it slides out and cheeps hungrily. Another Babbeh! It’s fluff kinda like his daddehs, but much darker. It has no pointies or wingies either. Almost looks like poopies. You don’t care, though. You are a good mummah. You love all your babbhes like daddeh says. All babbehs are gud babbehs. Especially your babbehs! And now you almost have as much babbeh’s as you have hoofsies!
You lick and hug all your babies excitedly as Cherry brings them around but you feel one more push and some cheeping. One more Baby! One for each of your hoofsies! You are going to be the best Mummah! And it’s blue and wingy just like you!
Cherry brings it around but doesn’t seem happy. She said it “Nu Smeww pwetty”. Silly Cherry. It’s your babbeh! You begin to lick but something feels off….
The bitter taste envelops your tongue. Your other babbehs didn’t taste pretty, but this one is really icky. It cheeps loudly as you lower your nosie to sniff it. The rank aroma fills your nostrils immediately. You can’t even stand it. You almost make sickie wawas, even. It looks like a good babbeh but your hoofise almost instinctively reaches out to push it away.
You look at the cheeping babbeh as you hold your others. It makes an attempt to crawl towards you to feed, but. Why are you pushing it? You don’t want to push it! It’s one of your babbehs! But something inside tells you it’s wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
You look and plead at Cherry to help as Cherry runs to the side of the pen to yell for Daddeh! The babbeh makes another attempt as you place the cheeping foals onto your teats. But you push it away. Why? It’s hungry but your hoofsies won’t let it near you! How could this be?
You burst into sad wawa’s as the babbeh keeps on crawling towards you. Daddeh will come! He’ll solve the problem! Then your baby will be all pretty like the others!
You are the “Responsible” Breeder. Someone even put it in a Yelp review, recently. It’s pretty good for business. But you are known locally and online for your excellent standards of breeding, training and care into the fluffies you sell. But all within your planned budget. You need to make a profit of these things after all. You like your fluffies. You take care of them and make sure they have a chance at a good life and a good home, even if the reality is they may not ever get that chance.
But you don’t discriminate on who you sell to. You know some will get a loving home or a living hell. It hurts seeing some of the most well behaved, wonderful fluffies get sent to their doom with a sick abuser. At the moment, you are after shutting up shop and finished making your dinner time rounds and checks on the pens.
Suddenly one of your seasoned attendants is calling for you from the birth pens. You’ve had Cherry for a while. One of the best attendants and breeding mares you have. She has had a lot of litters and is quite experienced in helping your newer breeding mares. And right now, she’s calling to you for help with your newest.
With her cries, it sounds like Blueberry gave birth. You bred her with Aurum, your golden fluffed, unicorn stallion recently. He’s a reliable hand and anxious to meet his foals. He’s long given up hope for a “Special Friend” though, especially when you repeatedly told him no. He still performs when needed so you don’t need to retire him for now. Blueberry will be devastated when her “special friend” will only get to visit his foals once or twice. Then come visit for the next round of breeding, provided the colors are good.
Better that Blueberry doesn’t get attached either, anyway. Same with the stallions, no special friends allowed. Even if it has to be drilled in with the sorry stick. You made an exception once with your bleeding heart when you were starting out but the fluffy couple were just a shit factory in terms of foal colors. So you always say no, even if the inevitability is the stallions and mares get depressed and stop wanting to breed down the line. That’s the reality of breeding fluffies responsibly and keeping numbers to a minimum.
Still, Aurum’s colorations have brought in cash even if the occasional brown foal was birthed and his behavior has been impeccable otherwise. He can be an anxious, loving father as long as he’s not being an asshole to the mares.
You arrive at the pen with a concerned look. This is Blueberry’s first birth. Probably the first of many considering her colors. Her mother was a prize Alicorn mare after all and she didn’t come cheap from the woman who sold her to you as a foal. Her temperament was excellent, no demands, only one trip to the sorry box for being too lazy to use the litter box when playing and she never did it again. Her record sheet indicated she was perfect breeding mare material.
You arrive at the pen and tell Cherry to calm down as she points you towards the light blue foal crawling towards the mother. Blueberry tearfully bats it away as soft as she can while the foal cheeps in distress. Fuck.
You scoop the foal lightly into your hands while Blueberry cries a muffled “Sowwy, Sowwy”. You don’t need her crying. You need her to sleep off the birth. She’s tired and stressed. You gently ask her to explain what’s wrong. Turns out the baby “Doesn’t taste pretty”. Poor girl pushed out a runt on her first birth and won’t feed it because of her Hasbio designed instinctual response to push away any runted foal. An instinct designed so they wouldn’t waste time and money on inventory that wouldn’t survive in most cases.
She’s devastated that her own mind is telling her to reject her own offspring. Hasbio’s hard wired instincts could sometimes make their own breeding stock depressed. It was never supposed to be seen by the public either since fluffies would be spayed or neutered before shipping and only Hasbio could breed them. You shudder thinking how many mares just acting on what their instincts told them were brutalized by people who did not understand what was happening.
You pick it up and gently look over its body, gently moving the chirping foal on its back in the palm of your hand and poking for reaction. You can see nothing wrong with its body. Perfectly formed. No impairments or lost limbs. It’s voice certainly isn’t a problem with the loudness of the cheeping coming from it. Another filly too. But the more important thing now was to see if it can survive especially since foal seems to have great fluffy colors too. Looks like you have to make the effort for this one. You leave the runt on the nearby medical table on a paper towel and go inspect the others
You ask Blueberry if you can see her foals. It’s a crucial test as sometimes you can get a mare who is a bit too overprotective and suddenly display a temper. Mares won’t give you them because “Babbehs too widdle” which is OK. That’s how Hasbio designed them and their former vets and breeders mentioned in tell-alls that fluffy parents had designed instincts to not let humans touch the “chirpie” foals within the first week unless it was an emergency. But it’s OK if the mother or the attendant just holds them in her hoofs. Unsurprisingly, Blueberry tells you “Nu take babbehs. Babbehs too widdle”. But she does meekly hold them up for you one by one so you can have a look at them. She’s such a well behaved fluffy.
All fillies, all seem in good health. Two amazing colored blue and gold pegasus foals you can charge high prices for as long as the manes come in right. The other, a poor brown-ish earthy filly who has already has “abuse bargain bin or snake food” in her destiny unless her fluff turns auburn or has the most amazing mane grow in. You shake your head as the brown filly coo’s and peeps hungrily. She’s adorable to you, but not “$100 and an upsell of accessories to a loving family” adorable. Best you can do is give her a nice life before her inevitable and cruel demise.
You put them back and help the distraught Blueberry guide them to her teats. The foals are making the instinctual peeps and cheeps to signal that they are hungry so Blueberry is trying to get them to feed. You know she’ll be able to rotate them easily even when she is tired since there are only three. You carefully inspect the chirping runt on the table but Blueberry seems upset by its presence. The muffled “Huu huu” sniffling coming from the pen tipping you off that the new mother still can’t get over it.
You reach down and gently pet the new mother as you comfort her “Blueberry, I’m just going to take your baby away to make it better again. It might not come back but it’s a good foal and I want you to know you are a good mother”
“Mummah wuv babbeh, babbeh wuv mummah….” Blueberry discordantly sings and weeps as she fights against her own tiredness. You try to keep her spirits up. Positive reinforcement means there’s less chance of post-natal depression after losing a foal. If she’s lucky, it might even be returned.
You mutter to the cheeping foal “Time to get you some food and see what’s wrong with you” as you pluck the distressed foal off the table and take a bottle of pre-prepared fluffy milk out of your fridge. You tell Cherry to give some much needed hugs to Blueberry, make sure her foals can get to her teats (She’s trained to rotate them herself if needed) and let her rest as you take the tiny foal with you to your office.
On the table in your office is a glass pen not unlike a large hamster cage, gently lined with soft towels and some toys. You normally use it for observing foal behavior while doing your books but today it will hold the sick “chirpy” foal (As your fluffies love to call them). You gently let the peeping foal down and offer it the nib of the feeding bottle as you switch on your computer. The foal quickly latches on and begins to drink. You start playing some soft music from your computer to help ease the stressed out foal
Confidence comes back that it simply might be the issue is small enough that even though the baby has the runt smell, it’s nothing serious. you can return it to the mother soon so it can get some real milk. You even start wishing it was a colt. Those colors would have been superb breeding material. You work on your books as you observe the foal suck down the precious milk and contentedly burps
Not only 20 minutes after you start planning your feed budget do you hear the smallest of retches, yet loud enough to reach your ears. You look down and find a sticky mess and a vomiting foal in the towels. You mutter a curse word as you watch the foal upchuck some of the feed you gave it. Something is possibly wrong on the inside, you deduce. You make your way out to get more formula just in case it’s only an accident and check on the newborns.
You wander back out to the pen to find Blueberry and her brood sleeping. The foals have been fed, but You can still see the tear stains in her fluff from where she was crying. You scoop up Cherry and return her to the breeding mares pen with an oatmeal cookie for another good job. The other fluffies are winding down and you don’t see any problems from your rounds. You briefly let Aurum know his foals were here and he was jumping for joy asking when he could meet them. You tell him later on. Take him now and he’ll insist on staying in the pen and being protective of Blueberry. Take him in a week and he’ll be much calmer. The automated lighting should take care of the night time without your assistance tonight as you head back to your office with the formula.
You return back to your office, formula in hand to find the filly wheezing in your observation pen. It’s upchucked the rest of the formula while you were gone and is currently struggling to get air into its lungs. You theorize it must be missing or have an underdeveloped internal organs and is rejecting the food. Poor Blueberry, she knew it was wrong and still loved it. You cradle it and give it one last pet, muttering “You tried, fluffy. You’re a good fluffy” as you take it in your hands, put your thumb under its head and quickly pop the head up from its spine. The fluffy falls dead instantly in your hands. No point in prolonging the suffering of a foal that’s not going to make it.
The night time air feels crisp as you walk across the yard. You check the outside pen to make sure all the fluffies are inside where they should be . While it’s not quite winter, you make it a habit for to check for fluffies. One of your rookie mistakes was not looking for a fluffy who hid too well playing hide and seek outside and assumed he went in when you called. It was rather a rather disturbing sight seeing the shivering, barely alive stallion begging you to help him.
You arrive at your destination and take the still warm corpse out of your pocket. It’s still eerie to you that something designed artificially can have so real emotions at the same time. You sigh as you open the biowaste bin and toss the deceased foal in. Two other mares are due to foal so you maybe will have more by the end of the week.
You walk back to your home wondering what excuse you will make to Blueberry that her foal is not coming back. You think of “Skettiland” or saying it flew away. Blueberry is a Pegasus, she would like the idea that it got big and strong and flew away. You settle on the couch as you put on the TV. A news report shows a illegal mill operation being busted. Mutilated and shaking fluffies are loaded into vans, presumably on the way to certain death after months or years of suffering. You almost reach to your phone to ask your friends at the shelter to watch out for some good colors if they come through. But these ones look like the kind that need eternal peace from their suffering. Maybe you should be honest with Blueberry and say it’s better to have not lived as a fluffy pony at all…
You are Blueberry
You have the biggest saddies. You had as many beautiful babbehs as you had hoofsies. But now you have less babbehs than your hoofsies. You couldn’t stop pushing her away. You didn’t know what was wrong.
You are so tired, but you wake up constantly to feed your hungry babbehs. You hope your babbeh comes back. But you don’t think she is coming back.
Maybe daddeh helped her fly away. He said she was a good fluffy after all.
You sing about wingy babbehs to your other babies.
You miss your wingy babbeh…
You drift to sleep, dreaming of flying with all your wingy babbehs…
You are the responsible breeder, again.
You wake up the next morning to start opening shop and feed the fluffies. But first you check on Blueberry. She’s still asleep. Her foals are mewling and wiggling about, crawling on her teats and drinking some milk. Everything looks healthy as you place her morning oats in the pen while being careful not to wake her up. She needs all the sleep she can get, having to look after foals. You can talk to her later about her dead foal.
You take out her chart and note the date of birth for her foals. The foals should be ready in about a month for sale. You write down the complications and when you estimate she is ready to breed again on her chart. You’d give her an extended break for the stress but the gold colored pegasus filly already is a gold mine provided the right mane comes in. You chart her two months from now to meet Aurum again. Keeping in mind to not let them have any ideas of “special friends”
Even through heartbreak, business must go on. You are the responsible breeder. And you are responsible for paying the bills too.
