Mark my words, I’ll continue this someday. I don’t do a lot of super long work, but this one has been cooking for a while and it’s gonna be long when I get around to it.
The day is bright and stained with horrors.
You are a foal. A chubby little Munstah Mummah colt, with pretty blue fuzz that was quickly becoming fluff. You live in a big place that isn’t a housie. Hoomins have your mummah Precious trapped here to make babbehs! But your mummah is sad, because she never gets to keep her babies.
You don’t understand what that means. Why would she not keep you? You’re her biggest and bounciest babbeh! Sure, brudda and sissies might move on, but you didn’t want to leave mummah all alone! After all, she was a sad Huggie fluffy. She said the hoomins took her wunny weggies away so she couldn’t make good runnies, that way the stallions would always be able to catch her for special huggies. That made you have heart hurties. Your mummah was still very sore from having you and your siblings, and you’d heard her tell several stallions that “speciaw huggies am bad fow nyu mummah!” Most of them took the hint.
Most of them.
One particularly meanie stallion didn’t. The dreaded Ricky The Walrus, named such for his two horns that he called “tusks.”
They weren’t coming out of his mouth or anything, it was just an extra nub forming on his forehead. But he’s got the most of it visible past the skin out of any of the two horned fluffies so big horn=tusk=walrus. They’re not smart. It’s unlikely they know what a walrus is. You don’t know what a walrus is. You just heard one of the hoomins telling a friend about him one day.
You never see the hoomins. They don’t interact with you. You hear them up above on big metal walky things, and sometimes they sound like they’re underground! That scares you to think about. But unlike places where one of the mares had lived, the hoomins don’t come take away the babbehs. They just would only feed the mummahs enough to make miwkies for the babbehs who didn’t have teefies yet. They always seemed to know, too. You’d already seen it happen to your neighbor. A big fat wingie Carpdime, Belladonna still had her back weggies. They were just “dummeh weggies dat Bewwadonna nu eben can feew nu mowe.” She had five big plump colts, and they all loved her so much. But she had another litter not long after them. And by the time her big babbehs were able to wean, her little babbehs were just becoming talkie babbehs.
Five of them. Five little foals, just learning words. Can’t even walk yet.
Belladonna had been getting one fulk bowl nummies for each litter. When she was raising the big babbehs, she had one bowl of kibble per day. Once she was a soon mummah, that became three. After giving birth, it was gradually reducted to two. But one day, all five of her big babbehs went to get good miwkies and had to be booped on the nose for “gibbing mummah pinchy huwties wif teefies” on her miwkie pwaces.
The next day, she received one bowl of kibble.
She spent that whole day shouting at hoomins when she’d hear them. “Hewwo? Hewwoooo? Nicey hoomins? Bewwadunnah nu hab nuff nummies! Onwy hab wun boww, nu hab udda! Nee’ mow nummies fow make miwkies fow aww babbehs! Pwease hewp bestest mummah Bewwadunnah!” But they never did. Never even responded. It’s unclear if they could even hear her.
She rationed, but her chirpie babbehs weren’t growing like they should. She could see that now. They needed all the miwkies she could make, and she knew that all her big babbehs would have to do to get nummies, was walk down the Big Scawy Hill.
The surface you all live on is flat and surrounded by walls on three sides. There’s various habitrails and cat trees set up to give the foals something to do, abs everything is extremely padded and covered in fluff. But on the fourth side, there are no walls. There’s a hill. It’s steep. Really steep. It’s not so steep that you’ll get hurt falling down it, and anyway it’s padded to avoid that. But the padding over there isn’t nearly as forgiving. It starts before the incline, so you and your siblings all know what to expect.
The deal with the hill is that it’s steep, it’s long, it’s covered in little drops that are safe to jump down but hard to climb up, and worst of all? Wawa running down it. Only a little. Not enough to be dangerous to a fluffy big enough to go down the hill. At the bottom, you can all see your future. You can all see nummie towers and play places and toys and friends. It’s beautiful. It’s hundreds of feet away, and the journey will be arduous, but you can all see the land of plenty at the bottom.
Belladonna knew. It was time. She’d hoped to hang on longer, but it was clear her children had to begin their journey. And all of them did.
All but one.
The biggest babbeh had become a little big for his britches. “Nu! Big Babbeh nu wan gu down dummeh hiww! Make nyu sissy gu down hiww. Bwuddas wiww hewp. Big Babbeh gun stay wif mummah!” His mummah tried to dissuade him, but he scooped up the biggest of the wittwest babbehs and started to leave.
You just wish he hadn’t picked her up by biting her back. Not only did she lose her pretty wingies, but she said she couldn’t feel her back weggies anymore! Her brother was surprised, but quickly recovered to berate his mummah. “Dewe! Nao sissy am dummeh nu wawkie sissy, mummah nu wan. Nao babbeh can stay!” He started bucking with joy and took off to make zoomies around the Baby Pwace you all called home.
His mummah was despondent. She was giving best huggies to her beautiful little wingy daughter. She’d never had a wingy filly. She was so excited to teach her how the world worked, and was sure she’d beam with pride on the day her daughter left home. But that was gone now. Stolen by her biggest babbeh. Now her wingy filly only had one wing, and it was mangled and missing feathers. You remember seeing her say something to her other four sons. There was a lot of scaredy farts and huhuhus, but whatever they were talking about, you know what it led to.
Big Babbeh was sprawled out on the Big Haff Baww Fing, a ball sticking halfway out of the ground under a heat lamp. It was soft and bumpy so foals could easily climb it and sun themselves. But Big Babbeh took up almost all of it. His brothers waited for him to be done. When he rolls off the bump, he always lands on his back and his bruddas help him flip back over.
But not today.
Today, his cry of “Hewp! Famiwy hewp! Huggy babbeh am stuckies! Sabe fwaffy babbeh!” was met not with aid, but with the sorriest hoofies you’d ever seen. He was beaten and battered. Some kicks to the face mangled his teeth and he bit off his tongue, so it’s impossible to know what his last words were before his brothers scooted him to the Hill, shoved his face down in the water, and held him there until he stopped struggling and shit himself as the last light left his eyes. You think it was “Nu! Nu wan wawa huwties! Anyfing bu’ dat!” It’s what you would say, you tell yourself with a shiver. The Hill scares you. Your neighbors scare you. Your whole life scares you. But what scares you most of all? Yesterday, when you were feeding. Mummah booped you on the smeww pwace. The words she said made your blood run cold.
“Cawefuw babbeh, mummah nu wike teefie huwties fow miwkie pwace!”