Hey FC, Axestraddler here with the next part to Try to Be a Good Mummah, please let me know what you all think. As always, I’m looking for constructive criticism whenever possible!
Thanks for reading!
You are Opal, a fluffy mare who gave birth to a brood of forever sleeping foals last week. Since then, you’ve found a new nest, and you’ve seen a pretty stallion fluffy near your new alley. You wonder if he would want to be your special friend. This time your babies would be born healthy.
You recall your mummah Jane’s last words to you. “Opal, I love you. I’m so, so sorry I can’t keep you. Try to be a good momma, Opal.”
You really thought you were being a good mummah, you would give huggies to your tummy babies, and sing to them, and find lots of nummies so you never had tummy hurties.
But they came out forever sleepies. And they came out that way every time you had babies! It wasn’t fair. It made you feel like the worst mummah. Like the worst fluffy. You couldn’t even do the one thing Mummah Jane told you to, and you loved her so much. In fact, the last time you remember being happy was with Mummah Jane.
You miss her, as much as your babies. You miss having a pile of blankets and pillows to nap in. You miss having a ball, and blockies. You miss sketties, you even miss your not very tasty kibble, though you just barely remember living with her. Just moments, words. Little pieces of joy. It has been a very long time since you had seen Mummah Jane. A very long time since you’ve been happy.
You’ve had 5 litters of foals, all but one were stillborn, and each one haunts you. You hope to correct the mistakes of each previous litter, though you can’t really figure out what was a mistake, and what was the right thing to do, especially for the last two litters. They were the first children you had after you were driven from the farm you lived at, which was after you stopped living with Mummah Jane.
All of these thoughts were a lot on your poor thinkie place. Err, your head. And because you were having so many meanie hurtie thoughts, you were making sad waters, making the search through spilled trash and discarded food wrappers that much more difficult.
You were very good at finding nummies. You already had some, hidden under your new blanket, inside your new nest. Its always good to have more, though. And near the mouth of the alleyway, where it opens up to the sidewalk and street, there’s a vending machine that’s particularly unreliable. People will often receive the wrong candy or snack from the machine, and toss the unwanted food. You picked up on this a few days ago, and have been hoarding every morsel you could.
Today, because you were crying, you got turned around. You only found icky nummies, like thin, grimy potato skins and a brown banana peel. You were really hoping for one of the nummies humans called a KitKat. They were your favorite. You were very far from your nest, and even further from the vending machine you got most of your food from.
As your tears dried and eyes cleared, you became aware of the soft glow of another vending machine. This one was different though. You caught the unmistakable smells of fluffy waste, and of foals. As your head stopped pounding you heard their happy coos and chirps.
You run. You run faster than you can remember ever running. Your momentum carried you past the vending machine, and tumbling onto the sidewalk. A human that wasn’t looking stepped on your tail. When he heard you screaming, he ground the ball of his foot into your tail, and you feel something in your tail break.
You scurry back into the alley, hiding behind the strange vending machine, the smells and sounds of foals stronger than ever. You cry for a while, trying to hug your broken tail back to health. It doesn’t work, and only causes you more and more pain. As your screams rip through you, you hear a change in the foals sounds. They’re peeping in distress! What was scaring them?! Should you be scared too?
You quiet yourself as quickly as possible. Its not easy to ignore the pain in your tail, which now follows you limply. You look around, and listen hard. You don’t see any monsters, and you don’t smell anything, except your own bad poopies and scaredie peepees. The foals eventually calm down too. You feel brave, and you really want to see the babies, so you walk from the shadows to the vending machine, and into the light it projects.
Your mind is overwhelmed as you see more babies than you can count, probably more than even the smartest smarty-friend can count, you think. They’re all lined up in see through nests! Some of them suckle at teats in their strange little nests, tiny hooves kneading at the rubber nipple containing their nutrient rich imitation mare’s milk slurry. Some of them coo and sigh contentedly, having sleepytime pictures.
You get closer, and press your hooves onto the see through wall separating you from all of those babies. It’s warm to the touch, so you know they’re not cold. You start to notice a few of the foals are actually discontent. The older ones, mostly. They look as though they’re starving, like the nest stopped giving them milkies for some reason. You see the thinnest of the foals in the contraption. It is completely unmoving, not even to breathe.
You can’t decide if this is the best thing you have ever seen, or the most horrifying. Your maternal instincts kick into over drive, and you want to save them all. To sing to them all. To love and hold them all. You press one side of your face up to the warm glass of the foal-in-a-can vending machine, and do your best to wrap your two front legs around it. You hope the foals within can feel you giving them the best hug you can muster.