VALENTINE
A Pegasus Story
Chapter Nine – Escape
The pink pegasus sat quietly among the soon-mummahs, eating her breakfast. Flower nummies tasted bitter in her mouth and gave her no satisfaction. Many of the other pregnant mares around her had the same dead expressions as she, and for the same reason.
Their foals would be nothing but nummies for the herd.
Of course, many of the older soon-mummahs had seen this before—why hadn’t the pegasus noticed their emotionless faces? Was she so preoccupied with excitement over her own foals that the obvious signs that something was wrong eluded her?
Without question. Fluffy ponies are simple creatures with simple pleasures. They are hardwired to want very few things in life—children’s toys that desire first and foremost huggies and love. Fluffies also love to run and play with blocks and balls, and have an unspeakable obsession with spaghetti.
Hasbio never intended fertile fluffies to exist outside of their factory and a few chosen breeders, but the Georgia escape and subsequent bankruptcy took the matter out of their hands. The country now teemed with mature fluffies who possessed an additional desire: in stallions, an unyielding desire for “special huggies”. In mares, the desire manifested itself in wanting to birth as many foals as possible for “milkies, huggies, and love”. The profit motive made this latter desire easy for marketers to exploit—irresponsible television programming like FluffTV’s “Babies” resulted in millions of dollars in additional sales for foal accessories, formula, and sorry sticks (for the mares who didn’t raise their “babbehs” in the way that their unprepared owners wanted).
So it was that the pink pegasus had ignored all of the warning signs before, and was especially cognizant of the danger around her now. She loved her babies without knowing why, and knew that she had to protect them, whatever the cost.
The herd ate the green earthie dam’s remaining foals over the next two days. By the time the last one was devoured, she was pregnant again.
Nightfall came. In spite of her innate fear of darkness, the pegasus knew that this would be the best time to make her escape.
Most of the herd slept in the fluffpile, save for two sentries posted to warn of danger. Occasionally a fluffy would wake up and make its way to the poopies pile to make poopies, and then would return to its sleeping place. This would be her excuse if a sentry confronted her.
She got up on all four of her leggies and looked around. Several of the bloated dams snored loudly, and the occasional leg twitched as one of the sleeping fluffies dreamt of running through a grassy meadow (or had a nightmare about being chased through the darkness my a toothy, tentacled monster). Careful not to step on any of the sleeping fluffs (not too hard, anyway), she quickly found herself at the outer limit of the fluffpile.
The wood was silent. The fluffy looked around at the trees, at the forest floor, and at the mist that hung in the air. She made a wide berth around the two sentries, staying higher up the hillside, but the red earthie saw her out of the corner of his eye. He turned to face her.
“What am mawe doin’ owtside da fwuffpiwe?”
The pegasus struggled with her thoughts for a moment, but then remembered her excuse. “Soon-mummah nee make poopies. Am goin’ tu da poopies piwe.”
Snorting, the sentry replied, “Dummeh mawe, poopies piwe am odda way!”
It was no use. Go back by way of the poopies pile, and the other sentry would watch her until she finished and waddled back to the fluffpile to sleep. She realized that her only chance was to keep to the hillside and make a break for it—the sentry would have to run up the hill at an angle to catch up with her. She may have been pregnant, but she was only a week along, and every fluffy knows that a wingie-fluff is the fastest fluff there is.
She stood there, making eye contact with the red stallion. They stared at each other for a moment, and then the pink pegasus turned to run.
“Hewd, WAKIES UP! Dummeh-wingie-soon-mummah am wunnin’ ‘way!”
The pegasus could hear the sound of fluffies waking up behind her, but she didn’t dare turn to look—she had to outrun the sentry.
Then, she tripped over a tree root. She face-planted in the hard dirt, and could feel boo-boo juice trickling down her nose, but quickly got up and started running again.
Tears formed in her eyes as she thought of her unborn babies. In her mind, she could picture a pink wingie-baby under the smarty’s hoof, getting its head torn from its body. She couldn’t let that happen.
Wun fastew, weggies! Wun! Nee sabe babbehs! Driven by the love of babies she had never met, she bounded on through the forest, surrounded by pine trees a hundred feet tall.
The stumble she took earlier had taken its toll. Her left front leg was sore, and she couldn’t run as fast as she would have on four good legs. The red sentry was catching up, with the smarty and several toughies not far behind.
“Gon’ get’chu, dummeh mawe. Smawty wiww gif sowwy hoofsies fo wun way fwom hewd!”
At that moment, a shape came out of the darkness—out of nowhere—and seized upon the red earthie. He let out a SCREEEEEEEE, but the monster did not release the fluffy from its jaws. The pegasus, and all of the fluffies who pursued her, all made scaredy-poopies in their tracks. They gaped as the coyote ripped a chunk out of the sentry’s fat side.
“Nu wet dummeh wingie-fwuff get ‘way! Keep wunnin’, dummehs!”
The mare shook off her stupor and started running again. If they caught up with her now, they would give her worsest owwies and num her babies! She ran and ran, and burst into a clearing as the sun started coming up over the horizon.
Ted Polk had joined the Army when he was seventeen years old. His marksmanship ability was noticed early on by his superiors, who recommended him for sniper school. He may have become one of the best army snipers in history had he been able to pass the written exam—fuckin’ dyslexia. As it was, he received many accolades for his shooting and served with distinction in the closing days of the Vietnam War. When he left the army, he drove a truck for decades before settling into retirement on the family farm. The shit he saw in Vietnam still weighed heavily on his mind, and he found maintaining his grandmother’s roses to be a soothing activity. He still did a lot of shooting—mostly from his back porch, as old age and a tree stand didn’t set well on his ass—and that kept his mind sharp and his belly full.
He sat out on the porch on the misty January morning with his cup of black coffee and his Browning BAR .30-06, waiting to see what would come by. He had scattered some corn out by the treeline—that usually pulled in the odd deer or two, or maybe a flock of turkeys. He kept a .22 on the table beside him, just in case. The deer rifle would have obliterated a turkey.
The sun was just starting to come up when Ted saw a pink fluffy pony run out into the clearing. Damn fluffies. Taste like shit this time of year. Still, he didn’t want the things around come springtime. They bred like rats and were a constant threat to his garden.
He picked up the Browning and got ready to set his sight on the pink fluffy when all of a sudden he saw a half-dozen others come out from the woods. It looked like they were chasing the pink one with wings.
Well, it looks like I’ll get my “Good Deed for the Day” out of the way before breakfast, the old man thought as he sighted in a blue one with a horn. He loved shooting off their horns.
The pink pegasus ran through the open field. The grass was all brown, dead, and hard, and so it felt rough on her leathery hooves. But she couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t.
A blue unicorn—one of the herd toughies—ran up next to her left hindquarter. A yellow earthie—the attendant mare—ran along her right. They were catching up to her. It wouldn’t be long before—
BANG
Out of her periphery, she could see that the blue toughie’s head was gone. He ran a couple more steps and then crashed end over end in a heap. The yellow mare screamed as his blood and brains now covered her fluff, and she stopped running as well. The mare looked back just in time to see another green stallion explode in a red mist. The yellow earthie collapsed next. She turned her head back and kept running. Her pursuers were in chaos. The white smarty was the first back into the woods.
The pink pegasus ran behind a small garden shed and through the treeline on the opposite side of the meadow. She kept running through the forest, not wanting to look back at the grisly scene. She ran and ran, until she could run no more.
There was no sound there in the piney woods, save for the birds singing in the trees. The herd had given up when the invisible monster started to num the toughies. She sat on her rump, then down on all fours, and slept next to a large gum tree.
She slept for hours, exhausted from her successful escape. Her tummie-babies were still kicking, and that was a good sign.
“Tummeh-babbehs, yu am safe nao. Nu wet munstah-fwuffies num yu.” She rubbed her belly with her hoof, which made it gurgle. She hadn’t eaten all day.
The pegasus scraped at the pine straw on the ground, finding only token grass shoots. Nothing filled her belly. There were strange things growing on the trees that one of the herd fluffies had called “shwooms”, but they were too high for her to reach. If she was to feed her babies (and herself) she would have to keep walking.
Four days passed, and still she found no steady source of food. She still found the odd grass shoot, and sometimes a rotten nut on the ground, but the “nu taste pwetty nummies” didn’t satisfy her increasingly painful tummy-owwies.
She felt a kick at her belly. “Nu wowwy, tummeh-babbehs. Mummah wiww fin nummies soon.”
Then the rain started. The pegasus found meager shelter under a large cedar tree, but still felt the dripdripdrip of cold water droplets on her pink fluff.
“Pwease, sky wawas…wawa bad fo fwuffies…pwease nu huwt fwuffy…”, and she settled into an uneasy rest.
When the pink mare woke up the next day, the rain had stopped. The ground all around her was wet and cold. She shuffled out from under the cedar tree to survey her surroundings—nothing but pine forest all around. A squirrel bounded about, searching for one of its stores of nuts. A blue jay pecked at the ground for whatever morsels it could find.
That only reminded the pegasus of her persistent hunger. The long winter took its toll on creatures of the forest, but nature had adapted them to their surroundings. A fluffy pony had no such biological advantage. Her only recourse was to continue searching for food.
She walked and walked on her sore, leathery hooves. She didn’t feel like walking anymore—but what choice did she have? Mummahs needed nummies to make milkies for their babies. Everyone else had run away from her because she was a bad fluffy. She couldn’t risk her babies running away because she was a bad mummah.
Finally, she stepped into a clearing. She saw a large building at one end of the meadow, and a human house at the other end. But what drew her attention were the green bushes near the see-through house.
Nummies! She couldn’t believe it. After all of her searching, and all of her running, she finally found some bushes with enough greenery to feed herself and her babies. She shuffled forward as fast as she could.
Then, she took a bite from one of the bushes, and cut her tongue. “Why nu nummies fo soon-mummah? Why gweenie-bushies gif owwies? Haf wowsest tummeh owwies. Nee nummies fo make miwkies fo tummeh babbehs!” She tried to step back from the bushes, but realized that the bush had grabbed her and wouldn’t let go. She began to panic.
“Nu, gweenie-bushie! Wet gu of soon-mummah! Nee fin nummies fo babbehs!”
Then the realization hit her—she had eaten so little over the past week that her tummy-babies would leave her soon if she didn’t eat anything. She began to sob into her fluff.
“Huu huu, if soon-mummah nu fin nummies soon, wiww be mummah-nu-mowe, huu huu…”
Her overwhelming fear prevented her from hearing the human coming until he came around the corner of the see-through house. She couldn’t run because the bush wouldn’t loosen its grip on her leggie, so she did the only thing she thought she could. She begged.
“Huu huu…pwease, nice mistah. Pwease hewp fwuffy owt of meanie bushies. Fwuffy haf pokey owies an haf tummeh owies an haf heawt huwties.”
The human smiled, and then replied in a soothing voice, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.” He knelt down next to the ensnared fluffy. “Let me take a look at you.” The man examined her leggie, but couldn’t get the meanie bush to let go.
“I’ve gotten most of it off. Can you wait here so I can get some scissors to finish the job?”
And so, the pegasus waited. The longer the human was away, the more her eyes welled with tears. Did this human run away, too?
No. He came back. He had to cut off some of her pretty pink fluff to get the bush to let go of her, but then he made it all better by giving her greenie-nummies! She ate hungrily while the human petted her fluff.
“Do you have a name?”
She froze. Many forevers ago, a mummah had given her a name. But that mummah had stopped loving her, as had every mummah and daddeh before or since. She didn’t want that name anymore, so she decided to lie.
“Fwuffy haf name, bu fwuffy nu wemembah.”
The human seemed surprised, but then responded. “Hmm…how about we call you… ‘Candy’?”
She fluttered her tiny wings. This nice human had given her a new name! That caused her programming to kick in.
“Candee wuv nyu name! Fwuffy am Candee! Nice mistah be nyu daddeh?”
Her question was met with silence. Why didn’t the human say “yes”? Was he going to run away, too? How could a human give a fluffy a name and then not be its new mummah or daddeh? She couldn’t bear another rejection—the heart-hurties were almost too much to bear!
“Sure, I’ll be your new daddy.”
The days of Valentine and the nameless pink pegasus mare were over. She had lived a hard life, known love and even more heartache, known suffering and pain, and very little joy. But such is the life of a fluffy pony. Created by imperfect man rather than infalliable god, they are the most imperfect of beings. Born to give love and receive it in return, they suffer the greatest scorn and the most evil machinations that mankind can devise. It sucks to be a fluffy pony.
But Candy now lived a good life, the likes of which Hasbio never intended and which most humans do not believe they deserve. She birthed healthy foals, raised them to be good fluffies, and made friends of other fluffies who either came to or were born on her daddeh’s farm. True, there was still heartache and pain, but there was happiness and joy beyond measure. The last few months of her life were mostly happy, and she lived in peace until the last of her days.
THE END OF “VALENTINE”
Thank you for reading!