Sandy and Bluebonnet snuggled together in a shallow depression that they’d scraped beneath a thornbush. They were both feral-born, into a herd that had been a fairly safe and pleasant place to live. Until the smarty, Crambone, had suddenly decided that Bluebonnet should be his special friend, and not Sandy’s. Crambone wasn’t usually the sort of smarty who thought that all the mares belonged to him, but something about Bluebonnet just seemed to make him lose his mind. Maybe it was her cute little horn, deep blue fluff the color of a night sky, and lighter blue mane the color of a summer’s day sky. Sandy was a light orange-brown pegasus with a pale yellow mane. The two of them had sneaked away from the herd to try to make some kind of life for themselves, but so far things weren’t going well. Fortunately, it wasn’t cold-time yet, but nummies were getting hard to find.
They had just managed to get to sleep when they heard the sound of a metal-monster approaching. The metal-monster stopped right next to their bush, and all they could do was to keep as quiet as possible and hope that it didn’t notice them. It stopped growling, and a human got out of the front part of it. He opened the back part, and another human came out of it, it looked as if its front hoofies were stuck together somehow. Suddenly, the first human gave the second one sorry-hoofies and knocked him down! Then, he pointed at the second human with something in his hoof, and there was an incredibly scary noise and boo-boo juice squirted out of the second human’s head.
The noise made Sandy and Bluebonnet scree out loud, and the human turned round to look at them. It was then that they discovered that the thorns around them were too thick for them to get out of the hollow and away from the human. They tried to look small, but he grabbed them and gave them upsies. He looked down at them, and his eyes went hard and cold like a hissy-monster’s. Sandy thought that he was going to get forever sleepies, and hoped that it would be quick.
“Pwease mistah”, Bluebonnet blurted out, “No huwt fwuffies! Bwuebonnet be good fwuffy, wet Bwuebonnet and Sandy go!”
The human’s eyes softened a little bit, but he didn’t let them go. Instead he put them in the back of the metal-monster, not very gently, and shut the doors on them. Sandy thought that the metal-monster had swallowed them whole and that they were going to be nummies, but nothing happened for a few forevers apart from a noise that sounded as if the human was digging. Then the human got into the front part of the metal-monster and it started growling and moving. The fluffies could hear the human talking but didn’t really understand what he was saying.
“Yeah, a couple of shitrats.”
“I had to do something, they saw my face! If they always hang around there and somebody digs up Hsiang, the cops might get clever and talk to them.”
“Yeah, I should have, but they talk like little kids and look at you the same way, and I just couldn’t do it.”
“I’m just thinking, my great-uncle won’t get another dog because he says he doesn’t wanna die and leave it on its own, but shitrats don’t live that long, do they?”
“OK, if Uncle Charlie doesn’t want them, I’ll just smash their heads in with a tire iron or something.”
Eventually, the metal-monster stopped growling and moving, and the human lifted them out of it and put them on top of a stone thing that some iron gates were fixed to. He looked at them very scarily and told them that they were going to be pet fluffies for Mistah Contini, or they were going to get forever-sleepies. They had to be good fluffies and “respect” Mistah Contini.
The human carried them through a big field to a big human housie and banged on the door. An old human with a little bit of white fluff on his head opened the door, and the two of them talked to each other in a language that Sandy and Bluebonnet couldn’t understand at all. The old human seemed angry for a time, but then he calmed down and gave the other human huggies. He took the two fluffies inside and put them in a room with a lot of dark wooden furniture.
“You got names?”, he asked.
“Fwuffy name am Sandy, and dis am speciaw fwiend Bwuebonnet”, Sandy said.
“Hey, Sandy and Bluebonnet, you got those colors right”, Mistah Contini said.
Mistah Contini brought them a pile of newspaper pages and told them that they were only to make poopies and peepies on it, or bad things would happen. “I’ll get you a litter box tomorrow”, he said. He gave them a big soft cushion to lie on, and told them not to touch anything in the room. Especially they weren’t to touch the black and grey sketties that were against the walls in some places, because they had lightning inside them and would kill them if they tried to num them. Sandy thought that Mistah Contini was a scary smarty, but he didn’t seem mean.
“Gib sketties?”, Bluebonnet said hopefully. “Fwuffies no have nummies since wast bwight-time.”
Mistah Contini said that he didn’t have any sketties at the moment, but he brought them a big bowl of bread and milk, like the nice lady who lived in the little housie near where the herd lived sometimes left out for them.
“Fank you, Mistah Contini”, Sandy said. “Other hooman say fwuffies muss wespeck Mistah Contini, awways be good fwuffies.”
Mistah Contini patted Sandy on the head, then turned the lights off and closed the door on the room. The housie was warm inside, but Sandy and Bluebonnet still wanted to hug each other close as they went to sleep.
Start of a story I’ve been thinking of for a while. There are so many stories about some nice, “respectable” human having a secret life as a fluffy-abuser, it made me wonder about the inevitable reverse.
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