The next few weeks were good for Sandy and Bluebonnet, although they had to learn a lot. Mistah Contini put a big piece of soft ground on the floor of the room they’d slept in, with a wooden fence around it. He said the fence was because there were all sorts of things in the housie that could hurt a fluffy. But they had bowls of something called “fwuffy kibbuw” to eat, and water, and something called a “wittah box” which was a box full of soft earthy stuff to make poopies and peepees in. They kept the cushion from the first night, and they had balls and blocks to play with. Sometimes Mistah Contini played with them with a strange little thing that he held in his hand that made a little red light on the floor, which they could chase and try to catch.
The first day, Mistah Contini had given them a bath. Both of them cried and said that water was bad for fluffies, but he made sure he held both of their heads up out of the water, and afterwards it did feel nice to be cleaner than they’d ever been. They ended up having a bath every few days, but they never liked it while it was happening.
Every evening Mistah Contini would take them out of the “pwaypen” and put them on the couch, where the three of them would have huggies and watch the magic talkie picture box. Sandy and Bluebonnet had seen one a few times through the window of the nice lady’s housie, but the pictures that Mistah Contini watched were mostly about human herds fighting each other. Sandy and Bluebonnet had never known human herds fought so much, and it reminded them of what had happened the night they’d first come to live with Mistah Contini. Bluebonnet plucked up the courage to ask him what had been going on, and he said that the second man in the metal-monster had been a toughie from a herd that was trying to take his herd’s land, and that he’d been given forever-sleepies to try to scare the other herd off. But Mistah Contini said that there were some bad people called “cops” who didn’t think that anybody should ever be given forever-sleepies unless it was them doing it, even if they really really needed it, and that he’d taken them in so that the cops wouldn’t find them.
Sandy was surprised to find out that Mistah Contini had once been the smarty of the herd himself, but that he’d got too old and tired to do it and his brother’s son was the smarty now. Sandy was sorry that Mistah Contini’s own son had gone forever-sleepies, but Mistah Contini laughed and said that his son was something even better than a smarty, which was a “woy-yuh”. A woy-yuh was a special kind of extra-sneaky toughie who had a very important job to protect the herd and stop people from taking their land and nummies. A woy-yuh could scare other toughies off just by talking to them!
Every few bright times an old lady human called Missus Contucci came to keep the housie clean, although she always made Mistah Contini empty the fluffys’ wittah box himself. There were also a group of humans called Dewgado’s Gawdens, who did things with the plants in the garden. After a couple of times a nice man called Manwel took the fluffies out in the garden with them so that they could num grassies and other tasty plants. He would tell them which plants they shouldn’t num because they would give them hurties, which plants they shouldn’t num because they were for Mistah Contini’s nummies, and sometimes he would ask them to poop in special places in the garden to help make the plants grow. The first time he asked them, he had to take them back into the housie, because Sandy didn’t want to do it until he was sure Mistah Contini wouldn’t be angry that they’d pooped outside the wittah box.
Occasionally other people from Mistah Contini’s herd came to the housie, and they would talk and play with “cards” (Sandy and Bluebonnet asked Mistah Contini once if they could play cards, but it was too hard and gave them head-hurties) and drink something called “gwappa”. Mistah Contini let them try gwappa once, but it tasted like dirt and made their mouthies hurt. They couldn’t understand why humans liked it. Some of Mistah Contini’s herd would play with the fluffies, but some of them looked at the fluffies with eyes like monsters’ as if they wanted to give them hurties.
One bad thing was that Mistah Contini ate a lot of sketties (except he said it wasn’t sketties, but something called win-gweeni, which was even better than sketties), but he’d only let them eat them sometimes. He said too much sketties made fluffies’ poops go runny and messy.
The other bad thing was once when Mistah Contini came into the room because he heard Sandy and Bluebonnet having special huggies.
“Jeez Louise!”, Mistah Contini said. “I forgot to check if you were fixed.”
Sandy had heard what “fixed” meant from some domestic fluffies who’d joined the old herd, and he started crying in fear.
“Pwease Mistah Contini”, he sobbed, “pwease no take Sandy speciaw wumps! Send Sandy away, keep Bwuebonnet safe, but NO TAKE WUMPS!”
Mistah Contini muttered to himself for a while. “I don’t know if I can handle any more of you… Look, Sandy, no more fucking unless I say it’s OK to have kids. But didn’t anyone ever tell you there’s other ways to get “good feels”?”
When Sandy was young, all the other colts had said that a mare’s special place tasted like poopies. Maybe it was because of the baths, but Bluebonnet’s special place tasted like mare scent, but even stronger and better, and Bluebonnet said it felt better than even normal enfies when Sandy gave it lickies. Bluebonnet didn’t think Sandy’s nu-nu juice tasted very nice, and sometimes she would spit it in the wittah box, but she was happy to give him lickies because she liked making her special friend feel good.
And so, Sandy and Bluebonnet were happy. For a while.