After a day of sitting in your hand or your desk while you conducted remote meetings and kept yourself abreast of the latest gaming news, Leonidas lifted his head, peeped and rubbed his eyes. As you lifted him to your face, he slowly opened his eyes and blinked. His vision swam, and cleared, finally resolving into the image of your face as you grinned at him. “Da-…daddeh?” He squeaked. You smiled, “Yes Leonidas, I’m your daddy.” You chuckled. “We-owe-nigh-dush” the baby repeated slowly before brightening and tapping his chest with one micro marshmallow hoof “Dat fwuffy! Fuwuffy am namesie Weonaydush!” You answered yes and he 1let out a small “Ha-ooh! Ha-ooh! Ha-ooh!” filled with joy.
You felt a lump in your throat at this moment. A feeling of pride, wholesome love, joyful acceptance. Unconditional love. You realized there had been something missing in your life that had just been filled without you even knowing it. A void of loneliness that you never have admitted to yourself. And now that you had felt the melting of your heart in the brief moment of joy, you knew you would not, could not, ever return to live as it was before. For, what was the point of living without moments such as these? In the grand scheme of things arent we all but motes in a vast and empty cosmos?
“Hey”
Railing against the promise of cold earth of the grave by gathering such precious moments as if to gather a few sparks of heat. Since man first crawled from the primordial and screamed to the spiral of indifferent stars-
“Do you mind?”
Oh…
“Nawwatah am hoofin on da moment”
Apologies.
“We’ll call you Leo for short okay?” You said, skritching behind his ear. “Smaller name for smaller fluffy.” The small creature gave a close mouthed chirrup behind his grin. “Weo! Weo widdah bay-beh. Wub coo wub daddie coo chirp” He leaned forward and hugged your hand, nuzzling his head against you. His head suddenly snapped up, eyes widened and he let out a tinny poot. “Poopies…” he whispered as if entranced.
You lifted him up and walked quickly over to the small litterbox you’d purchased, setting him down as he at first looked confused…then concentrated…then very very sewious…then relieved.
“Well Leo! Good job goin in the litterbox!! Poopies go in the litterbox and when Leo poopies in the litterbox it makes Daddy very happy!”
Leo bounce-bounced on his front hooves, squeaking with joy “Weonidush guud fwuffy! Peep!”
You laughed and picked him up, walking through the house and pointing out things for him to see. You pwace him how to push the button in his safe room if he had an emergency and where his bed was. Leo wandered around waggling his little stump of a tail and babbling back and forth with you. “Weo spwowwin babbeh!” He chirped.
A bit later you sat with him after he had “run out of batteries” so to speak, feeding him his bottle. The concoction, that you had dubbed “Fluffy fuel” was slowly drained and nearly empty before Leo popped his little mouth off the tip and licked his lips. Looking drowsy, he gave a little belch and scooted his shoulders to make himself more cozy. Bedtime.
You flicked the remote a few times and brought up “300” again, looking down at him as it started, gauging his reaction, worried that the movie would scare him now that he could see.
As the movie opened, Leo seemed to grow more sleepy recognizing the music and narration. He was fast asleep in moments and you tucked him in his bed. Well…next time.
Over the next week, Leonidas grew fast, his legs becoming stronger, his vocabulary expanding slowly. He asked you questions about blocks, ball, legs, upsies, day, night, and food. His teeth were growing in and he began eating hard and soft food. He also developed a habit of asking you questions that were a bit more difficult than usual fare for fluffies, which surprised you. He asked things that he picked up from the movies you left on:
“Daddeh, wha’ am boo-chee-does?”
“Daddeh, why da bang-bang dok-duh mans say he “huckaw-bewweh”?”
“Daddeh, does yuu knoes kun-foo?”
“Daddeh, what am a summa…sumina…sunmunabeetsh?”
These questions filled your days with sharing your personal philosophy as you took the growing fluffy on walks. You also made an appointment and got Leonidas checked out by a vet specializing in fluffies. As Leo stepped back and forth on the exam table, a frown on his face from trying to understand “cwinky papuh”, the doctor came in and sat on his swiveling stool. Running a hand through his thinning hair he adjusted his glasses with a fingertip and looked at you.
You gritted your teeth at the serious face the vet had pulled. “Give it to me straight, doc.”
After a pause the doctor said “You know this is an alicorn right?” You about fell over. Of course…sighing heavily you nodded. “Yeah, lost his wings to an asshole fluffy when I found him.” The doctor made an “eh-hehm” and made a few notes in Leo’s chart. “What have you been feeding him?” You wince and then explain your “fluffy fuel”, at first a concoction of convenience, then a the staple of the foals diet in the following weeks as you felt that what you’d been giving him was superior to the canned stuff.
The vet made another note and then sat back. “Well, Mr. (Your name here)…Leonidas was probably the most appropriate name you could have given him. See he’s not healthy…” your heart sank. “The closest thing I can come up with is he’s the fluffy version of a supersoldier.”
Leo picked his head up, recognizing the word from a rainy day when the two of you had been trapped in the house and had marathoned the Captain America movies while working out on the floor.
“Essentially…well what I’ve put together anyway from his blood work and physical, you provided such a high protein, vitamin rich diet and exercised him so well during his primary development period that his skeletal and muscular development is well above the benchmark even for an alicorn. The markers we find almost universally for liver and kidney damage from weaning foals are nonexistent. To tell the truth, fluffy milk is basically white colored sugar water with a bit of protein in it. At this point there’s still ongoing research but the posited theory is that fluffies are basically Type-2 diabetic by the time they move to hard food. Hence the constant need for food, the extreme mood swings et cetera. Leonidas here seems to have escaped that entirely.” You glanced at Leo who glanced at you.
“His reflexes are excellent, cognitively he’s extremely well developed and appears to still be developing…you don’t let him watch FluffTV do you?” You shook your head, explaining about your aversion and preference of human films. “Excellent. I’d say wean him off TV altogether but that’ll be your choice. FluffTV is numd numbing for Fluffies. There’s a conspiracy theory among researchers that HasBio subsidiaries are using it to backdoor reinforce their original programming for the current generation since the original labs went bankrupt. Without the orignal trigger phrases to induce dopamine-seratonin and frontal cortex reaction, the resulting lack of hormonal or deep seed memory reactions prevent fluffies from carrying out their presubconscious tasks of marketing assistance and product line extension”
“…yew wut mait?” Leo peeped precociously, perched on his papered pedestal.
Ah! How alliterative! So clever! The English language is such a marvel, wouldn’t you agree? Well…notwithstanding the convolutions of its contextual uses-
“For the love of-! Cut it out!”
ahem Indeed.
“Nawwatah-man coo’ help us unnastan da nice Vetwa-Vitehwanana…da nice Docca’ man’s big wowdies?”
I see, yes. Quite. Indeed. A moment, if you will.
It suddenly clicked in your brain and to a smaller extent Leonidas’. The “Fluffy Fuel”, the workouts and walks everyday, the lack of FluffTV. As much as you had panicked over doing the right thing for your little Scarlet buddy, you had actually made him some kind of Ubermensch…er, Uber-flauschige.
“With your permission, I would like to enter Leonidas’ chart as part of a paper to consideration of a Veterinary peer review board, citing it as a superior method for overcoming the rampant health issues suffered by fluffies without the need for breeding.”
“Uhm-sure.”
“Grand.” The vet clapped his hands “Just grand!”
Leonidas wagged his little tail and made his happy face.
“Time for his shots”
“Aw fwuff”
