Good Daddeh 4

Swindle, March 29, 2014; 11:54 / FB 19807
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Good Daddeh

Part 4

You are Rock, a feral fluffy stallion. And you are heartbroken.

You live far away in the trees, but a hoomin monster found you anyway. It killed your precious orange baby.

The nice den you and Dusty dug for your babies is no longer safe; it is full of scaredy poopies, and the monster knows where it is now. It could come back at any time to kill the rest of your family. This was a good spot, with plentiful wawa and nummies, and it was fairly safe until now. You hate to leave it, but it's necessary if you want to save the rest of your family.

Before you left, you dug a shallow hole in the ground and hid your orange baby there, then covered her over with dirt and leaves. You didn't want the monster to get her.

Then, still feeling guilty over leaving your baby to die at the hands of a monster, you lead your family deeper into the trees.

This proves impractical. The deeper you move into the woods, the harder it becomes to find nummies. Grassies are sparse, replaced by piles of dead leaves and short bushes that are barely edible. If your babies weren't still drinking miwkies, there wouldn't be enough nummies for all of you.

Then you run into a herd of fluffies, about ten of them. You're curious how they've found enough nummies to survive out here, but then you see how thin they all are and realize they haven't. They're even hungrier than you are.

The smarty demands that your family join his herd. You're not putting up with another pushy smarty, and if you join the herd that just means even less nummies for your family. You refuse. He insists, loudly making threats and puffing his cheeks, and when you still refuse he lunges forward and smacks one of your babies off of Dusty's back.

You leave him crying in a pile of leaves with four broken weggies, abandoned by his herd.

You don't like it, but you have to move your family closer to the hoomin lands, where nummies are more abundant.

After days of hunger, thirst, and sleeping in a fluff pile under bushes (your family sleeps; you stay up in the dark crying as quietly as possible, hating yourself for abandoning your orange baby. Dusty understands there was nothing you could do to save her, and she always hugs you and says you're a good daddeh; you wish she hated you too.), you finally find what you think is a good place.

There are plentiful nummies here; several berry bushes, none of them poisonous, a tree that drops soft, juicy fruit of some sort (though it has lots of seeds you have to spit out), plentiful grassies, and even some tasty flowers. A couple of things you're not familiar with and insist on sampling before Dusty or the babies nibble any; none of them make you sick, so you declare them safe to eat.

This place should also be safe, even from hoomin monsters; there's a big, big, BIG bush, bigger than any you've ever seen, but its leaves are huge and covered in long, nasty points. Any monsters trying to get through it would be poked bunches of times and leave because of the owies. But, you've found there's just enough space underneath it, hidden by a berry bush, for a fluffy to walk around upright. And the dirt is soft enough to dig in.

The babies rest in the shade under the pointy bush, too scared to wander off on their own, while you and Dusty dig a den out. It's a little bigger than your last den; you learned a painful lesson about how far hoomins can reach, and you dug the den out so your family could all hide in the back out of the reach of any hoomin trying to grab you and pull you out.

Next, you and Dusty pull out clumps of fluff to make a nestie, and bring the babies inside. It's nice and cool in here, the nestie is soft to lay on, and you feel safe for the first time since the monster took your baby from you.

If only the heart hurties and guilt would go away now.

You quickly learn that while this den is safe from monsters and nummies are plentiful, there isn't much wawa to be found. The babies are ok drinking miwkies for now, but they're eating big fluffy nummies more and more and will need wawa soon. You also don't like Dusty wandering so far from the safe place in search of wawa, which she needs more often than you do so she can make miwkies for the babies. You need a solution.

Out of desperation, you lurk along the edges of the hoomin lands, ready to run at any moment because a hoomin might spot you and attack. You smell wawa coming from this direction on the wind. It's not fair that the hoomins have all the good nummies and wawa and nice safe places; why can't they share with fluffies? You've never hurt a hoomin. You don't even know how you COULD hurt a hoomin. But they hurt fluffies all the time, even when they haven't done anything and are good fluffies.

Hoomins will forever mystify you. They're incomprehensible, and better avoided than understood.

Finally, you find the source of the wawa: it's coming up from the ground in a spray, soaking the grassies in front of a hoomin's den. You catch some in your mouth and drink it, gasping and coughing when some goes in your nosie, but your thirst goes away. This isn't a good solution though; it's too far from the den, and you don't want to bring Dusty and the babies here where hoomins could see them and give them hurties and forever sleepies. You need a better source of wawa.

Suddenly, you spot something and get an idea.

It's a... thing, that hoomins drink from. You've seen them do it. It's made of no-see stuff called "plas-tek", and it holds wawa. What if you could fill it with wawa and take it back to the den?

Gripping it in your teefies, you hold it to the wawa spraying from the ground and watch as it slowly fills up. Then you grip it near the top with your teefies again, and carry it back to the den.

It's heavy. By the time you get it back to the den, your neck and jaw HURT. But your family needs wawa.

Then you have to stop and think again. How are they going to drink the wawa? They can't drink it from the no-see thing like hoomins do; their lips aren't as flexible and they don't have not-hoofsies to hold it with, even if it weren't so heavy. You dug a shallow pit near the entrance of the den so sky wawa wouldn't fill the den up, so Dusty helps you pour some wawa into that so she can drink it. But the ground is dry, and the wawa soaks into it almost immediately; all Dusty manages to do is get mud on her tongue that she has to spit out. This isn't working. You need to find something else.

You leave the den again, searching for a solution, and come across a bunch of hoomin trashies scattered about. There are no nummies there, but you find something that's also made of plas-tek and is shaped like the pit you dug to catch sky wawa. Hmmm...

You drag it back to the den, enlarge the pit slightly so it fits inside, then tip the no-see thing so the wawa inside goes in the bowl. It works! The wawa stays there instead of running away into the dirt! Dusty hugs you and calls you a very clever fluffy before she drinks her fill of wawa. The babies all sample the wawa too and start hugging each other; you keep an eye on them in case one falls into the wawa; you've seen it happen before and don't want the wawa to hurt your babies.

The no-see thing is still half full of wawa, and there's a little wawa left in the bowl, so this should last you through tomorrow. You'll have to fill the no-see thing from the ground-spray wawa until you find a safer source of wawa, but this should be good for now.

You curl up in the nestie, your babies huddled in a fluff pile between you and Dusty, and close your eyes. The last several days have been very tiring, physically and emotionally. But now... now things are ok. You can rest now.

You hope they stay ok.

You make the dangerous journey into the hoomin lands several more times, lugging wawa back to the den in the no-see thing every couple of days and pouring it into the bowl for your family to drink from. You really need a better solution, this is too dangerous and you know it's only a matter of time before a hoomin monster sees you and tries to give you forever sleepies. You're not so concerned about your own safety, but what would happen to your family without you? That scares you more than any threat of hurties or forever sleepies.

One day, while making the journey to fill the no-see thing with wawa, you spot something laying in the grassies a couple of houses down. What is that? It's dark blue and green. You look all around for hoomin monsters, then fill your no-see thing with wawa, keeping a nervous eye on this anomaly the entire time. Then you lug the wawa back to a spot where you can hide it while you investigate.

You look all around for hoomins and see none, work up your courage, and run across the grassies to investigate this strange thing in the grassies.

As you get close, you realize in horror that it's another fluffy. Its fluff is soaked in booboo juice and it looks hurt EVERYWHERE. You recognize this as the work of a hoomin munsta and start to run away before it returns, but a sudden sound startles you.

It was a moan. The fluffy is still alive!

You shift your weight from one side to the other and back again, debating internally, then make your decision.

You couldn't save your orange baby from a hoomin monster. But you can at least try to save this fluffy.

Grabbing him by the mane, you drag him back toward the den. He weighs more than the wawa, he's bigger, and he's flopping around limply, moaning in agony, so he's much, much harder to take with you. But you have to try. You might not be able to save him, but you're going to try.

Finally, after what seems like forever, you manage to get him back to the safe place. Dusty sticks her head out to investigate the odd noises and rushes to help you get the strange fluffy under the poky bush and into the den. Then you examine his owies.

He's hurt all over and looks like he's been stomped badly, but you think he'll be ok so long as he gets plenty of rest. His worst injury is one of his back weggies; it's bent in the wrong place. His other back weggie is a little crooked but doesn't seem hurt, just this one. You decide you're going to have to straighten his hurt weggie if it's going to get better. Dusty pins the fluffy to the ground, eliciting another moan, and you grab his hoofsie in your mouth and tug with all your might.

His weggie goes straight again with an audible POP, and the strange fluffy makes a squeak of pain before falling completely silent. You check and he's still breathing; he's just asleep.

You leave Dusty to tend to him while the babies all babble endless questions about who the strange fluffy is and why he has bad owies while you retrieve the wawa. Once you've returned to the den, you find your babies are all hugging the strange fluffy and asking him to get better, while he remains asleep. You shoo them back to the nestie so he can rest and you cuddle up with Dusty, explaining what happened as best as you can.

Why did the hoomins have to hurt this poor fluffy like they did? What could he have possibly done to deserve this?

***

You're Mel, of Acme Construction. Your company finished building the nearby subdivision months ago and nearly all the houses have residents now. The real estate company liked how quickly you built the neighborhood and has contracted you to build the next subdivision, which is going in just down the road.

You've got a map of the planned subdivision spread out on the hood of your truck, and representatives from the local cable, telephone, gas, water, and electric companies are all gathered around looking at it.

"Ok, city says they'll be putting in the streets for this subdivision starting next week. Soon as they get done, you guys are gonna start trenching so you can lay pipe, cable, and what have you. Once all the utilities are in place, we'll get started building the houses and you guys can hook everything up once the houses are in place. We've got a deadline of six months to get this place built, and we can't start until until you guys have all the infrastructure in place, so as soon as those streets are done, you need to be out here getting stuff in the ground."

One of the men, you think he's gas from the logo on his hardhat, nods and squints at the map.

"Got an idea where the utility easement is gonna be? I can go ahead and start marking the ground with paint and my boys can dig the trench while the city guys build the roads, get things knocked out sooner. We've all already discussed it and except for water, we're gonna joint trench."

"You guys don't mind sharing?"

"Nah, we get paid by the real estate company for digging the trenches, and they save time and effort on digging their own. We just dig the trench, everybody installs their stuff at the necessary depth, buries it, and the next guy installs his stuff on top of it. It's gonna be gas, then power, then telephone, then cable. Water guys are doing their own trench work a few feet over from us."

"Sounds good. As for your question, the right-of-way easement for utilities is gonna be in a straight line going from about where that persimmon tree there is... through that bunch of rocks... and ending about where that huge mesquite tree is. That's gonna be where the entrance to the subdivision is located."

The men continue talking for another hour, walking around and looking at things, before going their separate ways.

In the straight line where they intend to bring their machinery and install utility infrastructure, is a large prickly pear cactus with a family of fluffies living beneath it.