Fiona

FractalFluff, May 1, 2014; 17:30 / FB 22512
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Fiona

Fiona was already preggo when Harry adopted her from "Nyu Fwenz", the fluffy shelter in the next town. It was too late for a termination to be of much help; this far along, it would be as gruelling as a live birth but with the added fun of losing the foals. It was a stretch, he realized, adopting a gravid mare, but he fell in love with the cheerful little earthie's temprament. He was also very taken with her colours: vivid leaf-green fluff with a curly copper mane. She reminded him of the princess from Shrek, and was amused to discover that the staff had named her after the character.

If she hadn't been carrying already, he'd never have let her foal. For one thing, she was much too young: at just four and a half months, it was unusual for fluffies of her type to concieve, let alone go to term. And for another... well, cute colouration or no cute colouration, jolly nature or no jolly nature, Fiona rapidly outdid even the most absurdly exaggerated tales of fluffy incompetence.

Fiona was the product of a half-baked basement breeder's fun and games. Instead of being left with her mother to train up and wean, as even the worst breeders generally did, she'd been tossed in an incubator with several other litters to live or die as fortune pleased. When they graduated to "teefy babbehs," the  the surviours were moved to a battery of individual cages, cramped, isolated, and dimly-lit. With no adult fluffy to train her and certainly no guidance from "meanie Mistah", she was woefully ignorant of many basic concepts. She'd escaped the gnawing misery of her confinement by pretending she was somewhere else; this had left her more good-natured than others from a similar background, but absent-minded and given to daydreaming.  The green earthie wasn't merely slow on the uptake; she was actually a smidge more intelligent than most. Unfortunately, this conferred on her a tendency to overthink things that made her a disaster from her nose to tail.

Most fluffies have "accidents" on the way to being litterbox trained. Most don't poop in the box first time out... and then kick the poop out onto the floor the next time they have to go. Apparently she thought that existing crap somehow turned later contributions into bad poopies unless it was removed. It's also not unknown for fluffies who've messed on the floor to try and shift the blame, but most don't try to blame their stuffed toys for bad poopies. They certainly don't try that trick repeatedly.

To be fair, by the fourth occasion she appeared to have worked out that "it wa' Mistah Teddeh, Daddeh!" wasn't fooling her owner. However, her solution was to grind Mister Teddy's butt into the poopies, ingraining the fluffy shit so completely into its fabric that Harry had to throw it out. Fortunately, it was easily replaced with another piece of mass-produced tat. The new bear wasn't perfectly identical, but Fiona didn't seem to notice brown checks on his trousers where there had been yellow.

Whether it was poor nutrition, lack of mobility during her early life or that disasterously early pregnancy, she also seemed to be backwards in her physical development. The immobile fluffy mummah stage is a burden to most owners, but for Harry it was a blessed relief from Fiona's regular spills. Even weighed down with growing foals, she was forever falling off, walking into or getting stuck under items of furniture. He had to pad the walls of her saferoom since she'd sometimes trundle face-first into them. Her eyes would be on the window or her mind would simply be elsewhere, and she wouldn't stop walking in time. Her terrible depth perception didn't help; having spent her short life in spaces where the walls were seldom more than a few inches away, her eyesight just hadn't developed properly.

It wasn't that she made trouble deliberately — on the contrary, she was almost unnaturally compliant. So long as she understood it, she would obey any request immediately and unquestioningly. She really did try, but couldn't always process information effectively. Even her dissembling wasn't malicious, just the reflexive action of a fluffy who'd been too harshly punished for infractions in the past. Things like hiding "bad poopies" had once literally been a matter of life and death; from what she'd told him, foals were routinely maimed and killed for less. They'd learned to blame any bad poopies on friends who were dead already — there was always a corpse or two in the foal-bin, it seemed.

Even when she entered her final week and really couldn't move, she was less obnoxious than most pregnant dams. Instead of being fractious and demanding, she was content to spend hours just rocking on her butt or her belly, hugging as much of herself as she could reach, and singing her own version of the notorious fluffy mother's "gonna have babbehs" song. Over the thrumming croon that underlay every mummah-song (and was itself the real mummah-song, distinct for every family and almost impossible to fabricate), she improvised her own lyrics to a meandering non-melody.

"Fee an babbehs, Fee wiww miwkies, Fee tummeh miwkies, babbehs gif tummeh, miwkies happeh miwkies, happeh Fee  babbehs..."

Well, as long as everything's in there somewhere... reflected Harry, hopeful against all rationality.

It was unfortunate that his work schedual was abruptly changed just before Fiona foaled. The late shift might have grated, but it did mean that he was home with the fluffy during her most lively — and thus most dangerous — period. Now he was home in the evening, and Fiona was alone all day. He'd arrranged for a sitter to start coming in and keeping her company around the time she was supposed to foal, but the babies arrived days ahead of her due date. At least they'd come in the late evening, so he was home for the big event.

It was horrible. Over and above the baseline horribleness of fluffy birth, Fi's lack of insight made everything that much more nightmarish. The fluffy had only the dimmest understanding of what was happening to her, as attested by her whimpers of "Fee gud fwuffy, pwease nu owwies?" "bewwy-pwace gif sowwy babbehs!" and "noh-nohs am meanies, Daddeh get fwuffy nyu noh-nohs, pwease?"

But finally it was over, and the exhausted fluffy was joyfully nuzzling three undersized but fairly healthy-looking foals: two unicorns and a pegasus. In a further testament to fluffy genetics, only one of them looked like his mother. The little pegasus already had his mane and was a miniature Fiona, aside the addition of wings. It looked as if one of the unicorns might have inherited her ginger mane and tail, but so far neither amounted to more than a sketch of coppery fuzz. He was white rather than green, but it would still be a cute combination. The other unicorn, a filly, was blue with a white mane and tail.

 The new mother suffered a brief panic attack when she realized that she had only two teats and three babies. Most mares feed instinctively, nursing their foals at need (or according to personal perference), but Fee's tendency to trip over her limited intellect on the way to the obvious turned the numerical discrepancy into a major disaster. She calmed down when Harry told her she could rotate the babies so that everyone got a share.

"Babbehs shawe miwkies? Pwease shoh, Daddeh?"

"Is it okay for Daddy to touch the babies?"

Instead of the bratty tooth-snapping he'd expected, she immediately angled herself to present all the babies to him, even letting her forelegs fall to her sides. Only her flaring nostrils and flattened ears betrayed any reluctance. Evidently she'd seen other mares suffer for not giving up their young.

"There's a good Mummah," he praised her, petting the thick copper curls of her mane. "Let's put the little wingie on your tummy for now, because he's just had a feed. Now the white pointy can go where he was, and we'll put the blue pointy here... see? And then next time they need milkies, you do the same thing again. Just make sure that everyone gets a turn, and your babies will be fine."

Harry set off for work a little later, bleary-eyed but happy. If he'd known the part that his lesson was to play in the fate of the foals, he would have been much less so.

Waking from a doze to find her babies chirping, Fiona set about feeding them. Now... how had Daddy's clever baby-feeding trick gone? First you put the wingie on Mummah's tummy... then the orange-white baby went
here and the blue baby went there. That looked right. But then you were supposed to move people around after they'd had some milkie-nummies... how did that work again?

Brow furrowed in concentration, she plucked the blue and white babies from her teats; and then, after due deliberation, put the blue baby here and the orange-white baby there.

That didn't seem quite right. The wingie was fussing quite a lot, making tummy-owwie peeps. So she removed the protesting pointy-babies and put everyone on her tummy while she thought about what to do next.

Aha! Now she had it. It was just a matter of putting the blue baby there. and the orange-white baby here.

She nuzzled the fussy wingie and gave him a tender cuddle. "Nu wowwies, pwetty wingie babbeh," she told him. "Efwyone get a tuwn." After a time, the wingie did become quieter, although he was making a funny yawny face a lot.

"Sweepie babbeh? Sweepie babbeh haf nappies?" she suggested, but he carried on yawning silently.

For some reason that made her anxious, although she couldn't know why.

When Harry looked in on her in the evening, she'd finally got around to giving the pegasus a turn. It unlatched from the empty teat almost straight away, peeping mournfully; as Harry watched, she switched him to the other side and placed the white unicorn next to him.

"Have you made sure that all your babies got a turn, FeeFee? Has the blue pointy had milkies too?"

"Yes, Daddeh," replied Fiona mellowly.

"Aren't you a good mummah," yawned Harry, stumbling out of the saferoom to fall asleep on the sofa. He never saw the white unicorn detatch from the empty teat and fall into a doze, too comfortably sated to be disappointed by the lack of further milk. He never saw the pegasus pull away shortly afterwards, mewling in hungry frustration.

After a day and a half of this, the pegasus had missed enough nourishment that he was irrevocably damaged. His life could still have been saved if he'd been started on an intensive feeding regimen; but such was not to be.

Her heart swelling with sincere and boundless love, Fiona looked down at her beautiful, precious little foals, and began her careful feeding rotation once again. First you put the green wingie on Mummah's tummy; then the white baby went here and the blue baby went there...

After switching the blue and white foals back and forth several times throughout the day, Fiona finally got around to feeding the pegasus. This time he managed to drink his fill; and even though he vomited half of it right back up again, he did at least drift off to sleep with a satisfied tummy.

The next day, the pattern was much the same. The pegasus seemed logy and out of sorts to his loving mummah, so he got first milkies and lots of cuddles. But his tiny body couldn't handle more than a little milk, and after that one small feed Fiona became confused again. She went back to switching the two unicorns back and forth. Already affected by the lack of food, the pegasus was too weak and groggy to protest much. He peeped sadly for a while, but quickly fell into a stupour.

By the time the stomach pangs roused him again, he was only capable of gaping; his soundless pleas made her uneasy, but Fiona was too used to second-guessing her needs and instincts to respond effectively. It wasn't until late in the day that she became concerned and woke him up for a feed. He sipped a little milk, vomited again, then dozed off nuzzled into her fluff. His tiny brain was now too damaged to comprehend much of anything, but he was aware that some kind of suffering had ceased and been replaced with pleasure and comfort. He could perhaps be said to have been feeling loved and happy as he sank back into sleep.

He never woke up. When Harry got home from work, he found a distraught fluffy mother frantically nuzzling and grooming the stiff little body, trying to make the baby alive again. Death was one of the few things she had learned about in the breeder's basement, and she was devastated when Harry broke it to her that the baby was taking forever-sleepies.

"Wike... wike Sissy? An Bwuddah? An Uffah Bwuddah an Fwend an Uffah Fwend and Nuffah Uffah Fwend..?"

"I'm afraid so, sweetie."

"UuuuAAAAHHHH! Fee bad Mummah! Fee bad Mummaaaah!"

Only being repeatedly reminded of the other two babies got her to calm down and stop berating herself.

Examining the dead baby raised some serious anxieties. It seemed to have fed recently before it died, but it was noticably smaller than the others. Fluffy foals grew fast, with even a couple of days on short rations holding their growth back. They also became dehydrated very rapidly, which made the effects of hunger even more pronounced. The spindly limbs and scantier body fat of the pegasus suggested undernourishment.

That put Harry in a quandry. She was definitely making enough milk for three babies. If she'd been withholding milk from this baby, there was a chance she might do the same again. If so, there would be no alternative but to take the infants away. He didn't have time to hand-feed them. They'd have to go to the shelter, or somewhere they could be placed with a surrogate.  But he'd seen her feeding all of them... and she'd been so anxious about making sure all the babies got the nourishment they needed.

Well, there had been milky vomit around the baby's mouth and in its mother's fluff. Maybe it had simply had a digestive problem. He sighed. No way of knowing; and he hated the idea of taking her beloved babies. It would destroy her. Instead, he told her to let him know in future if the babies threw up or didn't feed properly.

Harry buried the foal in a quiet corner of the back garden, allowing Fiona the chance to say goodbye and take what comfort she could from the little funeral. Initially she seemed to recover well — almost too well, Harry thought. Her sudden indifference appalled him; were her emotions really so shallow that she could get over such grief overnight? Were fluffies really the soulless little robots that their detractors insisted?

But then he realized that she'd simply edited her reality such that the baby was still with them. It wasn't dead, it was simply out of her eyeline just at present. Every so often she'd scour the saferoom looking for it, then ask him to help find the "wosted pwetty wingie" and have to be bereaved all over again. It took a long time for her to properly integrate the fact of her baby's death into her picture of the world.

Not long after losing the pegasus, she became very anxious about the surviving babies' lack of litter-box training. They were still small enough to crap in her fluff, which upset her. Harry left a pile of special fluffy-formulated towelettes in a bowl next to her bed, on top of a moist sponge to keep them damp. Sometimes she remembered what they were for. Sometimes she didn't.

Worse was when the babies made messes on the floor or in the bed. He found her trying to clean up after them in the grossest manner possible, apparently reacting to something she'd seen in her early life. He repeatedly discovered her sitting the blind, wriggling foals in the litter-box, tearfully pleading with them to make good poopies so they didn't get biggest owwies, forever-leggie-go-ways and bad hurties.

Rescuing the shivering infants before they could rub themselves raw by wriggling on the abrasive litter and wiping them down with Fluffi-Wypes, he tried to convince her that she didn't need to worry.

"If they get poopies on you, or on themselves, just wipe off what you can. Use the wipies by your bed, that's what they're for. Okay? And Daddy will take care of anything you can't manage."

"Weawwy? Nu haf angwies at babbehs?"


"No, Fi. Daddy doesn't mind cleaning up baby messes. They won't know how to use the litter-box for a long time."

"Wy dey nu knoh?" asked the mare, frowning in confusion.

"Well, they're only little, sweetie. Look, their eyes aren't even open yet."

"Oh."

He'd shut the saferoom door behind him when he heard the fluffy bellowing: "GUD BABBEHS! OPEN YU EYESIES FOW MUMMAH! OPEN YU EYESIES, PWETTY BABBEHS! MUMMAH WUV YU!"

Harry facepalmed, then went back to explain that the foals weren't asleep, and that their eyes would open when they were a bit bigger.

"Open eyesie-peepews wen biggah?"

"Yes, sweetie."

"And den dey weawn wittahboxie? Nuh make bad poopies nu mowe?"

"Well, that'll take time. But yes."

"GET BIGGAH, GUD BABBEHS!" screamed the green fluffy, her nose almost touching the terrified foals. "MUMMAH WUV YU! PWEASE GET BIG — "

"No, Fi!" Harry exclaimed, clamping a hand over the fluffy's muzzle. "Mustn't shout at the babies. Look, they're scared. You've frightened them."

"Buh..." Fiona's eyes were swimming with tears. "Buh if babbehs nu open dey eyesies, nu weawn wittahbox an get bigges owwies, fowefah sweepies..."

"Listen to me, Fi-Fi. When you were little, before you went to the shelter... you saw bad things happen to fluffies who made messes. Is that right?"

She nodded mutely, eyes filling with tears..

"Mean people hurt those fluffies?"

She nodded again, lowering her head.

"But none of those mean people are here now, sweetie. They're far, far away, and they'll never hurt you again. Just Fi-Fi, and her babies, and Daddy. And Daddy will never hurt the babies. Daddy loves the babies. There are no meanies. Nobody's going to hurt the babies."

"Nu owwies for babbehs?"

"No, no owwies for the babies. Daddy loves your good, pretty little babies. It's okay for them to be little, and not know about the litter-box, and not to open their eyes for a while. They're not asleep, and they don't need to wake up. Most babies just have their eyes closed for a few, uh, bright-times. It's normal."

She still looks both dubious and fearful. "It's okay for the babies to be babies, Fi. There's nothing wrong with them."

In a few days, this was no longer to be the case.

The ginger foal was the first to open its eyes. They were a meltingly intense aquamarine shade, midway between sapphies and emeralds; the perfect complement for its colouring. The blue baby's eyes were still mostly shut —which sent its mother into another tailspin.

While Harry was at work, Fiona either forgot or rejected the knowledge that it was okay for the blue baby's eyes to stay shut. When he got home, he was greeted by three weeping, howling fluffies. The ginger-maned baby was trying to hug away his sister's owwies, while the mother tried to hug both of them. The blue baby was mostly crying because of the pain caused by its facial lacerations.

Harry scooped both the blue baby and its uninjured sibling out of their mother's reach. "Fi! What did you do?"

"Mummah hewpin!" sobbed the fluffy. "Mummah hewpin babbeh open eyesies, have seeins..."

Barely restraining the urge to scream at the mare, Harry said: "Okay, Fi. It's going to be okay. Daddy's going to take the babies to see the nice doctor now, to make sure they're both all right. You just sit tight and wait for Daddy, okay? Daddy will be back really soon."

"NUUUUUU!" howled the fluffy, reaching up for her babies. Much as he regretted it, Harry had no time to comfort her. He closed the door on her despairing screams. "BAAAABEEEEHHHHS!"

It was a brief but nervewracking trip. The babies were slipped into the flipped-open glove compartment, cushioned by a shammy and handfuls of paper tissues. Because he couldn't take his eyes off the road, Harry spent the whole trip terrified that the tiny foals were going to tumble out and end up smooshed under the foot-pedals. Cradling the little bundle of foals, shammy and now very smelly tissues, he belted into PonyCare and babbled out his story to one of their unflappable receptionists.

"Eye injuries are always tricky, but it looks like there's no lasting harm," said the vet on duty. "The scratches look worse than they are. They should be gone inside a few days. The main cause for concern is the filly's right eye; looks like her mother's torn the eyelid a little on this side. Should be fine, as I say, but if it gets infected there could be nasty complications. I'm going to give you some antibiotic ointment, and you'll need to keep that eye covered. Oh, and don't let the mother lick the ointment off."

She handed Harry the subdued and listless foal.

"There was one other thing... it might be nothing, but you should probably be aware of it..."

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, almost certainly nothing. But the thing is, while were were examining the baby, we detected a possible arhythmia. Now, I don't want you to worry!" she added hastily, seeing Harry's expression. "This sort of thing is fairly common in very young foals, especially if they're a bit premature. It usually corrects itself by the time the baby's a few weeks old. Sometimes the heart muscle just has a little catching up to do."

"I see."

"It's just something we might need to keep an eye on. You'll need to bring her back in a week or so to check that eye; we'll run some more tests then." The vet looked sympathetically at the bandaged fluffy, and petted its wispy white mane.

"Does she have a name yet?"

"I was thinking maybe Felicia. But that hardly seems appropriate now."

Harry drove home rather more carefully, though still very anxious to get back to Fiona. He was initially relieved to note that she'd stopped screaming, but on entering the saferoom he realized that this wasn't such a good sign. The fluffy had collapsed. She lay on her side, her breathing rapid and shallow  her eyes were glazed, as if in shock or pain, her tongue hanging out of her open mouth. Worrying, she'd wet herself; he wondered whether she'd actually been fitting. It took a lot of petting and a lot of hugs from her babies before she began to come to herself.

"Babbehs... nu... guh..?"

"No, sweety. Babies are right here. Babies are fine, see? Everything's okay."

"Bwoo babbeh... bwoo babbeh nu haf eyesies! Mummah bwake babbeh eyesiiiiies!"

"No, no, no, sweetie! She's still got both her eyes. Her eyes will be fine, okay? She just needs, uh, she needs to have huggies from our bandage friend so her owwies get better."

That night Harry set up an impromtu nest in his bed, carefully arranging everything so that the fluffies could curl up close to him. He woke in the night to find one of the foals trying to nurse from his pinkie... No, not a foal, he realized. It was Fiona.

It was lucky that Harry had taken out a policy with PonyCare. It was still luckier that PonyCare's Complete Protection plan actually was complete. Clearly drawn up by someone sympathetic to the travails of the average fluffy owner, it specifically included coverage for "acts of egregious parental ridiculousness". The blue foal continued to recover from Fiona's ill-starred attempt to open her eyes, but it was slow going; although the left side healed within days, her right eye continued to give her trouble. The young fluffy had to spend much of her time wearing a dressing over the worse-affected eye, giving her a slightly piratical air.

More troublingly, her weak heart didn't seem to be improving on its own. There were more tests, more poking and prodding.

Fiona was doing poorly too. Because they'd been discovered at the same time, she blamed herself for the baby's "heart-owwies." She thought she'd injured the baby's heart by hurting her eyes. Several times she begged Harry to take her eyes, take her heart, and give them to the baby. She obsessed over the idea that she could lick the baby's eye-owwies away, and Harry repeatedly found that the dressing interfered with when he checked it in the evenings. The baby could have been poking at it, but he was pretty sure that Fiona was the culprit.

His suspicious were confirmed when he caught her in the act of trying to drag the bandage away with her teeth. Fortunately, they'd just come back from a checkup, so there was a fresh eyepatch securely in place. The person who'd applied the dressing knew their stuff, and the mare couldn't budge it. Harry tried to be gentle with the anxious mother, but this was just another risk to her foal that none of them could afford.

"NO, Fiona," he said sternly. He flicked her nose, something he usually tried to avoid. "That's a NO. The nice doctor lady put that bandge on your baby to give her eye huggies and make it better. Good mummahs listen to the doctor."

"Fwuffy jus wan gif wickies," she responded. "Mummah-wickies keep babbeh cwean, make babbeh feew happeh, take 'way meanie owwies!"

"These are very, very bad owwies, Fi." Dammit, she simply wasn't capable of understanding "germs" or "infections". He'd tried "meanie no-see monsters that give baby owwies and sickies", but that had just generated more anxiety. How could he convince her? "You'd... you'd run out of lickies before you fixed the baby, and then you'd have no lickies left for cleaning either of your little pointies!" he invented frantically.

She gasped. Had he got through to her?

"Right! And... and the vet lady gave Daddy a special bottle of magic licks, see?" He showed her the ointment. "These help make her eye all better and stop it from hurting her. But if you lift up the bandage, all the licks will fall out."

"Huuuuh! Nu wan wose majik wickies! Mummah nu wickies eyesie nu mowe," she stated solemnly.

Please, let her have got the idea, Harry prayed silently. Jesus, Odin, Crom, Batman, Princess fucking Celestia: if anyone's listening, please don't let her fuck up this foal anymore.

Otherwise, he'd have to take it away from her. Both of them, really.

And that would kill her, and probably him, too.

***

Fortunately, Batman or one of his colleagues seemed to have been attending on that occasion. Fiona stopped futzing with the dressing; instead, Mr Bandage and his huggies became a regular feature in her rambling mummah-songs. "Mummah gif huggies, Bandid-fwen gif huggies, Mummah wuv babbehs, Mistah Bandid wuv babbehs, Bandid majik wickies..."

The blue baby required a very small surgical adjustment to correct some badly-placed scar tissue, but otherwise she was healing very nicely. Her eyes opened naturally a couple of days after her brother's. There was little change in her heart condition, if such it was; it didn't get any worse, but it didn't seem to get any better. The vet at PonyCare tried to raise his spirits.

"It's early days yet," she said. "This little girl's still got a lot of  growing to do. Plenty of  time to iron out the kinks."

He had a strong suspicion that her real view of the baby's chances was less rosy, but went along with the official line. Fiona didn't need any more stress. No sense worrying about something he couldn't change, and potentially feeding the stress back to her.

A couple of weeks after the injury, the baby's bandages came off. She appeared none the worse for her injuries, but seemed less active than her brother. She tired more easily than the increasingly rambunctious unicorn. This was h4rd on Fiona. She'd never really got to play as a foal and romping with her babies was obviously a delight for her; but she seemed to feel the need to drop everything the instant that the blue filly started to flag. She'd lie on her bed, nursing or cuddling the weaker baby, while enviously watching her colt bumble around his baby toys. When Harry got home he would sit with them in the saferoom and dandle the foal on his knee so that mother and son could play a little more.

Even playtime was overshadowed by Fiona's past. She would constantly stop her colt from playing with or even touching toys until she'd checked and double-checked with Harry that they were allowed to interact with each one. It didn't matter how many times he told her that all the toys were safe and all of them were for her and her babies to enjoy; she needed to know that they were okay to play with today. She was always afraid that the rules might have changed. Sometimes he'd catch her cuffing the foal, or pushing him away from a toy. "Nu touchie, babbeh!" she would warn him. "Nu touchie tiww Daddeh say it otay!" Fiona no longer identified Harry as a potential abuser, but seemed to think that the old "munstah hoomin" might emerge at any time to harm her and the babies if she did something wrong.

At least the white unicorn was developing well. He had a vocabulary of several words, and was alert and engaged. He soon learned to recognize Harry, and even when only a couple of weeks old would greet him with squeaky cries of "Habbi! Ubs! Hug!" He was devoted to his sister, often stopping his own play to cuddle her or babble to her and make her laugh.

But as time wore on, the increasingly strapping colt threw his sister's slow progress into relief. There was no sign of her injuries now, but she clearly wasn't thriving. She tired easily and often seemed out of breath; her speech and motor skills lagged miles behind her brother's. At her six-week checkup, the vet confirmed his worst fears.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she said, "but I don't think she's going to be with us much longer. The arhythmia's very bad; it looks as if her heart was more damaged than we thought."

"Is there anything we can do?"

"I'm afraid not. I'd suggest euthenasia, but she's not in any pain. What I'd recommend is that you take her home and make her as comfortable as possible."

"What am I going to tell Fiona? She'll think it's her fault."

"We can speak to her together, if you like. She might take it better if she hears it from the fluffy-doctor." The vet gave a sad smile.

Fiona took the news that her baby might not make it very hard. She held the foal in her forelegs and gave long, wracking sobs.

"'Buh... buh mummah wannid aww babbehs gwow up big an stwong..." she wept. "Mummah's wittew gween wingie take wongis' sweepies, an now... now bwoo babbeh..." She held the baby out to the vet, and then to Harry. "Saf Mummah's babbeh? Pwease saf?"

"I'm sorry, sweetie," the vet told her, "but your little girl's just too sick to get better."

Fiona drew the baby to her chest and wept.

"Fee bad mummah," she sobbed. "Fee wowsist mummah..."

"Baby, it's not your fault. Fi good mummah. Fi best mummah. Sometimes babies just have sickies inside, and it's nothing anyone's done."

She stopped berating herself, but Harry didn't feel like she'd believed the reassurance.

From then on, she seemed to disintegrate. Her overcautiousness began to be a real problem. She started forcing the babies to stay in bed with her when they wanted to play; when she did let them out, she was even more obsessive about ensuring that the toys were safe. Instead of checking in once for each, she ask would repeatedly about every item; and there was at least one toy every day that she would decide was permanently out of bounds. A red block; the yellow ball; a stuffed mouse plushie. The babies would be shooed away from these, and sometimes the toys were hidden in the bedding or shoved in a corner. Harry never ascertained any pattern: one day a toy would be fine, the next it would be a "bad-nu-touchie" toy.

A few days after the vet's verdict, the worst happened. Harry was playing with the fluffies in their saferoom; they were enjoying a rare moment of carefree happiness together, as he helped them to stack their blocks in the middle of the floor. One second the blue foal was giggling and full of beans, playing peek-a-boo with her brother around a blue alphabet block; the next, she gave a little sigh and rolled over onto her side. Even before Harry reached for her, he knew she was gone. He put out his hand to pick her up and check, but Fiona — sweet, jolly, gentle Fiona, who'd never shown him even the lightest resistance when he touched or handled her babies — gave a wild shriek and bit his hand. He looked down into her teary, rage-filled eyes.

"Fi," he said softly, "good fluffies don't bite. You're hurting Daddy. Let go of Daddy, there's a good girl." She did so, snatching both her babies and clasping them to her chest. The white baby was crying now, wriggling, reaching for his sister.

"Fiona," he said gently, "can you let Daddy see your babies?"

She shook her head.

"Fi," he said gently. "This is Daddy. Daddy who loves you. Daddy who loves your babies. Will you let Daddy see them?"

She shook her head again, clutching them tighter.

"Okay, Fi. That's okay. Do you need a little time alone with the babies?"

She didn't respond at first, but after a moment or two she nodded.

"Okay, sweetie. Daddy's going to be just down the hall. I'll come back later to see how you're doing, but if you need me before I come back, you can just shout, okay? Daddy loves you, baby."

Heavy-hearted, he turned on the baby monitor and left the room. He checked on the sad little group every half-hour, peeking round the door but not going in. He didn't want to further exacerbate the fit of over-protectiveness that Fiona was obviously weathering; that might induce her to harm herself, or the surviving baby. When his own bedtime rolled around, he tiptoed in and crouched next to the bed, coming in from the side and letting Fiona see him. Gently and slowly, he reached over and began to pet her curls.

"Fi? Do you understand that the baby... that she isn't going to wake up anymore?"

The fluffy nodded.

"Are you ready to say goodbye yet, sweetheart?"

She shook her head. No.

"Okay, baby. Okay. Well... I think everyone should come upstairs and sleep with Daddy tonight. And when you're ready, Fiona, you tell Daddy, and we'll... we'll take care of the blue baby properly. Does that sound okay?"

She nodded, and began to sob again.

He made them all a nest on one side of the bed, padded with their washable blankets and the waterproof liner out of the bed. He stroked her gently until she went to sleep.

Sometime around dawn, he woke with her tugging gently on his finger.

"Fee... weady," she told him.

He carried the little family out into the back garden in their bed, swaddled in blankets. Fiona and the bewildered white colt watched as he dug a small hole (next to the one he'd made for the green wingie), then came back for the filly. Both fluffies hugged her goodbye; then Harry wrapped her in a piece of her favourite blanket and buried her. As he had for the wingie, he put a large stone from the rockery on top of her grave to keep scavengers from digging her up.

Then the green fluffy asked to go back to the saferoom with her colt, and Harry complied. He left them alone to sleep and grieve.

It was Saturday, fortunately. If Harry had been at work, he might have missed Fiona's downward slide.

When he went back an hour later to check on the mare and her son, he couldn't find the white colt anywhere.

"Fi?" he said. "Where's your baby?"

She stared at him, mutely sucking on her hoof.

"Fi? Please show Daddy your baby. Daddy needs to know your little white pointy is safe."

With the greatest reluctance, she stepped away from her bed. Harry rummaged under the blankets and finally found the unicorn foal, pee-sodden and half-smothered. It chirped weakly as he picked it up and began to wipe it with the towlettes, then settled down into sobs.

"Fi," said Harry, fighting to keep his voice even, "you don't do that. If you put blankets on top of the baby that way, he can't breath. Bad for baby, Fi. That was very bad for the baby."

She appeared to understand and to be contrite, but when he left briefly to put the blankets in the machine and fetch some clean bedding, she'd hidden the baby again. This time she'd buried him under the plastic liner — even more dangerous than the  tried to hang onto the bed and stop Harry from prying her loose.

He spent the rest of that day trying to keep an eye on the mare and to convince her that she didn't need to hide the colt. The colt, for his part, became increasingly fractious and unhappy with being hidden. Eventually his mother seemed to relent enough to let him nose the blocks around on the saferoom floor... until he touched the blue block that he and his sister had been playing peek-a-boo around when she died. Fiona's screech brought Harry running back, to find her holding the colt down on his back and hitting his face with her free hoof. "NU TOUCHIE!" she was screaming. "NU TOUCHIE BAD TOY!"

Harry snatched her off him and set her on the bed while he checked over the foal. This time he ignored her pleas to give the baby back. The colt's injuries seemed superficial, but he was deeply distressed. Harry knelt down, holding the foal away from his mother. "Bad fluffy!" he told her, and gave her a light flick on her nose. "Bad girl! No hitting the baby! Good mummahs don't hit their babies like that."

"Gif babbeh! Dat Mummah's babbeh! Pwease gif?" she said.

"Promise me you won't hurt him any more."

"Fee nu wan huwt! Fee jus wan keep saf! Bwockie bad, am huwt-babbeh bwockie!"

"Sweetie, I've told you before. They are just blocks. Just toys!"

"Buh Mummah's bwoo babbeh touchie bwockies, den faww down gu bad sweepies! Bwockie gif babbeh fowevah sweepies!"

And nothing would convince her otherwise. Wearily, Harry gathered up the blocks; he could return them later, when she'd calmed down, or maybe get rid of them and replace them...

When he came back, Fiona was trying to cram the screaming baby down the side of the bed again.

The next day was much the same. Harry called up an old schoolfriend, a guy so laid-back as to have attracted the nickname "The Dude" before he'd even turned twenty. A self-confessed "horrific slackbeast," Ray supported himself through a little minor drug dealing and whatever work could be executed without putting on trousers. He redeemed his incredible laziness by making himself available for any small jobs that anyone might need taken care of. He was his neighbourhood's hero, always around to mind the kids, walk the dogs or help take Granddad to the doctor.

"It's nice to be nice," he explained. "'Sides, nobody's going to call the cops on me if I'm the only guy who can pick up little Tiffany from playgroup next week."

As soon as Harry explained the problem, Ray immediately offered  to mind the ponies for the entire work-week. He waved aside any suggestion that Harry might pay him.

"Wouldn't hear of it," he said aimiably. "You've got a nice comfy couch and some decent games. I'll take a go of Super Monkey Sprint 3 as payment enough."

When Harry came home on the first day, he found both fluffies nestling on his friend's stomach, happily watching him direct a sprinting monkey around an obstacle course made from Fresian cows. At first, everything seemed to be fine; but a quick word with his friend shattered the illusion. Fiona was okay with someone watching her, but when alone she would start trying to "hide" the baby again. "She's hitting him, man," said Ray softly. "When he tries to get out of where she puts him, she hits him till he stops. I know she's only trying to look after him, but it's really not good."

Over the next week, they both tried everything to get Fiona to behave more normally: puishing her with light smacks, bribing her with treats, providing empty boxes and a cat tent as safer hidey-holes. Nothing worked. She still shoved the baby into corners and small gaps, then piled things on top of him. The cat tent made things worse; she seemed terrified of it, although she couldn't say why. When she was around the baby she had to be monitored constantly; when separated, she went into a frenzy of anxiety and couldn't be calmed.

The following Saturday, Harry took both mother and baby into PonyCare. The staff were symapthetic, but with a mare this delusional...

"She might snap out of it on her own, or she might not," the vet said, as a sedated Fiona napped in one of the mother-baby pens. "But you have to understand: if this goes on any longer, the colt's development is going to be seriously affected. He's already showing signs of anxiety. He's just not getting a normal foalhood; and the longer this keeps up, the more likely it is that she'll hurt him."

Harry agonized over the decision, but his friend talked him round. "Hal, this is killing you. Look at you. When did you last get a decent night's sleep? And look at the foal. If she whales on him any more, she's going to break something. You can't let this go on, man. It's no good."

Harry left the mare at PonyCare overnight, with the assurance that she'd be monitored. Monitored or not, when he came in the next day she'd sprained the foal's leg trying to hide him at the back of her cage.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, but he knew it had to be done. Fiona was groggy with sedation when he held her in his arms, and told her that her baby couldn't be with her any more. She wept weakly as she gave the baby one last hug and told him goodbye. The confused foal was still asking for his mother as he was taken away in a carrier, headed for the shelter.

Harry expected her to blame him, but she seemed to understand why the baby wasn't hers anymore. "Fee bad mummah," she sobbed. "Fee baddes mummah. Wowstis mummah..."

Harry looked at the little green earth pony. He thought about that tiny pegasus, its starved-looking, spindly limbs. He thought of the scratches on the blue filly's face, and how she'd spent much of her short life with her face wrapped in bandages because of what Fiona had done. He thought of the dozens of times since the filly's death that he must have saved her brother from death by suffocation or crushing.

"Fee wowstis mummah... huuu..."

And he thought of the conditions the shelter staff had described: the incubator full of half-dead foals (and some all the way dead); the tiny cage that cut her off from all of her fellows; the forced mating that had put babies into a body too young to carry them; the mind that had been too undeveloped and too broken, in the end, to care for them...

Harry clasped the mare in a tighter hug. "Fi good mummah," he told her. "Fi good mummah. Fi the very bestest fluffy mummah."

And it was true, in a sense. She'd been the best mother; the best that she ever could be.

***