Daddy (Challenge No.02 entry)

AnonymousFluffery, November 27, 2012; 19:16 / FB 7063
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Daddy by Anonymous Fluffery

You are a fluffy daddy!
Your special friend's tummy was big because babies were hiding inside of her. Who knew? Certainly not you, you just thought she was getting bigger and was going to turn into one of the giant fluffies that pull carriages in the park. Then you could have ridden her!
The babies are even better, though. They peep and suckle at your special friend's teats and snuggle warmly into your fluff for huggies. It's like having two new tiny friends!

That's good, because the two of you are very lonely here in the lot. That's what you've heard hoomins walking by call it, anyway, "the lot" - you two hide in your safe place during most of the day, and you come out during the dark time to eat the grassies that grow up from the dusty earth (or bring them back to your special friend). Protecting you is the fence - it's chain-link and in a square around the lot. You could get out if you really tried to squeeze through the corner of the gate, but why would you do that? You can remember a time when hoomins gave you nummies and petted you, but you also remember being hit and yelled at by them, so you steer clear, despite the strong impulses you feel to beg them for attention.

Your special friend has less trouble with the desire to go to the hoomins because since she started getting bigger, she doesn't really leave the safe place, which is under some shiny sheet metal and broken furniture. She is content to care for the babies inside there, but you know they are getting bigger. They talk and walk on their own, and are beginning to want to venture outside and play.

The thought of running and hugging and playing with your foals excites you, but it scares you as well. There are dangers beyond the fence, you can remember that they filled you with fear before you came here, even if you can't specifically recall what they were.
But that was a long time ago, and you suppose that your foals have to grow up and know about the world sooner or later.

One dark time you fetch the least-brown grassies you can find and pull them up, bringing them back to your safe place. Your special friend looks cheerful and thanks you as you lay them at her feet. "Husban' am best fwuffy! Bring gud nummies fow make miwkies!"

However, after she takes a bite, you nose a few blades of the grassies towards the babies at her side. “Babbehs wan gwassies? Gwassies gud nummies.”

One of your two foals, the red girl-baby, interestedly paws the food. She is just about to experiment with putting her mouth on it when her mummah reacts badly. “Nuu! Gwassies nuu fow babbehs!”

At first you think she might need more for herself – should you have brought back a lot extra? You can make another trip!

But no, your special friend simply pulls the grassies away from the baby. She doesn’t eat them herself. “Babbeh nee’ mummah miwkies,” she murmurs insistently, “Babbehs nuu can haf gwassies yet…” And she lies on her side to allow your babies to take suck, which they do happily, the grass you brought forgotten.

You think for a moment, as much as your tiny brain allows. You seem to recall that at their age, you were already eating grassies and flowers, but that was a long time ago. Surely their mother knows best.

After a few days, your other foal, the beige boy-baby, surprises you by trying to follow you out when you venture outside to forage. You’re excited; he is smiling and saying “Babbeh come wif daddeh! Babbeh hewp!”

Again, shocking you, your special friend stops him! She clamps her mouthie down on his tiny tail and pulls him back, causing him to yelp and cry. “Owwies! Why huwty babbeh? Am gud babbeh!”

“Nu gif owwies!” you exclaim, but already your special friend is giving the baby gentle huggies, tenderly trying to make it feel better.

“Sowwy, babbeh,” she coos, “Mummah wuv babbeh, pwo’tec babbeh. Babbeh too widdow fow go ou’side.”

It confuses you, and you see that your red foal looks agitated. She keeps glancing at the exit to the safe place after you as you go, as though curious.

It’s all right, it can’t be long now. Soon they’ll be big enough for certain.

Dark-times and bright-times pass. You’ve held your tongue about how your babies need to learn to go outside, but more and more you see that they look at the nummies you bring back with interest, even hunger in their eyes. Finally things come to a head when your special friend lies down to let the two big foals suckle on her teats… but they are no longer swollen. They are not big with milkies, and your babies begin to cry. “Mummah nuu wuv babbeh! Nu gif miwkies!” “Babbeh hungwy… pwease nummies…?”

The mummah begins to panic. “Nuu! Dwink miwkies, babbehs! Haf miwkies, babbehs nee’ miwkies fow nummies!”But all she succeeds in doing with her urging is get them to accidentally chew on her nipples with their tiny teeth. “Owwies!” she cries, but doesn’t tell them to stop, merely insisting, “Pwease, miwkie-pwace, nuu gif huwties! Gif nummies fow babbehs!”

It’s time you put your leggie down. “Wifey, babbehs nee’ gwassies fow nummies. Babbehs tuu big fow miwkies, an’ mummah nuu haf miwkies.” Now that you’ve seen her body failing to feed them, you know this to be true. You can’t let your babies go hungry – babies need love from all the fluffies, and nummies to get big, and you have spent a long time with them. They are like friends, but your bestest friends, the most important fluffies in the world to you. You don’t just want them to be okay, you need it deep down, deeper than you’ve ever needed anything in your tiny meaningless little fluffy life. Even thinking about them having saddies hurts your insides.

Your wifey looks… unhappy, to say the least. Her giant fluffy pony eyes have gone even wider. You’ve always seen her eyes as pretty, but now they seem a little bit scary. “Nuu, nuu, onwy nee’ mowe nummies! Nee mowe nummies an’ bettah nummies fow make babbeh miwkies! Husban’ bwing nummies NAO!”

So you do, and she eats them. And eats more. She won’t stop eating, even when you bring too much nummies for her to finish. “Gwassies,” she mutters to herself between bites, “Gwassies fow miwkies, miwkies fow babbehs, babbehs stay wif mummah…”

But your babies aren’t just babies anymore. They’re foals without milk to drink, and they begin to complain – at first their poopies become smaller, even though they had been getting bigger before, too big to comfortably remove from the safe place. Then the poopies stop altogether. “Babbeh hungy… why mummah nuu wuv babbeh?”

You can’t have it. So you sneak them grassies when your overstuffed special friend becomes too lethargic to stay awake. At first it only confuses them, but after just two dark-times they’re eating what you bring them normally, and licking wawa off of the leaves you drag inside. Though their previous starvation has made them weaker, they give you huggies. It is a good feel.

Now that you know the babies can safely eat food, you will show their mummah, and she can be happy that she doesn’t need to worry about making milkies anymore!

“Hewe,” you decide to say just as a dark-time is starting. You have set aside a good-smell nummy with bright yellow petals, and nudge it towards your two beloved foals. “Nummies fow babbehs!”

They have never seen nummies that weren’t half-chewed grassies before, and are excited. Your precious young sniff it and exclaim joyfully. “Pwetty nummies!” “Tank ‘ou daddeh, wuv pwetty nummies!”

This is when your wifey barrels into the babies, pushing them forcefully away from the flower. You actually gasp in shock.
“NUU!” she screams, frightening them so that they squirt out pee onto the floor. “BABBEHS NUU HAF NUMMIES! ONWY MIWKIES! BABBEHS NU CAN BE BIG FWUFFIES!”

“Wahhh!” your girl-baby squeaks, round tears dripping into her fluff. “Mummah meanie! Mummah scawy! Nu wike!”

“Nuu huwties, babbeh…” your wifey says, but her voice quivers. She hugs the foal, but too tightly. She covers its face with her huggie – doesn’t she know that makes it hard to breathe? “… babbeh wif mummah… babbeh a’ways wif mummah…”

You waddle over and try nudging her uneasily, urgently. “Nuu, wifey, babbeh nuu ‘nee huggies… why mummah angwy at nummies? Teww fwuffy!”

“Ou’ bad speciaw fwiend!” she cries, shocking you, breaking your heart. “Babbehs fow mummah! Ou’ nuu take babbehs! Babbehs STAY wif mummah dis tiem!”

Now you notice that your baby is struggling under the increasing force of her panicked hug. “Nu mowe huggies babbeh!” you insist, actually going so far as to put your hoofsies around the foal and tug. “Babbeh haf owwies! Nu bweave!”
Your other foal is crying in the corner of the safe place. “HUUuu… huUUUuuu… too woud… haf owwies…”
“WET BABBEH GO!” you demand, pushing her as hard as you can manage to do without hurting her.

Your special friend’s eyes have gone far past just unsettling – they are now wild, unfocused. Spit is dribbling from her mouth and her whole body is shaking. “ MEANIE MISTAH NU TAKE BABBEHS NAO! MUMMAH KEEP BABBEHS, ‘OU NO HAF BABBEHS OW MUNNIES!”

None of what she’s saying makes any sense to you. You’ve never even heard the word “munnies” before – why would you? You don’t know about your special friend’s abandonment after the fluffy mill across town closed down. You don’t know about the half-dozen litters she gave birth to and had taken from her the moment they were weaned. You can’t even imagine how she was beaten for begging for her babies to come back, and then strapped down to get raped and impregnated to it could all happen again.

But you do know the depths of the love she has for her babies, because you feel it too – and the intensity of that feeling has led you to something almost unprecedented in the history of your mind. A rational realization.

You love your babies the same amount as your special friend – with all your fluffy little heart. But if it’s a choice between having huggies and the good feel and the love of your special friend… and your baby being smothered until she takes the forever sleepies? It’s taken all the power of your weak mind to make a values judgment, but you’ve arrived at it. Your babbehs are what matters.

“BAD MUMMAH!” you wail, more out of anguish than anger. Your hoofsies begin battering her face. Without so much as a ‘Why huwt fwuffy?’ she lets go of your baby, who falls limply to the earthen floor.

To describe the fight would be ridiculous – neither of you can do much damage with your floppy soft appendages, and biting each other just causes momentary pain as you pull on each other’s fluff. However, you’re fiercely determined to hurt each other, and even a fluffy can do that in the way that fluffies do all the things that cause the most pain to them. By accident.

You buck her in the chin for the tenth time, and this time she spins in place. She’s eaten too much, spent too much time sedentary, she’s slow and can’t turn back around. You mount her from behind, like you were about to give special huggies, but instead of that you just try to hold her in place, make her stop giving you and the babbehs owwies. And completely without meaning to, you’re on top of her entirely, smooshing her head into the dirt. Her childlike screams are muffled – “Bbbhs! Mmmh hwh! Bdd MSSH!”

You know that if you keep giving her head huggies against the ground, she won’t be able to breathe. So you do, with all your weight and might. You can’t really see because of all the tears you are crying. “S-sowwy, speciaw fwiend… w-wuv ‘ou…”

The bad mummah struggles, then struggles less. Finally she isn’t moving at all. You keep hugging her for a little while, but there is no way to make this better. You need to go by your babies.

It is only after some worried huggies that you find your girl-baby can wake up looking dizzy, and your boy-baby won’t even look at his mummah, or speak when you speak to him.

Your own breathing steadies, and you try to think. Nothing as powerful as the actual bit of reasoning you did earlier, but enough to handle the immediate needs of you and your offspring.

You can’t stay here – the bad mummah who was your special friend is still here, taking the forever sleepies, and you will have bad saddies in this safe place because of it. You begin to nudge your young towards the unfamiliar hole that leads to the outside world – one is crying, the other is unsteady and hurt.

They do not make it easy to move them, but you won’t stop trying. Whatever happens next, you will take care of them. You are all they have now.

“Is okey. Evy’ting okey,” you say. “Daddeh hewp.”