Sometimes. Just sometimes. E-e-every now and then. Only occasionally. There might be a possibility. A possibility that something had been done, an action had been taken, that could cause a touch of regret over the taking of the action. Just a smidge.
Deep in the Arfajia Valley. In the vast expanse of open fields and nothingness. A small community village, growing into a town. Surrounded by medium enterprises and a small handful of farms. One of those farms growing from very small and neglected, to burgeoning. Butterfly Farm.
Run by the fluffy purple and white vixen-taur Buddleia, with help of the tall, freckled human woman Sasha. It had been Sasha who had made many decisions, laid out a number of plans, taken a number of actions. She had not regretted any of them. The decision to help the amazingly caring and sweet vulpine taur to bring the old little farm back around from the brink of death, the decision to stay on that farm for the rest of her life, the decision to marry the fluffy vixen-taur; it had all been the best decision she had ever made. Not the slightest shred of regret about any of those decisions.
Time passed by, and more decisions were made, more actions were taken. All of them had benefitted the farm, had caused it to grow, to flourish. Only recently, it had even achieved a massive milestone, reaching a financial peak of seven figures on the company account, officially making it a million dollar farm. Every decision, every action, had been positive and had helped the farm to sustain itself and even grow steadily.
More decisions needed to be made. More actions needed to be taken. The time stopped for nobody, and work had to be done. Silage bales had finished fermenting and needed to be brought to the BGA plant. The grass in several of the fields needed to be cut, raked, baled and wrapped to make a new batch of silage bales. Every day, the chickens, the rabbits and the goat needed to be fed and taken care of, eggs needed collecting, milk needed collecting and processing. Decisions; there was such a surplus of milk that a shelving rack in the underground bunker had to be rearranged so it could hold a large number of extra cheeses made of out the goat milk. There was still such a surplus of elderberries that extra jam, juice and wine needed to be made just to get rid of the older berries and make room for fresh new ones.
Little discrepancies had every now and then shown up. The oldest chicken, the one mature chicken they had been given along with six newborn chicks, had been brooding on a clutch of eggs. The eggs had hatched, and eight newborn chicks were roaming the coop and large run. Three of them looked different. Larger in size, darker and more mottled in colouration. A bit of playful prodding revealed the answer to the mystery; the daintily-built Dutch Spaniel neighbours of Cherry Blossom Farm, Marian and Margot Witteveen, had brought eggs of their breeding pheasants to Butterfly Farm once or twice. At one of those times, while Marian was keeping the attention of Buddleia and Sasha in the small old farmhouse, her daughter Margot had put three of the eggs in the nest box the adult chicken was sitting on, consequently hatching the pheasant eggs eventually. A playful and innocent little prank.
The weather was another factor. September had gone by, October had started. The temperatures remained pleasant, the skies remained sunny - most of the times. Five fields of sunflowers were flowering abundantly, much to the delight of Buddleia who could not stop traipsing about near the large fields, crooning how pretty it all looked. But again a decision had to be made, action had to be taken, when the forecasts showed a change in the weather. Rain was a-comin', and even occasional hail was in the forecast. It had spurred Sasha on to make the decision to rapidly harvest the sunflowers; they were right at the point of being ready for harvest, and hail would damage them and diminish the yield.
It had taken a few days. The newly purchased Fortschritt combine harvester, while having a quite wide header, needed a good number of slow passes across the fields to gather up all the sunflowers. With a load capacity of a mere 6000 litres, it also had to be emptied regularly. Two full loads filled up the 1949 Berliet GDR W truck with the enlarged box, at which point the truck had to make the three-hour drive over to the Slickers oil mill to deliver the sunflower harvest. It made them good money, but due to the distance it also took a large amount of time. Time they were a bit short of, as they were working against the weather. On the third day of harvesting, Sasha in fact had to flee into the small farmhouse to change her pink sun hat for a sturdier raffia sun hat and put on a pair of full-body denim coveralls to protect her freckled skin from the assault of a hail shower descending over the valley.
Still, so far, all the decisions and actions were free of regret. There was just a smidge of regret, or rather disappointment, in Buddleia over the harvesting of the sunflowers, as it meant cutting down all the pretty flowers, but she was an experienced enough farmer to know it was necessary. Plus, with the tips they had gotten from the three biologists still working near their farm on monitoring and gathering data on the super fast-growing trees, there was the knowledge they could soon fill their fields with sunflowers again after the planting and harvesting of a crop of winter barley and canola.
There had been another day of cutting flowers. As soon as they had rescued their sunflower harvest from the autumn weather, Sasha had spent a day uprooting all the coneflowers in the small field she had planted, meticulously washing every last trace of soil off the plants and roots, and shredding them into pulp in the old blender she had purchased. Several sizeable glass jars had been filled with the confetti of flowers and a generous amount of quality Blue Diamond vodka purchased from the tavern in Rolling Hills, and the jars were set to steep in the wine-making area of the underground bunker. The production of Echinacea tincture was finally underway. Again, a decision without regret.
Only one small action, one decision, made out of love, made as a sweet gesture, had given rise to the slightest bit of regret in the tall freckled human woman. Having found the harmonica that used to belong to Buddleia's grandmother, Sasha had the instrument refurbished to look as new again and had given it back to her bubbly vixen-taur wife. As a memento, a souvenir of times gone by, of happy memories. She should have known better. She had been so close with the cheerful vulpine taur for long enough now to know how Buddleia would react. She could have predicted the result.
Buddleia could not stop playing the thing. All throughout the day, she carried the instrument in its holder that hung from her neck, positioning the instrument right in front of her slender muzzle so even just her exhales produced trilling tones through the harmonica. In the morning, while pleasuring and milking Choco the goat, she piped a cheery melody keeping time with the motion of her milking through the instrument. While riding any of the tractors as she helped Sasha with the silage, she whistled a tune through the instrument that rolled on and off in time with the tractor's engine. When cooking their breakfast porridge, lunch soup or dinner stew, she blew a flowing melody from the instrument that kept time with the swaying of her large bottlebrush of a tail - and she even tapped her right front and rear left feral paw to the melody. Even during their after-meal relax and cuddle time, Buddleia kept the harmonica in place and trilled long, slow, melodious and almost blues-y notes from it.
It had to be said; she was good. Were, in the beginning, her cheery tunes rather random and void of melody, she gradually regained the proficiency she used to have from years of practice when she was young as she got more and more used to having the instrument again and being able to play it as much as she pleased. She could in fact play recognisable songs and tunes, and ones she had made up herself. But all day, every day... it was a bit much.
Still, she was good. Sasha had to admit that. Buddleia was actually good on the small instrument. And while the random notes and tunes that were piped into the air throughout the day got a bit much after three weeks, Sasha still took some fun from challenging her bubbly fluffy vixen-taur wife, suggesting songs for Buddleia to play. "Oh! Susanna" was a given. "Rose of Alabama" and "Mary Blane" followed almost naturally. "Snooky's Shuffle", "The 'Big Tone' Train" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" were no problem. "Taps" and "Cross-eyed Cat"; easy, as well as "Heart of Gold" and "Dirty Old Town". Sasha even managed the opening of the Beatles' "Love me Do" by herself. Buddleia surpassed that with "EZ Blues", "Going Back South" and "Checkin' Up on my Baby". She went even further than that with "Cluck Old Hen" and "Roadhouse Blues", eventually culminating in Stevie Wonder's "Boogie on Reggae Woman".
There was no denying it. The fluffy purple and white vixen-taur was good. Might she initially just have been randomly feeping on the harmonica in the first week or two after Sasha's had the instrument refurbished and returned to her, all that random feeping had turned out to be an almost perfect practice to get back into the groove to rekindle her enthusiasm and her proficiency. And all the random feeping as well as the playing of the actual songs also helped along in heightening Buddleia's spirit even more than it already was and made her practice even harder. She accompanied Sasha when the freckled human woman did her practice on the acoustic guitar during their relax time - and it actually made for quite pleasant-sounding instrumental duets. And she got back into making up her own tunes.
With the sunflowers harvested in time to save them from the turbulent weather, and even the rough straw baled and stored, ready to be brought to the BGA plant and be sold, a sense of relaxation once more descended over Butterfly Farm. They were back in the mid-month lull, between harvests of their grass, allowing them more time to take a step back and relax a bit more. Upon a phonecall of their canine neighbours, they had both made a decision to set aside a day to not work but just relax, with the company of the three biologists and the two Dutch Spaniels. They deserved it, after the hard work they had done to get all the fields of sunflowers harvested and baled in time.
Of course, some work still had to be done. There were the steady routines that returned every day; feeding the chickens, feeding the rabbits, feeding Choco the goat, gathering the eggs, pleasuring and milking Choco, filtering, chilling and partially processing the milk. The three scientists, Dr. Janni Baston the Belgian Hare rabbit woman, Dr. Barbara Westing the blue-grey tabby cat woman and Dr. Sandy Nightz, the dark-coloured ocelot woman, had their steady routine of measuring the height, circumference and thickness of the Bambizia fir trees, as well as their bark, sap, needles, shoots and samples of their wood. Similarly, Marian and Margot had their own steady daily routine of feeding their quails, pheasants and a newly established flock of ducks, as well as their Mini LaMancha goats and milking those, and processing the milk. A day off could be decided on, but on a farm, there usually wasn't any, or at least not very much, time to take a day off.
It was, therefore, lunchtime when all of them eventually got together. The three biologists were helping to set out the extra set of outdoors furniture in the narrow fields in front of the old farmhouse, positioning the second metal table and the extra four metal chairs together with the table and four chairs that were already there in a half-circle in the shelter of the row of elm trees by the large rabbit runs. Sasha carried an armful of pillows from their nest-bed outside to set them in the chairs so they all could sit in the chairs comfortably, as all of them were naturally naked. Buddleia was preparing a more extensive lunch for all seven of them, cracking eggs, whipping batter, slicing bacon and apples and baking a stack of tasty pancakes. And of course, the whole time, she was rhythmically blowing on the harmonica in the holder around her neck.
Before too long, Margot's dark brown Range Rover made the turn from Sawmill Road onto the dirt path running between fields 2 and 3 and all the way in front of the old farmhouse, horn honking and both Dutch Spaniels waving cheerfully as Margot slowly drove past them and parked the car in the open area in front of the large shed, near Buddleia's 1948 Chevrolet Fleetline and Sasha's 1956 Citroen 2CV AZU. Getting out, both dainty yet fluffy canine women chortled as they were taken into four hugs each, by Sasha and the three biologists. Margot also showed a wide and cheerful grin as they sat down and she glanced at the young chicks milling about in the run attached to the chicken coop.
"Gee, look at that, seems like your momma chicken has sat on her nest a bit too long. Some of those chicks look quite different."
"Yeah, thanks a lot for that, missy," Sasha sniggered while setting out several glasses and filling them with cold goat milk. "What kind of eggs did you even sneak into our coop, huh? And more importantly, is it going to raise any problems in that coop once those chicks mature?"
"It'll be fine, Sasha," Marian smiled around a light chortle. "Chickens and pheasants can very well get along, especially when they grow up together. That chicken won't see them as intruders, as she hatched them herself."
"And they'll add a nice splash of colour to your coop, too," Margot grinned. "Those were eggs from our Golden pheasants, and the males are very bright in their colouration."
"And will any of those three chicks actually grow up into a male?" Sasha asked while setting the bottle of goat milk back into the cooler.
Marian pointed at the one of the three different chicks who had much less patterning across its little body.
"I can say with, ah, eighty to ninety percent certainty that that one there will be a rooster," she smiled.
"Right," Sasha nodded. "Will that cause any problems with our own rooster once he's all grown up?"
"Nah, they'll be fine," Margot said with a light wave of a paw. "Since they're different species, they tend not to be too territorial amongst each other. And should they raise a ruckus, you can always stick him in your oven."
"Right," Sasha nodded again, grinning lightly. "And will he keep his advances to his own kind, too? Or can we expect him to put some moves onto our lady chickens?"
"Oh, he most likely will," Margot chuckled. "And he may even manage, too. They may be different species, but they are still basically in the same family and they can in fact have mixed offspring. Those will be sterile though, so those hybrids won't be able to reproduce amongst themselves. Similarly, your rooster will be able to successfully mate with the pheasant hens, but that offspring will also be sterile."
Marian nodded.
"Female chicken-pheasant hybrids will be able to lay eggs, but those will never be fertilised. So if you do get some hybrids in time, they'll be good egg-layers for you, and those eggs are perfectly safe for consumption and selling."
"I see," Sasha nodded. "Well, I guess we'll see what happens."
Buddleia joined them, trotting out of the farmhouse on a tune she blew from her harmonica while carrying a large plate stacked high with thick pancakes that had both strips of bacon and slices of apple in them. She set the plate on one of the tables, dance-trotted back into the house, and reappeared moments later in the same manner while carrying a stack of plates and a pawful of cutlery, and a bottle of syrup tucked under one of her arms. Everyone chortled cheerfully at the display, helping with passing out the plates and cutlery. Soon after, the conversation slowed to a minimum as they all helped themselves to the tasty pancakes.
Still, while eating, there were still quiet chortles rising up every now and then as Buddleia still kept the metal holder with the harmonica in it around her neck, only sliding the instrument to the side a bit to stick bites of pancake into her muzzle. Long, content moments passed by in a cheerful atmosphere, the stack of pancakes slowly getting lower and lower. Sasha peeled a strip of bacon out of her last pancake and offered it to the short-legged and long-furred black and white feral cat Bubliny who had curled up in her lap. Buddleia filled all the glasses with goat milk again, and Dr. Sandy Nightz presented both Dutch Spaniels and Sasha with a cigarette, lighting one herself as well once the last pancake had been devoured.
Entering the after-lunch relaxation period, everyone slid off the chairs to instead snuggle up against the large and very soft quadruped lower body of Buddleia laying herself down half on her side in the soft grass. Some shuffling and wriggling accompanied by choruses of chortles as they all got in position and comfortable, all six of them somehow managed to fit themselves up against some part of Buddleia's fluffy double body, snuggling up as well as cheerfully cuddling one another. Sasha leaned up against the vulpine taur's upper tummy and chest with her back, being embraced from behind by Buddleia's arms and in her turn holding Marian in an embrace against her own front side. Margot leaned up against Sasha's side, right by the part where Buddleia's upper body melded into her quadruped lower body, one of the vixen-taur's feral forepaws coming to a rest over her hip and tummy. A bit further down, the three biologists cuddled up close against the chest and tummy of Buddleia's quadruped lower body, holding one another and several of the vulpine taur's feral paws in a playful embrace.
The food settling had them all laying in relaxation for another good number of content moments, as well as several long lazy whiles. But gradually, more chortles started rising up again, as Buddleia initially calmly breathed through the harmonica right in front of her slender muzzle, and gradually began changing the regular in-and-out tones into more melodious tones by blowing more deliberately into the instrument.
"Do you have that thing with you all the time?" Margot eventually asked with a light grin.
"Yes!" Buddleia nodded cheerily. "Is harmonica of grandmother. Sasha take to village when we find it, have Inga make it look all nice and new again."
"And believe me, of all the things I have done for this nutso fuzzbutt here, that is the one thing I have a bit of regret about," Sasha sniggered. "I just did it to make her happy, but she's been warbling on that thing almost non-stop from the moment I gave it to her."
"Jeez," Margot grinned, shaking her head. "That musta been driving you bonkers!"
"I'll admit it's been a bit much," Sasha nodded with a playful grin of her own.
"But surely it's not just been these kind of random notes and such all the time?" Marian asked with a smile.
"Oh, she can actually play that thing," the Belgian Hare rabbit woman Janni smiled from all the way back by Buddleia's feral hind paws. "We've heard her play some pretty nice songs."
"Yeah, we even recognised a number of them," the blue-grey tabby cat woman Barbara nodded with a smile as well.
"But some we didn't!" the dark ocelot woman Sandy chortled. "Some didn't even sound like any kind of song at all, but they were still very nice."
"I make songs myself too, yes," Buddleia nodded with a smile that showed her upper canine teeth behind the harmonica.
Margot grinned a bit wider and clapped her paws.
"Then play us one of your creations, honey! Let's see how good you are!"
"Careful what you wish for, there's a good chance she won't ever stop anymore," Sasha sniggered.
"I'll be glad to take the risk," Margot chuckled, turning a bit to push Buddleia's shoulder. "Go on honey, let us hear what you can do."
"Yes! I make new song, I play!" Buddleia nodded cheerily.
Despite the six women laying cuddled up against her, the vulpine taur shifted herself a bit to bring her upper torso a bit further upright. She actually took the metal holder off her neck and took the harmonica out of it, holding it in both her paws instead and bringing it up to her slender muzzle. Her bottlebrush tail started slowly tapping against the grass, gradually increasing in tempo as Buddleia regulated her breathing and closed her eyes. Starting out slow, she drew several long, deep, almost blues-like tones from the harmonica, letting them flow into one another and smoothly increasing the tempo and the pitch.
Marian and Margot leaned up against Sasha as the tall human woman sat up a bit as well, releasing the pressure of their bodies against Buddleia's upper torso as they could feel the rising and falling of the vixen-taur's breath increasing more and more. The slow and deep tones lifted, sliding along the scale of octaves, quicker and quicker and higher and higher, interspersed with vibrating trills and rapid note changes. Ears perked and flicking and bottlebrush tail tapping ever quicker to the melody, but eyes still closed, Buddleia kept increasing the tempo, moving both her head left and right as well as both her paws holding the harmonica, sweeping through the octaves in double-time, letting them ring clear through her exhales and trilling them in vibrato through her inhales.
It was actually quite impressive, and there was a very clear, upbeat melody to the tones Buddleia was playing. A recurring rhythm, rising and falling, rapidly, then slower, then increasing in tempo again. Subconsciously, as they were looking at the cheerful vulpine taur, both the Dutch Spaniels and the three biologists as well as Sasha found themselves moving to the rhythm of the music, feet wiggling, tails flicking or swaying, paws lightly tapping against thighs or arms. It was a very upbeat tune, sweeping them up in its tempo.
A very rapid trill ended in a high-pitched and long-drawn note. Buddleia lowered her paws and opened her eyes, showing her upper and lower canines and a part of her dark pink tongue in a cheerful smile as she saw the six women looking back at her.
"Wow, I don't know what that was, but that was impressive, honey!" Margot said with a light chuckle.
"Yeah, goodness can you swing!" Sandy chortled. "I wanted to get up and dance, hee!"
"Yay! Yes! Is dancy song!" Buddleia smiled brightly.
"Does it have a name?" Barbara asked with a giggle.
"Yes!" Buddleia nodded, showing all of her teeth and most of her tongue in an even wider smile. "Is Bubblebee Boogie!"
Everyone laughed cheerfully. Of course that's what Buddleia would have called the song. Because, as Sasha so often playfully pointed out; she was one nutso fuzzbutt. But one that certainly could swing.
