Sprout sat alone in the crib, his crib, wincing every time he moved his hind legs, getting a crinkle from the disposable undergarment that had been taped around his waist. After the first couple minutes passed, his eyes had adjusted to the dim illumination provided by the night light, and he heard his mom have a muffled, unintelligible conversation downstairs.

Five minutes passed as he sat in silence, the scent of foal powder wafting up to his nostrils. Then five more minutes, then ten.

Then, his stomach started to grumble. He hadn't eaten since that early lunch at work.

How was this any better than what Hitch was going to do? As far as he was concerned, he would be behind bars either way, clearly, and in the Maretime Bay PD jail cell he would have gotten a hot meal and he wouldn't be looking like this.

'You're the one that fought against dinner,' a voice in his head told him.

The tingling and soreness on his flanks had dulled considerably by now, and he was right back to thinking about how nuts this was. Did his mom seriously think she could just... Rewind the clock like this? Yeah, he had screwed up, but how was being babied like this going to help make any kind of improvement?

His stomach rumbled in protest again, and for a moment, he considered whining into the baby monitor next to the crib, before his mother's warning echoed in his head.

'If you're thinking about getting my attention for anything that is not an emergency, I'd like you to think about what I said about not being able to sit for a week.'

He was guessing in her mind, being ready to eat now instead of twenty minutes ago was not going to qualify as an emergency.

Taking a quiet, deep breath, letting it out slowly, he glanced over to the pillow that had been placed on the left side of the crib, and decided that maybe laying down would convince his stomach that things were going to have to wait until morning. He rotated on his flanks, trying his best to ignore the diaper's crinkling, and laid back, his head sinking into the pillow.

He had to admit, this mattress and pillow was considerably more comfortable than the jail cell cot would have been.

Fine, this situation got one point. But the cell would also have a toilet, sink, and room to walk around. And a meal. By his math, that was 4-1, advantage jail cell.

Laying down did seem to let his stomach know that a meal wasn't going to be happening any time soon, and the hunger pangs decreased somewhat. To pass the time, he stared up through the top bars at the slowly rotating mobile hanging above the crib.

There was no blanket, but the ambient temperature was comfortable enough where he didn't need one. Rather than drive himself crazy doing nothing in the confines of this crib, he decided to pass the time by watching the flying ponies on the mobile do laps around the center pole from which they hung, until it was time to rest his eyes...

Author's Note

Here's a short little update for you all.

So I'll level with you all; I'm not the best at focusing on more than one story at once, and I have been writing like a madman for nearly three weeks now. Today, for the first time since I can remember, two of my stories hit the Featured Box at the same time.

Follower-wise, I am on track to having my most successful month on this site in the nearly ten years I have been on here, and we're not even half done with October yet.

So in order to keep regularly updating my vanilla and not-so-vanilla stories, I may end up offering shorter, more frequent chapters like this, with just a single scene, until I can wrap up some of my far more popular stories that are continually making the front page. Or, if you guys prefer short updates like this that can be read in a matter of minutes, let me know, and I'll take that into consideration.

Thanks for reading, and I'll have more for you soon!

-Miles