Title: Fluff About Town
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Nosy, Ianto, OCs.
Rating: G
Word Count: 1427
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Nosy the Fluff leads a very busy life, there are always so many tings to do and places to go.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 278: Street.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.





Earth had changed a great deal in the last century and a half. Everything ran on renewable power nowadays, generated by the sun, the wind, the waves, and even electricity produced by plants. All vehicles were electric, and the air mostly smelled clean and fresh, except on the docks where freshly caught fish were still gutted and sold.

Climate change had been halted, water reclamation had allowed for crops to be grown in what once were deserts, and trees had been planted everywhere. Indeed, there was at least one tree in every garden of sufficient size, and more trees lined the majority of streets, providing shade from the sun for those who wanted it, and shelter from the rain, as well as homes for birds and insects, squirrels and chipmunks.

The sun was shining as the last of the rain clouds scattered on the autumn breeze, the puddles on the pavements were already starting to dry, and it looked like it would be a lovely day.

Nosy the Fluff slithered along the street, pushing its modified shopping trolley. It didn’t mind the dampness of the ground these days, not now it had figured out how to make its fluff waterproof. Gone were the days of getting waterlogged in the rain, and it had even learned to swim, an activity it found quite enjoyable on hot days.

“Morning, Nosy,” people called as it slithered past, and it hummed a friendly greeting in reply. The locals were all used to seeing the Fluff, although tourists and other strangers still tended to stop and stare. The whole world knew about Fluffs, there were over a hundred on earth now, but knowing about them and seeing pictures was not the same as meeting one face-to-face, and as most still lived in and around Cardiff people travelled there from all over the world just in the hope of meeting one of the famous aliens.

There were plenty of other aliens living on earth now, at least twenty different species, just as there were humans living on other planets. Exchange programmes allowed humans and aliens alike to learn about each other’s planet and culture, and all the major races had ambassadors living in Cardiff, liasing with Torchwood to promote understanding and trade between their worlds and earth.

Nosy reached the bus stop and joined the queue, where several young people petted it, chattering cheerfully. Nosy listened, humming encouragingly. It always enjoyed interacting with youngsters, and along with several of its offspring, ran a pre-school day-care centre. Other Fluffs had part-time jobs in care homes, arranging their schedules so there was always a Fluff on hand to soothe or cheer up residents whenever needed.

When the bus arrived, Nosy slithered aboard and showed its pass. Not that it needed to, because nothing else could be mistaken for a Fluff. All Fluffs travelled for free, it was considered that just by being somewhere they were providing a public service, making people feel happier, dispensing hugs and letting themselves be petted; it would have been wrong to charge them.

Leaving its trolley in the luggage area, it took a seat beside an elderly woman who looked sad.

“Hummm?” it said, laying its head on her lap.

“It’s silly really,” she replied, running her fingers through Nosy’s fur. “My husband’s been gone for nearly two years, but I can’t get used to being alone in the house. It’s so quiet with no one to talk to, so I come out almost every day, just looking for company, but somehow I feel even lonelier surrounded by so many people because they all have their lives and their friends. Who has time for a stranger?”

Nosy hummed sympathetically, and when it got off the bus a few stops later, the old lady got off with it.

They went to the supermarket, brought fruit and vegetables for Nosy, sandwiches, cookies, cakes, and juice to drink, then crossed the street and took another bus to the Botanical Gardens, where Nosy introduced its new friend to a lady it had met there the day before. Lonely people, it knew, stopped being lonely when they made friends with other lonely people. Leaving them with an assortment of food for a picnic, it slithered off on its errands.

First it went to the local pet shop to buy some treats, and then it went to the pet re-homing centre and spent an hour there playing with the cats and dogs that hadn’t found new homes yet. From there it went to the school to have lunch with Jack and Ianto’s daughter Amy. She had been a shy child who’d had trouble making friends at first, but she had lots of friends now that Nosy had helped her to feel more confident. Everyone wanted to be friends with someone who had a Fluff in the family. Amy was the only child in the family right now so Nosy was as much hers at it had once been Meriel’s so long ago. One day, when she was grown up and starting a family of her own, she would have a Flufflet, but for now Nosy wasn’t ready to share her with another Fluff. It had so much to teach her.

Lunchtime ended, Amy hugged Nosy, and ran back inside the school with her friends, without so much as a backward glance for her Fluff. Nosy hummed approval; she didn’t need it as much as she once had and that was a good thing.

From the school Nosy headed across Cardiff towards its next appointment. It knew its way around the whole city; every street and building was familiar, every bus route and timetable memorised. It hummed a greeting to a smaller Fluff that was on its way to the Fluff-run pre-school for the afternoon shift, then crossed the street at the next pedestrian crossing, waiting for the traffic to stop and looking both ways before slithering quickly across.

Soon it would be too cold out, but for the moment the street theatre group was still putting on open-air performances. Today they were performing one of their own plays in a plaza outside the old Cardiff International Arena. There was already a large audience assembled and Nosy hurriedly slunk backstage to get ready.

It was a very important play about how humans used to fear and distrust anyone who was different. Nosy had been cast, unsurprisingly, in the role of the lost and stranded alien that was threatened, chased, and even attacked, until it saved the life of one of its attackers and proved it wasn’t the fearsome monster everyone believed it to be. People learned from the play not to judge beings from other worlds by their strange appearances. The incidences of attacks on aliens had fallen by more than three quarters in the past three years since groups like this one had started putting on plays to educate people by entertaining them.

It was early evening before Nosy arrived home after another very well received performance, where people from all over the world had lined up afterwards to meet a genuine alien. Nosy had signed a lot of autographs with the squiggle and dot that had become the universal symbol representing a Fluff.

Ianto was cooking dinner when Nosy slithered in. Amy, home from school, was playing with her best human friend, who would be staying for dinner. Jack wasn’t home from work yet.

“Hum!” the Fluff greeted everybody cheerfully.

“Hi, Nosy!” Amy and her friend waved, knowing Nosy would join them shortly.

Ianto came out of the kitchen, drying his hands. “Hello, Nosy. Did you have a good day?”

“HUMM!”

“You’ll have to tell us all about it later.”

“Hummm,” Nosy agreed, heading for the bathroom to take a quick shower and wash off the dust from the streets. Being waterproof certainly made getting clean a lot simpler; a quick rinse, followed by a few minutes rolling around under the dryer and it was ready to play with Amy and her friend until dinnertime.

As much as it had loved its life back when it had first arrived in Cardiff, living at the Hub and helping out wherever it could, everything was so much better now it had the freedom to go wherever it wanted at any time. There was no shortage of things to keep it busy, so many people and creatures to play with and teach now that it was a streetwise Fluff about town, but it was always good to come home after its adventures and spend time with its family.


The End