The Day My Life Began

Meeting Zecora

Everyone was saying the same thing about this place. It's evil. It's cursed. It's where that witch lives. I guess those guys just don't know what I do.

The only thing that's in here that's really dangerous is Poison Joke. That stuff will mess you up, in a funny way.

Right now, I was walking in to try and find the supposed Witch of the Everfree Forest. She wasn't as bad as everypony was saying. Just misunderstood. Just like I was.

It took me a little over an hour, and almost getting attacked by a cockatrice, to find the zebra's hut.

Yeah. Zecora was a zebra. I couldn't really say anything about how strange that was, I was a dark pink unicorn with a blue and silver mane with a tattoo of a book on my flanks. Also, my sister was a dark red pegasus with a near straight silver mane, purple eyes and a cutiemark of a bloody knife and my charge was a dragon. A black and white zebra was normal by comparison.

I carefully trotted towards the hut. It was made from a tree, from the looks of it. Only two windows from what I could see, various colored jars hung from the branches of the tree, a red and green mask was placed above the door, another mask was placed on a root but had some brown added to it. The door was red with a yellow doorknob.

I knocked. Twice.

After a brief pause, I heard the sound of hoofsteps coming from inside the tree hut. The door was opened, slowly letting the zebra come in my sights.

A tall zebra stood behind the door. From my memory, I remembered her coat was slightly gray with various dark grey stripes on her back, legs, muzzle and a strange circular sun on her flank. Her eyes were I think sea green, or at least a very blue shade of green. The tips of her hooves were all black. Her mane had been styled into a Mohawk, going above her head in an off white and near black. The black bits matched up with some black stripes on her head.

Her jewelry stood out slightly. Four gold rings completely covered her neck, five bracelets covered her left front knee, Zecora had large golden hoop earrings.

Most people where I'm from, they expected zebras to bare multiple stripes. Almost too many. Zecora didn't really have much.

She stared at me for a moment. Probably wondering what I was doing here.

"Oh, but what is this I see. A pony, braving the Everfree to visit my tree."

The rhyming. That made the corner of my lips turn up into a smile. Zecora had a near deep voice, it was also kind of cheery. It was nice.

"Yes. That much is true. I came here, looking for you." I rhymed back.

This made Zecora smile back. I guessed she wasn't expecting a pony to come to her home and rhyme.

"Rhyming aside," I began, "I came here because my friends are gonna do something incredibly stupid today. You heard of the new unicorn that came into town a few weeks back?"

"The unicorn who took down Nightmare Moon, saving us from eternal doom." Zecora said.

"That's the one." I said. "When you head out into Ponyville today, she'll bring her friends in here. This will lead them to a patch of Poison Joke."

Zecora backed up. "What would make those pony folk run right into the Poison Joke?"

"A young filly named Apple Bloom. She follows you to prove she can be brave and that you're nice. Her sister is Applejack, Twilight's friend. What happens today is unavoidable, so I must ask that when I come back here tomorrow morning if it was at all possible I could help make the cure?" I asked.

Zecora eyed me, wondering whether or not to listen to me. "Tell me this, and I will agree," The zebra began, "How did you know to come to me?"

"I'm really good at this sort of thing. Also, I completely forgot to introduce myself. My name is Raspberry Stardust." I gave her my pony name.