Author's Notes:

Puzzled by the strange events going on around him, Talib seeks wisdom from another source he'd been avoiding - Zecora. She doesn't have a whole lot of insight, however, except into some personal matters Talib would have rather left undisturbed.

The oppressive humidity was beginning to clear, ushered away by a breeze that was surprisingly chilly by contrast. Talib was reminded that autumn was due to begin the following week, and made a mental note to check his experiment timeline to ensure his plots would be sufficiently established before the cool weather and weakening sunlight precluded further germinations. As he walked stealthily deeper into the Forest his ears and nose grew more alert. Despite his many, many hours here, Talib never grew blasé about the Everfree Forest’s dangers. He’d had enough narrow scrapes – with timberwolves, manticores, cockatrices, and even stranger creatures – that a kind of hyper-alertness came over him when he ventured in much further than his camp. But that wasn’t what was causing his hooves to move along reluctantly.

Talib and Zecora had bumped into one another a few times on his explorations in the Forest. At first, fear of the unknown had frightened him a little, like most others in Ponyville, and he’d tried to avoid her. Even after she turned out to be friendly and had expressed interest in his studies of the Forest, he’d not taken her up on her standing invitation that he come and visit her hut one day, due to his social discomfort. Now, though, his curiosity about Everfree Forest Edibles, and the concerning things he’d seen, made the visit seem necessary. He walked with resignation through the Forest towards her hut, arriving at the gnarled, spreading old giant after a couple of hours of tense travel. He’d never identified the species but it looked like some kind of banyan tree, with its buttress roots snaking out of the trunk like organic walls. Somehow the thing was still alive around Zecora’s abode, and the roughly-fashioned windows and doors gave the disturbing impression of forming a face. Talib approached with some trepidation.

Reaching the door, he took a deep breath and knocked. In the sudden silence he realised he’d been hearing some soft, husky chanting, so soft he hadn’t consciously noticed it till it stopped. A little while later the door opened and Zecora’s striking light-on-dark striped grey head poked out inquisitively, expression turning surprised when she saw the buff-coloured young colt at the threshold.

“Well, well! My eyes I thought deceived,

But yes, a Cane I have received!

Come in, colt, and have some tea,

I’m glad at last you visit me.”

There was no denying it, her exotic accent combined with the rhyming couplets were quite jarring. Nopony ever seemed to have asked why she insisted on speaking in verse, and Talib wasn’t about to be the first.

“Thanks very much, Zecora,” he said, too embarrassed to address the gentle rebuke in her words, as she ushered him in to sit at a little round table made from a tree stump. Zecora busied herself among her unbelievable collection of botanicals, talking half to herself as she considered.

“Now, young colt, what takes your fancy?

Feeling tired, or maybe antsy?

Peppermint to buck you up,

Or lemongrass - a peaceful cup?”

“Lemongrass please, Zecora,” replied Talib.

The well-built zebra smiled knowingly, crushing some dried stalks into a cast-iron teapot and ladling in hot water from a small cauldron, already shimmering at the boil.

“To overcome your social fear

I guessed that worry brought you here.

But firstly Talib, let’s begin

With simple chat – how have you been?”

As the tea was steeping, Talib briefly recounted some of the events since his graduation, while Zecora tended the larger cauldron she’d apparently been busy with when he’d arrived. The lemongrass infusion was ready by the time he finished catching her up, and she stopped fussing over the fire to come and pour the fresh, fragrant liquor of lemongrass into wooden mugs. She sat opposite him and looked at him perceptively.

“In you, I know, questions abound.

Has your work some answers found?

After all, you gave up much

To live in that small wooden hutch.”

“Well,” Talib began uncertainly, “my experimental plots are still too young to inform even preliminary guesswork, though if the treatment differences are going to be obvious then I should start to see that next week. But I am learning other things. For instance,” he said, extracting Everfree Forest Edibles from his pannier and hoofing it to her, “have you seen this before?”

Zecora’s eyes answered his question when they lit up with apparently familiar pleasure, and she started flicking through pages approvingly.

“Twilight found it for me in the Golden Oak Library. It’s the strangest thing – Old Sim tells me his pappy, Spruce Timber, wrote it. But that can’t be, can it? Look how much work, how much knowledge went into that! How could a first-generation Ponyville lumberpony have the time, the experience, to write it? Old Sim said something about Pappy Timber having had some help. Do you have any idea where this knowledge might have come from?”

Zecora froze, just for an instant, and then forced herself to relax and look Talib in the eyes. It reminded him of his reaction to hearing Progress’s voice in the Carousel Boutique – the instinctive tension of somepony who had just been found out. Talib couldn’t believe it.

“Zecora… did you write this?”

The zebra looked at him crookedly for a moment before bursting into a sudden, heartfelt belly laugh.

“Oh, Talib! Often Canes are sweet,

But your manners melt, I see, with heat.

I might be from afar, but, say,

How old you think I am, today?”

Talib slapped a hoof to his forehead. “Of course,” he said with chagrin, “I wasn’t thinking. This book must have been written when you were just a filly. I’m sorry.” Her amused smile didn’t deter him, however, and he pressed forward.

“But you seemed to know something about it, right?”

Zecora’s smile faded, and she looked quietly at him for some time. Years of avoiding confrontation were trying to drag his eyes away from hers, down to the floor, but somehow he forced himself to hold her gaze, uncomfortable though it might be. Eventually she spoke.

“Some things, young colt, I cannot tell,

And silence unexplained as well.

All I dare, though it sounds weak:

In Spruce’s journal you should seek.”

Talib remembered the unmarked volumes on Old Sim’s shelf. It seemed he was going to have to make a rather personal request of the old stallion. He had no idea what was in there, or if Old Sim had any reason to keep it private. He’d have to go in blind. Thinking of Old Sim reminded Talib of their concerns over Progress Group’s logging, and the displaced animals they’d seen.

“There’s something else,” he said after a thoughtful sip on the steaming tea, “Old Sim and I have seen some animals recently which shouldn’t be in this part of the Forest. We’re worried that they’re being pushed out of their normal range by over-logging – have you seen anything like that?”

The normally serene expression on Zecora’s face grew dark as her statuesque features were drawn into a strangely regal glower. She indicated the cauldron as she explained.

“Something, I knew, could not be right;

I see some strange creatures at night.

I wished to go and find the cause,

But am restrained by nature’s laws.

Some plants grow just in this month’s rain,

Without them I cannot treat pain.

In Ponyville they wait for this

Nurse Redheart seeks its calming kiss.”

Talib nodded understanding. Since the Ponyville ponies had overcome their fear, Zecora had proved to be an invaluable zebra to know. From her hut to the town flowed a steady stream of medical treatments, herbal luxuries and deep wisdom (dressed in the reassuringly homely garb of common sense), and many ponies could not now imagine life without her. Though she had no answers for him, at least he could add her anecdotal testimony to the report. Hopefully the Council valued her opinion as much as did the rest of Ponyville.

As Zecora cleared the tea and returned to her cauldron, she regained her usual fey, inscrutable expression; quite arresting on a zebra of her stature. Somehow, she always managed to project a deliciously contradictory aura of slightly mischievous, mysterious calm. Talib watched the stately zebra move assuredly around the fire, checking the heat, sniffing the concoction and adding a few careful measures of this or that, all the while wearing her enigmatic smile. Now that he had spent more time around Zecora, her rhyming couplets no longer sounded strange to his ears, but musical. He began to feel perhaps in danger of developing another infatuation, as doomed and futile as his crush on AppleJack. What was it with him and older mares?
Oh, Celestia, please don’t let me have a type, he thought desperately.

“Umm, also,” he said hastily, hitting the emergency brakes on that train of thought, “we’ve seen some snares, and Old Sim thinks there might be a griffon hunter passing through. I wondered if you’d seen them, too.” He paused in confusion, realising he’d also just rhymed. Zecora nodded, apparently not having noticed.

“Indeed I have, and Sim is wise;

The griffon cause I, too, surmise.

They journey through from time to time,

But setting snares is not a crime.

Though griffons have a taste for meat,

I promise: you, they will not eat.”

Talib was only slightly reassured, but saw that Zecora was even less concerned about the hunter than was Old Sim. Then again, he thought sarcastically, neither of them had the brilliant idea to live in a flimsy shanty in the woods. Still, although he wasn’t about to start sleeping out under the stars again, at least it seemed he was unlikely to become someone’s midnight snack.

But then he remembered that first morning with Old Sim, when something had terrified him from within the forest. Something he’d barely seen, if he’d seen it at all, and couldn’t explain. Ever since, he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something malevolent was waiting, deep in the Forest. He was not looking forward to the twilight walk home, as the day turned further towards evening. Better not delay it any further.

“OK, Zecora, thanks for everything. It was really nice to see you,” he said, rising from the table. But when he looked at her he felt a jolt – she was watching him, sharply.

“Talib Cane, I saw you, now,

Troubling thoughts showed on your brow

Something dark scares you, it’s clear-

Won’t you share with me your fear?”

Talib sat down again, slowly. He gazed out the window into the Everfree Forest, for a long time saying nothing, and Zecora just watched him quietly, stirring her cauldron and waiting. The day’s light was beginning to fade, and even though the sun was still up the plants of the Forest had begun to look different, putting on their weird evening clothes in preparation for the coming night. Though he knew, logically, that the longer he delayed, the darker would be his eventual journey home, he was loath to quit the safe, warm light of Zecora’s hut. Eventually, he gave up the struggle and indulged his uncharacteristic agoraphobia, sinking further into his seat as he stared out, unseeing, into the gathering dark.

“Zecora…” he said, slowly, not looking at her, “this may seem like an obvious question, but have you ever seen something in the Forest… something you couldn’t explain?”

The zebra just nodded, drawing him out with her silence.

“I don’t just mean some animal or plant you don’t recognise. A couple of weeks ago, I… I saw something.” He took a deep breath, forging onward. “Or at least, I think I did. I can’t be sure. It was just before dawn, while I was walking beside the Forest on my way to my first day with Old Sim. I noticed everything in the Forest go quiet.” He looked at the zebra now, half-noticing her raised eyebrow in recognition of the strangeness of this fact, but in his mind he still saw the blackness of the Forest trees that morning, two weeks ago. “Everything, Zecora. And when I looked, when I tried to see what it was…” he shuddered, “I think I saw eyes. Two eyes, glowing red and huge, though I couldn’t tell how close they were, exactly. And I don’t want to think about it. The next thing I knew, my hooves were moving practically by themselves and I was sprinting for Old Sim’s cabin. I never looked back, and he never saw anything, either.”

He came back to the present, looking around the glowing, sturdy cabin to reassure himself. “I’ve never felt fear like that before, Zecora, fear that went straight for my hooves.”

The zebra nodded, understanding implicit in her gesture, and Talib, encouraged, went on.

“There’s more. I spoke with Progress Miller today. He told me that, on the same night, some ponies came and sabotaged his logging operation. At least, he assumes it was ponies. His workers, from their camp, didn’t see anything, and never found any trails.” He looked away from the zebra, focusing now on the fire. This was harder than he’d thought, sharing fears which he’d kept half-hidden even from himself. Saying them aloud, however, seemed to make them tangible, somehow both more and less threatening. He plunged forward, into the strangest, most difficult revelation.

“Then there are the dreams.”

Zecora’s head tilted inquisitively.

“The night of my graduation, I’d been thinking about the Forest, and whether I was really being smart to give up formal studies to go off and run my experiments. I had this dream… it was pretty confused. But it was about the Forest, and there were wings – all different kinds of wings. And fire, and wholesale destruction of the Forest, and water, and blood, and a heartbeat… I don’t know. I was looking for something really urgently, underwater, but I was drowning, and then… and then the heart stopped beating, and everything went black.” He shook his head, re-focusing on the room and on Zecora. “Now, sometimes, when I go underwater, I see it again. And the eyes.” He fell silent at last, spent.

Zecora, too, now looked at the fire, thinking. The faint crackling and occasional pops marked the time, contrasting with the chirps and calls outside as birds began their evening combat for roosting space among the boughs and leaves of the thick canopy. The sun, Talib realised, must be nearing the horizon, and now there was no avoiding a walk home through the benighted Forest. Well, it would not be his first.

Zecora’s voice startled him out of his reverie.

“The truths behind your tale aren’t certain,

You’ve seen only a moving curtain.

What lies in wait behind, who knows?

Perhaps only the wind which blows.

But still it seems there might be something

More to this. I do know one thing;

These dreams you have, confusing sights

May yet be your best guiding lights.”

Talib considered her words. When you got right down to it he really did have nothing firm to back up his suspicions – that was why they were still suspicions, he supposed. And yet the more he considered the strange experiences of the last few weeks, the more convinced he was that something was going on. It was similar to his mistrust of Progress Miller, and his faith in Old Sim – not something he could be certain about, or put a number on. And yet, with a different kind of certainty, he’d bet quite a lot on these intuitions.

“Thanks, Zecora,” he said, looking again out the window, “I’d better be getting back now, I think.”

Zecora followed his gaze.

“Oh! I had not thought the time so late,

I’ll make a bed, if you will wait?”

Tempted though he was, there might still be time to get a little more work done on his cabin before turning in.

“No thanks, I’ll be OK.”

“Well, walk with care my pony friend,

And please make this visit a trend.

Just one more thing will I inquire;

Will we meet by the Spring Dance fire?”

“Not you, too!” Talib groaned. “Augh, my sister’s got everypony trying to convince me to go to that thing. What’s so crazy about wanting to read, or work instead?”

Zecora raised an eyebrow in amusement.

“Bianca hasn’t got to me,

I simply hoped the Canes would be

Attending, all, though I may guess

The cause of your social distress.

Talib wasn’t sure where this was going, and gave Zecora guarded frown.

“Do you recall one summer day,

The Forest trees could hear you say,

You’d never want another friend,

They all turn cruel in the end?

Well, I was there, though keeping quiet,

I thought to help, but dared not try it.

Still Ponyville was scared of me,

I didn’t want to make you flee.

But do not worry, I shan’t tell,

I know the feeling very well.

You mustn’t let rejection make

You bitter, for your own dear sake.

If ponies in the past have been

Unfriendly, then it does not mean

The best response is pulling back

From all ponies; or, down the track,

You will find yourself alone,

And things get bad when on your own.

Though many joys can come while lonely,

The best are with another pony.”

Talib had never heard Zecora speak for so long. Her amusement had faded into a serious candour while talking, and it was obvious she spoke from experience. Having seen Dawn being teased at school, he knew he wasn’t a unique case. He wanted to ask more, but felt uncomfortable prying. Still, he didn’t get to see Zecora that often. He steeled himself to make the most of the opportunity.

“What were your school days like, Zecora?” he asked. She smiled.

“They ended well, though at the start,

Teasing me was like an art.

I used to have an awful stutter,

Not one phrase that I could utter.

But verses helped, and over time

The zebras grew used to my rhyme.

Some thought it strange, but I was brave

And built respect on that I gave.”

She looked him full in the eyes before speaking her final two lines.

“The hardest thing, as we all live

Is also highest; to forgive.”

For a while he stayed quiet, struck by what she had said. Eventually, he rose and grabbed his pannier.

“Thanks again, Zecora,” he said, trying to master the emotional spectrum refracting and reflecting through his mind, “I’ll think about it.”

The zebra nodded to him, smiling faintly as he ducked outside into the evening and began walking softly back to his camp. The door closed behind him, shutting him off from her companionable presence and leaving him once more alone in the impersonal Forest, accompanied only by the unsettling inhabitants of his imagination. He hoped.

The half-moon drew the gaze, fixed, as it was, low in the sky – like it had been fired from some catapult and lodged in the weird solid of the celestial dome. A band of cloud flowed beneath it; a misty river across the horizon, the elusive forms moving in darkness until passing near the luminous orb. Their complex shapes were, for a time, lent definition and radiance before retreating away into the obscuring blackness: fantastic images still half-sensed by the mind when the eye could no longer make them out. As Talib passed silently over half-seen Forest trails, ears and eyes twitching, the effect was of being transported to an alien land, made of familiar sights turned strange.

When talking about his fears with Zecora, so soon before he must go out, vulnerable, into the night, he’d dreaded a kind of sympathetic magic; some vague old superstition that naming a thing would summon it. But he reached his camp without incident, while the evening was still young, and hauled the makeshift door-walls of his shanty apart, throwing moonlight onto the meagre sleeping space nestled into the seam between boulders. There was still a little time to work on his cabin before bed, and so Talib opened his chest to retrieve the lantern and tools, before grabbing some hefty beams from their makeshift storage under the upended cart. The floor beams were all hammered and bolted into place by now, and he’d decided to try and get the upright frame for one of the walls finished before hitting the hay – or rather, the bracken.

The young night was breezy, and Talib listened to the trees hissing and rustling, punctuated by his hammering and sawing. It was a strangely close atmosphere, where the ambient white noise shrank his perception till it covered only the little clearing in which he worked. No night-bird’s call, no insect’s chirp reached his sensitive ears through the aural foam; only the too-loud noises of his tools. Moon-light and lantern-light combined to reveal the skeletal structure he was assembling.

His little bubble and busy hooves freed his mind and encouraged introspection, and he reflected on his visit to Zecora. On the subject of the griffon she’d had nothing remarkable to say, but she’d clearly known something about the author – or, it now seemed probable, authors – of Everfree Forest Edibles. Why hadn’t she been able to say outright what she knew? Talib couldn’t even begin to guess and, though he knew she probably had her reasons, he still felt a little mistrustful and resentful at being kept in the dark. Her suggestion that he read Pappy Timber’s journal was of uncertain help, since he had no idea whether Old Sim might allow him to read it. He’d ask tomorrow. Still, there had been some solid outcomes: it was useful to have her observations to add to their report, and her encouragement that he attend to his dreams, if a little vague, agreed with his own instincts. As yet, however, he could not make head nor tail of them.

He hoisted another vertical beam into place, slotting it into the join he’d cut in the supporting floor beam, before bolting them together securely. A diagonal beam, like those he’d installed in all right-angle joins throughout the structure, reinforced the squares. He hammered a temporary nail lightly into the vertical beam and hung the lantern, brightening the silvery moonlit colour of the wood into something closer to its natural warmth. The wind continued its heavy sighing through the canopy. From the mysteries of the Forest, Talib allowed his thoughts to turn to the Spring Dance. The concept of spending hours surrounded by ponies, yet made alone by his discomfort, did not appeal. He’d have nopony to talk to except his family and a few acquaintances, and would spend the evening hugging the edges of the firelight and trying to avoid being forced into awkward conversations, while thinking all the while of his cabin and experiments.

But… but almost everypony he talked to wanted to see him there, it seemed. Some, probably, were just reacting without thinking, and would have been equally shocked at any other pony not going. But Talib was pretty sure some of them had genuinely wanted him to be there with them, to spend time with him. Very well. But why did the rest of Ponyville have to be there? If they wanted to catch up, why didn’t they just… catch up, somewhere quieter, where they could focus on each other? He didn’t see the point of doing it around a whole bunch of other ponies he barely, if at all, knew. Talib shook his head, decided. He still wasn’t going.

Zecora’s last words to him kept running through his mind, however. Even after he hammered in the last nail, after he packed everything up, retreated to his lean-to and blew out the lantern, the thought kept him from sleep. If he was honest with himself, in moments of rare self-awareness, it wasn’t as simple as he made out. He wasn’t just uncomfortable around ponies; subconsciously, he realised, he was expecting them to reject him, as had so many ponies in school. Pre-emptively, he was judging all ponies as hostile. When he’d been with Zecora, their similarities – a touch of the outsider, the quiet recluse – had allowed him to drop his guard and stop worrying about what she thought of him. A flash of insight told Talib that in doing so he had, without realizing it, made a friend. His first in years, since Dawn Flare had left for Canterlot.

He turned over on the bracken, unable to settle. Talib realized he’d had a nameless, dull ache in his chest as far back as he could remember, noticeable by its absence while he was with Zecora. He marvelled at how he hadn’t noticed it before, how it had become such a constant part of his being. It was like he’d adapted so well to a painful limb that he’d forgotten he was limping through life at half speed. Talib prodded the sensation, trying to identify it. The touching scenes of affection between ponies at graduation flashed into his mind, and suddenly he grasped it.

He was lonely.