Lanterns burned bright within the pit of Zecora's house, burning against the damp and the cold of Zecora's chosen home, against the never-ending twilight that stalked to everfree forest. She'd never once let those lights go out in all the time she'd lived there, the thick black soot streaked across the ceiling in testament to just how long they had stood. Below and between, Zebrican tribal masks fought for space with dragon scales, Griffon lances, bottled potions and baskets of herbs, and the collected detritus of a dozen or more cultures.

The tree was her refuge, its contents her only connection with a life ended many years ago, in a land she had not seen for far too long - a land likely changed beyond all recognition. Between that departure and her eventual settlement she had wandered the world, seeking respite, trading her wares and carefully avoiding entanglement. She found this place, this pit, beneath the crawling roots of her tree in the land no pony dared enter. She had found solitude. For a while it had been good. It had been what she thought she wanted. Nopony to speak to, none to ask her name, none to slip into her life and out again.

The loneliness had become too much to bear after just a few years. By then she was well known to the locals, who had sighted her many times as she scouted the edges of the forest. They'd never seen a zebra before, certainly not one like her. It had taken the innocence of a filly to break the boundaries of mistrust and fear when she had finally tried to come amongst them. There were days when she wondered if it had been worth the pain. Other days when she knew it must be, otherwise why was she still there?

Zecora idly stirred at the stew bubbling in its cauldron, ever fixed at the centre of her home, letting her thoughts drift in the pungent vapours it threw off. Mostly they drifted to her earlier encounter with Twilight and the almost intoxicating display of power the young unicorn had projected. And earlier still, to her own confusing acts.

The knock at the door came just as she expected, loud and persistent. Zecora briefly considered ignoring it and pretending she wasn't in, but whose purpose would that serve? Not her own. Not anybody's. She dropped the ladle and left the stew to its own devices.

Twilight stood at the door, frustration evident on her face, mirrored by that of her companion Applejack. The pair were worn from their journey through the forest, and from the experience of the last few days. Worn, yet determined. She welcomed them to her home, as she had always welcomed any traveller through these woods since the day she had chosen to end her hermitage, with offers of shelter and food and any comfort she could provide, all in the infernally frustrating patois that was her cursed tongue's only means to speak to the world.

The questions came without preamble, demands of her knowledge, insinuations of complicity (these from Applejack, who hated lies and hated anything that appeared to be one), ending with a desperate plea for help, to which she had no answer.

She wanted to answer. She wanted to speak, to tell them what they wanted to hear, or needed to hear, but her tongue tied itself as it so often had, without reason. Oh, but she could have spoken, given them their answers, but the pain would have destroyed her mind. So she stared at them, he face passive as she had learned to make it when such frustration was upon her. Let them think she was being mystic, she'd always told herself, and they'd take it for cosmic mumbo jumbo.

There was no escape in it this time.

"Curse spoke to curse," her lying tongue relayed. "In endless lonely verse."

"What the hay does that even mean," Applejack yelled She stomped her hoof and turned away, knowing a lie when she heard it. "Yall are just hollerin' away like rhymin' is all there is!"

"But what is reason without rhyme, dear Applejack? Let us not say things we would soon wish to take back."

The response did not go over well. Nor could it. Both mares snorted their disgust at her answer, both ignorant of the depths of her own frustration. Could they understand were she to explain? Could they comprehend what she had done?

"I am cursed too, you foal! Is taunting my pain your only goal?"

Abashed, Applejack looked away, but Twilight's ears perked up in sympathy with her plight. The unicorn drew close, so close she could see the bristle of her fur, so close she could feel her hot breath clouding the air. Zecora shook her mane, rattled her invisible chains.

"I would do anything to be free of the curse that is now binding me."

"Maybe we can help?"

"No help can you provide, it is better that I should have died."

"You have seen the power I possess, perhaps you should take a guess."

"You studied it. You're a mage?"

"Once, a shaman of great power and strength, I have studied magic at great length," Zecora relied. The smile was gone now as she slowly circled Twilight, as if trying to intimidate her, but then she suddenly seemed to lose her will and sat down heavy on the warm grass. "Until I lost all to this curse that brought my fall."

"I thought zebra magic was all about illusion."

"It is about imagination and is no trick, though you can see the truth if your eye is quick. We dabble with a deeper place-- ah, but your face, that glare, why do you stare?"

"I don't know, perhaps some crazy mystic is claiming to overturn everything I thought I knew about how magic operates across species. In rhyme."

Author's Notes:

Thee two snippets were part of an early draft of The Greatest of These. To be honest I liked the direction this was going better than the story as it turned out. Part of the reason I eventually put it on hiatus was because too much of it was becoming deep nonsense. There was no motivation for Zecora's actions, which this scene would have supplied had it gone on - but at the time I was worried about tipping my hand to certain plot points too soon.

Daft really. One day I'll re-write the whole thing. And I won't use "burned" and "burning" within 10 words of each other this time.