“Ya know, Journal, a lot of ponies ask me: “Pinkie, what got you into drugs? Pinkie, isn’t that stuff bad for you? Pinkie, why do you have soooo many pillows on your bed?””
“Well little journal of mine, let me tell you a story. This story takes place a few years ago, just a few months before I met Twilight Sparkle and my life changed forever. This was the day that I first met Zecora out in the Everfree Forest…”
***
The air was thick and damp with a cold fog as I slowly made my way past the border of the forest bordering Ponyville. Earlier that day I overheard a pair of customers at Sugarcube Corner chatting about a Zebra that had visited the morning market, and I started to plan a surprise party. After all, I can’t claim that I’m friends with everypony in Ponyville if I’m not friends with EVERYPONY in Ponyville, right? Right.
This was my first time entering the Everfree Forest since I escaped my family’s rock farm and moved to Ponyville, and the sun was starting to set. I hummed my Granny’s favorite tune, trying to drown out the sound of twigs cracking and leaves rustling around me.
Just as my teeth started to chatter from the chill air, I spotted a tree that stood out amongst the rest, and sighed in relief. Zecora’s hut kinda reminded me of the library in Ponyville that Twilight would eventually move into. What set it apart were the pouches filled with who-knows-what hanging from the branches, and Zebrican totem masks lining the exterior walls closer to the door. Readying my party cannon, I knocked on the door, and waited. And waited.
I started tapping my hoof on the dirt. You can understand my impatience, considering the stories I heard around town about the creatures lurking in the Everfree. Paranoia was getting to me, and my party plans were taking a backseat in my mind behind the instinctive need for shelter and safety. I placed my ear against the door. Did I simply get unlucky, and arrive when she was out gathering herbs?
But no, there was definitely someone inside the hut. Was that chanting? It wasn’t Equuish, that’s for sure. Wait, was that a scream?
I tried the door latch, found that it was unlocked, and let myself in.
“Zecora! Are you okay? My name is Pinkie Pie, and I can help you!” I snapped my eyes around the room searching for the striped mare. The walls on all sides of the round room were covered with shelves holding glass jars filled with all kinds of plants, powders, and provisions. More of those creepy masks were tacked up higher on the walls, and in the center of the room sat a huge cast-iron cauldron placed above the ashes of a small fire. Although the fire had clearly gone out a while ago, I could still smell the remnants of a bitter, acrid smoke. Suddenly I spotted my target: a striped leg laid prone behind the cauldron, slightly twitching.
“Zecora!” I rushed to the other side of the cauldron and knelt down to examine the zebra. Thankfully, the situation wasn’t nearly as dire as I dreaded. In fact…was Zecora laughing?
Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, and Zecora gasped loudly, as if taking a breath for the very first time before she once again began to giggle as she slowly worked her way up to a sitting position.
She wiped a bead of sweat from her brow, before she slowly turned to me and met my stare with one of her own.
“Um…hello? My name is Pinkie Pie.” In retrospect, my greetings back then needed some work. I didn’t meet very many new ponies at the rock farm, after all. “I’m sorry for trespassing, but I came here to welcome you to Ponyville, and when I knocked I heard screaming.”
Zecora tried to stand, but her legs started to wobble, and she retook her seat on the dirt floor. “I must apologize, little pink pony. Please give me a moment to come back to me.”
She closed her eyes and brought her arms out to her side in a meditative pose as I cocked my head to the side in confusion. What does she mean, ‘come back to me?’
I waited, and after a moment she opened her eyes again. This time, a smile graced her muzzle..
“Ah, here we are, back to the real. Now tell me, Pink one-” Her smile curved into a suspicious frown. “-are you here to steal?”
“What, no no no!” I shook my head vigorously. “I told you already, I came here to throw you a party to welcome you to Ponyville. You see, I’m friends with everypony here, but you’re new, and that means you’re a new friend, and that means I need to throw you a new friend party!”
Zecora chuckled and her shoulders relaxed. “I am relieved that your intentions are kind and not dire. Come take a seat, and I’ll relight the fire.” She stood up and slowly walked to an alcove near the back of the room. Opening a hatch, Zecora pulled out some firewood and returned to the cauldron, stacking the logs underneath. Pulling a burning torch from a sconce on the wall, she held the flame to the wood until it lit. I felt the heat building; a welcome warmth after the trek to get here.
“Ooh, thanks! Hey, do you always rhyme like that? It’s really neat!”
Zecora closed the hatch and returned to the fire, taking a seat next to me. “Not always.” I waited with baited breath for the rest of the rhyme, but Zecora just winked, making me giggle.
I took a moment to watch the smoke from the fire as it drifted toward the roof of the small hut and escaped into the air through a cleverly placed hatch.
Zecora took the silence as an opportunity to speak. “Again I am sorry to you on this night; seeing me on the floor must have given you a fright. I was in fact completely unharmed. Yet, you were understandably alarmed.”
I nodded, glad that she forgave me for barging into my home, and that nothing bad had happened to her. “I’m just glad that you’re alright. What was that, anyway? When I came in it smelled like something was on fire…besides the cauldron, I mean. It smelled kinda weird. Were you making some kind of spooky Zebra brew?”
Zecora laughed gently and shook her head. “Not this time, my new pony friend. Though the real answer may be hard to comprehend. I was partaking in a ritual of my tribe. Though like I said, it is difficult to describe. Let me show you instead, so that you are not misled.” She stood once again and grabbed a glass tube from the wall, sitting the contraption down between us.
I took a closer look at the strange device. It appeared to be a hoof-blown glass tube with a muzzle-sized hole on the top and a smaller hole on the side. The smaller hole was currently plugged with a tiny glass bowl that appeared to be removable from the main device. The bowl was filled with a fine gray ash; the remnants of something burned. The tube widened at the bottom into a larger bowl filled with water, and the whole thing sat on a flat glass base.
Zecora saw my obvious confusion and explained. “This device is called a water pipe. It is as common to the Zebra as our stripe. Using it, we inhale smoke from mystical plants as our tribe leader recites to us ancient chants. We ascend to a new realm of being, and we view new sights with eyes unseeing.”
My eyes lit up. “Oooh! Sounds spooky, can I try?”
I saw Zecora tense, and her eyes widened. “Pinkie Pie, I can see that you’re excited, it’s true. But you might not be ready for this new point of view. The experience is known to be rather intense, and warning you beforehoof would only make sense. Once you begin, you are in for a ride. Which for better or worse, you must abide.”
I creased my brow in thought. “But, like, you’ll keep me safe, right? You’re my friend now, you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me, would you?”
Zecora gave me a sad smile, and closed her eyes. “You will be safe from harm in the physical sense, but I cannot make guarantees against your mental defense. From pony to pony, experiences vary, but for pony or zebra, it can be quite scary. One consolation: the experience is short, and after it’s done I’ll be here for support.”
Zecora told me more about the plant, which I learned was called Salvia Divinorum, or ‘Divine Sage’ in ancient Equuish. She showed me how the water pipe worked; Zecora would light the end of a small stick of kindling on fire, then hold it to a pinch of the salvia placed into the bowl on the side of the pipe. I would then hold my muzzle to the hole at the top of the pipe and inhale, which would pull smoke from the plant in and through the water to cool it down before it entered my lungs, making it easier to inhale. Once the smoke filled the long stem leading to my muzzle, Zecora would remove the bowl from the side of the pipe to open the airway and allow me to breathe deeply. She instructed me to hold the smoke in my lungs until my vision started to shake, then exhale and resume breathing normally. Once I completed a practice run without Zecora lighting the contents of the bowl on fire, we were ready to begin.
Zecora stood, and pulled a mask down from the wall, placing it over her face. Clearing her throat, she began chanting.
“Under the stunted oak I waited for her
the Green Mare
clothed in the black of the mystified, the lost,
but more truly, naked and unshriven, seeking a dying moment.
Under my tongue, the bitter mint
above my head, invisible leaves,
known only for the moonlight they intercept
below my back, the green grass that saw me through my youth.
She came to me in a spirograph body
wings twined with ivy in curliqued ringlets
her fingers the thorns of roses pointed with the blood of the unworthy
the edges of her smile reaching up to the stars, her teeth, barbed spikes.”
Zecora paused, and nodded to me to begin. I held the pre-lit kindling in my hoof and touched the ember to the flakes of salvia in the bowl. I began inhaling from the pipe, and saw the smoke flowing through the water and up the stem. As it reached about half-way up to my mouth, I removed the bowl and the smoke quickly made its way into my lungs. The cool water helped, but I still had to fight the urge to gag. Still, I fought through it, and held my breath as I looked back up to Zecora.
“I had not expected fear, but terror came with her
and tho I sought a dying moment, she showed me a dying eternity
and tho I sought to bring wisdom into the real, she tore the real from me
and I was no more, and in unbeing, I lost my fear
She made me into a mist, expanding slowly until I was all
everywhere, blown by the wind of her breath
into eddies and whorls within myself
and it was I that her wings beat, to keep her aloft
She flew in me, acrobatically spinning and turning
casting off parts of myself in colors I have never seen
I flowed across her wings, she breathed me
and I flowed through her grasslike hair.”
The walls began to vibrate and change color, and I took that as my cue to exhale. I was surprised to see very little smoke leave with my breath, considering the amount that I had just inhaled. I think vertigo hit me at this point, and I laid back, flat on my back with my arms folded and relaxed against my chest. From this point forward, concepts such as time and feeling are subjective, but I’ll do my best to describe them.
***
I saw a forest illuminated in deep greens, like somepony took the light from a bright, sunny day and slapped a filter over everything. The forest was thick and deep with tall trees twisted around and through each other into impossible shapes. Reflections bounced around my vision, as if I was staring at the scene through a constantly shifting stained-glass window. I couldn’t smell the typical forest scents of wood and fungus, but looking back on it, I don’t think I even recalled that I could smell; like smell was a foreign concept that I had never encountered or even heard of. I think I could taste…something, though trying to figure out exactly what was completely foreign to me as well. The sounds though.
The sounds.
I realized at that moment, while trying to piece together my shattered psyche, that sound meant everything in that twisted, alien forest. Sounds were the building blocks which held time and space together, and without sound all of existence, all hope, would be lost.
And I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand anything.
I think I started to weep, if I still had eyes, that is. I couldn’t be sure of anything at that point.
The sounds morphed into something resembling voices, yet I couldn’t understand them, and I was cast away as punishment, thrown violently into the space between spaces to await the next chapter of my trial.
***
I floated in the garbage bin of the Universe, joining all of the mistakes and abandoned ideas stacked up since the beginning of Everything. I watched my limbs in horror as, molecule by molecule, they unfolded, split apart, and drifted away to mix with the sharp, vibrating edges of shattered glass that made up everything which had ever been. The atomization of my body continued past my legs and arms and into my core, and this was the last moment where ‘Pinkie Pie’ existed as a concept. My ego drifted away, mixing with the aether between.
Bits of what had been ‘me’ were inseparably joined to the Universe itself. I was reused, recycled, and discarded, again and again. It might have been two minutes, two hours, or two millenia; time did not exist in this place. I noticed myself being put back together, remembering who I was, and desperately trying to cling to that idea before losing my grip and falling apart again, and again, and again. Since time had no meaning here, neither was there a timeline, so I would find myself back in Zecora’s hut, falling away into the forest, melting into the aether, and reforming again and again, the scenes playing in a random order every time. The only time that I could even recognize what was happening to me were in those brief moments of clarity as I found myself back in the hut as I recalled in terror the hundreds of years I had spent broken apart before being reformed anew. Each time, I cried, not in terror but in ecstatic joy at the opportunity given to me by the Universe to be myself. To be a pony, laughing, crying, and sharing my experiences with others. I lived a hundred thousand lives in the span of a heartbeat, and I felt blessed to be present for all of it.
***
Slowly, impossibly slowly, the cycle of death and rebirth began to stop. I saw myself reborn to my parents back at the farm, being doted upon by the ones who raised me, learning how to work the farm, and finally escaping the farm for Ponyville. I saw the events that lead me through the Everfree to Zecora’s hut, and I saw myself laying on the floor by a discarded pipe. I watched as an outside observer for a time, before I decided I was finally ready to rejoin my body in the real world.
***
"Soon, oh, too soon,
boundaries encircled me and I contracted, condensed
and rained myself on the stunted oak, and dripped from it in rivulets
and froze beneath it into this mortal body, clothed in black of the still
mystified, but no longer lost."
Zecora’s chanting slowed, then stopped as I opened my eyes again. I felt moisture making a trail down my cheek, and I flicked it away instinctively with a sluggish, trembling hoof. I stared at the ceiling, watching and waiting for it to return to ‘real’ colors and cease its impossible movements.
Eventually I felt stable enough to sit up, and did so. Once my vision caught up with the rest of my body, I looked over to Zecora, who had finished her part in the ritual and sat next to me with her head tilted in thought.
I gasped, remembering how to breathe, and voiced the only question that came to mind. “What happened to me?”
Zecora nodded, as if she expected those exact words, and replied. “What exactly happened, I cannot know, for all take part in a different show. Just remember, none of what you saw was real. However, I hope the knowledge gained can appeal. While your memory is strong, I suggest that you write. In time, you may look back fondly on tonight. Come with me now, and let us roam; I will guide you safely back to your home.
Zecora helped me to stand and regain my balance, then let me out the door of the hut and into the forest. I smelled the familiar scents of wood and fungus, and knew finally that I had made it back from my trip.I leaned on the zebra heavily, both for physical support and to show her my thanks for the experience.
Was it intense? Of course. Was it scary? Certainly. But I don’t regret it. It was a completely new experience unlike anything I had ever known before, and the memory would stay with me for the rest of my life.
I returned to the hut in the forest occasionally, seeking new experiences and spending time with my new friend. Eventually, I shared my budding knowledge with some of my best friends through new rituals. Whether it was a relaxing night with Fluttershy, a dance party with Rainbow Dash, a trip to the void with Twilight Sparkle, a creative escape with Rarity, or a sacred family bonding with Applejack, I made sure that my friends felt as safe and comforted as I did leaning against Zecora on that trip back to Ponyville.