Zecora could not remember the last time she'd been this excited. She was not typically an excitable zebra, but the idea of going home after such a long time away from it absolutely thrilled her. The magic smoke filled her vision and nostrils, and she inhaled deeply of it. Being of the apothecaric arts herself, she could actually identify by scent most of the ingredients that went into the travel spell. Nearly quivering with excitement, Zecora burst out of the smoke before it had cleared properly, and as such was immediately nearly run over by a carriage being pulled by a pair of Wildebeests.
"Get outta the way, crazy dame!" One on the left yelled, never bothering to look back to see if she'd been run over or not. Zecora narrowly avoided a very unpleasant situation as she leaped backwards, becoming enveloped in the cloud of dust the carriage raised. Coughing, she blinked several times to clear her eyes, and finally got her first look at Zebrabwe in ten years.
Under her hooves, a dark paved road ran smoothly in front and behind her, parting every so often into seemingly random intersections. Carriages carrying passengers were being hauled down the road by powerfully muscled pairs of wildebeests, going one direction on one side and the opposite direction on the other. Pedestrians were everywhere, appearing equal parts pony and zebra.
On other side of the road, towering buildings stretched up towards the sky in all shapes and sizes and colors, heavily obstructing her view of the horizon, upon which rose and set the sacred sunrises and sunsets of childhood memory; the enormous sun tinging the sky with its vibrant colors. But here, here the sun was nowhere to be seen. Where Zecora and Mzungu had moments before left the late evening of Ponyville, here it was well past midnight.
"I don't recall Zebrabwe beng so civilized... or having such a prominent night life," Zecora said slowly, her voice still heavy with shock. "Where is the savannah? The watering holes? The herds of animals?" She asked. She'd been looking forward to seeing such things, to comparing the current state of the continent with the precious memories of her childhood. But here... here there was nothing even to compare it to.
"This is your home now," the giraffe said, sounding a bit regretful.
"I wanted you to see it.
Everything has changed."
"Yeah... I see that," Zecora said, shaking her head slowly. "I understand now why you have not come back."
"It's not my nature.
For my name is Mzungu...
Which means Wanderer."
He looked down at her, not with anger but with sadness, then looked back up across the paved roads towards the buildings.
"Explore if you like.
Zecora, I will wait here.
For when you come back."
Zecora nodded faintly, and took several steps down the road. She had anticipated the soft crunch of sand and grit under her hooves, not the hard clacking of urbanized pavement. It threw her off in a way she didn't like at all. Her head swung from side to side as she took in what sights there were to see, gazing upon each shop as she passed them. Clothing stores, restaurants, dozens of tacky trinket shops selling items she had absolutely no interest in.
It was at one of these shops that she stopped, staring into the reflective class past her own mirrored image. Displayed on a large peg in the front window was a nearly exact replica of the golden bangles she wore around her own leg, a precious gift from years before that was the only thing she had left of her mother. The sight of it advertised in the window... 5 bits for 5 rings... made tears begin falling from the eyes of the normally composed zebra before she even knew she was doing it.
She tried the door out of anger, wanting to give the shopkeeper a piece of her mind, but it was past midnight and the store was closed. Probably for the best.
Zecora turned away from it with disgust, stopping only to let a carriage pass, and returned to where Mzungu was waiting.
"There is nothing here for me to learn. Send us back, let us return."
Mzungu shook his head slowly, with the regretful confidence of one who had already made a decision.
"You, of course, can go.
I will not be going back.
Ponyville is far.
I think that perhaps,
I will go in the other
direction this time." He gestured to the far south with his nose and a swing of his neck.
"A wanderer?" Zecora asked, and Mzungu nodded. He was simply not the type to stay in one place for very long, always on the move.
"I will not forget you, nor the things that you do," Zecora said, slowly stepping back into the travel circle in which they had first appeared. She felt like a hypocrite. Ten years yearning to see her home again, and she couldn't even stand the sight of it for more than an hour. She paused in her own thoughts, though, rearranging the way she looked at things.
Perhaps... though... this was not her home. She had been born here, raised here, yes, but perhaps there was nothing more for her here. The place which she thought of most fondly, the place where her friends resided and her hut had been built, was over a thousand miles away just south of a major Equestrian city.
Mzungu was already preparing the travel spell, and Zecora realized her heart still felt empty. Perhaps she might not ever get a chance to tell him how she felt, and looked up at him with reluctant eagerness as the smoke began to fill her vision for the second time in as many hours.
"Mzungu!" She shouted, feeling herself losing her normally calm and composed nature. "Mzungu, I-"
The smoke began to clear, and through it, she could see her hut, the one she had built with her own hooves in the middle of a dangerously unforgiving forest. Her hut, and no sign of the giraffe.
"I still love you," she finished in a dead whisper.
But there was nobody around to hear it.