Wow.

Just wow.

I didn’t expect much from this story, given its length at first glance. Here I thought it would be a simple, short story just talking about Zecora’s past in a blatant way to eat up space and fill in the quota for the number of words required for publishing. I’ve seen many fics do things like that, and I won’t lie, I have done stuff like that in the past to “pump up” some of my chapters’ overall lengths.

Thank God my assumptions were wrong.

This story, though still short, is just so deep and rich in a narrative that I couldn’t help but feel drawn into it. Zecora barely says anything, and that plays into the story’s setting so well. This is her remembering, so why should she have to speak at all? I couldn’t help but also notice that, without being extremely obvious about it, a smidgen of insight was given into the culture (or at least, the author’s perception) of the zebras. I have no idea if this is based on something in a culture of our world’s many different ones, but it works so well in this. I can’t even imagine how much what little this story mentioned about zebras could be alluded to in as few words as it did.

The flow was top-notch (story-wise), the characterization unbelievably well-done, the quality of the written words surprisingly deep and of a higher quality, and the descriptions?

By God, I felt like I was walking with Zecora through the forest and looking back in her mind’s eye on her past. Indeed, she (or the author, to be precise) didn’t say too much, and I think that works for this story. It’s meant to be mysterious, even if we don’t learn every single little thing about zebra culture. Just this little snapshot, through a rather depressing memory, gives enough insight to show zebras are like and unlike ponies in so many ways.

I recommend this to anyone wishing to just... experience a story. I liked it very much, is what I'm saying.

Haha, thanks so much!