//------------------------------//
// Intro 
// Story: Tainted Moonflower 
// by Datura Daydream 
//------------------------------//

Silverstreak's eyes opened, heavy as the night from which she was desperately trying to escape.  She had a nightmare in which her 'special somepony', Datura Daydream, was strangling her. 
"Stro!" she yelped his nickname as her eyes nervously darted around, before settling on the empty spot in her bed. Slowly, she came to remember what had happened and her fear subsided.  Silverstreak wiped the sweat from her periwinkle brow with a still-shaking hoof.  The nightmare had seemed so real, she had even felt his hooves crushing her throat and saw the mad rage in his eyes.  The fact that Datura Daydream had been away for a couple days did not help her anxiety.  Despite how hard she had been working on her positivity lately, she could not help but wonder...  What if her dream was a premonition? What if, when he came back, he would be angry at her for some reason? What if he didn't come back at all? Silverstreak cursed her petty insecurities for making her think that way. She pushed those doubts aside and reassured herself that Datura was in safe hooves, and he was what mattered the most to her.  Datura was off visiting Zecora, the Zebra medicine-mare and herbalist. He himself was an herbalist, and a damn good one, too.  He had learned from the best--you see, Zecora had raised him since he was a young foal.  She had raised him as if he were her own since the day that she had found him. She had come across him on one of her trips to Ponyville.  He had been sleeping in a large patch of a poisonous plant called datura stramonium all alone, abandoned and helpless.  She spotted footsteps leading back to the small and friendly town; they appeared to be at least a day old, but the small foal was not crying, despite his abandonment. AND, he was not dead. Surely the Timberwolves would have gotten him by now, maybe the datura plant's distinctively poisonous smell or its spiky seed-pods had somehow kept them away.  Regardless, he was not going to survive long on his own.  The Everfree Forest was no place for foals without parents (or for the parents themselves). A little unsure of herself, Zecora had decided to take him home, for the day had been nearing nightfall and the very woods had begun to rustle as if it were one big nocturnal entity.  

Days, months, and years passed peacefully, although there had been the odd encounter with Timberwolves and other various creatures of the forest. When Datura outgrew his colthood, he became a strong Earth-Pony stallion and moved to the edge of Ponyville. However welcoming the apparently-friendly town seemed, he was considered somewhat of an outsider.  He was too weird for the other ponies, with a foreign way of doing things and an exotic accent.  He was lonely too, nopony wanted to date an Earth-Pony raised by a Zebra. His cutie mark was somewhat off-putting too: a poisonous white datura stramonium flower.  Regardless of the various stigma that had surrounded him, Datura had lived a quiet life, tending his herb and vegetable garden, and living alone in his small comfortable cabin--that was, until he met Silverstreak.