A request by Present Perfect:
Zecora is, in fact, the only living zebra still in the world.
“So,” Twilight asked Zecora, “what’s your hometown like?”
They were having lunch together at a little Ponyville cafe, and trying the little sandwhiches. A waiter had just refilled their teacups and brought a fresh pot. It was such a trivial question.
Then, in metered rhyme, Zecora told her of Ze-Brasil.
Once, Ze-Brasil had many tens of thousands of small settlements, for zebra were averse to large crowds. Every settlement or tribe was its own nation, and had its own laws, many quite serious in their nature. A zebra had to be careful, traveling from one side of Ze-Brasil to the other, lest he wander into another world and find himself suddenly beyond the strictures of good order.
Zecora’s home was a little settlement on a muddy river, where it was law that all zebra spoke in rhyme. Downstream from them, the river turned to whorling clouds and rose into the sky like a ribbon. On its gaseous banks rested another settlement, where it was law that all zebra had wings, and could fly tirelessly.
When she was little, Zecora would look for any excuse to take her little raft down the river and visit their neighbors. It was great fun, and she even met a colt there, who she thought she might marry when she was of that age. But when she was fourteen, one of the village mares crossed the border the other way while still in the air. Her wings vanished, and she tumbled from the sky and broke her neck.
After that, Zecora's parents forbade any more visits. She never saw the colt again.
When she was sixteen, she was sent to the first settlement. That was law as well, though it was not written anywhere. It was part of the supreme law, to which all other laws were subordinate. The supreme law kept order in Ze-Brasil, and tied the villages together. It said that the dead could not rise from their graves, that zebras could not be in two places at once, and that the sun and moon must rise at the same time for all tribes.
It also said that, at age sixteen, every zebra would journey to the first settlement to study the supreme law, and to understand their herriage. Her parents cried and did not want her to go, but there was nothing that could be done. The law said she would, not that she must, and so she knew she would arrive in the end. Though depending on the villages she passed through on the way, perhaps she would arrive a corpse.
Her parents knew the settlements immediately around their home, but after she left that little circle, Zecora was on her own.
She passed through one settlement where it was law that all mares loved the chieftain. She found herself smitten, heart racing, loins afire, and she threw herself upon him. It was only the danger of trespassing upon the supreme law that prevented him from keeping her. She wept as his guards dragged her away from him, and once she was over the border and her mind cleared, she wept anew.
She passed through a settlement where it was law that zebra had supreme mastery over the physical world. They built machines that could think, created light without fire, and built trains that floated above their tracks. She rode the train in circles over and over, until she ran out of money and had to move on.
She passed through a settlement where it was law that zebra had horns like unicorns, and she learned to cast spells from a young stallion. He was clever, and kind, and comforted her through her pain. Over many months, she came to love him, and the feeling of loving again frightened her. In the middle of the night, she fled.
There were dozens of other settlements. Some were small things full of small minded creatures. Others Zecora could scarcely comprehend. But she did not die, and eventually, she arrived at the first settlement. Tens of thousands of zebra gathered there in a state of perpetual anxiety. They fought, they bayed, they hated the crowds and the noise, but they could not leave until their study of the supreme law was complete.
It was a powerful time in every zebra's life. There were no guards, no police—only the law. Some of them would be beaten to death by their peers, and would never leave, as their training would never be complete. Some would complete their study and go home. Others would find love, have children, and found their own settlements with their own laws.
Zecora hoped to be among the last group. The laws of her home town seemed so petty. She stayed up late with her peers, studying the order of the world and speculating about what might be.
Like most zebra who survived the first settlement, Zecora found friends. She ended up sleeping under an overhang with three others: Kite, Zeifan, and Lo.
Kite could read and write, for in her village it was law that all zebras were clever. She lived in fear that her cleverness existed only by stricture, and tested her wits constantly with puzzles and word games. Zeifan was strong and often brutal, and when he slew a stallion attempting to rob them, the gangs of the first settlement let them be. So often, when they spoke of the world they would create together, he argued for a world of peace as the greatest good. He was violent by necessity, not by nature.
Lo, the last member of the group, was an anarchist; the first anarchist Zecora ever met. He argued that there was no supreme law: that no law could stand above or below any other— that the supreme law was merely imposed upon the settlements as each settlement’s law was imposed upon individual zebra. To an anarchist, the supreme law was nothing more than common law, supported by supreme tyranny.
The other three tolerated him during their time of study, as he was reliable, and they thought his madness harmless. When each mastered the supreme law, and it was time for them to leave, they cast him out. They would not have such thought polluting their new society.
Zecora was pregnant then, as was Kite. Zeifan was the father, though neither of them loved him. They gathered a dozen more zebra, and together they left to find unclaimed land.
It was at this point that Zecora, speaking in meter still, asked the waiter for more bread. He brought them a basket, and refilled Twilight’s tea.
The three of them had not been able to agree on what law would bring order to their settlement. So sharp had been their arguments, they had nearly broken apart on several occasions, each convinced the others must be malevolent or stupid to hold such views. And so when they built their new home, they resolved that their first step towards perfection would be correcting this oversight.
They named their new home Mahikeng, and decreed a new law, that all zebra within their land should be wise, clever, and good. And it was good. Their lives were simple, but they were safe, and comforting, and just. They had each other, and their children, and that was all they needed.
At no point in the story did Zecora tell Twilight what became of her daughter.
It was three years later that Lo returned. They welcomed him, for why should they not? All zebra in their settlement were wise and clever and good. Until the day came that Lo cheated another zebra in the market.
“It is law that I am good,” he said, “but what is goodness? I say that goodness is when every zebra fends for themselves, for only then can they be free, and what greater good is there than freedom?” And beneath their very noses, he decreed a law that goodness was selfishness.
Zeifan picked Lo up and crushed his skull with a rock. But it was too late.
Life in the village was not the same. Zecora could no longer count on the others to help her when she needed it. They would only demand things in return. Even Zeifan, noble Zeifan, would only help her in return for her consideration. He fed her and her daughter, and she grew to hate him. But they survived.
Until another anarchist arrived, of the same school as Lo. He decreed that information wanted to be free, and that the village should have no secrets. Jealous lovers tore into each other, and cheated merchants beat each other in the streets. They stoned the anarchist to death, but it was again too late.
There was word from other settlements of this new school of thought. Order, it preached, was a lie. Some settlements embraced the philosophy with eager hearts, believing each zebra an island. Others rejected it as the most vile blasphemy, and forbade anarchist sentiments to be spoken aloud.
Her settlement decreed a new law—that any anarchist who spoke aloud would be gagged and bound, and their statements would never be completed. One anarchist was captured in the village. His sister snuck into the town.
Without a word, she slew Kite in the dead of night, and in blood, wrote a new law on the walls of her hut. It stated that anarchist writing could never be censored.
That morning Zecora broke with tradition, with the supreme law, and with the order she so treasured. She took ink from her dead friend’s home, and wrote a decree in parchment: that whomever harmed Kite should burn.
The anarchist’s blood boiled and her flesh curled, and the next time Zecora spoke, she was bound and gagged by the very law she and her fellows had enacted. The others spared her life, but cast her out to fend for herself. With nowhere else to go, she began to wander home.
She passed through a settlement where it was law that zebra had horns like unicorns, and so by extension, any creature without a horn must not be a true zebra. Squads of stallions with machetes chased her to the border, and she barely escaped with her life.
She passed through a settlement where it was law that zebra had supreme mastery over the physical world. Lacking any control over their spiritual selves, they stood reduced to beasts, snarling and fighting over food in the remains of the train she had loved to ride.
She passed through one settlement where it was law that all mares loved the chieftain. But love can express itself so many ways. One had smothered him to death, out of kindness.
She passed beneath the settlement in the clouds, and her wings appeared like she remembered. But before she took to the sky, she examined the path ahead carefully. She saw no flying zebra, and a gentle fall of ashes rained from above.
Later, she would learn that it had been decreed that clouds were made of fire.
And then she returned home. There were no zebra there. Only empty huts. She did not find bones, which was a relief. Perhaps they’d all fled to safer lands.
In her parents' house, she found food and water. As the only zebra left, and their heir in any case, she thought herself the rightful heir to the place and to its laws.
“I decree,” she said, “a new law. Settlements can move. They grow like trees, and scuttle like insects. And at the command of their rightful zebra masters, they may cover the whole of the globe.”
Her parents' home grew branches like a tree and legs like a beetle, and at her command, it scuttled away from the land of Ze-Brasil, leaving the many settlements behind. It did not stop until it found itself in a little wood, far away from any danger, where it stopped to eat. Zecora was content with this location, and ordered it to bury itself in the ground up the door. Later, she would hear the phrase, “Everfree Forest.”
Across the table from Zecora, Twilight chuckled. Then she laughed. It was a very good story, she said, particularly spoken in meter, but it was obviously untrue. If Zecora could do these things, Twilight said, she would have done them in Twilight's sight by now.
“My anarchism was a fit of rage; wisdom comes with time and age. I respect Equestria’s laws, for Celestia gives me cause. I have no need for powers grand, to spread old mistakes to this new land.”
Twilight shook her head. “You really expect me to believe that all of reality is secretly controlled by rules so simple you can fit them into a short rhyming meter?”
“You may think it is tragic,” Zecora agreed, “but ‘friendship is magic.’ It is not without flaw, but here,” she smiled, “it is law.”