//------------------------------//
// You'd Better Not Go Alone 
// Story: If You Go Down In The Woods Today 
// by SilverNotes 
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"Nopony who's gone in, has ever... come... out!"

Fluttershy often had reason to think back on that long night, when she and her friends had found the Castle of the Two Sisters, but as she walked next to Zecora, she found herself mostly reflecting on what Rainbow Dash had said about the Everfree Forest. She'd been horsing around, of course, trying to spook the new pony in town with ghost stories, and given what had happened immediately afterward, nopony had had a chance to correct her and point out that there was somepony who frequently went in and came back.

Then everypony had found out that Rainbow had accidentally been right, as Zecora wasn't a pony at all. It was embarrassing, in hindsight, for Twilight Sparkle to have to lecture all of them about the fact that the creature who they'd all thought was a strange, striped pony was a different species entirely. It wasn't even that she hadn't heard of zebras, but she'd been picturing something very different. Even now it was hard to look at Zecora and not just see a taller-than-average pony with stripes, but she'd learned the differences slowly. 

Some of the body language was similar, but other things very different. Zecora could accidentally give the impression of being stoic, or even look aggressive without intent, like with her tendency to idly paw at the ground with her hooves. She'd explained once that it was a reflex, an outgrowth of an instinct to search for water in a dry environment, that came out when zebras were looking for something or felt lost. A zebra in an unfamiliar place would do it as a way of asking someone to guide them, and particularly anxious individuals would have it quickly turn into a nervous tic.

What the citizens of Ponyville had mistaken for strange, threatening behaviour from Zecora had been a request for help. For somepony like Fluttershy, who regularly cared for animals who had a wide range communication styles themselves, it'd felt even more shameful to have made such a mistake.

Zecora had, however, insisted that it was water under the bridge. She'd been happy to simply have the acceptance of the community and new pony friends, even if it'd been a bumpy road to get there. And Fluttershy was proud to call the kind zebra a friend.

Even now, Zecora was taking time out of her day to help out Fluttershy, the two equines walking into the depths of the Everfree while Harry lumbered a few body-lengths ahead, leading the way. The forest looked so much more friendly with the sun out, light filtering through the canopy and dotting the forest floor with specks of light, and she caught herself wondering why she'd ever been afraid of it in the first place.

"Is it really true that there are no bears in Farasi?" Getting Zecora to talk about her homeland had been difficult--most of the  initial information she'd gotten was through Twilight instead--but she'd found that asking more about the location itself than her own past could get the mare to open up, and sometimes there was a gleam of bittersweet nostalgia in those blue eyes.

"There are many creatures that I have known, but no such as Harry are found in my home," Zecora confirmed with a bob of her head toward the grizzly's shaggy back. "I have seen the mighty Atlas bear, but only drawn in ink, for by the time I was born, it was long extinct."

The rhyming had been another thing setting her apart. Zecora had not dodged the question of why she spoke like that, so much as nopony had broached the subject in the first place. Nopony had wanted to be the first to admit that one of the things that had frightened them about her was that they'd thought she talked strangely. As Rarity had put it, "We've already made ourselves look thoroughly backwards, there's no need to add to it by doing something as gauche as commenting on her speech." 

Besides, once somepony got accustomed to it, the outpouring of improvised poetry was very pretty to listen to. Though, right now Fluttershy was a bit too preoccupied with the words themselves to properly appreciate their rhythm. "That's so sad." Her ears drooped. "I know that no species lasts forever, but it's still hard to think about all the beautiful animals we'll never get to see because they've already died out."

Zecora smiled gently, and her shoulder lightly nudged Fluttershy's, yellow fur briefly intermeshing with black-and-white. "Have heart, for while some species have met their end, there are many yet for you to befriend."

"That's true. I have all kinds of animal friends." She smiled back. "And even if some species go extinct, we're finding new ones all the time."

"See? While we may mourn the past's demises, the future is full of surprises."

Fluttershy nodded her agreement, then looked ahead again, only to stop in her tracks, blinking in confusion. Where Harry had once been, slowly but steadily blazing a trail through the forest for them to follow, there were now just trees, silent and still. She looked left and right, trying to catch sight of the tracks and flattened vegetation that would normally mark his passage, but there was nothing. She rotated her ears, listening for his pawfalls or his usual grunts and growls, and caught only the far-off sound of a crow.

She looked at the mare next to her, who had also stopped. "Zecora, did you see which way Harry went?"

"Last I saw, he was right in front of us." Her hoof was already starting to dig at the earth, though it stilled when she seemed to notice she was doing it, and she gave a reassuring smile. "But he can't have gone far. No need to fuss."

Both started to walk again, eyes and ears sweeping the surrounding woods in search of their wayward guide. Fluttershy started to call out for him, her mimicry of bear-like sounds leaving her throat sore after the first few times and yielding no answer.

Both were so focused, they didn't notice that more than Harry had vanished, and that the mix of pawprints and hoofprints that had marked their voyage to this point were gone, the woods behind them pristine.

In the distance, the crow kept cawing.