Kavonde was given only the first chapter and was asked to write this second chapter.
Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes with a smile. Today was going to be a good day.
She went through her morning routine eagerly, with a quick shower, a few practiced flicks of a brush through her mane, and a breakfast of oats and daisies. As she ate, she gazed out her bedroom window and breathed in the clean, cool air left by last night’s storm. Rainbow Dash and her team had arranged the pleasant little downpour perfectly, and Twilight had drifted off to sleep to the cozy sound of rain tapping away at the leaves and limbs of the Golden Oaks Library.
She turned away from the view as Spike shuffled up the stairs, burdened down by a canvas backpack as tall as he was. “Hey, Twilight,” he said as casually as he could manage, straining to hide how winded the climb had made him. “Just seeing if you were up. I’m gonna go... ”
“... Help Rarity find gems?” the unicorn finished, raising an eyebrow.
Spike blinked. “How’d you know?”
“Because you’re up before noon, and I didn’t wake you,” she answered with a grin. “Besides, you’re wearing perfume.”
The little dragon flushed. “It’s not perfume! It’s cologne! Big Mac let me borrow it!”
“Uh-huh. Well, just be careful, Spike. Rainbow Dash said there’s been some strange pony seen outside of town the last couple of days.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine,” Spike grumbled. “Besides, strange ponies don’t worry me. She’s probably just a nice weirdo like Zecora.”
“Spike,” Twilight reprimanded, “Zecora’s not a ‘weirdo.’ She’s very knowledgeable and wise.”
“She has creepy masks in her house, and she rhymes all the time.”
“Well, yeah. But she’s not weird. She’s... eccentric.”
Spike scratched his head. “Isn’t ‘eccentric’ just a nicer way of saying ‘weird?’”
Twilight levitated a pillow and threw it at him. He raised his arms to deflect the blow, laughed, and headed downstairs, the backpack making him wobble slightly.
After finishing her breakfast, Twilight reviewed her to-do list for the day and headed out. The first few items on the agenda were simple: bring a few books to Cheerilee’s classroom, pick up groceries for dinner, and drop off her weekly letter to her parents at the post office. It was beautiful outside, the rays of the sun lancing through the remaining wisps of dark cloud and a cool breeze teasing at the edges of her mane, and so she let her pace slow to a casual trot as she made her way to the schoolhouse.
She could hear Cheerilee speaking from halfway across the playground, with the clear, sweet “teacher voice” she used whenever her students were around. Twilight stopped at the classroom door, watching her friend work.
“Now, then,” the teacher said, turning from her blackboard to address her foals, “who can tell me something about Zebrica?”
An orange hoof shot up. “Yes, Scootaloo?”
“There’s lions there!” the little pegasus exclaimed.
“Very good, Scootaloo.” The teacher smiled as several other hooves shot up. “Snips?”
“And elephants!”
“Wonderful! Silver Spoon?”
“And blood diamonds!”
Cheerilee froze. “Uh... well. Yes.”
“An’ that’s where Zecora’s from!” added Apple Bloom. The yellow earth pony paused and blushed, realizing she hadn’t been called on. “Sorry, Miss Cheerilee.”
“That’s correct, actually,” she smiled, clearly relieved to have the topic of the international black market jewel trade deflected. “Zecora, as I’m sure most of you know, moved here from Zebreca several years ago. She’s very knowledgeable about the traditional medicines and folklore of her people, but you should know that Zebreca is a very large place, with many diverse cultures.”
She trotted over to her easel and nudged the first sheet of paper off, revealing a rough map of the southern continent. She paused for a moment to let her students look at it, then pointed with her nose at the northern edge. “A very large portion of Zebreca is taken up by the Sandhara Desert. Now, it isn’t all sand dunes, like you see in some books. Parts of it are habitable and even rather nice, especially along the Neighl River. Though many different creatures live here, including some ponies, the largest country in the Sandhara region is Camelon, home of the camels. Can anypony tell me about camels?”
Sweetie Belle’s hoof shot up. “They’re big, and they’re smelly, and they spit a lot!”
Cheerilee’s teacherly smile faltered for just a second. “That’s... okay, can anypony tell me about their culture?”
“Well, they developed the universal mathematical alphabet that we all use, and made a lot of major discovers in the fields of medicine, chemistry, metallurgy and astronomy. Some camels still live nomadic lives, traveling from oasis to oasis and making their livings as traders, though this romantic image of them has largely been abandoned thanks to technological advancements in irrigation and sanitation, leading most camels to live in large cities, which are instantly recognizable by their distinct and beautiful architecture.”
All eyes turned to the door, where Twilight stood, blushing. “Um. Hi, everypony. Cheerilee, I brought those books you asked for.”
“Thank you, Twilight,” the teacher said, just a hint of wry amusement in her voice. “Class, say hello to Twilight Sparkle.”
“Hi, Twilight Sparkle,” the foals said in chorus, aside from Apple Bloom, who offered a hearty “Howdy, Twi!”
The unicorn smiled embarrassedly as she walked to the front of the room, levitating the books she’d brought out of her saddlebags. “Let’s see, one copy of The Culture of Camelon, one copy of The Zebras of the Savannah, and one copy of The Kudu: An Examination of a Mysterious Species.”
“Are we gonna have to do book reports?” Scootaloo groaned.
Cheerilee’s eyes widened in theatrical surprise. “Why, that’s a wonderful idea, Scootaloo! Thank you for the suggestion!”
The foals groaned. Scootaloo muttered to herself and slid down in her chair.
Sweetie Belle looked at her friend, then raised her own hoof. “Um, what’s that last thing Twilight mentioned? A cuckoo?”
“Kudu,” Twilight corrected. “The kudu live in the southernmost parts of Zebreca. Nopony knows much about them, as they’re very secretive and rarely leave their lands. Local legends suggest they have a lot of magic there, but also a lot of spirits--kind of like ghosts--both good and bad.”
“Whadda they look like?” asked Apple Bloom.
“Well, they look a lot like us, though they’re smaller and usually have earthy coloration. They’re not really related to ponies like zebras are, though, but they do have cutie marks. They also have long, spiraling horns that rise straight back from their heads, with female kudus’ horns usually being a little shorter.”
“Oh!” squeaked Sweetie Belle. “Like Zecora’s new friend!”
Every eye in the room turned to Sweetie Belle, who blushed. “Um, I saw them walking together yesterday. They looked like they were looking for something important, so I didn’t bother them. I... really liked her scarves.”
Twilight blinked. “There’s... there’s a kudu in Ponyville?! And she’s friends with Zecora?!”
“Um... I guess so.”
Cheerilee staggered back from her friend’s intense gaze as the unicorn’s head whipped towards her. “OkayCheerileesorryforinterruptingpleaseenjoythebooksgottagonowbye!”
Twilight burst out of the classroom at a full gallop.
Fluttershy was hungry.
That wasn’t a strange occurrence in and of itself, but really, she had never been this hungry before in her entire life. It felt like her stomach was made of rough bark, and the walls were trying to scrape eachother clean. It hurt. It made her feel weak and nauseous. She didn’t even want to move. She didn’t even want to open her eyes.
“Angel Bunny?” she called. Her voice sounded hoarse and low. That’s strange, she thought. “Angel Bunny, I’m really sorry to bother you, but I think I caught a cold from that storm last night, and... “
She heard the soft thump of the rabbit’s feet landing on her blankets. Gingerly, she opened one eye.
Angel went pale, leapt straight into the air, and dashed away.
“A-Angel?” she asked. She pushed herself into a sitting position, looking around for her little companion. After a moment, she spotted a pair of white ears sticking up from behind a picture frame. “Angel, what’s wrong?”
He poked his head around the side of the frame, gulped, and pulled back.
“Oh, dear, I must look awful,” Fluttershy said sadly. She raised a hoof to straighten a lock of mane, and froze. Her soft, yellow coat had been horribly discolored; it was now a dark, dusky brown. And... what was that at the end of her hoof? Were those... those were claws...
Fluttershy squeaked, bolted out of bed, and ran to her bathroom mirror. A moment later, she screamed. Angel, concern overcoming his fear, bounded into the room after her.
The pegasus stared in open-mouthed horror at her reflection. A grotesque muzzle filled with razor-sharp fangs stared back at her. Its face was framed by long, curly ropes of what might have been grass or ivy, aside from the wicked little barbed thorns growing here and there. Her light blue eyes had turned an intense, glowing green. And a little brass bell hung around her neck.
“Oh, oh no,” she breathed. The monster. The horrible, rhyming thing that attacked her last night. It had used some sort of magic in its bell to convince her to open her door, to let it even, even to feed herself to it. Zecora and that strange hunter--Shujaa?--had arrived just in time to save her. Zecora had said it was an evil spirit that Shujaa had chased all the way from her homeland. And then they’d... they’d killed a tree. Because anywhere the spirit could have taken root had to be destroyed.
Destroyed.
Fluttershy stared at her twisted reflection, panic rising in her chest.