//------------------------------//
// Zecora 
// Story: Bathtime for Ponies 
// by Derpsanddinks404 
//------------------------------//

       You twist the tap off and stand up from the tub. You secretly wondered how a hut made of bamboo and woven tropical leaves could have running water and indoor plumbing. But that was a wonder for another time. You leave the tub's side and go to the door. "Zecora!" you call out for the filly.

The wooden door opens as a young zebra foal trots in. She looks up to and smiles sweetly. Her attire includes her usual neck rings (two at this age) and golden ear rings. What isn't usual on her is the red tribal paint on her face, which seem to be made into markings and symbols you can't decypher.

"Sorry to disappoint you Zecora, but the paint has to come off," you try to explain to her. "You wouldn't want to get the bath too dirty."

Zecora gives you a look of understanding and leaves the room. A minute or so later she returns with a clean face and still-happy mood. You nod in approval and go over to pick up the young zebra. 

You place her in the tub and get to work. Grabbing the all-natural locally-made shampoo on the brim of her tub, you squirt a handful of the hair-cleaning gel into your palm and start working it through the filly's mohawk black and white mane, being sure not to touch the filly's ear rings (the piercings were fresh, and you'd hate to get them infected). The hair is stiff at first, but after a few short moments it falls limp and allows you to clean it. Her hair is surprisingly shorter than you had intially thought, but still takes a bit to clean due to the dirtiness within it caused by long hours spent outside.

Instead of your usual method of rinsing, which involved the use of two cupped hands, you use the handy clay bowl made for this very purpose by Zecora's family. As you submerge the bowl under the water, you notice that the sides are also marked with native markings. If your memory served you right, they were also the same ones Zecora had painted on herself. Must be a family mark, you figure. With the bowl's large size, the zebra's mane is finished and suds-free only a few rinse cycles later. Instead of returning to its full form, however, it instead remains flat and hanging slightly over the foal's left side. You would later fix this with the hair product left on the counter for you.

With her mane clean, it is time to move onto Zecora's tail. The filly reads your mind and already has her hindquarters lifted by the time you have a handful of shampoo ready. You thank her, surprised, and start lathering her black and white tail. Unlike her mane, Zecora's tail is what you suspect to be unusually soft for a zebra. You look at her questioningly, only to receive her trademark blank look. You shrug it off and continue to finish washing. The tail does match its mane counterpart in the sense that it's dirty, so it too takes a while to effectively clean. 

Now that the zebra filly was fully cleaned, you decide to let Zecora sit in the bath for a bit, considering she and other zebras usually took less baths than humans and ponies. Unfortunately, she didn't have any toys that would really fit as bathtime play. Still, you had brought in her clay doll figures that were craftily made to look like zebras. They even went so far as to have little pieces of hay inbedded in them to resemble a mane and tail. "Neat," you think aloud as you turn one over to inspect it before handing it over to Zecora.

When Zecora gladly accepts your offering, you decide to sit down on the... "Er, what?" you ask as soon as you find out that there isn't a toilet in the bathroom. "Where do they... Oh Celestia." You facepalm as soon as you realize that their tradition was to use the outdoors as their restroom. You prayed they at least used leaves afterwards. 

Sitting on the floor instead, you turn your attention from that disturbing revelation and back to the little Zecora in the tub. The striped filly is contently playing with her custom made toys. You observe her behavior with them, and mostly notice that she treated them quite differently than most fillies would: where ponies would care and love the little replicas, Zecora acted out scenarios with them, making them do actions such as talking, running and playing.

A few painfully long minutes of sitting on the hard floor later, you cut Zecora's playtime a bit short and take the toys from her. She doesn't object, even when you unplug the tub and lift her out of the water. You place her on the earth floor and reach over for the towel with which to dry the young zebra. Because there weren't any factories where zebras live, the towel was homemade like everything else in Zecora's house. The cloth was made of itchy wool, and you yourself would honestly hate having to use it every day to dry yourself off. Nonetheless, Zecora is obviously used to the towel's texture by the way she hardly reacts when you shake it through her mane, then her body and hooves, and finally her tail. You try your best to get between and underneath the golden neck rings, hearing their jingles as you rustled them, but in the end there still remains a bit of water on her unexposed neck. You hoped it wouldn't irritate her later on.

Now came a step you normally didn't do. You grab from the counter a bowl of odd-smelling hair gel and dip your fingers into the product. Lifting your now-sticky fingers out of the bowl, you bring them to Zecora's flat mane and start to try your best attempt at creating a mohawk. In the end, your efforts produce a not-too-shabby traditional zebra mohawk. Zecora gives you a look that showed you that she liked the feel of it. She blinks and nods thankfully and leaves to return to her usual activities.

When she's gone, you begin to clean up the bathroom and put everything away. As you pick up the woolen towel, you feel its texture once again and shudder. "I wonder how long it takes to get used to homemade things," you say out loud while throwing the towel into the bamboo hamper.