Zecora didn’t often get to see the moon in the Everfree Forest. When she woke to see it streaming through her window, she was grateful.
Life in the Everfree was a constant battle for all of its inhabitants, the animals, the insects, even the plants themselves. The trees grew close and thick, starving those that grew too slowly. There was no place for moon or stars in the Everfree, and even the sun was reluctant to intrude.
However, for one single month in the heat of the summer, the moon hung in just the right part of the sky to shine through a tiny gap in the canopy for a few minutes each night.
Zecora smiled and let her eyes wander around the room. Some ponies might have called it small and cramped, but she didn't see it that way. What did it matter that her hut only had two rooms? Or that she shared her sleeping quarters with shelves full of herbs, potions, and empty cauldrons? This was her home, and it was beautiful. Especially in the moonlight.
The moon could make anything beautiful.
Her eyes alit on a mask which hung above the door. It was carved in the likeness of the very first zebra to set hoof on the savannah and see the stars in all their glory. In the daylight, it would have captivated the eyes with bright greens and dark reds, but even at night some of that color still shone through in the moonlight.
That mask was just one of many that lined the walls and dangled from the ceiling. Another one, smooth and brilliant white underneath the swirling yellow and blue lines that wound their way across its face, hung over her bed; a representation of Princess Celestia as seen through the eyes of hundreds of generations of zebras who had had only their imaginations and the sight of the rising sun over the open plains to guide their hooves.
Zecora watched the masks, letting her eyes soak up every silver-clad detail of her heritage as she lay there and thought about nothing more than the beauty of the nighttime. The moon could make anything beautiful.
Finally, her eyes flickered across to a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves on the other side of the room. They sat as far from the window as possible, in a place where the moonlight never reached. On one of those shelves, near the very top and tucked behind the clutter of her work, lay the dark outline of another mask.
Zecora shivered and wrapped her thin blanket around so that only the very tip of her nose stuck out for air and tried to go back to sleep.
***
At first, Zecora thought she was dreaming. The drumming was too powerful, too immediate to be real. It rolled through the forest, resonating off every tree and rock. It spoke of malice and the hunt, filling her hut with its steady pulse. Real or nightmare, though, it didn’t matter. Her response was the same either way.
Zecora bolted upright and scoured the darkness with her eyes. The moonlight had long since fled and left her hut shrouded in darkness. The masks were no longer objects of pride and heritage, but twisted beasts and monsters. The shadowed objects on her shelves hid lurking nightmares, foul and diseased.
There was no time to waste. Zecora tossed aside her blanket and leapt out of bed, crossing the room in three strides to grab the emergency saddlebag that she kept on a peg next to the door. There wasn’t much in it, just a day’s worth of rations and tools that would be helpful if she were ever unlucky enough to need to venture through the forest at night. Next, she yanked another saddlebag off one of the shelves and started stuffing food into it. She didn’t have time to sort through it, anything that would keep for a few days would have do.
When she was done filling her bags with supplies, she ran over to the next set of shelves and started pulling down bottles. Unlike the food, these needed to be sorted very carefully. Some of her potion ingredients were dangerous, and a dropped bottle could easily poison her. Others were simply too common to burden herself with. She needed to move quickly, and any extra weight was a danger.
Zecora didn’t dare light a lamp while sorting the bottles, but even the near total darkness in her hut did little to slow her hooves. The pounding of the drums had driven all weariness away it woke her, and she knew her ingredients better than she did her own stripes. Most of the bottles went back on the shelves, but a few ended up alongside her saddlebags on the floor. Those ones contained rare and potent ingredients that could only be found in the Everfree Forest, like the Poison Joke extract. That particular bottle had kicked off the most embarrassing week she’d ever lived through before she finally figured out a cure. The rest contained various leaves, roots, and most especially seeds. With haste born of urgency, she wound the bottles in rope so they wouldn't clatter and hung them from her saddlebags.
Task complete, Zecora let her eyes fall to the space under the lowest shelf, where a small chest sat. For the first time in the minute since she’d awoken, Zecora hesitated, then sighed.
“This is dangerous beyond belief, but to leave you behind would cause me great grief.” Reluctantly, she crouched down and hooked her forelegs around its corners and pulled.
The chest was much heavier than it looked and Zecora had to strain to pull it out from underneath the shelf. Soon enough though, she had it out in the open. She sat down in front of the chest, breathing heavily, and lifted the lid. In the daytime, the sand that filled the chest to the top would have shone a brilliant white, but in the night it was just dull grey.
Carefully, she began scooping it out one hoofful at a time, until she struck something hard with a clink. Her heartbeat mirrored the drums as she brushed the rest of the sand away to reveal a tiny bottle nestled amongst the grains.
Zecora could never help but gaze in wonder whenever she brought it out. A tiny yellow light glowed from within. It was not the kind of light that banished the darkness, though. It was the kind of light that wore the darkness like a fine robe, whose beauty could only be seen in the night. It was the seed of a phoenix tree, suspended in a special oil to protect it from exposure to the air.
After a moment, Zecora reached down and gingerly took the bottle in her lips and took it over to her bed. There, she placed it in the middle of her blanket and twisted the cloth around it. It was the work of only a moment to tie the ends of the rat-tail together so that she had the bottle wrapped tight in a cushioning sling, which she could slide over her neck to carry.
Her preparations complete, Zecora took a deep breath to still herself. For the last four years, it had been her home, not just a place where she lived and lay down her head, but a place where she belonged. Here, she had found both freedom and friends, and now she had to leave it all.
Again.
Her breathing hitched and she felt a tightness in her throat that she wished with all her heart would go away—she needed to breathe if she was to run.
Zecora let her gaze roam across the room one last time, caressing each item in turn; the shelves that held her tools and life’s work, her bed, and the masks that hung on every available wall. Her heritage was written in those masks.
She wished that the moon was still there to grace the room with its light. The moon could make anything beautiful, even that which already was so.
Last of all, Zecora let her eyes rest on the dark shape on the top shelf. Her heritage was written in that mask too.
Her pulse began to pound ever louder in her ears, until she could no longer tell where her body left off and the drums began.
A sound tore its way out of Zecora’s mouth, something feral that started low and rose in both pitch and volume, like a lion’s roar and eagle’s cry rolled into one. With one swift motion, she reached back and undid the strap that held her saddlebags in place, letting them fall to the floor with a thud.
She had a home here. She had friends here. She had freedom here.
Zecora crossed the room and pulled the mask from the shadows.
The mask was a simple one, elegant and forbidding. It was carved from ebony and decked with a headdress of black feathers and dead plants. Unlike the ones that hung from the walls and ceiling, though, this mask was intended to be worn. It’s inside surface was carved and smoothed so that it fit her face like a second skin.
Mask in place, she reached up once again and nudged the urns and bottles aside, revealing a spear which had been hidden behind them and the mask.
The sound of the drums rolled over her still, the drumming in her heart had finally drowned them out.
They were not the only ones who could hunt.