Outland

by Dafaddah

Sensations and Perceptions

Outland

by
Dafaddah

Chapter three: Sensations and Perceptions

Edited by Sharp Logic, Microshazm and Mythee

---

Zecora awoke with a massive headache. Everything felt hazy. She fought through the pain and cobwebs in her mind until she finally felt lucidity, and then memory, return. She gasped.

The basilisk!

She jumped onto all fours, which made her head ring like a bell. Her legs trembled as nausea threatened to make her lose her meager lunch. Biting back down on it, she opened her eyes.

Nothing! I’m in the dark!

Zecora wondered if perhaps the basilisk had dragged her into its den rather than eating her in the clearing. That was unusual behaviour for such a beast. Then she remembered another image from the fight: a foal’s visage, peeking from the edge of the clearing.

A sudden feeling of dread shook her. Her saddlebags! She needed light. Tentatively, she pawed the ground around her with a hoof, hoping beyond expectation, until the memory of her bags flying off into the bushes came back to her unbidden.

Despair grazed the edges of her conscience, as well as a feeling of shame such as she hadn’t felt since she was a filly.

“Zecora girl your plight is dire, and you’ve got neither charms nor fire!” she scolded herself.

A foal’s voice whispered from the dark. “Hi, pony."

Zecora froze in utter surprise. The impression of a small hoof touched her lips.

“No talk. We hide from the monster.” The voice was that of a colt barely of school age. It also might explain her survival of the basilisk’s attack. Surely the colt’s parents’ had saved them. But if that were indeed the case, where were they? She had to ask.

She whispered in turn into the dark. “Little one, tell me please, where are all the big ponies?”

There was a pause, as if the colt was unsure of what to say. She felt a small hoof over her ear.

“No other pony. Me alone. Momma gone long time ago,” whispered the colt.

It took a moment for her to work out the implications.

Zecora! she exclaimed to herself in wonder. The being that saved your soul, is no more than a tiny foal!

---

Shad looked up at the pony. For some reason it wasn’t looking at him when it spoke, even though its eyes were half open. He shook his head and focused on the important things that needed to be done now.

There was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to the pony. He had collected them along the way into this relatively secure thicket. He wadded a bunch of the leaves into a ball and crushed it between his hooves, then rubbed the damp mess on the pony’s legs and flanks. Its nose wrinkled at the smell.

“You wish to hide our scent. Colt...” The pony stopped speaking when he again touched its lips.

It seemed to have gotten the message and didn’t speak again as he tried to finish coating it with the leaf juice. At one point he tapped it on the withers, and it understood enough to lie down so he could rub its head and back. The pony had a huge bump where the monster’s tail had struck it. Despite his best effort at being gentle, the pony tensed and took several breaths through its teeth as he coated the area in leaf juice.

He ended by doing the pony’s face. Its eyes didn’t track his movements. He waved his hoof right in front of one eye. It didn’t even blink. The pony can’t see! he thought. Shad knew that they needed to move soon, but it didn’t look like the pony would be able to follow him by sight.

Then he remembered another of Momma’s rules, this one on moving together in the dark.

He put his mouth next to the pony’s ear and whispered: “Hold onto my tail, and follow.”

The pony nodded. Relieved, Shad grabbed his own tail in a hoof and touched it to the pony’s mouth. It bit down securely on the hairs of his tail and carefully stood up. With a last glance in its direction, he carefully moved forward out of the thicket, the striped pony in tow.

---

Zecora followed the tug of the colt’s tail, treading carefully, but trusting that he knew what he was doing.

This young pony is truly kind, leading me as if I’m... blind! The word resonated in her head, competing with the headache she'd had since waking up. On her barrel and flanks she felt the brush of leaves and blades of tall grass, as if she was walking in a forest, not a cave. She took a deep whiff through her nostrils and discovered that she couldn’t smell anything either.

The shock of the discovery almost made her lose her grip.

She fought not to cry out loud as her eyes welled up with tears and her stomach cramped. It took all of her willpower to focus on the act of following, and not the myriad of aches, pains, and feelings of numbness that pervaded her sensorium, nor the icy clutch of fear and dread on her heart.

For quite a while they made their way slowly onwards as she concentrated on following his tugs. The trek gave the zebra mare much time to attempt to force order into her thoughts. Having several years of training in the medicinal arts of Zebrabwe, Zecora was well aware of what the confluence of her symptoms suggested: a moderate to severe concussion. She knew that her life might be hanging by a slim thread, and that the only assistance she could expect in this remote part of the Everfree was a small foal leading her through these most dangerous woods.

Her dire thoughts were interrupted by the colt halting abruptly and placing a hoof on her muzzle. He stroked it downwards, and repeated the motion twice more. Zecora could take a hint. She silently folded her legs, and felt the foal press up against her, still as a statue.

They lay that way for several long minutes.

Thus concussed you must take care, to remain conscious, zebra mare! She repeated this mantra to herself over and over again, willing herself to stay awake. Finally, after what seemed an interminable pause, the colt stroked her muzzle thrice again, this time with an upwards movement.

She rose. Nausea again washed over her, making her knees tremble. She had just bit down on the colt’s tail again when in the distance she heard the sound of a whippoorwill. As if called by the bird’s song, her nose was suddenly assaulted by the acrid smell of manticore's bane leaf! Mixed within it was another plant oil she couldn’t identify, and beneath it all lay the scent of a large body of water nearby.

She stumbled in surprise, but righted herself immediately. Her queasiness momentarily forgotten, the corners of her mouth rose over clenched teeth as tears ran down the sides of her muzzle. Her sense of smell had returned!

---

Whippoorwill, Loon.

Shad had led the pony almost all the way back home. He stopped and listened carefully before leading it to the entrance of the cave. He gestured for it to wait while he took out the thorn bush, then cautiously led the pony inside. In the main chamber he whispered to it. “You sit now. I come back.” The pony dutifully complied.

He went back out through the passage and secured the thorn bush back into place. He then went back in and lit the guard fire near the entrance.

The pony hadn’t moved. But its ears followed him as he went about the cave completing his daily routine. His nightly tasks over, he sat down in front of the pony, feeling suddenly embarrassed that he didn’t know what to say. Finally, something came to mind.

“Hello, pony,” he whispered.

The pony smiled and whispered in response. “Hello, little pony who led me true. Zecora’s my name, what should I call you?”

“Shad,” he said. Something about the pony’s voice reminded him of Momma. “Are you a momma pony?” he asked.

The pony’s smile faltered, and then came back even wider. “I have no foal of my own, though I am a mare fully grown.”

Shad was confused. This pony had a strange way of talking that was very different from the way Momma talked. But then, he was right, the pony - she - was a mare, just like Momma.

“Brave little Shad, where is your momma, or could you tell me where’s your poppa?” asked the pony.

“Momma gone a long, long time.” He hesitated before asking. “What’s a poppa?”

The pony’s smile went away. Her eyes got wet again. Then the smile came back, although her eyes still seemed sad.

“For the next three hours we must talk young Shad, for if I sleep it could be bad.”

He nodded solemnly. Whenever Momma asked him to do something it was very important, so he always obeyed as best he could. And he wasn’t sleepy anyway. At least, not much. He wondered what he should talk to the pony about. Looking at the drawings on the walls of the cave, a sudden inspiration hit.

“Zecora?” he asked, “Tell Shad a story, please?”

The mare smiled even wider, which made Shad feel very warm inside. She patted the floor next to her. He felt shy all of a sudden, but Momma did that too when she wanted him to lay besides her. He hesitated only a moment then lay down as she had requested. She placed a forehoof closer to him and he noticed it was trembling. He did what Momma did when he was scared and trembled: he placed his own little hoof over hers.

“Once... once upon a time,” she began in a hesitant voice, “in a land far, far south of here, a zebra stallion named Chaminuka healed and performed many great deeds. Neither ponies nor even ferocious beasts did he fear, and everywhere he went he collected wild plants and seeds.”

When she paused Shad looked up at her. “More story, please?”

Zecora nodded. She continued, her voice becoming stronger as she fell into the familiar rhythms of the legend.

“The great bull Mhindudzapasi was his most loyal friend, following him around, lying down, rising and trotting forward at his command...”

---

For over three hours Zecora recited many ngano of her tribe to the colt, the words of the epics, myths, and legends coming to her in the voices of her grandparents, aunts and uncles and elder cousins, told around a fire in the hazy lands of her youth. She even sang a few nziyo, although these she did not translate into Equestrian.

Throughout her recital, the colt let her know he was awake by periodically stroking her foreleg. He seemed to have an unusual number of non-visual clues, making him very quiet compared to pony or zebra colts his age. He even laughed very softly when she told the story of ‘How the chameleon became slow’.

Finally, her headache had receded, and she felt clear-headed enough to risk going back to sleep. She yawned and noticed that the colt no longer stroked her leg. She heard his soft, slow breathing. He had finally drifted asleep.

How could such a small one live alone, especially in such a fearsome zone?

She put her muzzle down next to the colt’s hoof, and felt her spirit stretch forth into the dreamlands. All through her dreams that night, out of the corner of her eye, she spied a tiny shadow following close.