The Other Side

by MagnoliaThourns

Ch.4 - Wearing Thin

I wake up at the river, and sigh. You’re at my side, and I ask, “What time is it?”

“Twilight Sparkle, it is three AM.”

Great. It’s too early—I whip back to you and wait. A broad smile cracks over your face.

“Yes?”

I lunge forward and pull you into my forelegs. “I’m so glad you trust me enough for this, Zecora!” I look you in the eyes, and jerk back the impulse to kiss you. “You can rhyme again whenever you want. But thank you for—I don’t know—being so vulnerable around me.”

“Well, you are vulnerable yourself right now. Look at this river, I’m sure you understand how. Whoop!” You laugh cutely, “Huhuhuh, that one was unintentional.”

I giggle too. We start walking back to your hut, and the strongest joy I have felt since I started sleepwalking swells inside my heart.

For training, I stretch and pole stand and meditate with you for a while, though both balancing and keeping my mind empty are much harder than they have a right to be. And more than once, I stare up to your serene face as you stay stock-still suspended in the air by the pole pinning up your head. It’s very impressive, and fuels my drive to improve.

Then, after a while of that, you jump down and say we’re going to start on harnessing energy. We head outside, into the clearing boarded against the undulating green and quiet cacophony of chirps and roars, and you stand with your hooves apart about shoulder width. “Stand with posture like me, Twilight; stable and hooves out alright? Oh, I rhymed again, huhuhuh.”

I try to mimic your pose, and you break to spread each of my legs out to where they should be.

“It is so strange to not rhyme around somepony else. It has been years since this.”

“Do you—“ my head spins for a second as your hoof touches my inner thigh to adjust it. “—like the feeling?”

“I feel I have more freedom. Although, I do still rhyme some. Huhuhuh, just like that.”

“If you want to rhyme, go right ahead.”

“No, you are right. It is a crutch, I should let it die. Besides, although it can be fun to rhyme it is rarely easy and easily stressful.”

“I like your spoken prose. It feels… I don’t want to be mean, but it does feel like I can communicate with you more effectively now.”

You’ve finished moving around my limbs and fix a smirk at me. “I am easier to understand?”

“Well...” I blush. “Yes. But your rhyming isn’t bad—“

“I know what you are saying. Each conversation had it’s wings clipped by how well I could find rhymes for what we talked of.”

“It made it hard sometimes. But I do really like hearing you like this. Your voice is still beautiful.”

“Hmm, thank you Twilight. Now,” You flip around and stand in front of me, a few paces to my right. Your shapely flank, I admit, is somewhat distracting. “There is non-magic energy that flows through your body and through the world. It is called chi. There is also a natural magic that runs through our world, you are familiar with it, called mana. Zebrican magic uses your chi in conjunction with your faith to bring out the mana of the world around you. When they come together, they create a force called ujasiri. In Equestrian that word it is close to bravery, courage, and fortitude, though there is no direct translation that I know of.”

“Woah. Wait, wait, I know we’re getting started and we’re going to do something physical in a moment but can I write this down?”

You giggle, and shake your head. “Of course, Twilight. Would you rather a lecture than a lesson today?”

“No, no, I just want to make sure I don’t forget or misremember anything. I don’t have to break my pose, hold on.” I reach out with my magic and pull on the binder I keep in my secret room. It takes some energy but I zap the thing to me, along with a quill and an inkwell. I scribble down everything you just told me in shorthand, and look back eagerly for you to keep talking.

“The energy you use from your body is directed by your movements and your intent. For you to feel this energy that flows in you, we will practice martial arts. For now, we will back kick.”

“Okay.” I set my notes down on the ground to focus.

“Lift up one back leg off the ground, bring it only up.” You fold one back leg up and I follow suit. “Next, push backward as hard as you can in a straight motion.”

Your kick is stiff and precise; you hold the leg up exactly where it would’ve hit, your hoof level with my body. Mine gets up, but the motion bursts out as inelegant, clumsy even, and I can’t hold it up like you.

“Very good. As you stretch and practice you will gain height and smoothness. Bring it up, and then out.” You kick again, faster and stronger, high enough you could hit the tip of my horn. Probably even break it if you wanted to.

“Wow.”

“You must focus your intent to strike through your leg; let the energy in your body flow out and into the motion. You must feel the force of it!”

We practice kicking for a while, you show me exaclty how to do it and even pull my leg up and make the motions for me. You tell me that my energy has to be strong and flow from some point just below my teats; my skin tingles as you tap the spot. I write down everything you say and every detail of what we do.

When we finish for the morning my back legs burn and I’m tired but my mind races with curiosity, running through every moment of what we did.

As we come up to the door, you ask, “Do want to see a demonstration of this magic at a higher level?”

“Of course!”

“Then watch closely.” You wink at me, then turn back toward the side door to your hut. Instead of opening it, you walk forward. Silently, you clip through it in an easy gate, the wood yielding like it’s intangible. My mouth hangs open as your tail swishes away into the door, disappearing.

“What! What!? You can do that?”

You stick your head back out again without opening it. “This takes more energy and practice, but is it so different from walking on water? To the pond I say ‘you are solid’; to the door I say ‘you are not’.” You smile coyly and pull your head back.

“How did I never know this? How did you never tell me this?” I have to open the door like the novice I am now and you’re grinning inside, pleased with yourself and how impressed I am. “That’s amazing!”

“Huhuhu, yes, thank you. Perhaps eventually I can teach it to you as well. Ahh, but it seems our time is up for today. Six thirty, what do you say?”

“Well, I guess I should get going. Thanks for all of this Zecora, really.”

You put a foreleg over my back. “You are quite welcome. Will you come back again tonight?”

“Yes, I’d like to, please.”

“Then I will be expecting you. Now go, have a good day, Twilight Sparkle.”

I gently ease out from your foreleg, and smile at you before I teleport away.

At the castle, I make my way out of my room and head on downstairs. As the day tumbles onward I swim through the motions with my head full of fog. Just waiting to see you again, to train again for whatever this river’s hiding. Still mulling over how impressively you melted into the door. I don’t catch a chance to spend more time organizing my notes about you and your magic. I’ll have to try and get in some time tomorrow.

When the evening spreads its dusty wings over our small town once more, I have the sudden inclination to walk to your hut instead of teleporting. I know enough defensive and offensive magic to be safe from the Everfree creatures, and my legs feel like they need some activity. That might be the earthpony in me raising it’s quiet voice, as it does sometimes. It might also be my subconcious desire to be strong like you; your demonstration earlier still shifts through my thoughts and kicking woke my muscles up to how much time I spend static. So after I say goodnight and everything, I sneak out the castle doors and start trotting.

I’m nearing the Everfree tree line, thinking up several spells that will be handy against whatever lurks within when a voice calls out and stops me.

“Twilight?” Applejack gallops up and continues, “Are you okay? Why are you heading out to the forest so late, is something going on?” She must have just now finished breaking down the apple stall from the market; all the bits and bobs are in a cart she’s left behind a couple meters away.

Now I have to think up a pretext for being here at all. “Oh, Applejack, it’s nice to see you, uh, I was just… um… going to see Zecora.” There really isn’t much else I can say I’m about to do that will make any sense.

“Oh. What for?” She seems relieved, relaxing in her standing pose a little more.

“Well, I need a potion for, uh…” I hate lying to her, especially when she used to be the element of honesty and all. “…Spike! He’s having trouble sleeping, so I’m going to get a potion.” Sort of close to the truth kind of. It’s not.

“Well, alright, Twilight. Had me darn’d spooked, walking up to the Everfree in the middle of the night and all. Be careful out there, ya’ hear?”

“I will be, Applejack, have a good night.”

“You too, sugarcube.”

I scramble through the brambles for a few minutes and realize this was kind of stupid. I can’t stride through this like you do, at least not yet, and what thin path that fights to stretch out from under fallen logs or across buggy streams is overgrown on all sides, you being one of the only ones to really use it. The speed of the forest growth doesn’t help. I fumble over sticks and roots, through vines and plants that spark my fear as my resolve wanes.

I can’t do it. I teleport when I’m halfway there. But I don’t feel so bad about it, actually. I knock on your door and you pull it open. You look happy, and it makes me so happy just to see that.

We drink some herbal tea you had all prepared for me, and then slip into bed together. I feel a little weird about it this time. As if maybe I shouldn’t be here in your bed sleeping next to you when we aren’t dating or anything—not like I haven’t slept in the same bed as spike or Applejack or many of my other friends before. It solidifies my realization that I have a massive crush on you. I try to chase it out of my mind; I’ll think about it when I have a chance to put it all on paper.

“Twilight,” you say in your deep, beautiful voice, “do you feel alright?”

“Uh.” For a split second I’m sure that you’ve found me out. That you know how much I want to kiss you. But then I realize you’re just talking about the training and the river. “Yeah. I feel less worried with you training me for it. Helping out. How do you know what to do?”

“I can feel it on the river bank, and I’ve heard of magic similar to this before. Only in old Zebrican tales, so I think it means I need to teach you Zebrican magic to get across.”

A thousand questions buzz through me and internally I lament once again how few books there are about Zebrica. “That’s so… I. Zecora, if we get through this, will you teach me more magic? And teach me how to read Zebrican?”

“If we do? And you’d want to learn all of that?”

“Yes, of course I want to learn all of that. The stuff you do—it’s amazing and it’s unlike any style of spellcasting or enchantment that I’ve seen before. And if they have books about it in Zebrican by Celestia I want to learn Zebrican.”

You grin real big and wiggle your nose into my neck. “Thank you Twilight. I would love to share my knowledge with you.”

I feel giddy. Tingles wiggle all through my gut. In the moment I hug you and imagine all of the things we should do together. This missing piece of mine, the crawling under my skin that feeds a vacuum inside my life, I want to beat it. Or satiate it or kill it or whatever I have to do to get it out of me and spend more time with you.

I watch you while you sleep—there’s nothing else to do as I wait to fall asleep myself. You’re so peaceful, breathing deep and lying pressed into me. As my consciousness finally softens to the warm blur of dreams, I wonder why it is that it took me so long to really get to know you.

The water laps my fetlocks and I wake up. “What time is it?”

“Around three thirty.”

“Damn. Okay, let’s go train.”

You bring out a pad today, for our martial arts, and hold it up behind me.

“I want you to kick the center of this pad, I will hold it up for you.”

I kick with one leg and miss the thing entirely, my hoof jerking out too far to the right.

“When you kick,” you say, unsurprised apparently, “I want you to focus your energy on the target. Focus your chi; flow it out to strike not the surface of the target but so far into your target that you’re aiming for the space behind. Let the chi flow all the way through. Visualize it, feel it happening.”

It’s a black and red bag with a strap on the back and two concentric circles printed on the front. I am for the one in the middle, and imagine I’m trying to hit something behind it. The energy rushes from my flank down my leg and into the motion. My hoof bashes into the outer ring, a solid blow.

“Very good! Again.”

When I get back to the castle after training–worn out and covered in dirt—Starlight immediately confronts me. I have to wonder if she was waiting at the door.

“Twilight! I—oh. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, long story. What’s up?”

“Well, I was just wondering if we could add you to our sleepover today? I know you said maybe next time a while ago, and Sunburst isn’t staying forever, so...” She trails off and grimaces nervously at me. I shake my head to clear it. I’ve become so infatuated with you, and distracted by this thing that’s happening inside me, that I forgot the rest of my life is important too.

“Yes, absolutely!” I say, as enthusiastically as I can manage.

“Great! It’s going to be extra fun tonight because I invited Maud—“ she stops dead and looks back at me. “UhhHhh is it alright if I invite Maud over?”

I laugh, and take a minute to look down at the mud on my hooves. This doesn’t feel very real right now. Even though I’m here. “Yes, Starlight, you can invite anyone over that you want. As my protégée, this castle is half yours too you know.”

“Oh thanks, Twilight, really. I mean I already invited her over, but, well, you know. Uh. Thanks Twilight!”

I close the door behind me and ask her how it’s going with her friends, and the sleepovers, and this whole thing orchestrated for her friendship lessons. But I can’t push my mind around to focus and I need to clean off. “Hey, Starlight, I’m really happy that it’s going well and that you’re doing well, but I need to shower real quick.”

“Oh, of course, do you want to keep talking when you get out?”

“Yes, I would love to.”

I scrub all of the dirt off and decide to send you a letter that I’m staying at a sleepover tonight. I’m sure you’ll understand. And I’m sure I’ll end up back at that stupid river. But whatever. Just because the walk from the palace to the river stretches out longer than from your hut to the river doesn’t mean I can’t make it.

The sleepover is nice. I get to talk to Sunburst a bunch, and make a mental note to learn more about him. I ask him as casually as I can if he knows anything about Zebrica, but he knows even less than me. I try again with Maud and she tells me she wants to visit it one day to see the tanzanite mines.

After the last game of chess we decide to hit the hay. Everyone slips into their sleeping bags in the common room and after a rambling, late-night conversation, I’m left to spend a good while tracing the geometry of the ceiling while I wait for sleep to take me.

Suddenly somethings shouting in my ear and I jerk awake. I flail my forelegs at it and tumble down a few stairs. It hurts, and takes me a minute to realize where I am, laid out over several of the steps leading up to the castle entrance.

“Twilight!” Starlight says, leaning down over me. “Are you alright?”

I feel anxiety curdle into all of my muscles, and shame spreads hotly over my face. I hope she can’t see it as I stand up and get my balance before meeting her eyes below the bloom of white light she’s casting from her horn “Uh.”

“You were sleepwalking. Are you alright? I know you aren’t supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but, you were going outside and I didn’t know if—”

“It’s okay.” I can see her fear that she was a bad friend so I head it off at the pass. “I’m alright. I was just uh. Sleep walking, yep.” I smile, and then realize that I probably shouldn’t.

“Do you do this often?”

I don’t want her to know how much I’m falling apart, and a disappointment that I might not get to see you tonight gnaws at my gut. “I um… It’s a side effect!”

“A side effect? Of what?”

“Well, uh...” I don’t know why I blurted that out, and looking out across the dark town and the light spilling down the rest of the crystal steps from Starlight isn’t giving me any ideas. “Of this new medication I’m on for...” I don’t have anywhere to go but there. I fake my best I'm-embarrassed grimace that I can, helped along by the genuine guilt I feel, and say “...a rash. On my undercarriage.”

“Oh. Well, do you want to look for some spells tomorrow to maybe prevent that?”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” I say, fully aware that none of them will work because I tried them all months ago. “We can go back inside now.”

We start walking inside and a mix of disappointment and vertigo washes through me. I don’t like lying to her, but I can’t tell her that I’m going crazy. I don’t want anyone else to know about this thing except you and me. My self-diagnostics kick in and I realize maybe that’s a part of this magic I’ve stumbled into. Maybe it bullies me into being quiet until it can finally get me across the river and… do something. Or maybe I’m just more ashamed than I thought to be so completely lost while in such a high position of power and responsibility.

We re-enter the dark common room and slip back into our sleeping bags. There’s still some lights on in the palace, and from somewhere a dim splay of muted gold, almost colorless, slashes over the hewn-crystal patterns in the ceiling.

I move my head back down to stare at the wall, and catch her looking at me out of the corner of my eyes.

“Twilight?” she whispers.

“Yes Starlight?”

“Do you think I did okay today? With the sleepover.”

“Yes Starlight, you were a great friend today.”

“Thank you. Twilight?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for coming.”

My heart aches. I need to stop slacking off just because I’m tired. “I’m happy to be here.”

I can see her beaming in the dark, and then squirming inside her sleeping bag. Her breath evens out about ten minutes later, and I’m left staring up and wondering if I’ll get any more sleep. Wondering if I should go ahead and make my way to you myself.

I can feel the call. The river wants me there. It’s pulling in my bones and twitching through my flesh. And I want to see you again. I feel like I need to. Like I’m about to miss an appointment, an important one, forgetting to go to a scheduled therapist or a doctor visit. Or a date.

I blush as I think that. In the semi-silence my thoughts race. I have to go. But I have to be sneaky and teleporting would be way too loud.

I slip out of my sleeping bag as quietly as possible, then freeze for a moment, standing with my wings outstretched and alert. Everything sounds okay. Slowly, placing each hoof down as delicately as I can, I start my way to the hall. Then down the stairs, going a little faster, then out the door.

In the night air again. I need to get to the river. You were going to meet me there anyway so I can’t just go to your hut.

I fly out to the edge of the Everfree and haul myself above it. These wings are still clumsy and inexperienced, but I want to fly there. For whatever reason, it feels like I need to get to the river using my body.

Eventually, after much flapping and fretting over the dark canopy below, I see the river. Even from up high, everything after it is only mist. I descend onto the bank and look around for you.

You’re sitting not too far away, with your back to me. As I walk up, I take in the stripes laced over your spine, the way your tail lays curled around you, and your stiff mane peaking up. You look lonely. And I wonder suddenly if you actually enjoy living out here all alone. I have to. You’re just a zebra sitting at the edge of a stupid river, with no neighbors or friends for kilometers. I want to scoop you up and carry you into the next day and put you down in town and have everyone instantly become your friend.

But I have to settle for walking up to you instead. You turn, surprised, when you hear me. “Twilight? You’re awake.”

“Yes. Starlight woke me up once I started sleepwalking, but I didn’t feel right going back to bed. I could still feel it calling to me.” I look out over to the fog.

“Hmmm.”

“What’re you thinking?”

“I am worrying about you.”

A smile fights the frown on my face. I pull you to me and nuzzle into your neck. “Thank you. I’m worried about you too.” I meet your eyes, “You live out here all alone and rhyme all the time because you feel bad about who you used to be. Are you okay? You can come to Ponyville any time you want you know, not just when you need groceries.”

Something like sadness or restraint holds back the curve of your lips. “Thank you Twilight Sparkle. I might start coming more. I am not the best at making friends though.” You look across the river yourself.

“I mean it. I really like you Zecora, you’re a wonderful zebra. You wake up at three o’clock just for me, you’re teaching me all of this stuff just so I can get across this stupid river. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you.”

You seem more sincerely happy now, trickles of joy glowing into your eyes. “Well, I am not entirely altruistic. I do want some company and I genuinely enjoy teaching you. And I like you too, Twilight, very much so.”

My heart beats way too fast. This is flirting, right? I wonder if there’s enough light for you to see how red my face is as I completely fail to recall anything from The Romantic in You, a Guide to Dating or any other books I’ve read about this. “Do… do you want to talk and cuddle a bit before we train?”

“I would love that. Can you take us home?”

Us. Home. I know you didn’t necessarily mean it like that but that’s how it enters my mind first, that your home is now suddenly our home. “Of course!” I zap us to the front door of your hut and we go inside. Lay on the mattress together and start talking.

“Zecora?” I ask, holding you from behind, with my wing draped over your legs and my nose in the back of your head. I keep my eyes closed so I can focus on how warm and tingly you are against my skin and my feathers. “I’m going to ask something that’s going to scare you. Just hear me out, okay?”

“Okay.”