9 The Witch Doctor

Beta left the Doctor's workshop following the directions to Zecora's place, deep in the woods. He figured that Rarity would need more time to make his squirrel suit. The Everfree Forest... well the names here were apt if not descriptive. Beta followed the route as exactly as he could.

After a few minutes travel, he was deep in the forest. Beta stopped and inhaled the smells. Closing his eyes and raising his long ears into the air, he took in the pulse of the forest. Life... this forest was so filled with life, it made him smile. He inhaled deep again, tasting the air for prey... for Zecora. She wasn't prey of course, but his hunter... his fox side saw all equines as prey.

He heard her hooves shortly after he picked up her scent. Exotic. Something he had never smelled before. Almost like a warm breeze on the Savannah. Cardamom, cinnamon and anise oil. Beta loved how ponies smelled here. So different than in his world. So expressive. He turned before opening his eyes[, where]. Where he saw Zecora's large, intelligent eyes staring at him.

Beta smiled again. She was much closer than he thought she'd be. He underestimated her. She knew how to move. His respect for her just went up several notches. He had to [stop]shop underestimating these fillies.

Zecora started simply "Though you may seek to find,  the answers lie already in your mind."

'Great' Beta thought 'a riddler.' He then put a finger on her soft equine lips.

"I don't have much time. Can we please skip the rhymes... just this one time?" chuckling, Zecora nodded.

"Ok, but just this once stranger." Zecora said with a soft smile. Beta chuckled in grateful return.

"I'm no stranger to you. You've been tracking me since I entered the woods. I imagine you also know at least the basics of my story from the wild life here." Beta stated plainly.

The zebra smiled and nodded. Her respect for his tracking skills also just went up a few notches. This was a hunter. A warrior. She would need to keep a close eye on him. He... interested her.

"You want to know of magic." Zecora said flatly. Beta liked her directness when she wasn't talking in riddles.

"Yes... and no." he said cryptically in response.

"Now you speak in riddles, blue rabbit." She saw his tail but he seemed more lupine then vulpine to her. A lost little bunny looking for home.

He touched his bandage and flinched in unexpected pain. "Yes because my life has become one since I arrived." he said, wincing in pain. Zecora snorted, turned and swished her tail, smiling a little.

"Come follow me Mr, my-life-is-a-riddle. All of our lives are riddles Beta." she began. He wasn't surprised she knew his name.

"But how we deal with them... that's the real enigma." her voice was as sweet as it was deep for a female. Beta could listen to her read the phone book. Of course they probably didn't have directories here. He had to mentally kick himself. Beta had been underestimating Equestria and its inhabitants since he arrived, unfairly. He had to stop being so... bigoted. that thought stopped Beta cold.

"You see, Beta." Zecora said stopping with Beta. Her tail still towards him giving him his privacy, looking forward. "Your true answers lie inside you. Your heart can not lie, unlike your mind." She added sagely. Beta nodded, his self disgust radiating.

"Do not feel you are so bad. You are ignorant. That can be fixed." she noted. Beta looked at Zecora, who looked back now, smiling kindly. "Ignorance can be fixed with kindness and knowledge. Bigotry can't. You seem like a smart one to me, Beta."

"Dammit, can everyone read my thoughts today?" Beta wondered darkly.

"No, but you project your feelings so loudly". Zecora said with a laugh and a friendly smile. "that you might as well say them with your own voice."

Beta definitely liked her, even if her readings on him were too eerily accurate.

"What do you know Zecora?" Beta pleaded.

"More than you, and yet less. I know that bandage is holding your life force in." she said with an air of graveness. "I know it's a product of moon magic. How that can be, I do not know." she finished half in thought. Beta knew she was right.

"That night" he began. "When I escaped the lab..." she turned to listen to him. "I prayed to the moon goddess. As I passed out I begged Luna to save me. And here I am. More or less alive" he said, grabbing his waist again. Something in this forest was interfering with the bandage's magic.

Zecora gasped. 'Such an act of mercy?!  From Luna of all ponies!?' she thought.

"What?" Beta asked in innocence.

"You truly don't know, do you?" Zecora asked.

"Know what? I owe Luna everything. Without her help, I would be dead. Worse, I would never have met anypony that I have met here. I'm happy here, Zecora. Maybe even happier than I was when my team..." he drifted off, suddenly melancholy overcoming him. "...was alive." he finished in a tiny voice. 'I'm the last...' he realized. Finally able to allow that thought.

Zecora walked over and touched her nose to his. An intimate gesture of affection, she knew. But he needed it. Whatever he lost coming here, it meant a great deal to him still.

"Make you whole, I cannot" she said "but your trip to me isn't for naught." she smiled, slipping in a rhyme.

Beta smiled and blushed. Both from the touch of her soft equine... zebra nose and with her rhyme.

'I guess she enjoys speaking in riddles. I suppose I should be more tolerant of such a sweet pony... mare?' he realized.

"We are here at my home, try nothing funny or it will be your doom!" she intoned as they arrived at a smallish hut/house.

Beta smiled, bowed with a flourish and intoned "Healing is all I wish to do, I swear, not an evil claw will be set upon you" and Zecora realized he was swearing to be her protector if ever she needed.

She blushed at the oath and nodded smiling. 'Brave, strong and sure he is.' she pondered for a moment. 'And I'm sure he means it. I will not come to any harm as long as he is around Ponyville.'

Zecora then walked around her hut and started pouring or tossing various ingredients into her cauldron.

"Stir this if you can. Mend your wounds... try I can." she said and they both chuckled at the failed verse.

"Mmmmm" Beta began in a gruff Yoda-like voice, mildly taunting Zecora "Learn the ways of the force you must. Know it's way, that you must trust... YEEEessss" They both laughed for a couple minutes.

Beta took the stirring ladle. "To the left or right" he asked. "For you I can stir all night." he replied in his own verse. "How will this help me?" he asked. He trusted her well enough, he was just curious.

"I am only to show you what to do for this potion requires moonlight itself.  Your bandage is a gift of Luna so to Luna must you go. The potion you will brew tonight should last for at least one fight." she said with a wink and a smirk.

Beta didn't care for the foreshadowing but understood it was unlikely he was going to stay without a fight.

After an hour, he understood what needed to be done, when and how. Zecora lent him a small cauldron, as well as the ingredients and big wooden spoon needed. Beta said his thanks and returned to the Doctor and Derpy, hoping to Luna they were finished...'playing Doctor and patient'.

"Ah, you got your mumbo jumbo supplies, I see." The Doctor quipped.

"Even men... er... ponies of science admit there are 'as of yet unknown forces in the world'." Beta replied. He then quoted Asimov. "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic."

"Are you suggesting that magic is just technology we don't understand yet?" The Doctor huffed.

"Yes, in its own way it is a very exact science. What is it they say here?" Beta thought out loud... "Friendship is magic."