Zecora turned her ear to the darkening forest outside the window of her hut, her eyes narrowing as she listened intently. A strange sound, almost akin to a drip of water, echoed among the trees.
"What is this sound I hear?" she mumbled to herself. "Strange noises at night could be cause to fear." The zebra peered cautiously out into the twilight, acutely aware that the sound was getting louder. The drips resounded into deeper, muffled clacks that rang out like faltering hoofsteps.
"Does some pony their life despise?" she hissed quietly, sweeping her gaze more fervently across the darkening foliage. "To walk here at night is very unwise!"
"I... I..."
Zecora froze, both ears now swiveling into the darkness out her window. Gulping softly, she backed to her door and cautiously peered through the viewing hole. Through it, she saw a lone mare stumble out of the thick forest growth, her legs flailing aimlessly as she tumbled down to rest in a murky puddle. Quiet sobs wracked her bony frame, her tangled and muddy mane obscuring most of her figures.
With a gasp, Zecora burst out of her hut to come to a stop at the pony's side. She looked small, too small to be healthy, and her coat was a muddy and matted patchwork of scrapes and bruises. Zecora scooped the mare up out of the stagnant water, brushing her mane out of her face with a gentle hoof.
It seemed that no part of this mare was in good condition, but the wounds and dirt were not what mattered to Zecora in that moment. It was the mare's eyes. They stared blankly from sunken sockets, surrounded by weary shadows that seemed to ooze out of the shining emptiness apparent in the depths of her gaze. They seemed to stare without seeing, but saw everything as a passing detail that once may have mattered but had since passed into eternal insignificance. They grasped out with trembling movements at the zebra as if she were an island in the midst of a terrible storm, but that she knew was just out of reach, just out of grasp.
"What happened to you my dear?" Zecora whispered to the mare with wraithlike eyes. "You look as if death is near."
The pony stirred at the rhythmic tones of Zecora’s voice, her cold eyes turning to stare blankly upwards.
"I don't remember," she croaked, her voice not even a whisper.
Zecora gently draped the mare over her own back, surprised and dismayed by how light she was. Stepping lightly so as not to jostle the already injured mare, she retreated to the safety of her hut. Once within the warmth of her home, she helped her wounded guest to warm up at the base of her cooking fire before getting to work mixing a salve for her wounds The mare inched dangerously close to the flames, yet she shivered as if the fire were a bone-chilling gale.
With the salve prepared, Zecora sat down next to her guest and slowly slathered a hoof-full of her remedy on the mare's wounds. In an instant, she was up on her hooves again, racing to her more potent medicines. The little salve she had applied slid slowly down the blistering hot coat of the shivering mare.
"I don't remember," she whispered to the flames through chattering teeth, her eyes watching the fire without noting its existence.
Potion after potion was smeared on the head or dumped down the throat of the mare, but her condition only seemed to gradually worsen. Determination set in to the constantly moving figure of Zecora as she whipped around her home in a flurry of bottles and boxes, her mind racing to find a solution for her deteriorating guest. By the time that every potion or salve, plant or brew that she could quickly muster was used, she was desperate.
"Stronger magic is needed for this situation dire," she huffed, her breath coming in tired gasps as she double and triple checked every jar for a new clue to help the injured mare. Zecora shook her head and sighed as she realized that she would have to bring the mare to the library in the darkness of night. "Twilight Sparkle, I hope I do not incur your ire."
With a grunt, Zecora unceremoniously slid the mare onto her back before bursting out her door and galloping with as much speed as she could muster in the direction of Ponyville.
"I don't remember," the mare groaned softly, tears dripping steadily down her muzzle and onto the back of her helper. "Please, I don't want to remember."
The forest thinned abruptly into the city limits, but Zecora's exhaustion was increasing with every stride. Trusting the library door to swing open, she lowered her head to plow straight through. With a boom like that of a small explosion, Zecora and her injured guest barreled into the main area of the tree-home and nearly into it's resident.
"Z-Zecora!" Twilight sputtered, her wings spread wide in shock. "What is going on?"
"This mare needs magical care! I may be too late, I despair," she grunted, the mare on her back sobbing more violently with each passing moment. Twilight jumped into action as Zecora had not long before, laying the mare down on a sitting pillow and levitating some medical books into the air around herself.
"What happened to her?" Twilight queried. She looked with concern over the wounded and gaunt mare.
"I don't want to remember!" the mare spat venomously before stumbling to her hooves, her movements erratic and shaky.
"That is all she will ever say, a terrible thing must have happened this day," Zecora sighed, her head dipped slightly in exhaustion. Twilight looked back to her exhausted friend and pulled a faded white tome from the shelf nearest to her.
"Thank you for helping her, Zecora. I'll do my best to find out what is wrong," she said determinedly. After scanning a few pages, she closed her eyes and her horn glowed brightly, the light extending forwards towards the mare. The mare's empty eyes snapped upwards to stare past Twilight, a terrified look slowly twisting her bruised muzzle.
"No!" she screeched, startling Twilight out of her spell. "I don't want to remember!"
The sheer terror emanating from the mare forced Twilight a pace back, her own expression contorting from concern to fear.
"Zecora, help me find a book, A Treatise on Mental Magic." She ran to her shelves as she spoke, tossing books left and right in her hurry. "We have to diagnose the problem before we can fix it."
"No!" the mare bawled, falling to her side in a failed attempt to run at the door. She grasped wildly at the hooves of the other mares as they ran to save her life. "No, I can't, I can't!"
Her hiccuping sobs faded into the background for Twilight as she frantically tore apart shelf after shelf, but she only noticed the eerie silence after it was too pervasive to be ignored. She whipped around, her eyes as small as pinpricks, and galloped forwards to stop by the softly wheezing mare.
Her saliva foamed around her jaw as it gaped open and closed like a fish out of water. An insane giggle bubbled up through the froth of the writhing pony's dying gasps, her eyes flickering back and forth between the horrified faces before her. Clenched in her hooves was a small, silver vial that had once occupied Zecora's hut, one that the zebra knew all too well as poison.
"I will never remember," she giggled, the words breaking through her gasps in short, gleeful bursts. The two ponies who had tried to save her could only watch, frozen in place, as the mare's dead eyes finally lost all light.
"Never..."
Author's Note
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-Michel de Montaigne
