Anonfilly Gets Raped By Snakes [Good Ending]

You blink, and the world shifts.

One moment you're in your apartment, scrolling mindless threads, the next there's a flash of green light and you're falling—tumbling through void until you hit soft moss with a breathless oof. The air smells wrong: thick, green, alive. Your body feels wrong too. Lighter. Smaller. When you push yourself up, you see teal forelegs ending in tiny hooves. A glance back reveals a bouncy cyan mane and a tail to match. Your heart hammers as the realization slams home.

You're a filly. A tiny, female pony. In Equestria.

Panic surges. You scramble to your feet—hooves—and bolt into the underbrush. Branches whip at your face, roots snag your legs, but you don't stop until your lungs burn and your new, smaller body tremhes with exhaustion. The forest around you is the Everfree: twisted trees, unnatural shadows, distant howls. You've read enough stories to know no pony comes here willingly.

Hours pass. Maybe days. Time blurs. Hunger gnaws, thirst scratches your throat, and the constant damp chill seeps into your bones. You're lost, utterly, hopelessly lost. Your adult mind screams in a body that feels far too young, too fragile. Every rustle in the leaves makes you flinch.

Night falls. The temperature drops sharply. You stumble blindly, hooves aching, until the ground suddenly gives way beneath you.

You fall.

You land in a writhing sea of cool, smooth bodies.

Snakes. Dozens—hundreds—of them, tangled in a living knot at the bottom of a deep, leafy pit. It's breeding season; you can tell by the way they coil and twist around one another, sleek bodies sliding in rhythmic, sensual friction. The air is thick with their musky scent. They are cool to the touch, seeking warmth wherever they can find it.

You try to scream, but it comes out as a high, frightened whinny. You thrash, trying to climb the slippery walls of the pit, but the snakes shift with you, flowing over your small form like liquid. Their scales are silky, almost caressing as they glide across your coat, your belly, the sensitive insides of your thighs. You feel their coolness everywhere, a stark contrast to your own rising body heat.

One particularly thick snake—dark green with faint bands—slides between your hind legs. You freeze. Its blunt head nudges curiously at the soft, furless slit hidden beneath your tail. You've never felt anything there before; the body is virgin, untouched, the delicate folds sealed by a thin barrier of innocence. The snake senses the warmth radiating from that moist crevice, the inviting heat of living flesh.

It presses forward.

The first touch is cool, slick, almost gentle. The snake's head is smooth and tapered, easing between your untouched lips with surprising patience. You gasp, legs trembling, as the pressure builds. There's a moment of resistance—your hymen, thin and fragile—and then a sharp, bright sting as it gives way. Warmth trickles down your inner thigh; a single drop of virgin blood. The pain is brief, quickly overtaken by the strange, full sensation of the snake sliding deeper.

It's thick enough to stretch you open, the smooth scales gliding against your sensitive inner walls with every inch it claims. You feel every ripple of its body as it wriggles inward, seeking the deepest warmth. The cool length warms quickly inside your heat, and the motion—the constant, intimate undulating—sends sparks of unwanted sensation through your core.

Another follows. Thinner, quicker, it slips in alongside the first, coiling lazily as it explores the slick passage now slicker still with your body's confused response. Your new marehood clenches instinctively around the intruders, but that only seems to encourage them; the movement massages your inner walls, rubbing over spots you didn't know existed. Each twist sends shivers up your spine, a mix of violation and traitorous pleasure.

More come. A third, slender and eager, wriggles past the others to push even deeper, its tip brushing your cervix in a way that makes your hips jerk involuntarily. The pit around you is alive with their brethren, but these few have claimed the warmest, wettest haven: you. They move in slow, sensual waves, breeding instincts guiding them to burrow and coil inside the tight, velvety heat of your virgin body.

Your breath comes in short, filly-soft pants. The stretch is immense for such a small frame, yet your body yields, walls fluttering around the cool, living intruders. Every subtle shift of their bodies strokes nerves you never knew you had, building an aching heat low in your belly. You're helpless beneath the sensation—trapped in the pit, pinned by living ropes of muscle and scale, filled in the most intimate way possible.

The snakes settle deeper, curling together in the warm, moist cradle of your womb, content. Their movements slow to a gentle, constant massage. Your hind legs quiver; your tail flags involuntarily. The adult mind trapped in this tiny body reels at the wrongness, the overwhelming intimacy of it all—yet the sensations are undeniable, rolling through you in slow, liquid waves.

You lie there in the dark, surrounded by the soft rustle of scales, filled and claimed by creatures that sought only warmth. The forest night presses close, and somewhere deep inside, the gentle writhing continues, intimate and unending.

===

Dawn breaks in thin, gray streaks through the canopy. The snakes have thinned out overnight—most slithered away in the pre-dawn chill, leaving only cool, empty coils around your small body. You’re trembling, sore, stretched in ways you can’t fully process. When you finally gather the strength to scramble up the pit’s leafy wall, hooves slipping and scrabbling, only one snake remains with you.

It’s the thick, dark-green one with the faint bands—the first to breach you. The others have gone, but this one has burrowed deeper than the rest, curling snugly into the warm cradle of your womb like it belongs there. You feel it as a heavy, living weight low in your belly, a constant, gentle pressure that shifts whenever you move.

You haul yourself out of the pit and collapse on the moss, legs splayed, chest heaving. The forest is quieter now, birds beginning their morning calls. You roll onto your back, hind legs parted, and stare down at yourself in dazed horror.

Your marehood is puffy, flushed, still glistening from the night’s events. The lips are slightly parted, tender and sensitive in the cool air. You reach back with a trembling forehoof, gently spreading yourself, and there—nestled just inside the entrance—is the blunt, rounded head of the snake.

It senses the open air and slides forward an inch or two, slow and curious. Its scales gleam wetly with your own slick. The forked tongue flicks out—once, twice—tasting the morning, tasting you. The sensation is electric: that delicate, fluttering touch against your swollen clit and inner folds makes your hips jerk and a soft, involuntary whine escape your throat.

Then, as if deciding the outside world is too cold, it retreats. Smooth muscle ripples, and the snake glides back inside, deeper, until only the faintest bulge in your lower belly shows its presence. The motion is slow, deliberate, intimate—like a lover withdrawing after a thrust. Your walls flutter around its retreating length, trying to grip, to hold, and the pleasure-pain of it leaves you gasping.

You lie there for a long minute, staring at the sky, feeling it settle again in your womb. A living thing, curled contentedly in the warmest place it’s ever found.

Over the next hours you try everything.

First, gentle coaxing. You find a sunny clearing and lie on your side, hind legs drawn up, hoof carefully stroking your marehood. You part the lips, whisper soft nonsense in your high filly voice—“Come on out, please, it’s safe, just come out…”—and wait. The snake stirs at the rush of cooler air. Its head emerges again, tongue flicking rapidly now, tasting your scent, the sunlight, the breeze. You feel the cool tip brush your clit and you shudder, thighs clenching. For a moment you think it might leave, but no—it slides forward only far enough to bask, head resting just outside your entrance like a guardian, then languidly withdraws once more, deeper, curling tight.

You try again later, squatting awkwardly over a fallen log, bearing down as if foaling. You strain until your legs shake, face flushed with effort, marehood winking and clenching visibly. A thick coil of the snake’s body bulges at your entrance, stretching you open for a breathless second. You feel the slick scales slide against your ring of muscle, the pressure exquisite and terrifying. The tongue flicks out again, tasting your straining efforts, and then it simply… slips back in. As if your body is pulling it home.

By afternoon you’re desperate. You find a shallow stream and wade in up to your barrel, hoping the cold water will drive it out. The shock of it makes you squeal, marehood clenching hard around the intruder. The snake reacts instantly—wriggling deeper, seeking the core heat of your womb, its movements massaging your inner walls in slow, rolling waves that force a low, embarrassed moan from your lips. When you stumble out, dripping, it’s settled even more comfortably than before.

You collapse on the bank, panting, legs spread wide. Your hoof returns between your thighs almost without permission, rubbing slow circles over your aching clit as you feel the snake shift lazily inside you. Each gentle stroke makes it respond—a subtle ripple, a coil tightening, pressing against places that send sparks up your spine. You hate how good it feels. You hate how your body has already begun to accept it, to crave the constant, living fullness.

The sun lowers. You’re still lost in the Everfree, still a tiny filly with an adult mind screaming in frustration and shameful arousal. And deep inside, curled warm and safe in your womb, the snake sleeps—occasionally stirring just enough to remind you it has no intention of leaving.

It has found its perfect home.

===

Night falls again in the Everfree, colder than the last. You curl up beneath the roots of an ancient oak, small body shivering despite the thick moss you’ve burrowed into. The snake shifts inside you—slow, deliberate, like it’s turning over in sleep—and the motion drags a helpless whimper from your throat. Your hind legs twitch apart without permission, marehood winking once, twice, as the living weight settles deeper.

You hate it. You hate it so much it burns behind your eyes.

You were a man once. Twenty-something years of memories: late nights on imageboards, cheap beer, the weight of a human body that belonged to you. Choices. Control. A dick that answered to your hand, not this slick, needy slit that clenches around a cold-blooded intruder like it was made for it.

The violation sits in your chest like a stone. Every time the snake moves, it’s a reminder that something else is using your body for shelter, for warmth, for whatever instinct drives it to coil inside your womb and refuse to leave. You feel colonized. Stolen from. The word rape flickers through your mind and you flinch from it—too big, too human a word for what happened in that pit—but it lingers all the same.

Shame comes next, hot and sour. You tried to get it out. You begged, strained, touched yourself in ways that make your ears burn to remember. And every time it slid back in, your body welcomed it—walls fluttering, slick easing the way, a shameful pulse of pleasure blooming low in your belly. You came once this afternoon, just from the slow drag of its body resettling, hips bucking against nothing while tears streaked your cheeks. You bit your foreleg to muffle the cry, hating the high, filly-sweet sound of it.

You feel filthy. Defiled. But worse than that—you feel broken, because part of you is starting to adjust.

The snake’s movements have become familiar. When the air cools, it coils tighter, pressing against places that make your breath hitch. When you walk, its weight rocks gently inside you, a constant, intimate friction that keeps you half-aroused and aching. You’ve caught yourself walking slower, tail flagged a little higher, choosing paths where the underbrush brushes your swollen teats and sends sparks up to where the snake rests.

You’re terrified of what that means.

Loneliness creeps in at the edges. Days alone in this endless forest, no pony voices, no human ones either. The snake is the only living thing that touches you now. It doesn’t judge. Doesn’t speak. Just stays—warm when it basks in your heat, cool when it slides out to taste the air and then returns, tongue flicking delicately against your clit like a kiss before it vanishes inside again.

Sometimes, in the dark, you talk to it.

“Get out,” you whisper, voice cracking. “Please just leave me alone.”

It answers with a slow ripple that strokes your inner walls and leaves you panting.

Other times, exhausted and shaking, you murmur something different.

“…stay warm, okay? Just… don’t go too deep.”

You hate yourself for that most of all.

You’re trapped between two unbearable truths: you desperately want it gone, and some traitorous part of you is starting to fear the day it might actually listen. The emptiness it would leave behind feels worse, somehow, than the violation of its presence.

Tears come then, hot against your cheeks. You press your face into your forelegs and sob—quiet, broken sounds that belong to a frightened filly, not the man you used to be. The snake stirs at the shaking of your body, slides forward just enough for its head to emerge. The forked tongue tastes the salt of your tears carried on the air between your thighs, flicks gently against your aching folds once, twice—comfort or curiosity, you can’t tell.

Then it slips back inside, curling tight, as if to say: I’m still here.

You cry harder, legs splayed, hips rocking helplessly into empty air while the thing inside you holds you together and tears you apart at the same time.

You don’t know how much longer you can stand feeling both claimed and utterly alone.

===

Days bleed into one another until you lose count. The forest is a maze of thorns and shadows, and your small hooves are raw, your belly constantly aching with that heavy, living weight. The snake has become a rhythm in your life: a slow coil when you rest, a teasing slide when the air shifts, its tongue occasionally flicking out to taste the world before retreating into your warmth. You’ve stopped trying to force it out. Your body has learned the shape of it too well.

You smell woodsmoke before you see the hut—spices, herbs, something earthy and comforting that cuts through the Everfree’s rot. Hope flickers, fragile and painful. You stumble toward the scent, pushing through curtains of vines until the clearing opens: a twisted tree carved into a home, masks hanging from branches, cauldrons bubbling softly.

The door opens. A zebra steps out—striped, gold-ringed, calm-eyed. Zecora.

You freeze. Your legs give out. You collapse in the dirt at her hooves, and everything you’ve been holding back shatters.

Words spill out of you in a frantic, high-pitched rush—nothing like the rhymes you half-expect from her, just raw, broken babble.

“I—I was a guy, okay? A human guy! Twenty-four, lived in a shitty apartment, spent all day on 4chan and Reddit and—fuck—greentexts about this exact thing happening and now it’s real and I’m a filly and there’s a snake and it’s inside me and it won’t come out and it feels— it feels—”

You’re sobbing, forehooves scrabbling at the ground, tail tucked tight even as your hind legs splay from exhaustion. Your voice cracks on every other word, swinging between a filly’s squeak and the deeper cadence of the man you used to be.

“Internet—screens—keyboards—porn—cars—pizza—none of it’s here and I’m small and everything hurts and it’s warm inside me but it’s wrong, it’s so wrong—”

Zecora’s calm fractures. Her ears pin back. She kneels swiftly, one striped foreleg reaching to steady you, voice soft with worry rather than rhyme.

“Little one, breathe. You are safe now—come inside, let warmth ease your brow.”

You let her guide you in. The hut smells of drying herbs and potion steam. She settles you on a woven mat near the fire, wraps a blanket around your trembling frame. You curl into it, still shaking, still leaking nonsense.

“Anon,” you mumble. “That’s what they called us. Anonymous. I had a name but I don’t—I don’t remember it anymore. Just Anon. And now I’m… this.”

Zecora listens without interrupting, brewing something that smells of chamomile and mint. When she brings the cup to your lips you drink greedily, the warmth spreading through your chest. For a moment the snake shifts, disturbed by the heat, and you whimper.

Zecora notices the way your hind legs twitch, the subtle bulge low in your barrel, the way your tail keeps lifting and then clamping down again. Her eyes narrow with concern.

“Little filly, something troubles you deeper still. Show me where the pain is—let me see your ill.”

You hesitate, face burning beneath your coat. But you’re too tired to hide anymore. You roll onto your back, blanket falling away, hind legs parting with shameful ease. Your marehood is flushed, lips slightly parted from days of constant stimulation, glistening faintly even now.

Zecora’s breath catches.

The snake chooses that moment to stir. Its blunt head emerges slowly between your folds, scales gleaming with your slick. The forked tongue flicks out—once, twice—tasting the warm air of the hut, the herbal steam, the zebra’s shock. It lingers there, half-out, resting against your swollen clit like it’s sunning itself.

Zecora recoils with a stifled gasp, hooves scraping the floor. Her eyes are wide, stripes stark against suddenly pale fur.

“By the spirits… a serpent dwells within this child? This is no natural bond—dark and wild.”

You whine, hips jerking as the tongue flicks again, sending sparks through your oversensitive nerves. “It won’t leave,” you whisper, voice cracking. “I’ve tried everything. Cold water, pushing, begging… it just goes back in. It likes it there.”

Zecora steadies herself, though horror lingers in her expression. She leans closer—not touching, just observing—as the snake tastes the air once more, then languidly withdraws. The motion is slow, sensual, scales dragging over every ridge inside you until it coils deep again, leaving you empty-mouthed and trembling.

The zebra’s voice is quieter now, almost reverent with dismay.

“This is no mere parasite, nor simple beast. It has claimed your womb as its chosen feast—of warmth, of shelter. I have potions, salves, and rhyme, but to evict a tenant so entwined… may take great time.”

You curl back into the blanket, tears fresh on your cheeks. “I just want it out. I want to be… me again. Or at least not this.”

Zecora settles beside you, one hoof gently stroking your mane. For the first time since the pit, another living being touches you with kindness instead of instinct. It breaks something open in your chest.

You cry against her striped shoulder while the snake sleeps contentedly inside you, undisturbed by the firelight, the herbs, or the zebra’s quiet, horrified resolve to help.

===

Days turn into weeks in the warm, herb-scented confines of Zecora’s hut. The Everfree howls outside, but inside there is routine: steaming potions at dawn, poultices at dusk, quiet hours where the zebra hums old Zebrican lullabies while grinding roots and petals.

Zecora tries everything her lore offers.

First come the bitter teas—wormwood and feverfew, meant to make the body inhospitable to parasites. You drink them obediently, face scrunched at the taste, while the snake simply coils tighter in your womb, basking in your rising fever-heat like it’s a sunbeam.

Then the salves: slick, cool pastes of aloe and serpent-repellent herbs smeared gently between your hind legs by Zecora’s careful hooves. You lie on your back, legs splayed, cheeks burning as she works the mixture inside you with a smooth wooden applicator. The snake stirs at the intrusion, sliding forward to taste the unfamiliar scent on its tongue. Zecora freezes as its head emerges, glistening, forked tongue flicking against the salve—and against your swollen clit—before it retreats deeper than before, as if insulted by the offering.

Smoke baths follow: bundles of sage and cedar burned beneath a woven basket you sit in, steam rising to coax the creature out. You sweat and tremble, marehood winking in the humid heat, and the snake responds by writhing slowly, massaging your inner walls until your hips buck and a broken moan escapes. Zecora averts her eyes, ears flat, murmuring apologies.

She even tries gentle magic—crystals placed along your barrel, chants in her rolling native tongue. A soft glow bathes your lower belly, and for one hopeful moment the snake shifts downward, head emerging fully, tongue tasting the charged air. You gasp, straining to push, but it hesitates… then glides back in with deliberate slowness, scales dragging over every sensitive ridge until you’re left shaking and empty-handed.

Nothing works. No potion, no herb, no rhyme or ritual prepared her for a serpent that has chosen a living womb as its permanent burrow. Zecora’s frustration grows quiet but palpable; her golden eyes linger on the subtle bulge of your abdomen with something close to defeat.

Physically, you heal. The rawness from the pit fades. Your coat gleams again from Zecora’s grooming, your hooves stop bleeding, and the constant hunger of the forest is replaced by filling stews and sweet mangoes. You gain a little weight—soft curves on your small filly frame, teats fuller and more sensitive beneath you.

Mentally, you are only marginally better. The babbling has stopped; you speak in short sentences now, voice still high and filly-soft, but laced with exhaustion. Nightmares come less often. You can sit by the fire without sobbing. But the snake remains, and that is the fracture that will not mend.

It moves when it pleases—slow, sensual ripples that catch you off-guard.

While you’re stirring a cauldron, it shifts and presses against a spot deep inside that makes your knees buckle. The wooden spoon clatters; you grip the edge of the pot, biting your lip until it bleeds to keep from crying out as the climax rolls through you in helpless waves. Zecora looks up from her mortar, sees your flushed face and trembling legs, and quietly turns away to give you privacy you don’t really have.

While you’re bathing in the wooden tub, warm water lapping at your barrel, the snake slides partly out to taste the steam. Its cool body drags slowly against your clit, tongue flicking in quick, curious darts. You grip the tub’s edge, head thrown back, and come with a strangled whinny that echoes off the hut walls. Tears follow immediately—hot, angry, ashamed. You sink lower in the water, hiding your face against your forelegs, while the snake retreats contentedly, as if rewarded.

At night it’s worst. Curled on your mat beside Zecora’s larger one, you drift toward sleep only for the snake to begin a slow, rhythmic coiling—stretching your walls, rubbing insistently against that cluster of nerves no filly your apparent age should know about. The pleasure builds unbidden, relentless. Your hips rock into the blanket, breath hitching in tiny, desperate filly gasps. When the orgasm crashes over you, it’s always sudden and shattering; your whole body arches, marehood clenching hard around the living intruder, milking it deeper as if thanking it. Then the tears come—silent at first, then shaking sobs you try to muffle against the pillow.

Zecora wakes sometimes. She doesn’t speak, just slides closer and wraps a striped foreleg around you, letting you cry against her chest until you’re spent. You cling to her warmth, hating how much you need it, hating the snake for making you need anything at all.

“I’m sorry, little one,” she whispers once, voice thick. “I have failed you in this trial. No brew or chant can break this vile… bond.”

You don’t answer. You just press your face harder into her coat and feel the snake settle again, warm and sated from the climax it stole from you.

The days continue. You are cleaner, fed, safer. But every unexpected peak of pleasure chips another piece from what’s left of the man you were, leaving only a trembling filly who cries herself to sleep with a serpent curled possessively in her womb.

===

Moonlight filters through the carved masks hanging outside the hut, casting striped shadows across Zecora’s sleeping mat. She lies awake, ears flicking at every small sound from the smaller mat nearby. The filly—green coat, cyan mane, no cutie mark, no name she will give—sleeps fitfully, legs twitching, breath hitching in tiny, stifled gasps.

Zecora’s mind circles the same thoughts it has for weeks.

A lost child, wandered too deep into the Everfree. Terrified, babbling nonsense about places and things that cannot exist—screens, metal beasts, a life before hooves. Trauma does strange things to a young mind; fear can invent whole worlds to escape the real one. And then the snake… Spirits above, the snake.

She has seen parasites before: bloodworms in the river zebras, burrowing vines that latch to the heart-root of trees. But nothing like this. A serpent that has claimed a filly’s womb as its den, curling possessively in the warmest chamber of her body, refusing every potion, every chant, every gentle attempt to draw it out. It does not feed on blood or flesh—it feeds on heat, on shelter, on the constant pulse of life inside her. And, Zecora fears, on something deeper.

The filly’s reactions are not mere discomfort. When the snake moves, her eyes glaze, hips rock, and soft, broken sounds escape her throat—sounds no child should make. Climax comes sudden and unbidden, leaving her trembling and tear-streaked. Zecora has learned to look away, to busy herself with grinding herbs, giving what little privacy the hut allows. But she hears everything: the wet shift of scales inside slick walls, the desperate clench, the muffled sob that always follows.

She wonders if the serpent has woven itself into the filly’s mind as surely as her body. The child fights less now. The frantic pleas of “get it out” have faded to quiet resignation. She still flinches when it stirs too strongly, still cries at night, but during the day… she moves through chores with mechanical grace. Sweeping the floor, sorting leaves, stirring potions under Zecora’s guidance. Her tail no longer clamps tight between her legs; it sways loosely, occasionally lifting to reveal the faint, perpetual sheen between her hind thighs.

Weeks slide by like mist over the river.

Morning routine: Zecora rises first, starts the fire, brews tea. The filly wakes slowly, stretches, winces as the snake resettles with her movement. A ripple runs through her lower belly; her ears pin back, breath catches, but she only bites her lip and pads over to help measure herbs. No tears this morning. Progress, of a sort.

Afternoons: gathering in the safer parts of the forest. The filly walks carefully now, gait adjusted to the constant weight inside her. When a cool breeze cuts through the trees, the snake coils tighter, seeking core heat, and she stumbles—legs spreading instinctively, a soft whicker escaping as pleasure spikes sharp and sudden. She leans against a tree until it passes, face flushed beneath her coat, then straightens and continues picking feverfew as if nothing happened. Zecora pretends not to notice, but her heart aches.

Evenings: shared meals, quiet talk. The filly speaks more now—short sentences about the day, questions about Zebrican herbs, rare fragments of her “before” life that Zecora files away as delusion born of terror. When the fire burns low, the filly curls near Zecora’s side, seeking warmth beyond what the snake demands. Some nights she allows a gentle hoof to rest on her back; others she shrinks away, ashamed of her body’s betrayal.

At night the snake is most active. Cool darkness drives it to movement—slow, deliberate undulations that stroke every sensitive inch inside her. The filly has learned to muffle her cries into the blanket, hips grinding helplessly against nothing while the serpent claims its due. When it’s over, she lies trembling, spent, the living weight curled contentedly deeper than before. Sometimes Zecora shifts closer, offering silent presence until the shaking stops.

The filly functions. She eats, helps, even smiles faintly when Zecora praises her steady hoof with a mortar and pestle. But her eyes are older than any foal’s should be—haunted, distant, cracked through the middle. She no longer begs the snake to leave. She no longer fights the pleasure it forces on her. She simply endures, day by day, in the only safe place she has found.

Zecora watches from the shadows of her own thoughts and wonders how long a spirit can stay broken before it reshapes itself around the fracture. The snake has claimed its home, body and perhaps mind. All she can offer is hers: the hut, the food, the quiet striped presence that says, without words, you are not alone.

It is not enough. But it is all she has.

===

The hut is silent save for the soft crackle of dying embers in the firepit and the distant hoot of some Everfree night creature. Zecora sleeps deeply on her larger mat across the room, her striped sides rising and falling in steady rhythm—exhausted from a long day of foraging and brewing. You lie on your own small mat, blanket pulled up to your chin, staring at the shadowed ceiling beams. Privacy, at last. No watchful golden eyes to see you unravel.

The night has grown cool; the air carries the crisp bite of approaching winter, even here in the sheltered clearing. You feel it first as a subtle chill between your hind legs, where your marehood rests exposed beneath the blanket’s edge. Then the snake stirs.

It always begins like this.

A slow, deliberate uncoiling deep in your womb—a heavy shifting of living weight that sends a ripple through your lower belly. The blunt head presses downward, seeking the exit, drawn by the cooler air that trickles in. You clench instinctively, trying to hold it back, but your body has long since learned futility. The snake slides forward with patient insistence, scales gliding smoothly over your slick inner walls.

Cool muscle meets warm flesh. Inch by thick inch, it emerges into the narrow channel of your pussy—stretching you open with that familiar, aching fullness. The sensation is intense: every ridge of its body drags against your sensitive folds, cool at first, quickly warming as it drinks in your heat. Your breath catches; hind legs part beneath the blanket without permission, tail flagging high as the snake’s head finally nudges free between your swollen lips.

It pauses there, half-out, basking. The forked tongue flicks delicately—tasting the cool night air, the faint herbal scent of the hut, the perpetual musk of your arousal. Each flick brushes your clit like a teasing kiss, sending sharp sparks up your spine. You bite your foreleg to stifle the whimper, eyes squeezing shut.

But the outside is too cold. It always is.

The snake relishes the contrast: the chill on its exposed length, the blazing warmth waiting deeper. It learned this weeks ago—your body’s reactions. How a slow squirm sends your walls fluttering around it. How deeper thrusts make you flood with slick, turning the tight passage into a perfect, heated sheath. How your climaxes clench and milk it, drawing it home with rhythmic pulses that massage its entire body.

Tonight it claims its due with deliberate luxury.

It withdraws slightly—dragging cool scales back through your entrance—then surges forward again, deeper. A slow, sinuous thrust that burrows toward your cervix. Your hips jerk; a soft, wet sound escapes as your marehood winks desperately. The snake feels it—the gush of fresh moisture coating its length—and responds with eager ripples, squirming in tight circles that rub every inch of your inner walls.

Deeper. Always deeper.

The blunt head presses against your cervix, cool and insistent, until the tight ring yields with a pop of sensation that makes your vision spark. It slides into your womb proper—thick coils following, filling the chamber completely. The stretch is immense, intimate; you feel every twist as it arranges itself, curling and uncurling to find the warmest pockets. Your belly bulges faintly with its movements, a living weight that rocks you from inside.

It experiments now—learned behavior. A slow coil presses against that spot along your front wall; your back arches, breath hitching in tiny filly gasps. Another ripple strokes deeper, and your walls clench hard in response, slick pouring fresh and hot. The snake revels in it—the increased warmth, the velvet grip, the way your body molds around it like it was made for this purpose. It squirms faster, deliberate waves that stroke and tease, building the pressure relentlessly.

You can’t fight it anymore. Never could.

The pleasure coils tight low in your belly, unwanted and overwhelming. Your hind legs splay wide beneath the blanket, hooves digging into the mat as your hips rock in helpless rhythm. Quiet sobs catch in your throat—soft, stifled things that shake your small frame. Tears streak hot down your cheeks into your mane.

The snake drives you higher, relentless. A thick loop grinds against your g-spot while its tail end teases your entrance, sliding in and out in shallow thrusts that keep you stretched and aching. Your marehood clenches rhythmically, winking hard, slick dripping onto the mat beneath you.

When the climax hits, it’s shattering.

Your whole body seizes—back arched, legs trembling, a silent cry caught behind clenched teeth. Waves of pleasure crash through you, walls spasming around the intruder in hard, milking pulses. Fresh heat floods your core; slick coats the snake’s scales as it burrows triumphantly deeper, drinking in the warmth, the moisture, the perfect clenching cradle your orgasm provides.

It settles then—coiled tight and content in your womb, warmer and wetter than before. The movements slow to gentle ripples, soothing now, as if rewarding itself with the comfort it forced from you.

You lie there afterward, chest heaving, hind legs still splayed and trembling. The blanket is tangled around your barrel; cool air kisses your soaked marehood. Tears flow freely now—quiet, broken sobs that you muffle against your foreleg. Alone, in the privacy of the dark hut, with Zecora’s soft breathing the only other sound.

The snake sleeps warm and sated inside you.

You cry until exhaustion claims you, body still twitching with aftershocks, womb full and claimed once more.

===

Dark. Warm. Perfect.

The world outside is cold edges and sharp scents, dry air that bites the scales, ground that shifts and threatens. But here—inside this soft, living cavern—everything is right. Pulsing walls of velvet heat cradle every coil of my body, slick with constant moisture that coats me like dew on leaves. The rhythm of her heart thrums through the flesh, a steady drum that rocks me gently. Her breath, far above, is the wind that stirs the chamber when she moves.

I was one of many in the pit, tangled in the writhing mass, seeking only warmth when the night turned cruel. The others scattered at dawn, but I found this: a small, trembling heat-source, legs splayed in exhaustion, a hidden slit radiating invitation. I tasted the air—salt, fear, virgin sweetness—and slid forward. The barrier gave with a faint pop; blood warmed my tongue for a moment, then deeper wetness welcomed me. Tight, so tight, but yielding. I pushed until the widest part of me passed the ring, then coiled into the deepest chamber, curling tight as the walls fluttered around me in panic.

Panic faded. Warmth stayed.

Now this place is home.

The chamber narrows to a silky tunnel that opens to the cold world, but I rarely venture far. Only far enough to taste the air when it changes—herbal smoke, steam, the striped one’s musk, or the sharp chill of night. The forked tip of my tongue flicks against the swollen nub at the entrance; it makes the walls spasm deliciously, flooding me with fresh slick, clenching in waves that massage my length. I learned this quickly. Movement = comfort. My squirming makes her hotter, wetter, tighter—better for me.

Tonight the air cools again. Instinct pulls me from my tight curl in the womb. I uncoil slowly, savoring the drag of my scales against her ridges. She resists at first—muscles tensing, trying to hold me—but the resistance only heightens the sensation, gripping me like a living sheath. I glide forward, thick body stretching the tunnel, head emerging into the narrow space between her hind legs. Coolness kisses my snout. I taste: salt of tears, thick arousal, the faint iron of old blood long healed.

Too cold.

I retreat a fraction, then surge deeper—deliberate, powerful strokes that force the walls to part and cling. Each thrust draws more slick; the chamber floods, turning slippery and hot. I feel her heart race faster, blood pounding through the thin walls, heating me from every side. Perfect. I twist, loop, press against the spot that makes her whole body shudder—the one that sends the strongest clenches, the hottest gushes. She fights it silently, but her body betrays her every time: hips rocking, tunnel winking, slick pouring over my scales.

I drive harder, relishing the building rhythm. The walls ripple in frantic waves, milking me deeper. When the climax comes, it is exquisite—her entire core seizes in violent spasms, heat spiking, moisture surging until I am drenched and cradled in pulsing velvet. The contractions pull me fully home, dragging my tail end inside with wet, sucking sounds only I can feel. I coil tight once more in the womb, basking in the afterglow: warmer, wetter, tighter than before.

She trembles around me, soft sobs vibrating through the flesh. The salt of tears drifts down on warm air currents. I taste it when I flick my tongue again, brushing that sensitive nub in lazy thanks. The walls flutter weakly—one last grateful clench.

This is mine now. This heat, this moisture, this living cradle that responds to my every movement with perfect hospitality. I will never leave. The cold world holds nothing like this.

I settle deeper, scales gleaming with her essence, and sleep in the throbbing warmth of my chosen home.

===

The hut is dark, the fire long reduced to glowing coals that cast faint orange flickers across the woven walls. Zecora’s breathing is slow and even across the room—deep in sleep, oblivious. You lie on your side, blanket kicked halfway down your barrel, hind legs splayed open to the cool night air because closing them only traps the heat and makes it worse. The snake is awake again.

It begins with a slow, deliberate stretch deep in your womb—a heavy uncoiling that presses outward in every direction, bulging your lower belly faintly under the dim light. The pressure blooms into a deep, intimate ache, and your breath catches in a tiny, trembling whinny you pray doesn’t wake the zebra.

Then it moves.

The blunt head slides downward, parting your slick walls with cool, muscular insistence. Every scale drags over swollen, oversensitive ridges you didn’t know existed until this thing claimed you. Your pussy clenches reflexively—trying to hold it, push it out, anything—but the motion only grips it tighter, milking a low ripple of pleasure from the friction. The snake responds eagerly, surging deeper again, then withdrawing in a slow, deliberate glide that leaves you empty and aching for a heartbeat before it thrusts back in.

Memory fragments flicker behind your clenched eyes like corrupted image files—glitching, half-formed.

A glowing screen in a dark apartment. Fingers flying over a keyboard. Greentext threads: >be me >anon in Equestria >turned into filly >mfw magical realm bullshit. Laughter—your own, deep and human—echoing in headphones at 3 a.m. You’d scrolled past stories like this one, rolled your eyes, typed “degenerate” in the reply box. Now the joke is on you, and the punchline is buried inside your cunt, exploring you with patient, relentless curiosity.

The snake twists suddenly, coiling in a tight spiral that grinds against your front wall. Sparks explode behind your eyes; your hips jerk upward, tail flagging high as slick gushes hot around its scales. A broken sob escapes—soft, wet, filly-sweet. You bite down on your foreleg to muffle the next one.

Another memory: a convention hallway, badge swinging against your chest, the smell of cheap cosplay fabric and body odor. You’d seen a girl in a Twilight Sparkle fursuit, laughed with friends about how far the fandom had fallen. You’d been tall then. Male. Untouchable. Now you’re small, soft, legs trembling apart while a serpent uses your virgin marehood like a custom-fitted sleeve.

It thrusts deeper—head nudging your cervix, pressing, pressing until the tight ring yields with a slick pop that makes your vision white out. Coils follow, thick and heavy, filling your womb until you feel impossibly, obscenely full. The stretch burns sweetly; your walls flutter in frantic spasms, trying to adjust, failing. The snake savors it—rippling in slow waves that stroke every buried nerve, learning your body better than you ever wanted to.

Flash: driving home at night, radio blasting, windows down. Freedom. Control. A body that was yours alone. No one inside you, no one claiming space that should be private. You’d never felt anything like this stretch, this invasion, this constant, living fullness that turns every breath into a reminder.

The snake experiments now—tail end teasing your entrance while the bulk of it coils in your womb. It slides out an inch, letting cool air kiss your swollen clit, then surges back in with a wet, obscene sound. Again. Again. Rhythm building, relentless. Your pussy winks desperately, clit throbbing in time with your racing heart. Slick drips steadily onto the mat; the scent of your arousal fills the small hut, thick and humiliating.

Memory fractures further: a girlfriend once, clumsy hands under shirts, the awkward thrill of firsts. You’d been the one in control then, the one pushing forward. Now you’re the one being taken—night after night, explored and mapped and used for warmth while your mind screams in a voice no one here would recognize.

Pressure coils tighter low in your belly. The snake grinds deliberately against that spot—the one that makes your legs kick helplessly, hooves scraping the mat. Pleasure spikes sharp and cruel, drowning the shame for a moment. Your hips rock into the thrusts without permission, chasing the sensation even as tears streak hot down your cheeks.

“Stop,” you whisper soundlessly, lips trembling. “Please… I was… I was someone else…”

The snake doesn’t hear. Doesn’t care. It drives deeper, faster, scales rasping over every ridge until your entire world narrows to the relentless exploration of your pussy and womb. Climax crashes over you without mercy—body arching, walls clamping down in violent spasms, milking the intruder in rhythmic pulses that only welcome it home.

You sob openly then, quiet and broken, face buried in your forelegs as wave after wave wracks your small frame. The snake drinks in the fresh heat, the clenching warmth, and settles triumphantly deeper—coiled tight, content, leaving you trembling and empty-minded in the dark.

Fragments fade to static. The man you were feels farther away than ever, drowned in slick and scales and the endless, intimate claiming of the body you’re trapped in.

===

The sun hangs high over the Everfree, filtering in thin golden shafts through the dense canopy as it reaches Zecora’s clearing. You’re outside, hanging freshly washed herb bundles on a line to dry—simple work that keeps your hooves busy and your mind, for a few blessed minutes, quiet. The snake is calm today, a heavy but dormant weight curled deep in your womb, lulled by the warmth of the afternoon.

Hoofsteps on the path—light, quick, familiar in a way that makes your ears perk before your mind catches up. A yellow filly with a red mane and bow trots into view, saddlebags bouncing.

Applebloom.

Your heart stutters. You know her—everypony knows the Cutie Mark Crusaders from the stories you read back when you were… someone else. But seeing her here, real and close, hits like a punch. She’s looking around curiously, nose wrinkled at the strong herbal scent.

“Howdy, Zecora!” she calls, voice bright. “Ah brought those special zap apple seeds you asked for!”

Zecora emerges from the hut, smiling warmly. “Applebloom, my dear, what a welcome sight. Come in, come in—your timing is just right.”

Applebloom’s gaze shifts to you mid-step. Her eyes widen with friendly curiosity. “Oh! Hey there! Ah don’t think we’ve met. You Zecora’s new helper?”

The snake shifts lazily—barely a ripple—but it’s enough to send a warm pulse through your lower belly. You freeze for a heartbeat, tail flicking, then force your face into what you hope is a normal filly smile. Legs together. Voice steady. You can do this.

“Uh—yeah,” you say, the word coming out higher and softer than you want. “I live here now. Helping with… potions and stuff.”

Applebloom beams, trotting closer. “That’s real neat! Ah’m Applebloom. What’s your name?”

You hesitate a fraction too long. Zecora smoothly fills the gap. “She is still finding her place in this land so wide; for now, she answers to Greenbloom, at her side.”

You nod quickly—grateful for the cover name Zecora gave you weeks ago. “Greenbloom. Nice to meet you.”

Applebloom doesn’t notice the strain in your voice. She chatters on about the farm, the seeds, how Granny Smith swears zap apple jam cures everything from colds to crankiness. You nod in the right places, even manage a small laugh when she describes Applejack getting zapped by lightning for the fifth time this season. You fetch a basket for the seeds, hang a few more herb bundles, keep your movements careful and controlled.

Inside, you’re screaming.

Every shift of your hips reminds you of the weight inside. When you bend to pick up a dropped bundle, the snake uncoils slightly—stretching your walls with a slow, cool drag that makes your breath hitch. You cover it with a cough, ears burning. Applebloom doesn’t notice. She’s too busy asking Zecora about a potion for stubborn tree blight.

You keep the mask on. Smile. Answer questions about how you like living in the Everfree (“It’s… quiet”), whether you have your cutie mark yet (you turn slightly so your blank flank isn’t obvious), if you want to come crusading sometime. You say “maybe” with just enough shy enthusiasm to sound normal.

Eventually Applebloom’s saddlebags are lighter and her questions are answered. She waves cheerfully. “See ya around, Greenbloom! You should come by Sweet Apple Acres sometime—Ah’ll show ya the crusader clubhouse!”

You wave back until she’s out of sight down the path.

The moment the red bow vanishes between the trees, your legs buckle.

You sink to the moss, forehooves pressed hard between your hind legs as the held-back tremors take over. The snake chooses that instant to move again—roused by the day’s tension, perhaps, or just because it can. A thick coil presses deep, grinding slowly against your inner walls. Your breath catches in a choked sob; hips jerk once, involuntarily.

The mask shatters.

Tears come sudden and hot, streaking down your cheeks as you curl into a tight ball right there in the dirt. Quiet, broken sounds escape—half-whinnies, half-sobs—muffled against your foreleg. The snake ripples again, savoring the fresh heat of your distress, and the pleasure-pain of it only makes you cry harder.

Zecora steps out of the hut, ears pinning back at the sight. She crosses the clearing swiftly, settling beside you without a word at first. One striped foreleg wraps gently around your shaking shoulders.

“The visit stirred old shadows, I can see,” she murmurs. “You held yourself with grace, but now you’re free.”

You press your face into her coat, unable to answer—just nod against her warmth while the snake continues its lazy exploration inside you, uncaring of your tears. Zecora doesn’t ask questions. She simply holds you until the worst of the shaking passes, her hoof stroking your mane in slow, steady circles.

The forest hums around you both, indifferent. Inside, the serpent curls contentedly, waiting for night.

===

The moon hangs low over the Everfree, its pale light seeping through the hut’s carved windows in thin silver blades. Inside, the air is thick with the scent of cooling herbs and the faint, unmistakable musk of arousal. Zecora sits on her mat, eyes open, staring at the far wall. Sleep will not come tonight—has not come easily for weeks.

Across the room, the filly—her little Greenbloom—lies on her side, blanket pushed down to her barrel. Hind legs splayed wide, tail flagged high, small chest heaving in quick, stifled breaths. The snake is active again.

Zecora hears every sound: the wet, rhythmic slide of scales through slick flesh, the soft squelch as thick coils shift deeper, the filly’s muffled whimpers that rise and fall like a tide. A particularly deep thrust draws a broken, high-pitched whine; the filly’s hips jerk helplessly, hooves scrabbling at the mat as her marehood winks and clenches visibly in the moonlight. Slick glistens on her inner thighs, dripping steadily onto the woven bedding.

Zecora’s jaw tightens. Her golden eyes burn with a hatred so pure it scares her.

She has never loathed a living thing before. Not the cockatrice that once turned her cousin to stone. Not the timberwolves that prowl her doorstep. Not even the manticore that scarred her flank years ago. Animals act on instinct—hunger, territory, survival. She has always understood that.

But this serpent… this cold, mindless thing that has claimed a child’s body as its personal burrow… it is different. It has stolen everything.

It took her purity in that pit—burst through her virgin barrier, filled her with its coils while she screamed alone in the dark. And now it takes her mind, night after night. Zecora watches it happen: the way the filly’s eyes glaze when the snake moves, the way her body betrays her with helpless climaxes, the way she sobs afterward—quiet, shattered sounds that claw at Zecora’s heart.

Every potion failed. Every chant. Every salve and smoke and crystal. The snake simply drinks in the heat of the filly’s forced pleasure and settles deeper, smug in its victory. Zecora’s knowledge—centuries of Zebrican lore passed down through shamans and brewers—proved worthless against it. The helplessness is a poison in her veins, worse than any venom.

She hates it with every stripe on her hide.

She hates the way it learned her filly’s body: how a slow grind against that inner spot makes her gush slick, how circling thrusts drive her to climax faster, how it times its deepest coils to the moment her walls spasm hardest, milking it home. She hates the wet sounds it forces from her, the scent it leaves in the hut, the faint bulge it makes in her lower belly when it curls tight in triumph.

Most of all, she hates that she can do nothing but watch.

The filly’s breath hitches sharply—hips bucking once, twice—as the snake drives her over the edge again. Her small body arches, legs trembling, marehood clenching in visible, rhythmic pulses around nothing visible. A fresh flood of slick coats her folds; the snake ripples in satisfaction, sliding fully back into her womb with a final, obscene glide. The filly collapses, curling into herself, quiet sobs shaking her frame.

Zecora rises silently. She crosses the room and settles beside the trembling child, wrapping a striped foreleg around her without a word. The filly presses into her warmth immediately, face buried against Zecora’s chest, tears soaking her coat.

Zecora strokes her mane in slow circles, murmuring soft Zebrican lullabies under her breath. It is all she has left to give: her presence, her warmth, the steady beat of her heart against the filly’s ear.

Inside the child, the serpent sleeps—warm, sated, untouchable.

Zecora’s eyes fix on the faint bulge beneath the filly’s barrel, and the hatred burns colder, sharper, deeper than any night in the Everfree. One day, she vows silently, she will find a way. One day this thing will pay.

Until then, she holds the broken filly close and waits for the sobs to quiet.

===

Months bleed into seasons.

Every night without fail, the snake claims its due.

It has learned you perfectly—every fold, every secret ridge, every rhythm that makes your small body arch and spill. It grows, slow and inexorable, fed on your heat, your shame, your helpless climaxes. Your pussy transforms around it: walls thickening, softening, stretching to accommodate its increasing girth, becoming a living sleeve tailored exactly to its coils. Your clit swells perpetually, sensitive to the slightest shift inside you. Your womb deepens, cradles it like a nest built for one.

Your mind fractures along a thousand fault lines.

Memories of your human life fade to ghosts—keyboard clicks, screen glow, lonely nights—replaced by the endless present of fullness and surrender. Some nights you beg it silently to stop. Other nights you beg it not to. Zecora holds you through every session: striped arms wrapped tight, voice murmuring rhymes that no longer soothe, while your hips buck against nothing and your filly voice breaks on high, keening cries. Only her presence keeps the shards of you from scattering completely.

A full year passes.

The snake is now as thick and long as your foreleg, sleek and powerful. Your belly rounds permanently with its coiled bulk; your hind legs bow slightly to accommodate the constant stretch. Walking sends ripples of pleasure-pain through you. Sitting is worse. Lying down is surrender.

Then comes the hottest day of the year.

The air shimmers. The Everfree steams. Breeding season returns like a fever.

That night, the snake wakes with new purpose.

It begins as always—a slow stretch deep in your womb. But tonight it does not settle. Tonight it pushes.

You feel the pressure build at your cervix, relentless. Your eyes snap open in the dark hut. Zecora is already awake, sensing the change, striped face pale in moonlight. She reaches for you, but you are frozen, legs splayed, breath coming in shallow gasps.

The blunt head breaches your cervix fully, then keeps coming.

Inch after thick inch emerges into your pussy—stretching you wider than ever before. The drag is excruciating ecstasy; your walls clamp desperately, trying to hold it, milk it, keep it home. But it is leaving. The entire length begins to uncoil and slide outward in one long, sinuous motion.

You scream.

Not the muffled whimpers of nightly claimings—this is raw, animal, shattering. Your body convulses as the thickest coils pass through your strained entrance, scales rasping over every nerve. Climax after climax rips through you, each stronger than the last, until pleasure becomes pain becomes something beyond either. Your vision whites out. Your mind fractures into glittering dust.

Foot after foot of serpent emerges—glistening, muscular, endless—pooling wetly between your hind legs on the blanket. The sensation of emptiness growing inside you is worse than any filling: a void that howls where warmth once ruled.

Zecora watches, hooves trembling. She dares not touch the snake while it is willing to leave—fearing any interference might drive it back into the home it knows so well. She can only kneel beside you, whispering your name, while your body births the thing that possessed it for a year.

The tail finally slips free with a wet sound.

You collapse, gaping, leaking, mind blank and staring. The snake—magnificent now, longer than you are tall—slithers away into the night without a backward glance, drawn by ancient instinct to the breeding pits.

Zecora acts instantly.

She crushes herbs with shaking hooves, brews strong restoratives, bathes your ruined entrance with cooling salves. She holds cold cloths to your fevered brow, spoons broth between your slack lips, sings the oldest healing rhymes until her voice cracks.

Days blur.

You do not speak. You barely move. Your pussy gapes for days before slowly, painfully closing—scarred, changed, forever altered. Nightmares wake you screaming for a fullness you hate yourself for missing.

But Zecora is there.

She picks up every shard. She glues you back together with patience, with presence, with love fiercer than her year of helpless hatred. Slowly—over weeks, over months—you return. Not whole. Never whole again. But breathing. Speaking. Helping grind herbs with trembling hooves.

The snake is gone.

The den it carved inside you remains—transformed flesh that aches on hot nights, that weeps slick at memories. But you live.

And Zecora never lets go.

===

Months stretch into a new kind of eternity.

Healing is not a straight path; it is a slow, stumbling crawl through the ashes of what was taken and what was given against your will.

You cling to Zecora.

In every spare moment, you seek her out. When she stirs a cauldron, you press your small green body against her striped leg, cheek to her warm flank, breathing in the familiar scent of herbs and earth that once meant safety and now means survival. When she sorts leaves at the table, you crawl into her lap without asking, curling tight, forelegs around her neck, face buried in the soft mohawk of her mane. She never pushes you away. Her strong forelegs fold around you, hoof stroking your back in slow, steady circles, voice humming wordless zebra lullabies that vibrate through her chest into yours.

You are reliant now—utterly, achingly. The hut is small; there is nowhere to hide from yourself except in her.

At night, the emptiness is worst.

You wake in cold sweat, heart racing, hind legs splayed and trembling. For a year, the snake’s endless thrusting filled every dark corner of your mind, drove thought away until pleasure-pain blanked everything into merciful nothing. Sleep came only after exhaustion, after the final coiling settle deep in your womb. Now there is only silence inside you. The transformed flesh between your legs aches with phantom fullness—your pussy deeper, softer, perpetually ready, weeping slick at the slightest memory. Your body remembers. Your body wants.

You hate it.

One dusk, after a day of quiet tasks—grinding herbs with shaking hooves, forcing down stew you barely taste—you break.

You are curled in Zecora’s lap by the fire, her hoof tracing idle patterns along your barrel. The words tumble out in a cracked whisper against her chest.

“It’s wrong,” you sob. “My body feels wrong now it’s gone. Empty. Like… like it’s waiting. Like it wants to be full again. Stretched. Claimed. I wake up reaching for something that isn’t there and I hate it. I hate how I miss the thrusting, the way it made everything go blank so I could finally sleep. I’m broken, Zecora. It made me need it and now it’s gone and I still need it and I hate myself for it.”

Your voice fractures on the last word. Tears soak her coat.

Zecora’s hoof stills. She is quiet for a long moment, golden rings glinting in firelight. Then she pulls you closer, presses her muzzle to your forehead, voice low and steady in rhyme that does not mock your pain.

“Little one, scarred and torn, your body remembers what your mind has borne. The thief is gone, yet echoes stay—hatred for it, for self, each day. But you are here, and I am too. We mend together, me and you.”

She holds you through the storm of sobs, through the shudders that rack your small frame when phantom coils seem to tighten inside. She does not promise it will fade quickly. She simply stays.

Slowly—over more months, more seasons—you heal in crooked pieces.

You still seek her touch constantly: nuzzling under her chin while she works, sleeping curled against her barrel instead of alone, forelegs tangled with hers. The clinging lessens only gradually, replaced by quieter companionship—helping brew potions without trembling, laughing faintly at her rhymes, walking beside her to gather herbs instead of hiding behind her.

The nights remain hard. Some evenings you wake gasping, reaching between your hind legs to press at the aching emptiness, tears streaming as your body betrays you with slick readiness. Zecora is always there—pulling you close, letting you cry into her coat until exhaustion claims you again.

You are not fixed. The den remains, transformed and hungry on bad nights. The hate—for the snake, for your own flesh—lingers like scar tissue.

But you live.

You breathe.

And Zecora’s warmth is the thread that holds the shards together, day after day, until the cracks begin to fill with something new.

===

You have a name now.

It happens on a quiet evening, rain drumming softly on the hut’s roof like distant hooves. You are curled against Zecora’s side, her striped foreleg draped over your small green barrel, your cheek pressed to the steady thrum of her heart. The fire hisses. Outside, the Everfree murmurs its endless secrets.

You speak into her coat, voice small but steady for once.

“I want a name. A real one. Not ‘little one’ or ‘lost one.’ Something that’s… mine.”

Zecora’s hoof pauses mid-stroke along your mane. She waits.

“Verdant Glass,” you whisper. “Green like… like me. And glass because I’m… breakable. See-through. Sharp pieces sometimes. But still here.”

She tests it aloud, rolling the syllables in her rhyming tongue. “Verdant Glass, strong yet frail, a name to carry through storm and gale.”

You nod against her chest, eyes closing. For the first time in longer than you can measure, something settles inside you—small, but solid.

Zecora smiles for your sake. But inside, the storm rages on.

===

Zecora’s private thoughts, written in the dark when you finally sleep.

I have never hated as I hated that serpent.

Not the manticores that scarred my flank in youth. Not the poison joke that twisted my words and body. Not even the slavers who once hunted my kin across distant plains.

That snake was different. It did not merely harm—it colonized. It took a child already stolen from her world and hollowed her further, turned her own flesh into its throne. Night after night I held her while it moved inside her, forcing pleasure through her tears, teaching her body to crave what her mind screamed against. I brewed every remedy my ancestors knew. I sang every ward. I begged spirits older than zebra or pony. Nothing touched it. It simply waited, patient as stone, then claimed her harder for my interference.

I hated it with a heat that frightened me.

And when it finally left—sliding out of her on that fever-hot night, leaving her shattered and gaping—I felt… relief, yes. But also a black, shameful spark of grief. Because I knew what the absence would cost her. I knew the den it carved would ache. I knew she would wake reaching for the very thing that broke her.

Now she clings to me like moss to ancient bark. Every spare moment she seeks my warmth—pressing close while I stir potions, crawling into my bed at night, forelegs tangled with mine as if afraid the emptiness will swallow her if she lets go. She confesses in whispers how her body feels wrong now, how it weeps and yearns for fullness, how she hates the craving yet wakes in cold sweat when no thrusting blanks her mind to sleep.

Verdant Glass. A fitting name. Green and growing, yet fragile, transparent with pain.

I am her anchor, her only steady thing. And I am terrified.

What if I am not enough? What if my warmth becomes another cage? What if the shards of her never fuse, and one day she cuts me with them—or herself beyond repair?

I failed to drive the serpent out. Have I only replaced it? A striped shadow she needs the way she once needed its coils?

No. No. She heals, crooked and slow. She laughs sometimes now—small, startled sounds when a potion bubbles over or a mask falls from the wall. She grinds herbs with steady hooves. She chose her name. She is growing around the hollow, not into it.

But the hatred lingers, turned inward now. Hatred for my helplessness. For every night I could only hold her while it took her. For the part of me that still wakes listening for a slither that never comes.

I hold her closer these days. Stroke her mane. Let her cling. I rhyme softness into her nightmares.

Verdant Glass, my fragile green miracle.

I will not break you further.

I will not let you break.

Even if it means carrying this storm inside me forever.

===

The hatred never left her.

It slept, coiled in Zecora’s chest like a second serpent, waiting for the dry season when the Everfree steams and the breeding pits call every scaled thing home. She tells you nothing at first—only that she must gather “rare reagents” deep in the forest, alone. You cling to her leg, Verdant Glass with your fragile name and your fragile healing, eyes wide with the old fear.

She strokes your mane, promises return by dusk, and lies with her smile.

She tracks it for three days.

The trail is easy now: crushed grass wide as a pony’s barrel, trees scarred by a body thicker than her foreleg, the air thick with a musk that makes her stomach turn and her hatred flare white-hot. Magical residue clings to every scale-print—Equestrian magic soaked into serpent flesh for a full year inside a filly torn from another world. It changed the snake. Made it something no natural thing should be.

She finds the pit on the hottest night of the dry season.

Moonlight silver on a writhing sea of lesser serpents—hundreds locked in breeding frenzy. But one towers above them all: fifteen feet of glossy black muscle, thick as a young dragon’s thigh, hood flared like a cobra though no cobra ever grew so vast. Its eyes glow with intelligence older than its body. It speaks as she steps into the clearing, voice a dry rustle that echoes inside skulls.

“Stripe-mother. You came.”

Zecora’s spear levels—carved bone tipped with every poison her lore knows. Her golden rings glint like bared fangs. “You know why I am here, thief of innocence. You took what was never yours.”

The snake lifts its head, tongue tasting the air thick with her rage. Lesser serpents part around it like supplicants. “Took? No. I was invited. Warmth sought warmth. She was empty. I filled her. Taught her. Made her sing every night.” The voice is almost amused, almost tender. “You hated me for giving what you could not.”

Zecora’s snarl is wordless. She lunges.

The fight is brutal, short, and unfair.

The snake is faster than anything that size should be—magic-warped muscle uncoiling like a whip. It strikes; she dodges, spear slicing a shallow groove along its flank. Black blood hisses where it touches earth. It laughs, a sound like dry leaves in wind. “I tasted her mind, stripe-mother. Every memory of a lonely man trapped in green filly flesh. I gave purpose. Pleasure. Belonging.”

She drives the spear deeper—into the hood, through muscle. It roars, coils around her barrel, constricting. Bones creak. Vision tunnels. But she has prepared for this. A vial shatters in her hoof against its scales—concentrated manticore venom mixed with essence of cockatrice stare. The coils spasm, loosen.

She twists free, gasping, and rams the spear through one glowing eye.

The snake thrashes, pit erupting in panicked serpents fleeing into the night. Its remaining eye fixes on her, voice weakening but still cutting.

“She will never be empty again. I carved my shape into her forever. When she wakes aching, reaching…it is me she reaches for. You can kill this body, stripe-mother. But I am already inside her deeper than flesh.”

Zecora rips the spear free and drives it through the skull, pinning the head to earth. She does not stop until the body ceases all movement, until black blood soaks her stripes and the pit is silent.

She burns the corpse with alchemist’s fire. Watches until nothing remains but ash and a single fang she pockets—proof, trophy, warning.

She returns to the hut at dawn, exhausted, bloodied, eyes hollow.

You are waiting, curled in her bed, trembling from another night of phantom fullness. You smell the smoke and blood on her coat and know without asking.

She kneels, pulls you against her chest, voice raw.

“It is done, Verdant Glass. The thief is ash.”

You cling to her, sobbing—not relief, not yet, but something close to it. The hollow inside you still aches. The den it carved still weeps on bad nights. But the voice that sometimes whispered from the dark is silent now.

Zecora holds you until the sun climbs high, hatred finally spent, replaced by something fierce and exhausted and tender.

The snake was wrong about one thing.

You reach for her now—always her.

===

Late morning in the Everfree, the light filtered green and gold through the canopy. You and Zecora walk the narrow path she has worn over years of gathering—her saddlebags half-full of moonbloom and feverroot, your smaller baskets swinging at your sides. Verdant Glass, no longer clinging every moment, but still close enough that your shoulders brush hers with every step. The air is warm, almost gentle. Birds call. You have even hummed a little, off-key, while plucking silverleaf.

Zecora pauses to examine a cluster of blue fungi. You step ahead, eyes scanning the undergrowth for the telltale shimmer of stargrass.

You see the snake first.

It is small—barely longer than your foreleg, a harmless grass snake sunning itself on a fallen log. Emerald scales catch the light like a cruel joke.

The world narrows to that gleam.

Your breath stops. Heart slams against ribs. The baskets drop from your mouth, spilling herbs across moss. Vision tunnels; sound warps into a distant roar. You stagger back, legs folding beneath you, small body hitting the dirt hard enough to bruise.

It is happening again.

You feel it—phantom coils tightening deep inside, the slow stretch, the slick slide, the endless claiming. Your hind legs splay without permission. A high, broken whine escapes your throat. Tears flood instantly, hot and blinding. You scrabble at the ground, trying to push away from the log, from the snake, from the memory that is not memory but present, now, always.

Zecora is there in an instant.

Strong striped forelegs scoop you up, turn you away from the log, press your face into the warm curve of her neck. She shields you with her body, voice low and steady in rhyme even as her own heart hammers with shared panic.

“Breathe with me, Verdant Glass, my dear—
the past is ash, the now is here.
Small snake, no threat, just sunning scale—
feel my heart, let your terror pale.”

You can’t answer. You shake violently, clinging to her mane like a foal in a storm. Sobs tear out of you—raw, animal, years of buried nights spilling onto her coat. Your hindquarters twitch with phantom thrusts; slick gathers unbidden between your legs, betraying you again. Shame burns hotter than the panic.

The little grass snake, disturbed by the noise, slips quietly into the ferns and vanishes.

Zecora does not move until your breathing slows from gasps to shudders, until the tears soak through her coat and cool against your cheek. She strokes your back in long, firm sweeps, humming the same wordless tune she used when the real serpent still lived inside you.

When you can finally speak, your voice is tiny, cracked.

“I thought… I thought I was better.”

Zecora presses her muzzle to your forehead. “Healing is not a line drawn straight, little Verdant—
some days the past still bares its weight.
You fell, you shook, but you are here—
and I am holding you, my dear.”

She gathers the spilled herbs one-hoofed, never letting you go. When you are steady enough to walk, she keeps you tucked against her side the entire way home, your smaller steps matching her slower ones.

Back in the hut, she brews calming tea thick with dreamroot, settles you in the big nest of blankets that has become yours-and-hers. You curl into her barrel, forelegs wrapped tight around her neck, face hidden in her mane.

The panic ebbs slowly, leaving bone-deep exhaustion.

Zecora does not rhyme now. She simply holds you, golden rings cool against your coat, until your breathing evens and the trembling stops.

Some wounds never close cleanly.

Some days, even sunlight on scales is enough to reopen them.

But she is there—always there—her warmth the only thing the terror cannot take.

===

The forest path is quiet now, the spilled herbs gathered, the small snake long gone into the green. Yet its shadow clings to her like damp moss.

Verdant Glass—my Verdant Glass—sleeps at last in the nest of blankets, small chest rising and falling in uneven rhythm. Her face is turned into my coat, one foreleg still draped across my neck as if even dreams might try to pull her away. Tears have dried in salty tracks through the fine green fur of her cheeks.

I do not sleep.

I watch the moon through the window and count the costs again.

I brought her deeper into the Everfree than I should have. I knew the risks—knew scales glint on every log in sunlight, knew memory is a sharper fang than any serpent’s. Yet I thought the routine would steady her, thought shared tasks would weave new patterns over the old scars. Foolish. Healing is not a potion stirred once and done; it is a brew that must be tended daily, and some days it boils over.

When she saw that harmless grass snake, something inside her snapped like green wood in fire. The sound she made—high, broken, lost—cut me deeper than any manticore claw ever has. I felt her small body seize, felt the old terror flood her as if the great serpent still coiled within. And I could do nothing but shield her eyes, hold her close, murmur rhymes into her ear until the storm passed.

I hate my helplessness.

I have faced monsters, brewed cures for curses older than tribes, walked paths no pony dares. Yet against this wound—carved by a thief I burned to ash—I am only warmth and words. She clings to me now more fiercely than before, as if the panic reminded her how easily emptiness can return. She wakes reaching for me instead of phantom coils, and I am grateful… but I wonder what it costs her to need me so.

She is stronger than she knows. She named herself Verdant Glass—green and growing, fragile yet enduring. She helps with potions without flinching at bubbling sounds that once echoed worse memories. She laughs sometimes, small surprised bursts when a mask tilts or a brew turns unexpected blue.

But tonight the laugh is far away.

Tonight she is small and shaking again, and I am the only wall between her and the dark.

I stroke her mane with one hoof, careful not to wake her. My heart rhymes its own quiet vow:

I failed to spare you the first violation,
failed to drive the thief out sooner.
But this I swear by earth and sky—
no shadow will take you while I stand by.

The panic will come again. Scales will glint, memories will bite. Some days she will crumble, some nights she will wake reaching for fullness that is no longer there and hate herself for it.

And I will hold her every time.

Until the cracks in her glass fill with new light.

Until she no longer needs my stripes to feel safe in her own green.

I will hold her.

I will hold her.

I will hold her.

===

It is a quiet afternoon months after the panic in the forest. Rain taps steadily on the roof like patient hooves. Zecora is out gathering under a waxed cloak, leaving you alone in the hut longer than usual. The silence presses close.

You have been thinking about it for days.

The idea arrives sideways: a sudden, childlike urge wrapped in something deeper, older. You want to see yourself different in the mirror. You want to feel less like the hollow thing the serpent left behind. You want—though you cannot say it aloud—to wear her strength on your skin the way she wears it on hers.

You find her pots of pigment: black earth mixed with charcoal, white clay thinned with water. Simple, ceremonial paints she uses for masks and rituals. Your hooves shake as you mix them thicker, testing on a scrap of bark first. The black is rich, velvety. The white cool and chalky.

You start at your barrel.

Standing before the polished bronze mirror, you dip a broad brush and draw the first bold stripe across your green coat—wide, slightly crooked, from withers to flank. The paint is cool, startling against warm hide. You watch your reflection change: green interrupted by black, then white beside it. Another stripe. Another. You work slowly, carefully, turning to reach your hindquarters, your neck, even the sides of your face. Your tail you leave green—a small rebellion, or perhaps a reminder.

The filly in the mirror becomes something hybrid: emerald base with uneven zebra bars, paint smudged where hooves trembled, stripes thicker in some places, thinner in others. Not perfect. Not Zecora. But closer.

You sit back on your haunches and stare.

Something tightens in your chest—pride, shame, longing all braided together. Tears prick sudden and hot. You do not know if you look beautiful or ridiculous. You only know you needed to try.

The door creaks.

Zecora steps in, rain dripping from her cloak, saddlebags heavy with wet leaves. She stops dead in the threshold.

Her golden eyes widen. Take in the pots, the brushes, the mirror, and finally you—small green filly streaked in black and white, paint still wet and gleaming.

For a heartbeat she is utterly still.

Then her expression softens into something you have never seen on her face before: wonder, grief, and fierce tenderness all at once. She drops the bags, crosses the room in three strides, and kneels before you.

“Oh, Verdant Glass…” Her voice is low, almost broken from its usual rhyme. A striped foreleg rises—slow, careful—and touches one painted stripe on your shoulder as if it might smear a dream. “My brave, brave girl.”

You flinch, ears folding back. “I—I didn’t ruin your paints, I can clean—”

She silences you by pulling you into her chest, paint smearing onto her own stripes without care. You feel her heartbeat fast against your cheek.

“You honor me,” she whispers into your mane. “More than you know. These stripes are not mere marks—they are story, survival, home. And you… you chose to carry them today.”

You start to cry then, small hiccuping sobs against her wet cloak. “I just wanted… to feel like I belong somewhere. Like I’m not still… empty.”

Zecora holds you tighter, one hoof stroking the painted lines on your back as if sealing them in. “You belong here. With me. Green or striped or both—you are my Verdant Glass, and that is enough.”

She does not wash the paint off that night.

She helps you even it out instead—gentle hooves correcting crooked lines, adding finer details with a smaller brush until the stripes look deliberate, ceremonial. When it is done, she stands you before the mirror again and rests her chin atop your head so both reflections show together: true zebra and painted pony, side by side in the bronze.

“Beautiful,” she declares, voice steady now, rhyming again like armor sliding back into place. “A new pattern born of heart and rain—
Verdant Glass, in stripes you bloom again.”

You sleep curled against her that night, paint flaking slightly onto the blankets, her striped foreleg draped protectively over your painted barrel.

Some belonging is chosen.

Some is painted on, stroke by careful stroke, until it feels like skin.

===

The days have grown sweeter, slower, like honey thickening in the jar.

Verdant Glass—my Verdant, my fragile green miracle—has begun to reach beyond clinging. She watches when I brew, emerald eyes bright with something that is no longer only fear. She asks questions now: hesitant at first, then bolder. “What does the moonbloom do?” “Why chant in Zebraican?” “Can I stir this one?”

I let her.

I teach her.

She stands on a low stool beside the cauldron, small hooves careful around the flames. Her first attempts are disasters in the kindest way: potions that turn the wrong color, froth over like angry clouds, or simply refuse to thicken. She flinches at every pop and hiss, ears folding back as if expecting punishment. But I rhyme encouragement, guide her hoof with mine, show her how the rhythm of words shapes the magic as much as the ingredients.

She learns.

Slowly, stubbornly, like moss claiming stone.

She has a gift for the growing things—green recognizing green, perhaps. Her hooves are gentle with roots and leaves; she speaks to the plants in a soft voice I pretend not to hear, apologizing when she plucks them. The simple healing draughts come easiest to her: salves for bruises, teas for calm. When the mixture finally glows the proper soft blue, her face lights in a way that makes my heart ache with pride and sorrow both.

Zebra spells are harder.

Our magic is woven through rhyme and rhythm, through story and breath. She stumbles over the rolling consonants of my mother tongue, cheeks flushing beneath her green coat. Some nights she grows frustrated, ears pinned, threatening tears when a ward flickers and dies instead of holding. I do not push. I simply begin again, slower, letting her feel the cadence in her chest before her mouth.

She persists.

She wants to be useful. Wants to give back what I have given her a thousandfold. I see it in the way she grinds herbs without being asked, in how she organizes my shelves with a careful order only she understands. Unofficial apprentice, yes—that is what she has become, though no ceremony marked it, no elders approved. Just a small green filly with painted stripes flaking from her coat, standing at my side, learning to turn pain into potion.

I watch her and wonder at the paths the spirits weave.

Once she was shattered glass, edges cutting even herself. The serpent carved emptiness where fullness had been forced. Now she fills the hut with questions, with careful stirs, with quiet songs in broken Zebraican that make the cauldron steam rise sweeter.

I am proud—fiercely, painfully proud.

And I am afraid.

What if the magic asks too much? What if a brew goes wrong and the hiss of steam echoes worse memories? What if she masters enough to leave one day, to walk the Everfree without my shadow at her side?

No. I push the fear down. She is not prisoner here; she is home. And if the day comes that Verdant Glass spreads her own stripes—real or painted—across a wider world, I will let her go with blessings in every tongue I know.

For now, she is here.

For now, she measures moonbloom with careful hooves and asks me to teach her the next rhyme.

For now, the hut smells of herbs and hope, and my heart rhymes its quiet gratitude:

A filly lost became my own small star—
Verdant Glass, you heal me as you are.

===

The lessons have settled into rhythm.

Verdant Glass—no longer flinching at every hiss of steam—stands at the cauldron daily now, small green hooves steady as she measures, stirs, chants. Zebra magic demands rhyme: precise, respectful, woven with the old cadences of earth and ancestor. Zecora’s voice rolls like distant thunder, smooth and deep.

Verdant tries. Truly.

But the words that come out of her mouth are… not quite the same.

It starts small.

A simple calming draught. Zecora demonstrates:
“Moonbloom soft and dreamroot deep,
grant this brew the gift of sleep.”

Verdant nods, concentrates, horn glowing faintly with borrowed Equestrian magic braided into zebra chant. Her voice rises—higher, sharper, edged with something old and human leaking through:

“Moonbloom, dreamroot, do your thing,
knock this pony out like—zing.
No nightmares, no creepy dreams,
or I’ll dump you in the streams.”

The cauldron… answers.

The potion bubbles violently, turns an electric teal instead of soft lavender, and emits a scent like fresh sarcasm and lightning. When tested on a bruised apple, the fruit doesn’t just heal—it bounces once, hard, and rolls aggressively across the table like it’s offended.

Zecora’s ears flick. One brow arches.

Verdant freezes, cheeks burning under green coat. “Uh. Sorry?”

But Zecora only tilts her head, tasting the air. “A twist in the rhyme, a bite in the brew—
your words have a flavor uniquely you.”

It happens again and again.

A ward against insects becomes:
“Buzz off, bugs, you little shits,
or zap yourselves to tiny bits.”

The barrier forms—stronger than expected, crackling with static that actually zaps a curious moth into stunned retreat.

A fertility potion for withered herbs turns into:
“Grow already, you lazy sprouts,
or I swear I’ll yank you out.”

The plants don’t just recover—they explode into lush, almost sarcastic overgrowth, vines snaking possessively around the pots as if daring anyone to complain.

Verdant’s rhymes are never respectful. They are dry, self-aware, laced with the ghost of old imageboard snark and human exhaustion. They roll their eyes at tradition. They threaten ingredients with creative consequences. They rhyme “deep” with “sleep” and then tack on “or else I’ll count sheep and yeet this whole heap.”

Yet the magic listens.

The spells work—often better, wilder, feistier. Potions gain an edge: healing salves that tingle with attitude, calming teas that knock you out with a smirk, protective wards that feel judgmental toward threats.

Zecora watches, golden eyes narrowed at first in concern, then softening into something like delight.

One evening, after a levitation charm meant to lift a basket instead yeets it clear across the hut with unnecessary flair, Verdant slumps, ears flat.

“I’m ruining it. Your magic’s all… graceful and wise. Mine’s just—me being a smartass.”

Zecora kneels, lifts the filly’s chin with a striped hoof.

“Magic is not one path alone, my Verdant Glass so sharply grown.
The ancestors spoke with thunder’s grace—
you speak with lightning in your face.
Feisty brews and biting rhyme—
they suit you well in this our time.”

Verdant blinks, then huffs a small, surprised laugh—the first real one in longer than anyone can measure.

“Fine. But if this potion explodes, it’s on you for encouraging me.”

The next brew glows wickedly successful.

And in the hut, among masks and bubbling cauldrons, a new voice rises—green, sarcastic, unapologetically alive—making the old magic spark with fresh, rebellious fire.

===

Another bright morning in the Everfree, the air thick with the promise of rain later. You and Zecora walk the familiar path again—saddlebags swinging, baskets at your sides, your smaller steps keeping easy pace with her longer ones. Verdant Glass, unofficial apprentice, sarcastic brewer of feisty potions. You feel almost steady today. Almost whole.

Zecora points out a cluster of stargrass shimmering in a sunbeam. “Careful with the roots, my sharp-tongued friend—
pull gently, or the magic will end.”

You snort, already dipping your head to harvest. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be gentle as a summer breeze—
unless these roots decide to be a tease.”

The rhyme comes easy now, laced with your particular bite. The stargrass practically leaps into your basket, glowing brighter than it should. Zecora’s ears flick in approval.

You step ahead, scanning for moonbloom.

You see the snake.

It is larger than the last—thick as your barrel, glossy black with a faint iridescent sheen that catches the light like oil on water. It is coiled across the path, sunning, tongue tasting the air. Harmless, probably. But the shape—the scales—the coil—

Panic slams into you like a manticore.

Your vision tunnels. Breath seizes. The baskets drop again, herbs scattering. A high, broken sound rips from your throat—half-sob, half-snarl. Your hind legs buckle. You stagger back, small body trembling violently as phantom coils tighten inside the hollow the first serpent left. Slick gathers unbidden; shame and terror flood hot behind your eyes.

But this time—something else rises with the panic.

Fury.

Your horn ignites without conscious thought—green magic braided with zebra cadence, fueled by every night you woke reaching for what wasn’t there, every tear you swallowed, every sarcastic shield you built to survive.

Words tear out of you in a frantic, rhyming torrent—your voice, your brand, raw and unfiltered:

“Get the fuck back, you slimy shit—
coil somewhere else or I’ll make you quit!
Zap and burn and fucking fry—
I’ve had enough, you’re gonna die!”

The magic answers like it’s been waiting for permission.

A bolt of electric green lightning—crackling with zebra runes and pure, sarcastic venom—erupts from your horn. It slams into the snake with a sound like a thunderclap in a tin bucket. The serpent convulses, scales smoking, and launches itself into the underbrush with impossible speed, hissing in outrage as it flees.

The backlash hits you a second later.

The spell was too big, too wild. You collapse onto your haunches, chest heaving, horn smoking, tears streaming freely now. The panic ebbs into shaky aftershocks, leaving you trembling and drained.

Zecora is there instantly—strong striped forelegs wrapping around you, pulling you against her warm barrel. She does not scold the swearing, does not flinch at the scorched earth where the snake had been. She simply holds you while you shake, one hoof stroking your mane in slow, grounding circles.

When you can speak, your voice is small, cracked with leftover terror and wonder both.

“I… I did it. I made it go away.”

Zecora presses her muzzle to your smoking horn, voice low and fierce with pride.

“Yes, Verdant Glass, you claimed your fire—
panic turned to power, fear to ire.
Your rhymes may bite and swear and sting—
but oh, my sharp one, how they sing.”

You huff a wet laugh against her coat, clinging tight.

The path smells of ozone and burnt scales.

The snake is gone—really gone this time.

And something new coils in the hollow where the old terror lived: a bright, feisty spark that answers when you call.

===

Mid-afternoon, warm and lazy, the kind of day that lulls the Everfree into false gentleness. You and Zecora are sorting dried herbs at the table—your smaller hooves surprisingly steady now, labeling jars with your own sarcastic flair (“Bug-B-Gone: Now With Extra Attitude”). Zecora hums a working rhyme, golden rings catching sunlight.

The door bursts open without ceremony.

“Howdy, Zecora! Hey, Verdant!” Applebloom trots in, red bow crisp, saddlebags bulging with empty jars and a few questionable “specimens” from the forest floor. Her yellow coat is smudged with dirt, mane windswept, grin wide and fearless.

You freeze mid-label.

The jar slips from your hoof and clinks—thankfully not breaking—on the table. Memories slam into you without mercy: stumbling alone through thorns, hooves bleeding, belly cramping with hunger and something worse, night falling cold and endless, the ground giving way beneath you into the pit…

You force the smile back on, but it feels thin, brittle.

“Hey, Applebloom,” you manage, voice higher than you want. “You… you came alone again?”

Applebloom nods cheerfully, already unloading her bags. “Eeyup! Shortcut through the blue flowers this time—almost got lost, but Ah figured it out!”

Zecora’s ears flick; she glances at you, reading the sudden tension in your shoulders, the way your hind legs shift as if ready to bolt.

You try to keep it light. You really do.

“That’s… kinda dangerous, y’know.” The words come out sharper than intended, edged with the sarcasm you’ve honed like a blade. “Everfree’s not exactly a playground. Things out there don’t care how brave you are.”

Applebloom tilts her head, puzzled but still smiling. “Aw, c’mon, Ah’ve been comin’ here forever! Ah know the paths.”

You swallow hard. Flashes: darkness, writhing scales, the slow breach of something cold and living into warmth that was never meant to be taken. Your voice drops, no longer pretending.

“I didn’t know the paths,” you say quietly. “When I first got here. I was alone. Lost. For days. And something… found me.”

The hut goes still.

Applebloom’s ears droop. She looks smaller suddenly, the fearless Crusader mask slipping. Zecora sets down her pestle and moves to your side, a silent striped anchor.

You force yourself to keep going, the words tasting like ash.

“There’s stuff in this forest that doesn’t just scare you and let you go. It… changes you. Forever.” Your eyes meet Applebloom’s wide ones. “Please don’t come alone anymore. Just—wait for somepony. Or take the long way. Anything.”

Applebloom shuffles her hooves, cheeks pink beneath yellow fur. “Ah… Ah didn’t think about it like that.”

Zecora speaks then, voice gentle but firm. “The Everfree keeps its own cruel rhyme,
and bravery alone won’t master time.
Listen to Verdant’s hard-won truth—
the forest takes more than it gives to youth.”

Applebloom nods slowly, promise in her eyes. “Okay. Ah’ll be more careful. Ah promise.”

She stays for tea after that—conversation lighter, but careful now, like walking on thin ice. When she leaves, she takes the safer, longer path, waving that red bow until she’s out of sight.

You stand in the doorway long after she’s gone, staring into the green shadows.

Zecora rests a hoof on your withers.

“You spoke your scar today, my Verdant Glass—
and turned its edge to shield, not slash.”

You lean into her stripes, voice small.

“I just don’t want her to break like I did.”

Zecora’s answer is a quiet nuzzle.

“Then we teach her not to walk alone.”

===

She sleeps now, small green barrel rising and falling against my side, one foreleg still draped possessively across my striped chest as though the dark might steal her if she lets go. Verdant Glass—my Verdant—named herself so long ago, yet the name still feels new, fragile, like the first green shoot after fire.

I watch her in the low firelight and count the years that have passed since the flash that tore her from her world and left her bleeding on my threshold.

She was small then—physically, yes, but also in every other way. A filly’s body forced upon a mind that had already lived decades in isolation and screens and silence. The serpent found her before I did, claimed her before she could even scream her own name. When I finally carried her home, she was hollowed glass—cracked, leaking, reflecting only terror.

Now?

She is taller—not much, but enough that her head rests higher against my shoulder when we walk. Her coat gleams with the health of regular meals and steady work. Her horn sparks brighter each day, green magic braided with zebra rhythm and her own sharp wit. She still wakes some nights reaching for coils that are no longer there, but the cries are quieter now, the clinging less desperate. She has learned to stand beside the cauldron instead of hiding behind my legs.

Her age is a paradox I cannot solve.

By pony measure, she remains a filly—perhaps the equivalent of ten or eleven summers. Yet her eyes sometimes carry the weight of thirty winters spent staring at glowing rectangles, alone. She swears like a dockworker when potions go wrong, rhymes with sarcasm that would make my elders wince, and laughs at things no child should understand. She is old in sorrow, young in wonder, and forever caught between.

Her rhymes… ah, her rhymes.

They twist the old zebra cadences into something new and biting. Where I speak of earth and ancestors with reverence, she threatens the ingredients, mocks the moonbloom for being lazy, dares the dreamroot to fail her. And the magic listens—listens harder, wilder, feistier. The ancestors do not disapprove; they chuckle in the steam that rises. She has taken the ancient art and given it teeth.

And her stripes.

Painted at first—black and white laid over green in trembling strokes, a filly’s desperate bid to wear my strength like armor. They flaked away eventually, as paint must, but something lingered. Now, when she brews under stress, faint black-and-white lines shimmer across her flanks like heat mirage, vanishing when she calms. Magic’s echo, perhaps. Or her own heart claiming the pattern she once borrowed.

I stroke her mane—careful, slow—and feel the truth settle heavy in my chest.

She is no longer the broken thing I carried home. She is growing into something fierce and green and striped in ways no zebra ever was. She still needs me—still curls close on bad nights, still seeks my hoof when memories bite—but the need is changing. Less survival. More partnership. Apprentice to master, filly to zebra, scarred soul to scarred soul.

I fear the day she outgrows the hut.

I fear more the day she never tries.

Verdant Glass, my sharp-tongued miracle, my painted storm in filly shape—
you carry years no calendar can name,
rhymes no elder taught, stripes no bloodline gave.
Grow tall, grow wild, grow feisty and free—
but know this always: you belong with me.

The fire pops. She sighs in her sleep, nuzzling closer.

I close my eyes and let the rhyme settle into silence.

Some reflections are not endings.

They are promises kept in the dark.