Zecora pulled out a small wooden table from one of the neighboring rooms. Without a word, she sat down on its far end, and motioned for Reek to sit opposite to her. The slug curled himself into a tight ball as he sat at the table's edge, his eyestalks two thin, grey towers on a mound of blackness.
"So... you gonna tell me what's going on now?" he growled.
The zebra blinked. "I'm not sure what you want me to say,
But feel free to ask away."
"Well for one, how long has it been since... uhm...
Reek paused for a minute. He hadn't considered just how much time had passed since he had last seen the sun. He knew it was a long time mostly due to the first thousand years being filled with Sammakött's constant counting. But once the ice had robbed that monster of his telepathy spell... who knew how long Reek had been in there?
"How... long... have we been gone?"
"If by 'we' you mean the beasts that roam
the land of which they once called home,
I have not heard in all I've read
of this old place from which you fled."
Reek unrolled himself a slight amount, only to let out a dramatic sigh. "Can you stop speaking in rhymes please? You're not a sphinx or something, are you?"
"A sphinx, I am certainly not,
but I'm sorry for the stress I've wrought."
"Yeah whatever," Reek rolled his eyes, "So I guess I'd better list off names. Back in my day, my king was Melo Milo. Big snail, lots of tentacles, last of the Carcolh. Ever heard of him?"
Zecora clacked her hooves together, closing her eyes and focusing entirely on scanning every inch of her memory for any trace of such a name. "I will admit, I know of your kind,
but that name holds no place in my mind."
That caught Reek's attention. The slug unfurled himself fully from his comfortable ball, reaching his full height and nearly scraping the ceiling of Zecora's hut. He leaned in towards the zebra, though she remained placid and unmoving.
"You know my people? What do you mean you 'know my kind'?"
"Though you are quite the giant brute,
the Mulilo Slugs back home are cute."
Though Zecora spoke as if what she had said was the most casual thing in the world, her statement hit Reek like a blizzard wind that froze his skin solid and petrified him on the spot. "Wh-where's your old home?"
"A far savannah across the sea,
A place you might not like to see.
If I took you to see your kind,
you might not like just what you'd find."
Reek slammed his thick tail onto the table, causing it to flip into the air and crash into a far wall. Several potions and ingredient bottles clattered to the floor, releasing various brightly colored clouds. "Enough with the riddles, wretched creature! I have never known a zebra in all my days, so either you tell me what you are and how you know me, or I tear you to ribbons and chew on your bones!"
Deep inside his mouth, Reek's serrated teeth began to revolve, spinning and whirling like a grinder in his rage. But somehow, despite his threats, Zecora only smirked.
"Would you still eat me alive,
if I said you wouldn't survive?"
Reek snarled. The zebra's words were quickly going from nuisance to torture. "You think you can stand against me?"
"A Mulilo Slug would eat me quick,
but my poison blood might do the trick."
Reek spat a laugh out, splattering half eaten specs of Begonias all across the floor. "You don't have poison blood."
"But of that can you guarantee,
for you know nothing about me.
It's been some time since you were last aware
Some things might've changed, here and there."
As Reek thought it over, the rage flowing through his body began to subside. Slowly, he shrank back down to a modest size, and his eyestalks straightened as he calculated the risk. After some minutes, he looked back at Zecora, squinting at her in disbelieving suspicion. "If you really are poisonous, then prove it."
"If you wish to know if I am untrue,
then there's only one thing that you can do."
Zecora held out her hoof to Reek, taunting him to try and bite.
"Take a bite, if you wish.
I hope you enjoy your final dish."
Reek gulped. It had been quite a long time after all, maybe ponies did have poisonous blood now. He didn't know, but the idea of Sammakött choking and dying on ponies of all things made him chuckle slightly.
Deciding against it, Reek slinked back into his ball, grumbling all the while. Zecora smiled, pulling her hoof back and sitting up straight with pride.
"We've reached, it seems, quite the impasse,
let's just hope this storm doesn't last."
"Yeah... let's..."
For a while after that, no one moved an inch. Reek initially spent his time glaring at Zecora, but boredom eventually overcame him, and so he stared at the various bottles and miscellaneous knick-knacks that covered every wall of Zecora's home and even the floor to some degree. Eventually, he slithered over to the window and watched as the snow continued to build around the zebra's hut.
"Ugh, when will this Boiuna forsaken storm ever end!"
"I do not know,
I thought you would, though."
Reek sighed again and rolled his eyestalks. "You know, considering you live here, I thought you'd be more knowledgeable about the present."
"And you knew your past, but now it's sheared.
And all of that history's disappeared."
"Disappeared? It's all over the place! I've had to avoid three puechens, a bregdi and several hungry kor just to end up getting poisoned of all things."
"Puechens? How great!
Oh, please elaborate."
"What, you know about puechens? Do you poison them on the regular too?"
Zecora laughed, and as she leaned back, Reek barely restrained himself from going straight for her neck.
"Of course not, I'm no crook.
But I've read of them in storybooks."
Reek turned away from the window to sit back down in front of Zecora. He wasn't particularly interested in telling her about his old enemies, but looking at the slowly raising snow made him paranoid and claustrophobic.
"What did the books say about them?" he asked in a bout of skeptical curiosity.
"That they were pretty and thin,
With teeth like pins.
It said they were snakes,
that they lived in lakes,
And that the flap of their wings
Would cause shivers and quakes."
"Heh, well that's not totally inaccurate," Reek grabbed a shard of glass from one of the dozen broken bottles and started to carve out the rough shape of a snake onto the floor. "They are snakes, sort of. As far as I remember, they're distant cousins of the wyverns. You still have those here?"
"Not this close to town,
But I know they're around."
Reek grunted in affirmation. "Well, it's not that important anyway," after finishing the body, he moved on to the puechen's head. " They usually travel in packs, and each of them have got these rows of serrated teeth filled with enough venom to drop a chimera in one bite. Back in my day, if you were smart, you'd run and hide the second you heard their screaming."
"The puechens sound rather ghoulish,
To fight against them would be foolish."
"Yeah. That was what most of the other kingdoms thought at the time. In flesh, they were children of the mighty amphithere, Quetzalcoatl. But in spirit, they followed only the will of Sammakött. They were the first to join his army, and when they did, Quetzal's only options were to join his children, or face their fangs."
Zecora's face turned a paler shade of grey as Reek continued. "That sounds bad."
"Yeah, just a bit."
"This Quetzal, was he mad?"
"Oh he was furious," Reek paused his carving for a minute to gesticulate during his speech, waving the shard of glass in all directions. "Only one kingdom ever defied Narok, but Quetzal came close to being the second. It was said that in his ire, he cursed all the puechens so that their wingbeats would mimic his screams of rage forever. It would remain a permanent reminder of their betrayal, but the puechens saw it as proof of Sammakött's infinite power, having defeated a lord so easily."
"So that's why they scream...
This Sammakött is more then he seems."
"Much more, my monochromatic abductor. There's a reason he's called 'the King of the Dead'... And also why there aren't any Leudnan Righrean graves."
Reek huffed. He looked back down at the crudely carved puechen, and it started up at him with vacant, soulless eyes. Of all the things that survived the ice, the puechens were already the most acclimated. Reek would've bet that, had he stuck around the glacier's corpse for a little longer, he would have seen them diving for any cadaver big enough to fit in their mouths. He knew all to well what they were capable of. He dropped the shard of glass, where it shattered on the hardwood floor. He didn't move, only staring at the little wooden monster before him.
Zecora stood up in an attempt to reach Reek's eye level. While she had failed quite spectacularly, she softly placed a hoof on Reek's side. Instinctively, he slithered away from her, and she made no further move towards him.
"I sense that these monsters of old,
Have committed many horrors untold.
I know you're scared it's you they'll find," She leaned closer to him, and he watched her movements with an intently scrutinous eye. "But I could help... if you'd be inclined."
The slug leaned towards Zecora, his fangs rippling as he grumbled paranoid, skeptical remarks to himself. "Help? How do you plan to help me, exactly?"
The zebra responded first with a small, knowing smile before speaking another infuriating verse. "If you are nice, and you put some work in,
I'll make a potion, and you won't be noticed again."