Twilight Sparkle, Unicorn Economist

Chapters

Diversity
General Gluts
Applejack's Test: Trust
Pinkie Pie's Test: Uncertainty
Rarity's Test: Gossip
Rainbow Dash's Test: Optimization
Fluttershy's Test: Expected Utility
If You Can't Protect Your Friends Then Make More Friends
Economicon: Nightmare Moon
Canterlot Monthly, July: Lead Interview: Twilight Sparkle
Charley and the Coase Theorem
CM August Lead Interview: Twinkleshine
The Knightian Code
CM September Lead Interview: Gamma Glisten
The Nightmare Attribution Error
CM October Lead Interview: Cherry Jubilee
CM November Lead Interview: Vela Flicker
Deadweight Loss
Spontaneous order
The Very Important Princess Cadance Origin Story
The Exogenous
The Exogenous 2: Opportunities
The Exclusive Worlds of the Social and the Economic
Applejack's Cutie Mark: Responsibility
Allocating Scarce Resources
Price Discrimination
Rarity's Cutie Mark: Beauty
Fluttershy's Cutie Mark: Destiny
Marginalism
The Everfree Forest's Cutie Mark: Property Rights
State of Nature
State of Nature 2: The Last Remedy
Pinkie Pie's Cutie Mark: Family
Sunk Costs
Sunk Costs 2: Friendship is Witchcraft?
The Market for Blood
The Economically Inclined
The Use of Friendship in Society
Allostastic Overload
Singing in the...Rain
Twilight Sparkle's Bad Day
The Five Tests of Twilight Sparkle: Theory and Practice
Surpluses and Shortages

Diversity

“It’s a test.” Twilight said. “Princess Celestia is always testing me. I just have to figure out what I’m supposed to do.”

“Are you bringing only books, Twilight?” Spike asked.

“Is this really about seeing if I can manage the NGDP Targeting Festival?” Twilight began to pace. “But Princess Celestia already knows how good I am at managing things. Maybe the real test is to improve the level of economic literacy in Ponyville. Those rubes probably don’t even know what NGDP is.”

“Are you bringing a toothbrush? How about a comb for your mane?”

“She can’t really have meant it when she said I should make friends.” Twilight stopped. “No, it can’t be. I’m probably supposed to derive and gather data for the economic theory of friendship. Yes, that must be it."

“I’ll pack a second toothbrush.”

There was one train—not One Train, merely one train—running through all the towns and cities of Equestria. It was built and maintained by Princess Celestia’s own funds, which were themselves donations from every adult equine. Princess Celestia collected no taxes. It just so happened that the ponies of Equestria were wise and thoughtful enough to see that Canterlot needed a certain amount of funds to provide for the defense and support of Equestria. Any pony was free not to pay.

Nevertheless, Princess Celestia worried that the ponies who chose not to donate were unaware of the good things she could do for Equestria, and so she invariably paid them a visit in order to advertise the quality of her product.

Ponies are very proud of their immaculately well-tended gardens, so Princess Celestia would strengthen and focus the sun’s rays on the grass and flowers, making the plants grow taller than the houses. Then she would summon clouds as fluffy as bunnies and heavy as flying boulders. With a burst of light from her horn a monsoon the exact size and shape of the garden would crash down. When it was over, the garden would bloom like Eden on the morning of creation. Finally, Princess Celestia would call actual flying boulders bigger than herself from nearby, which sometimes meant from miles away. She used them to add her own touch of feng shui to the garden.

Ponies are kinder to free riders than primates are, but they tolerate them far less.

What Princess Celestia would do after that no one knew, for the pony in question would by that point always open the door in a trembling sort of way and politely ask the Princess what the reason was for her visit. When Princess Celestia explained that she simply wanted to advertise the spells she used to defend Equestria with her limited voluntarily donated funds, the pony would always smack their forehead and exclaim that they had forgotten to send their own donation this year.

In a short time their oversight was happily corrected. Princess Celestia left with the money she needed to defend the land of Equestria, and the pony left with their bladder control intact.

Such mutually beneficial exchanges provided Princess Celestia all the money she needed to build public works like the train tracks, which wrapped three times around the mountains that marked the east- and west-most points of Equestria. Why they needed to wrap around the mountains three times no pony remembered. That was simply how they had been built.

Twilight Sparkle and Spike relaxed in the first-class cabin near the front of the train. Twilight nibbled on sugar cubes while she made notes in her heavily marked copy of The Economic Approach to Pony Behavior. Spike flipped through a book about tourist attractions in Ponyville. They spoke little. They were friends, and the difference between true friends and people you hang around with to ward off a creeping sense of nihilism is that you can enjoy the company of the former in complete, utter silence.

~~~

“Oh boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy!”

The pink puff of pony hopped—literally hopped—around the entire room, waving her hoofs in the air like she did not care that Twilight was there.

“Okaaaay.” Twilight’s magical glow surrounded a pen poised on top of a checklist clipped to a clipboard. Twilight liked lists, and she liked to check things off of them. “You are Pinkie Pie, the pony supplying the festivities?”

“You mean the party?”

The creature from the pink lagoon skidded to a halt and lifted her chin proudly. “Yup! I’ve got all the games and music and balloons and streamers and pins and tails for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey which always seemed like such a cruel game to me but it’s really popular so who am I to judge HUUUUHHH and popcorn and candy and more games and even bigger balloons and—”

“Okay!” Twilight scratched a check onto the list. “I believe you. Now I’ll need to inspect everything.”

“How come?” Somehow even a question sounded like an exclamation coming from Pinkie Pie.

“You do know who I am, don’t you? You were jumping around shouting ‘oh boy!’”

“Oh that’s just because I had never seen you before and if I had never seen you before that means we weren’t friends yet and if we aren’t friends yet then that means we get to become friends and I love becoming friends with ponies it’s so much fun HUUUUHHH my favorite part is when we share secrets and have sleepovers and bake silly things together and now that I think about it that’s more than one part but maybe we could combine them like a secret bakeover—”

“I am in charge of overseeing the NGDP Targeting Festival here in Ponyville,” Twilight said firmly. She used the same voice she normally reserved for when Spike was being as much of a baby as his current stage of maturation implied. “That means I need to inspect everything and ensure the festival goes well. My name is—”

“No!”

Pinkie Pie stuck out a hoof. She looked alarmed. Twilight raised an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t tell me your name! I want to guess!”

Twilight winced. She had never encountered such a concentrated barrage of exclamation marks. It was wearing down her mental defenses.

“Okay. Fine, guess.”

“Oooh, let me think.”

Pinkie Pie set her chin on her hoof and stared off, frowning. Seconds ticked by. Just as Twilight was about to interrupt, Pinkie Pie shot up.

“Sunshine Sweetie!”

“No.”

“Lollipop Lucky!”

“No.”

“Radish Racer!”

“What? No. Do they all have to be alliterative? I’ll give you a hint.” Twilight motioned to her mane. “See the dark colors? My name starts with ‘Twi.’”

“Oooh….” Pinkie Pie concentrated. “Tweezers!”

“That isn’t logical,” Twilight said, “but I’m guessing you don’t care—”

“Twixie!”

“MY NAME IS TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” Twilight shouted.

She coughed. “Sorry, excuse me. Where were we? You were going to show me your preparations?”

Pinkie Pie narrowed her eyes. “I am going to throw you a party.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Nope! Come on, I’ll show you all the fun things I’ve got!”

An hour later Twilight emerged from Pinkie Pie’s seemingly endless storage of party games, party toys, party accessories, party soundtracks, party, party, party, it made Twilight want to scream. She could feel the exclamation marks digging into her skull.

Twilight made a big, jagged check and flipped the page. “I do not know how that pony got put in charge of anything.”

“Ponyville’s largest corporation, Sugarcube Corner, is run by a pony named Pinkie Pie,” Spike said. “There’s supposedly one on every corner. I wonder if it’s the same pony?”

Twilight looked down the street. A large glass cube, transparent, sleek and shiny sat on the corner like an alien spaceship stopped for coffee. “Sugarcube Corner!” ran across the front in bright colors. Ponies milled about inside, inspecting large, vibrant cakes, all watched by the very same Pinkie Pie’s large smiling head that adorned the side like the encouraging eyes of Big Sister. “Let’s have dessert at the Sugarcube Corner!” the glittery speech bubble by her face read.

Twilight looked up the street. At the other corner was an identical glass cube except for the speech bubble, which read, “Let’s start the day the Sugarcube way!”

“I’m scared, Twilight,” Spike whispered.

“Let’s just keep moving,” Twilight said. “Next we need to check on the food.”

Applejack was an orange pony with a blonde mane, a cowgirl hat, and a hoofshake that nearly ripped Twilight’s leg off.

“How can I help you, Miss Twilight Sparkle?” There was a twang to her voice like her throat contained a miniature banjo and was practicing for the county fair.

Twilight set her hoof on the ground in such as way as she didn’t have to actually put any weight on it. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you. We just need to check on the catering.”

“Right this way, Miss Twilight.”

Applejack turned and motioned for her and Spike to follow. “We here at the Apple family farm are pleased as apples to be providing all the food for this year’s NGDP Targeting Festival.”

“That’s great,” Twilight said. “Do you mind showing me a little bit about your operation? I’m very interested in agricultural economics.”

Applejack led them to the crest of a hill. “That’s just what I was fixing to do. Take a gander at Sweet Apple Acres.”

Twilight did. She had read that the Apple family owned the biggest share of land in all of Ponyville, but the number of square acres had meant so much less as a figure in a report than did the sight of the golden farmland stretching on across the grassy hills for as far as she could see.

The trees were thick with bright red apples. Even from a distance they looked juicy and plump. Twilight could almost feel her teeth sinking into one. She could hear the bright crunch, taste the sweet juice on her tongue. The apples were delicious, absolutely delicious, and she wanted nothing more than to spent her life down in those fields doing whatever it took to get another bite of that sweet fruit—

“Twilight?” Spike tugged on her tail. “You’re drooling.”

“Huh?” Twilight clamped her mouth shut. There was a puddle on the ground underneath her chin that hadn’t been there before.

“That’s a normal reaction for a first-timer,” Applejack said. “We make durn good apples here. Come inside and try some.”

The Apple family table was long enough to seat about fifty ponies. The kitchen itself looked large enough for a dozen ponies to sleep comfortably. Pictures of who Twilight could only assume were members of the extensive Apple family clustered on every available space, giving the room the feel of belonging to a grandmother or perhaps a serial killer. Everything smelled of apples, even the wood.

“Of course it does,” Applejack said. “It’s cut from our very own apple trees. Apple Bloom! We got guests!”

An impossibly cute yellow filly with big eyes and an even bigger pink bow in her hair trotted into the room. “The Apple Sampler?”

Applejack nodded. “The Apple Sampler.”

The Apple Sampler turned out to be a fifty-course “bite-sized” meal featuring “the sort of regular food we Apples eat, not like the fancy stuff you city folks are used to, but it sticks to your sides and slides out in time.” It included applesauce, apple pies, apple fritters, apple butter, poached apples, dried apples, apple cake, apple chutney, apple pancakes, apple granitas…the plates ran on. “Bite-sized” apparently meant “portions the size of your head.” Twilight and Spike were groaning and patting their bulging bellies after the second course.

“We take big bites,” Applejack said. “Granny-slapping good, ain’t it? Don't tell her I said that.”

“And it’s all apples?” Twilight asked. “You don’t eat any grass or hay or oats?”

“Just apples,” Applejack said. “Makes us big and strong.”

“Well, what little we were able to eat was delicious,” Twilight said. Spike nodded. “I can see there will be no problems with the quantity or quality of food for the festival.”

“I’m pleased you liked it,” Applejack said. “They’re secret recipes. You can read about all of them in a cookbook we sell.”

“A cookbook?” Twilight exclaimed. “But that’s no secret at all! You should patent these amazing recipes so no pony can steal them.”

Applejack stopped piling apple fricassee onto a plate. The spoon banged on the counter. She glared at Twilight’s cutie mark, then fixed the Unicorn in her gaze.

“You reckon we ought to patent our recipes? Listen here, Miss Twilight Sparkle, I don’t know what kind of food you’re used to eating but there ain’t no pony, and I mean ain’t no pony who can make apple anything as good as we at Sweet Apple Acres.”

“I only meant that—”

“Any fool can read out of a cookbook,” Applejack said. “And I suppose you reckon that’s all there is to cooking? Reading’s cheap. The experience, the real know-how can only be learned in one place, and that’s right here. We don’t need no patents. There ain’t no pony who can imitate us who ain’t us already.”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. Even Apple Bloom was glaring at her. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It was only a suggestion.”

Applejack sniffed. “Suppose I allowed as since your economic, uh, whatever is you make, are so fine, perhaps you ought to patent them?”

“Of course we don’t patent economic theories. Economics is a collaborative and global search for understanding—”

“Don’t try to feed me none of them hush puppies. If you saw an advantage to doing so, you’d do so lickety-split. Granny Smith always says as to look after a customer’s advantage to comprehend his angle. That’s a city word that means ‘figger out.’”

Twilight tried to smile. “We economists always try to explain ponies’ behavior in terms of self-interest.”

“Then what was you piddling about with all that collaborative jibber-jabber?”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I’m new here and I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sure that the Apple family can’t be matched by anyone when it comes to apples and apple-related foodstuffs.”

“I ain’t riled up,” Applejack said in all evidence to the contrary. “Just a bit suspicious of city folk looking for an angle on the Apple secrets we publish for 12 bits, that’s the hardcover price, you understand. And it’s nice to have an economist here for the festival. Frankly I never understood any of that nominal gross derogatory influx hoodilly.”

“I’d be delighted to explain at the festival,” Twilight said. She hastily and somewhat bitterly adjusted her prior regarding the domain-specific intelligence of the Ponyville inhabitants.

A thought occurred to her. “Are you friends with Pinkie Pie?”

“Pinkie Pie? Of course I’m friends with her. She’s friends with most every pony in Ponyville and quite a few as ain’t. Usually doesn’t go so well for ponies who resist. She throws ‘em parties.” She noticed Twilight’s expression and laughed. “Don’t worry! She ain’t never hurt no pony.” Applejack frowned. “At least not that I ever heard.”

Twilight pushed herself away from the table. “Thanks for the meal. It was delicious. We’ll be going now. Spike and I have a lot of work left.”

“That you do, Miss Twilight Sparkle,” Applejack said. “That you do.”

A Unicorn by the name of Rarity was in charge of decorations. Twilight and Spike plodded on full stomachs toward her salon and dress store, the Carousel Boutique.

A bell rang and they walked in. A stunningly white pony with an immaculately coiffed purple mane greeted them at the top of a crystal staircase.

“Ta, darlings,” the flawless apparition said. It struck a pose. “I am Rarity. How can I help you become even more beautiful today?”

“We’re just here to check on the decorations for the NGDP Targeting Festival,” Twilight said. “We’re not interested in fashion.”

“Not interested in fashion?”

The pale pony trotted down the stairs, looking alarmed. “Darling, you sound positively depressed! What do you mean you aren’t interested in fashion?” Rarity spoke like Princess Celestia did when she was imitating Princess Celestia, putting on the sort of regal-sounding tones visitors expected.

“I’m a manager,” Twilight said. “The whole point of my job is to not be seen.”

“Nonsense!” Rarity trilled. Twilight hadn’t known that anypony actually did that. “You are the manager. You simply must be seen and stunningly so!”

Twilight had learned her lesson from Pinkie Pie and Applejack. The Ponyville ponies were smarter than they looked and not to be trifled with. She meekly submitted as Rarity dragged her upstairs and into the boutique.

“Most ponies will be attending the festival au naturel,” Rarity said, “so I assume you won’t be needing a dress for the occasion?”

“No dress,” Twilight said. “Just—yes—natural. I mean, naturel.” It was a little hard wrapping her mind around the idea of Rarity and Applejack living within a short distance of each other.

Rarity sat her down in a cushy chair facing a mirror. Twilight frowned at her reflection, but Rarity spun her around.

“How do you usually wear it?” Rarity asked. “When you’re trying, I mean. Do you wear it up? Do you curl it? How do you feel about bangs?”

“Uh…normal?” Twilight guessed. “Au naturel?”

“What sort of product do you use in it?”

“Shampoo?”

“Oh la la. What kind of shampoo?”

Spike did most of the shopping, Twilight didn’t want to admit. She just used whatever he had and didn’t notice the label.

“Shampoo Brand Shampoo. It’s all the rage back in Canterlot.”

“‘Tough Scales’ Shampoo For Big Boy Dragons,” Spike said. Twilight threw thought-daggers at his stupid face.

“I’ll give you a complementary starter set,” Rarity assured her. “And I suppose if I were to ask about makeup…?”

“Your current expectations would be confirmed,” Twilight said.

“Of course, darling.” Rarity spun her around again so that Twilight was looking into her reflection. “Now what I’m going to do is bathe your entire hair and face in a potent chemical cocktail of dubious legality.”

“Isn’t this store licensed?” Twilight winced as Rarity dragged a comb through her mane.

“Licensed? Of course!” Rarity opened a bottle that smelled like anise. “I invite the inspectors over every year for tea and cake. They’re wonderful people, don’t bother me at all.”

Twilight sat paralyzed, torn between her reflection and the impending chemical warfare Rarity was about to wage on her head. Which, Twilight belatedly realized, was where she did economics.

“Enough!” Twilight shouted, pushing Rarity away. “This is shallow!”

Rarity closed the cap and set the bottle down carefully.

“Shallow?” Suddenly her Unicorn horn seem pointed. “There is nothing shallow about beauty, mon cher économiste.”

“Yes there is!” Twilight jumped out of the chair and smoothed back her strangely untangled mane. “Caring about beauty is practically the definition of shallow!”

“You have a way of putting your hoof in your mouth,” Rarity said. “Take a look at me. Am I not beautiful?”

She tossed her hair.

Twilight tossed her hair when it got in her face. It seemed to get in her face a lot when she was around stallions, but Twilight had never tossed her hair like Rarity did. Rarity tossed her hair in the same way that a hurricane blows, which is to say, it is technically correct as a description but totally fails to capture the experience.

When Rarity tossed her hair, it sparkled. It shouldn’t have sparkled. There was no logical reason for it to sparkle, but it sparkled when and only when she tossed her hair. Her eyebrows poised at an elegant arch, her hips cocked at a frightening angle, and the look in her eyes was one of a bored queen idly considering dangling one of her many highly replaceable subjects over a bear pit.

Spike was giving Rarity a look like she was the unique and stable equilibrating price vector for his initial allocation. “You are beautiful.”

“I know,” Rarity sighed. Her sigh was the breeze caused by the flap of an angel’s wing. “But normally I look like this.”

A blue glow surrounded Rarity’s horn. Her hair unwound from its elegant coif, losing its shine, luster and bounce. It landed on her back in a dry clump. Paint peeled from her face, revealing blemishes and tired eyes. She looked ill compared to her made-up self.

“This is my natural appearance,” Rarity said. “But is it really me? Or is Rarity really a stunningly beautiful, precious gem in the midst of dull pebbles?”

She lifted her head. “I still carry myself like a Queen.”

Twilight was lost for words. This was beyond anything she had expected.

Rarity’s horn glowed again as she restored her old look. “All my customers come here looking for the same thing. Magic. They want me to find them the perfect dress and hairdo to make them avoir du cheval, funny, confident, charming and beautiful to win the heart of a handsome stallion.

“Of course clothes and hair product can’t do that. Underneath the illusion they are still the same pony. What I really do is draw out the best pony they already are through the illusions ponies wear all the time so they never have to see themselves. I can’t fix the game, but I can give them the best odds.

“It’s business, Twilight. Aren’t you an economist? Suppose I turn a plain pony into a, well, me. She has a wonderful time at the dance and agrees to a date with a dashing young stallion. But will she wear my clothes and my styles for as long as she lives? The illusion must come down, as it always does, and the pony will come running to me with tears in her eyes and vengeance in her heart, knowing, just knowing that I lied to her, tricked her, exploited her vulnerability and yearning to make a sale. Now she wants her money back.” Rarity looked pained. “Return money? It’s unthinkable!

“So what do I do for this pitiable creature? I use my admittedly formidable talents to bring out the inner pony, the her who isn’t a face she puts on for her friends or the kind of pony she wishes she could be but the beautiful pony who has never come out because even she didn’t know it was waiting there all along. My customers think I make them beautiful. But I don’t. I make them them, the best them they can be. It’s sad that they don’t recognize themselves in the mirror when I’m through.

“Shallow? No. What is shallow is wearing dry, tangled hair because it fits your image of the academic pony unconcerned with looks. What is shallow is judging a pony’s livelihood according to some cliche. So tell me, Twilight Sparkle, economist extraordinaire, just who among us is shallow?”

Twilight’s mouth hung open. Her jaw creaked when she shut it. “I…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have questioned the integrity of your business. I think I was just upset and confused. It’s been a long day, I’m new here and…”

“Of course!” Rarity said. “You’re from the capital! Adjusting to Ponyville life must be incredibly taxing. Have you met Pinkie Pie? …Oh dear. …She’s like that with everypony, you must understand.”

“I think I just need to check on the decorations,” Twilight said weakly.

“Follow me. And take one…no, two makeup kits. All complementary. Never let it be said that Rarity is not generous!”

Twilight’s head spun as she exited the Carousel Boutique. Rarity had talked for ages about color theory, color wheels, different shades of color—Twilight couldn’t tell the difference between bright green and chartreuse, but Rarity insisted there was—where colors came from and how they were made, the going market rates for different pigments and how Rarity got the best deals, and then she started on the fabrics. Twilight followed her in a numb haze, the automated semi-conscious managerial aspect of herself handling the checklist while the rest of her wanted to scream, “I DON’T CARE!” but Rarity was sweet and kind even if her interests were baffling, so Twilight nodded and stretched her lips in a gruesome approximation of a smile while she prayed for the sweet embrace of death.

Finally the ordeal ended. Spike, enthralled by Rarity’s glamor, had to be levitated out of the Carousel Boutique with Twilight’s magic. Rarity bid them adieu.

Spike sighed. “She’s gorgeous.”

“You’re a dragon. You’re a baby. Nothing about her should…well, you know…”

“Beauty is universal, Twilight.”

Twilight frowned. “No it isn’t.”

There were still two ponies Twilight needed to check on. One of them was a Pegasus called Rainbow Dash who had agreed to lend the big screen in Ponyville’s stock exchange to display the numbers as Celestia brought the money supply in line with the market's forecast of its own needs. Twilight decided she needed a pick-me-up after the exhausting tour of Rarity’s boutique and trotted to the stock exchange with Spike.

She knocked on the door. “Come in!” somepony shouted.

Unlike the stock exchange in Canterlot, Ponyville’s Make Friends With Everyone Stock Exchangeaganza was compressed, run-down and badly maintained. Like the stock exchange in Canterlot, Ponyville’s Make Friends With Everyone Stock Exchangeaganza was noisy, busy, and packed to the brim with panicking ponies.

“Sell everything!” one screamed into a phone. “Everything! Sugarcube Corner, Sweet Apple Acres, everything!”

“Buy everything!” another pony shouted into the next phone. “Everything! Sugarcube Corner, Sweet Apple Acres, everything!”

The stock exchange was pandemonium, which is to say, everything was normal. Ponies raced back and forth, some laughing, others weeping, all shouting. It was the eighth-loudest thing Twilight had ever heard. The first seven had been at the Canterlot stock exchange, which was bigger, after all. But what the Ponyville stock exchange lacked in size it more than made up for in sheer insanity.

One Pegasus in particular caught Twilight’s eye. She was zooming around the ceiling so fast she left rainbow trails in her wake. Even if her rump was made of oil, there was no way a pony could be flying that fast.

“Ten thousand bits!” the rainbow pony whooped. “Guess who just made ten thousand bits!”

“You lost twenty thousand this morning,” another pony said to general laughter.

The rainbow Pegasus swooped down before him. “Yeah, and I’ll make thirty thousand more before I go home today.”

“Excuse me,” Twilight said. “I’m looking for a pony named Rainbow Daaah!”

The rainbow pony was in front of her before Twilight could finish her sentence. “I’m Rainbow Dash! Nice to meet you!” Twilight felt a brief pressure on her hoof. She looked down. Had she just been given a hoofshake in an instant…?

Rainbow Dash smiled. "What can I do for you?"

“I’m Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight said. “I’m the economist who was sent here to oversee the NGDP Targeting Festival.”

“Uh huh.” Rainbow Dash looked bright, eager, and really, really helpful.

“So…you have a screen you can donate for when Celestia performs the NGDP ceremony?”

“So I don’t owe you any money?” Rainbow Dash wiped her forehead. “For once I get a visitor about something other than debts or inspections or insider...uh, yeah, sure, I’ll lend my screen.”

She pointed a hoof at the wall where a large monitor displayed stocks and prices, interest rates, growth rates, and a dozen other variables, all scrolling down the screen so fast Twilight could barely read it all. “Bought it to celebrate when I made fifty thousand in one day. Lost one hundred thousand the next, but hey, that’s life.”

“Uh…I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of risk aversion? Or…or hedging your bets?”

“Nope!”

“But don’t you lose a lot of money?”

“Yeah.” Rainbow Dash flew up the screen and squinted at a series of numbers. Twilight blinked, and she was at a phone, barking orders to someone. “Buy FlimFlam Fracking Funtime. Yeah. Ten thousand shares. I’ve got a good feeling about them.”

New numbers flashed on the screen. Ponies gasped.

“What’s happening?” Twilight peered at the screen, trying to understand.

“FlimFlam Industries just tanked!” Rainbow moaned. “I’m ruined! Again! Oh well, time to refinance.”

The other ponies got on with their work. Apparently Rainbow Dash losing more money than Twilight had thought existed in Ponyville was just another Tuesday.

Rainbow Dash was already at work flipping through a thick stack of papers. Twilight approached her. Rainbow Dash in action was like an extremely focused toddler, and in need of a guiding hoof. “Thank you for agreeing to lend your screen for the festival. But I feel that as an economist, it is my duty to give you some important financial advice.”

Rainbow Dash snapped up. “Got any hot tips?”

“That’s exactly it,” Twilight said. “You see, Rainbow Dash, if anypony actually did have any private information about how a stock was likely to perform, they wouldn’t tell you. They would buy or sell the stocks themselves. Imagine if you knew something no pony else did about a company. Would you tell someone else so that they could make money? Or would you go into the exchange and make a killing?”

Rainbow Dash had the look of a physicist being handed the control panel to the computer that programmed the universe and waking up to realize she still had to go into work today. “You…you mean, all those hot tips I paid so much for were just a…a lie?”

Twilight nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so. You can’t beat the market. At the very least, no pony is going to go out of their way to help you beat the market.”

“That does it!” Rainbow Dash started flipping through the papers so fast Twilight almost thought for a moment that Rainbow could read even faster than she could, which was simply ridiculous. “I’ll show them all!”

“By quitting the stock exchange and getting a real job?” Twilight asked hopefully.

“By making so much money they’ll be lining up to sell me their advice, and I’ll reject every! Single! One! I'll show them! I'll become friends with everypony in Equestria!"

“Okay then. Spike, I think we’re going. Good luck, Rainbow Dash.”

“Yup!” Rainbow Dash was already on the phone, barking orders at some hapless pony on the other end. “Thanks for the advice!”

“Sure thing!” Twilight slammed the door of the stock exchange shut behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief. Something about all the gambling that went on inside there rubbed her economist self the wrong way.

The sun was dipping below the horizon, oozing yellow across the sky like a runny egg yolk as Twilight and Spike made their last stop at an animal sanctuary on the outskirts of Ponyville. A petting zoo was supposed to be one of the attractions for the festival.

The sounds of chattering birds and the occasional ear-shattering fart from what Twilight hoped was a cow guided them to the edge of a wooden fence. Beyond the fence was the oddest assortment of animals Twilight had ever seen, and she had toured the zoo at Canterlot more than once looking for similarities between pony and animal behavior.

Small woodland critters like squirrels, beavers and raccoons gamboled in the grass not five feet away from lizards, snakes, and hawks, not to mention the mouse sleeping nestled in the mane of what appeared to be a snoring lion. Cows—thank Celestia—stepped gingerly around slow-moving turtles on their way to the tallest grass where a goat grazed next to a seal and a bright pink flamingo. There was a wasp—Twilight couldn’t think of why anypony would want to preserve a wasp or how they would keep it within the fence, but there it was—and a white bunny that stood on its hind legs and seemed to be watching the other animals like an overseer. It was possibly the most unnatural thing Twilight had ever witnessed.

A yellow pony with a pink mane greeted them at the gate. Or rather, she took one look at them, let out an “Eep!” flew over the fence and tried to act like just another one of the animals in the sanctuary.

“Excuse me?” Twilight said.

The yellow Pegasus pretended not to hear. She ducked behind a cow and grazed at the grass.

“Moo!” the yellow Pegasus said. She took a bite of the grass. “Moo—yuck!” She spat it out, shaking her head. “This is cud! No offense, Mr. Cow.”

“None taken,” the cow said around a mouthful of the stuff.

Twilight raised her voice. “Excuse me, but I can tell that you’re a Pegasus, not a…what are you pretending to be?”

“A…a bovine,” the Pegasus whispered. Her voice was like satin if satin could be afraid of its own shadow.

Twilight adopted the baby voice again. “And are you a bovine?” The Pegasus might have whispered something, but it was too quiet. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“Not a bovine,” the Pegasus muttered. She hung her head.

“What are you?” Twilight prompted.

“Pegasus.”

“Name?”

“Fluttershy.”

“Perfect!” Twilight said. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I’m the economist from Canterlot. And this is Spike, a baby—”

“A baby dragon!”

Fluttershy soared over the fence and nearly knocked Twilight over as she made a beeline for Spike. “How old are you? Can you talk?”

“I think so,” Spike said. “I’m, uh—” He cut off. Fluttershy was inspecting his scales with a critical look in her eyes.

“The scales are wearing at the edges,” she said. She glared at Twilight. “What kind of shampoo do you buy him?”

“Uh, Big Dragon Scales?” Twilight stammered. Fluttershy was giving her the evil eye.

“Tough Scales’ Shampoo For Big Boy Dragons?” she screeched. “FlimFlam Hair Care? That brand is terrible! All their products are made with harmful chemicals!”

Twilight backed off, horn at the ready to shield herself. “I didn’t know, I—”

“We’ll get you a nice natural remedy,” Fluttershy cooed to Spike. She stuck her hoofs in his mouth and pulled his lips apart. “You need to floss.”

“I boe,” Spike said.

Fluttershy started to lift Spike’s tail. Twilight had to step in. She coughed.

“Fluttershy, Spike is my assistant, and we are here to inspect the petting zoo for tomorrow.”

“Petting zoo?” Fluttershy frowned. “There’s no petting zoo here.”

Twilight gestured. “All the animals…?"

“Oh! You mean the Pony-Critter Interspecies Sharing Event,” Fluttershy said. “You’ll be providing the ponies?”

“I—uh—yes?”

“Wonderful.” Fluttershy beamed at Spike. “I’ll see you later, Mister Baby Dragon.”

Twilight held out a hoof helplessly as Fluttershy began to walk away. “I need to inspect the animals. To make sure everything is acceptable, you understand?”

Fluttershy stopped. Twilight sighed. Here we go again.

“That seems reasonable,” Fluttershy said. “Can I inspect your ponies?”

Twilight laughed. “So can we—”

“What’s funny?”

Twilight blinked. Fluttershy’s face was as innocent as a baby reaching out to take hold of her father’s finger for the very first time and as dangerous as a baby with a really strong grip. It still wasn't very threatening, but the intent was there.

“You laughed,” Fluttershy said. “Is something funny?”

“Well,” Twilight waved a hoof as if to dismiss the whole thing, “I asked if I could inspect your animals, and you asked if you could inspect my ponies as if they’re the same….” Twilight trailed off. Her stomach sank. From her side she heard the distinct sound of Spike facehoo—facepalming.

Fluttershy frowned. “Ponies aren’t the same as other animals?”

“Of course they are!” Twilight said. “It’s just that, um, well, uh….” She noticed all the animals in the fence watching her. Not glaring, not muttering to each other, just…watching. “They’re not, uh, with regards to the NGDP Targeting Festival perhaps in exactly the same position. Um. I’m not a speciesist.”

“I never said you were.” Fluttershy paused. “Are you leaving now?”

“I still need to, uh…inspect.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t want to upset any ponies no matter the inconvenience to the equal animals, would we?”

“‘Animals’ is speciesist,” the cow said around a mouthful of cud. “We prefer ’naturally evolved organisms,’ or NEOs.”

“New Earth Order,” the other animals said in unison so rapidly Twilight wasn’t sure if she had made the whole thing up in her head.

“I’m terribly sorry!” Fluttershy sounded truly pained. “I’ll say ‘naturally evolved organisms’ from now on.”

Twilight realized she was fighting a lost battle, but Princess Celestia herself had tasked Twilight with this job. For better or worse, she would see it through. “You run this sanctuary by yourself?”

“I do,” Fluttershy said. “Which means I’m very busy all the time. Interruptions can make my life so difficult.”

Twilight ignored the passive aggressiveness radiating from Fluttershy like a mother-in-law. “How do you fund it?”

“I saved for years,” Fluttershy sniffed. “Smart, careful investing. Mostly I just bet on the opposite of whatever Rainbow Dash was doing. Now I depend on donations.”

“You know,” Twilight said, “as the Chief Vice Executive Economist of the Bank of Equestria, I have a number of important contacts in the non-profit sector. I’m sure I might be able to get some money sent your way….”

The bait was set, but Fluttershy wasn’t biting. If anything, she looked even colder. “Let me guess. Save the Animals? Missing Animals? Animal Trafficking Watch?” Fluttershy sneered. “They don’t care about helping ani—naturally evolved organisms. They just like showing off to their rich friends how much money they have to waste on showing off to their rich friends.”

“They’re very kind people,” Twilight protested.

“Kindness isn’t a label you can slap on an organization and consider your work done!” Fluttershy began to tremble. “Kindness takes real work, care, and dedication! It isn’t a game!” Her voice had been steadily rising in pitch and now rose so high the last sentence came out as more of an incoherent squeak than anything.

“So no,” Fluttershy said, “you can’t ‘inspect’ the NEOs. They have every right to eat their dinner without being bothered by stuck-up economists and their oh-so-kind rich friends.”

Twilight knew when enough was enough. Fluttershy was an insurmountable wall when it came to her animals, but they were clearly in the best of care. She could consider this inspected. “Fine, we’re leaving. Sorry to have bothered you. Come on, Spike.”

“Bye!” Spike said.

“Bye, Mr. Baby Dragon!” Fluttershy called. “I can’t wait to see you at the festival. Remember to floss. And stop using that shampoo!”

Spike jogged to catch up with Twilight. “That went really badly, even for you. And she’s not even a stallion!”

“Not in the mood, Spike.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t more upset.”

Twilight sighed. “It’s been a long day. I just want to go home, take a bath, read a book and not think about missing the festival in Canterlot with Princess Celestia. Besides, in its own way this day has been meaningful to me.”

“What do you mean, Twilight?”

“I met five very different ponies today.” Twilight thought of Pinkie Pie and shuddered. “Very different. And Princess Celestia always taught me that the first rule of economics is that ponies are diverse. The second rule is that you’re underestimating how diverse they truly are.”

“Diverse?”

“Everypony has different wants, goals, and needs. They have different resources, abilities, constraints, knowledge and beliefs. Ponies look the same from afar, but when you get up close you realize just how different neighbors can be. That was demonstrated perhaps too clearly for me today.” She chuckled weakly. “There’s not one economy, Spike, there’s millions.”

“And you just have to accept the individual ponies for who they are?”

“Every time I asked a question like that, Princess Celestia would say that I didn’t have to do anything. But to answer what you’re trying to ask, no, you don’t. Change the world if you want. But the most important thing to remember is that the diversity of ponies is a fact. It won’t go away if you ignore it. It won’t go away even if other ponies are wrong to be the way they are. Princess Celestia always said that relative to its importance, diversity is the most under-appreciated constraint there is.”

“You care a lot about what Princess Celestia says, huh?”

“She’s the best economist in the world, Spike.”

“You’re not bad either.”

“Aww.” Twilight threw a hoof around Spike’s shoulders. “Let’s get the baby into bed. Tomorrow I’ll buy us new shampoo, one for dragons and one for Unicorns.”

“I still want one for big boy dragons.”

“I can’t believe you think I would buy you any other kind.”

General Gluts

Twilight oversaw the setup the morning of the festival. Admittedly, there was little to manage, with Twilight’s role being mostly restricted to trotting around Looking Officially At Things (for who could say that the festival was ready until it had been Officially Looked At?), asking questions like “Is this exhibit registered? Have you thought of—oh, you have? Okay, well, make sure to—oh, you’ve done this before. Of course. Sorry. I’ll get out of your way.”

With the Ponyvillians capable in their own hoofs, Twilight had everything checked off her list by midmorning. She didn’t mind. There was nothing like the feeling of checking things off a list. Sometimes she made lists just so she could check things off of them.

With her time free she checked out the food stands and stalls selling various items like model Banks with small parts a colt or filly could glue together, NGDP-controlling magic horns (Twilight tested one and confirmed it was fake—Princess Celestia didn’t manifest with the burning fire of a thousand suns to snuff out the magic. Princess Celestia’s attitude towards interference with the Bank was far more direct and pointed than in the case of taxation), and other ponies prepared puppet shows, songs and dances, and there was even a stall set up by representatives of the Porcius Institute, giving out their wretched pamphlets.

That left it at 11:00. The festival was in full swing now. Ponies thronged the field, eating caramel apples, wearing pink party hats and admiring the way Rarity had lined up the stalls so their colors made a series of rainbows throughout the field. Twilight watched them ooh and ahh grumpily. She hadn’t thought anypony would care. The petting zoo, on the other hand, was as popular as she expected. Fluttershy introduced all the colts and fillies to the “naturally evolved organisms” and watched them closely as they fed and petted the odd assortment of creatures she had collected. All the animals wore black bands around one of their limbs, about where a wrist would be on a human. Had it been that way yesterday too?

Applejack had deployed a small army of relatives to cook and serve all the food. She raced up and down the stands inspecting things, barking orders to her cousins and exchanging “how-do’s” with the all the hungry ponies. Pinkie Pie was up on stage performing some kind of vaudeville show, and Twilight spotted Rainbow Dash playing cards at a table with several sunglasses-wearing Pegasi. Everything seemed to be in order. It was no NGDP Targeting Festival like they had back in Canterlot, but this one she had managed. Sort of. It mostly seemed to be managing itself.

Spike waddled over to Twilight hefting a bag of apple popcorn almost as big as he was. “Twilight, you can relax now and have some fun. Eat something and play one of the games. Princess Celestia won’t be establishing the new money growth target for another hour.”

“I am going to go inside and read something until noon,” Twilight said.

Spike wrapped his tail around her leg and tugged. “Come on, there are water balloons.”

Twilight allowed Spike to lead her away. “I suppose it can’t hurt to have a little fun every now and then. Admittedly, I’d normally prefer to have a lot of fun by reading something, but….”

Two minutes later, Twilight discovered that prodigiously magically powered Unicorns who have been trained since a young age by Equestria’s ruler and foremost Alicorn, Princess Celestia, have something of an advantage when it comes to large-scale water balloon fights. About three seconds after that, Twilight discovered that large-scale water balloon fights are really, really fun.

“That’s what you get for dog-earing books!” she cackled as she magically fired several dozen water balloons at speeds so fast the rubber shell split open before they landed on the unfortunate ponies’ skin. She levitated two dozen of the water-bearing battle bombs over the field of victim-players. “Now kneel and submit to your Queen or face a watery doom!”

Time passes fast when you're crushing ponies beneath your hoofs. Spike waved urgently to her. “Twilight, it’s 11:55!”

All thoughts of conquest forgotten, Twilight turned and sprinted for the stage where Rainbow Dash’s screen displayed the economic data, only wincing briefly at the sound of ponies screaming as they were splashed by two dozen falling water balloons all at once.

Twilight pushed her way to the front of the crowd and gazed up proudly at the screen. Soon her mentor and the greatest pony in the world, Princess Celestia, would use her magic to guarantee economic order for another year. She felt a pang at the knowledge that the princess hadn’t wanted her protege at her side for the festival, but Twilight saw it as a sign of growing trust. One day, Princess Celestia had hinted, Twilight Sparkle herself would be the occasion of the festival. It was only fitting that she should manage one.

The clock ticked at a torturously normal pace. 11:56…11:57…11:58…11:59…12:00…

12:01. Twilight gasped.

12:02. The ponies began to stir.

12:04. Twilight stepped on stage and levitated a microphone to her mouth. “Excuse me, everypony,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “It appears that Princess Celestia will be delaying the NGDP targeting until this afternoon, so how about that neat puppet show? Uh, Pinkie Pie, has, I believe, uh….”

12:05. Panic broke out.

“We’re all doomed!” A stallion sank to his knees, wailing. “We’re all doo-hoo-hooooomed!”

“No we aren’t!” Twilight shouted above the noise. “Please, everypony stay calm!”

“Yup, we’re doomed,” Applejack said matter-of-factly. “Apple Bloom, get your brother and gather up all the leftover food. Don’t let any go to waste.”

Fluttershy whimpered into the shoulder of one of the black band-wearing cows. “There, there, Fluttershy,” the cow said. “Barter is a more natural mode of economic transaction.”

“I am livid!” Pinkie Pie screamed. “I am the CEO and proprietor of Sugarcube Corner, and I pay more than my share of voluntary defense funds! Princess Celestia owes me an explanation!”

“Sacré bleu!” Rarity swooned and fainted, her arm draped artfully across her forehead. After a minute she got up and did it again.

“Yes!” Rainbow Dash squealed. “I bet a thousand bits at sick odds that Princess Celestia wouldn’t show! I’m rich!”

“Ponies, please be calm!” Twilight struggled to be heard above the noise and pandemonium. “There is nothing to worry about!”

~~~

If you’re wondering what the ponies of Ponyville were so worried about, consider an economy in general equilibrium. That’s an important term. Write it down.

An economy is a system where ponies buy and sell goods and services. Producing and selling something on the market is hard work. It’s risky and takes effort, so ponies don’t do it for fun. They only sell goods on the market so that they can buy goods on the market. Applejack, for example, makes and sells all manner of apples and apple-related goods in exchange for food to eat, equipment for her farm, and a hundred other things that she wants. All the ponies that make and sell food, equipments, and a hundred other things do so because they themselves have innumerable wants that can only be satisfied on the marketplace. Everypony convinces other ponies to do them favors by doing them favors in return.

What this means is that everything that is sold on the marketplace is sold only in the expectation of being able to purchase some goods. No good is sold on the market without its corresponding purchase-good also being sold or being expected to be sold on the market. Thus there is a balance, a harmony, an equilibrium among all the goods and expectations on the market, each of which accounts for and is accounted for by some other good or expectation of a good.

In short, everything bought is paid for by everything sold, and particular things bought are paid for by particular things sold.

To simplify, let’s say that Applejack trades apples for oranges (if she’ll forgive the slander). Now, ponies are not all-knowing, perfect calculators, and sometimes they make mistakes, producing a good for sale in the false expectation its corresponding purchase-good will come into existence. Sometimes, Applejack makes more apples than ponies want to buy—Twilight would call this an excess supply of apples. But recall that all ponies produce only in the expectation that they can buy! Applejack produced as much to sell as she wanted to buy, and, not being able to sell all her goods, she will not be able to buy all the things she wants. All this is simply to say that an excess supply in one sector must, must be balanced by an excess demand in another sector.

To see this, imagine that Applejack produces apples to buy Orange Blossom’s oranges, who in turn produces oranges to buy Applejack’s apples. Since Applejack sells her apples to buy oranges, if she cannot sell all her apples, then she cannot buy all the oranges that she wants. Thus an excess supply of apples implies an excess demand for oranges.

Neither Applejack nor Orange Blossom are pleased with this situation. In order to salvage what they can, Applejack will adjust the exchange ratio: she will offer more apples for each orange until all the apples and oranges are sold. Recall that the apples and the oranges both are supplied in the first place only to be sold, and it, ahem, behooves neither Applejack nor Orange Blossom to hold onto any of their fruit. It should be clear why the market for both apples and oranges will clear, that is to say, there will be no fruit left over.

This harmony is called Say’s Law, named after its discoverer, the famous Unicorn Sunday Sayonara. It shows the impossibility of a general glut in the economy, as a surplus in one sector must be balanced by a shortage in another. This is a good thing. A general glut is one in which all the fruit lies spoiled and uneaten on the ground. The factories are empty. The machines are still. Nopony works the land. Everything is for sale, but nopony is buying….

This process of exchange and calculation in the marketplace until an equilibrium free of gluts is achieved is mediated by money. Money is a fascinating device invented by some long-forgotten Pegasus eons ago. It makes trade so much easier. Remember how Applejack sells apples so she can buy farm equipment? Imagine if she could only buy plows and tractors and so on when the plow-and-tractor makers were hungry for apples, and if they could only buy apples when Applejack wanted new equipment! It would be a very rare double coincidence indeed for any trade to occur. More often, Applejack wouldn’t get the tools she needs to run her business, and the members of Farm Stuff Incorporated would go hungry for a bite of her family’s famous apple pie.

The miraculous marvel known as money allows our dear ponies to circumvent this problem. With money, Applejack can sell her wares not just to the ponies who have something to sell to her but rather to anypony who wants them. In turn, Applejack can take the money and buy from whomever she wants, not just the ponies who are hungry for her cake. For all the trenchant critiques from the radical New Earth Order movement, money is a necessity to any economy larger than a small village.

But money has a hidden downside. Recall again our beautiful general equilibrium, the marketplace where gluts are local and quickly resolved, for one good is always balanced by another. But suppose we take the whole market itself. What can the entire market be balanced against…?

Let’s return to our good friend Applejack trying to sell her apples for oranges on the market. This time, she and Orange Blossom trade with money. In the previous example, Applejack and Orange Blossom dealt with their excess fruit by adjusting the exchange ratio at which they traded their wares. Now they do it by adjusting the prices, measured in bits, at which they sell their goods. Usually this works even better than in the previous situation.

But suppose that there is an excess demand not for apples or oranges but for money. The ponies at the market value their bits so much that they can’t be tempted to buy all the goods for sale (an excess supply). What will happen?

Applejack will have to let Orange Blossom spend fewer bits per apple, and Orange Blossom will have to let Applejack spend fewer bits per orange. In other words, prices fall. But the problem is circular. When Applejack lowers her prices, that means she takes in fewer bits. These are the bits she needs to buy oranges. So Orange Blossom has to lower her prices, meaning she takes in fewer bits, and these are the bits she needs to buy apples, so Applejack has to lower her prices….

Now what happens to the products on the market, sold for dirt cheap to ponies who cannot afford to spend their bits at any price?

Nothing. Nothing happens to them. They sit there unnoticed and unused. No one buys them because it’s not worth parting with their money.

And you have a general glut. Or, in colloquial terms, a recession.

Money! Brilliant, terrible money! A general glut, an excess supply of all the goods in a market is impossible in the absence of money. But with money, rare though it is, an excess supply of all goods can be balanced by an excess demand for money.

For a thousand years Princess Celestia has prevented general gluts by adjusting the money supply to match the market’s forecast for its own monetary needs. She uses her magic and wisdom to ensure that the supply of money is high enough that there is no excess demand for it and therefore no excess supply of goods in general on the market.

Only the Alicorns live long enough to remember the time before Princess Celestia and the Bank. To the rest of the population of Equestria, general gluts, the dreaded recessions of yore, are only a distant nightmare….

~~~

The mare is the color of the night sky. She is not black unless you mean in the electromagnetic sense, for the color of her skin is the color of the empty, uncaring void that surrounds our small and insignificant planet. Her wings spread out behind her like the the cloak of Death. Her horn is as long and sharp as a dragon’s tooth. On her flank rests the symbol of a crescent moon, and she towers over the equines assembled at the festival exactly like a goddess among ponies.

Twilight’s mind turned to fuzz at the sight of the dread apparition walking across the stage. This was completely impossible, her brain reasoned, and so, its logic went, it wasn’t happening. There. Problem solved.

The dark mare’s hoofs clicked across the stage. Twilight’s brain snapped back into reality. This was happening. The problem was, she couldn’t do a thing about it.

“Hi!” Pinkie Pie waved a hoof. “My name is Pinkie Pie! Who’re you?”

The Alicorn faced the crowd of ponies.

“I am the Mare in the Moon. I am the legend mothers whisper to their colts and fillies to scare them into bed. I am the darkness, the night, the glut to end all gluts. I am the Defeater of Discord, the Moon-Raiser, the Imprisoned Sister, the Betrayed and Forgotten, but I never forgot, for I AM NIGHTMARE MOON!” With this last declaration came a burst of power that amplified her voice a hundred fold. Ponies reared back in shock and fright.

“Neat!” Pinkie Pie said. “Want to bake cupmmph!”

Applejack withdrew her hoof from the pink pony’s mouth. “Not right now, Pinkie.”

Nightmare Moon regarded the crowd. “I seek your economist, mortal ponies.”

“I’m right here,” Twilight said as bravely as she could. This was braver than she would have expected, as reality was slow in dawning. So was, quite possibly, the dawn. “What have you done to Princess Celestia?”

“Only the same she did to me,” Nightmare Moon said. “I locked her in the sun for a thousand years. What can I say? I’ve always looked up to my big sister as a role model.”

“C-Could you let her out, please.”

“No. Oh, that reminds me. I believe your dear princess was supposed to do something about the money supply? Well, I’ve decided to tighten it.” She held a hoof to her chest. “I’m simply worried about inflation.” Her voice oozed with mocking self-righteousness.

“The economy needs more money, not less,” Twilight gasped. “If you shrink the money supply too much you’ll create a recession….”

Nightmare Moon smiled.

“What’s a recession?” one pony asked.

“It means no pony can buy anything because no pony can sell anything because no pony can buy anything,” said Applejack. Such things were written of in ancient Apple texts.

“Uh. Is that bad?”

“Eeyup.”

The ponies panicked.

“Silence,” Nightmare Moon spake.

The ponies were silent.

The dark Alicorn turned to Twilight. “Princess Celestia hid you well. It took me almost twenty minutes to find you since she scrubbed you from all the magical records. Still, even I eventually stooped to simply asking a pony on the street. They were all too quick to betray you.”

“I…didn’t make many friends,” Twilight said.

“Economists don’t need them.” Nightmare Moon walked toward her and past, circling Twilight like a hawk stalking a mouse. “But where are your wings? Ha! Only a Unicorn? My sister wanted six of us, and it looks like she only managed two and a half!”

“I’m proud to be only a Unicorn,” Twilight said. “What do you want?”

“To destroy everything my sister created and rule over the vast emptiness for eternity.” Nighmare Moon walked back to the center of the stage. “And that means ending the last of the economists.”

Twilight concentrated. A magical glow surrounded her horn. “Try me.”

Nightmare Moon laughed. It was the sound of a scythe running across a whetstone on Nightmare Night. “I defeated Celestia. An Alicorn. What can you do?”

“I can teleport.”

“What—”

Twilight vanished in a flash of light and reappeared on the other side of the crowd of ponies. She sprinted away as fast as a terrified pony can, which is pretty fast, but Nightmare Moon sent only her laughter in chase.

Twilight ran and ran through the dirt roads of Ponyville. She wasn’t thinking about where she was going, and so her legs took her home. Her brain had more important things to worry about, like the imprisonment of Celestia, the return of Nightmare Moon, and the prospect of a thousand years of bad monetary policy.

She needed help. She needed somepony she could turn to for trust, guidance and aid.

That pony had always been Princess Celestia. Twilight couldn’t run as fast for some reason when she was thinking about her teacher. New plan. What did she turn to when the princess was busy?

Books. And by some coincidence, she had ended up back at the tree-shaped house Princess Celestia had acquired for her and Spike. Good job, legs.

Twilight burst inside and summoned a hundred books to her with her horn. The answer had to be here somewhere. Alchian, Coase, Arrow, Samuelson, Knight, Walras, Malthus, all this power and none of it was useful. She thrust wildly aside an exposition on Banking by Princess Celestia—she couldn’t stop, couldn’t think—

Stop. Think. What was the threat Nightmare Moon posed? Disharmony, disorder, an evil economic equilibrium of doom. Twilight just needed to find a way to create a better equilibrium. And how did equilibrium come about? What were the…

“The Elements of Equilibrium!” Twilight shouted. “Of course!” She summoned the entire ‘E’ section to her, hoping, praying—

“You bore me,” said the voice of Nightmare Moon. Twilight jumped, nearly losing hold of the storm of books that surrounded her as she turned to face the monstrous mare.

“It’s impolite to enter without knocking,” Twilight said. She needed to stall for time while her search spell found the reference.

“You were muttering, ‘Princess princess princess,’ under your breath,” Nightmare Moon said. “You’re pathetic. My sister was only ever a tyrant.”

“You’re wrong,” Twilight said. Just a little longer. “Princess Celestia used the Bank for the good of all.”

“Yes, and so will I.”

“Liar.”

“Yes. Now die.”

Twilight teleported outside and charged blindly forward, levitating the book she needed. She ran right into Nightmare Moon’s leg and stumbled back, dazed.

“Why would I let you do that twice?” Nightmare Moon seemed bemused. “What could you possibly be thinking?”

“That I’m going to be rich!” A physical rainbow hit Twilight from the side, carrying her down the street.

“I’ve got you,” Rainbow Dash said. “You’re an economist, right? You can fix this?”

Twilight tried not to think about how fast her body was currently moving. “I-I might have an idea!”

“Good, because I’m filthy rich and I need there to be an economy for me to lord over!”

A dark glow surrounded the both of them. Nightmare Moon didn’t even seem bothered as she pulled them toward her. They struggled helplessly against her magic.

Nightmare Moon set them down before her and released her spell. Twilight concentrated magic in her horn to teleport again, but Nightmare Moon spoke. “What’s this about being able to stop me?” She sounded amused.

“Twilight Sprinkle is going to kick your butt so I can be rich!” Rainbow Dash said.

“It’s Twilight Sparkle, and there’s one thing you’ve forgotten, Mare in the Moon. Princess Cadance will stop you!”

“Who? I put Celestia in the sun.” Nightmare Moon sounded like she was talking to a child. “What do you not understand about this? No, that was not your plan.” She levitated the book out of Twilight’s grasp effortlessly. The pages opened and turned before her impossibly fast.

“Ah,” Nightmare Moon said after too short a time. “The Elements of Equilibrium. Of course. That might do it. Thank you for warning me.”

Twilight tried to smile. “Princess Celestia knew we would use the Elements to stop you. She left us a weapon so that we could defeat you even after she was gone!”

“Actually, it says here that the elements are kept in her castle.” Nightmare Moon laughed. “My poor sister must be growing senile to have sent her best economist halfway across the land and far away from her precious Elements of Equilibrium!”

“That’s what you think,” Twilight said. All she could do was bluff. “But Princess Celestia knew this day would come, and she has a plan to save Equestria even now.”

Nightmare Moon sighed. “For an economist, you don’t seem to understand self-interest at all. Grovel before me, and I might spare your life.”

Twilight lifted her chin. “There is more to life than economics.” Internally, she winced. Had she really just said that?

“Indeed,” the horrible horse mused. “Like utterly crushing your sister’s dreams. Very well!” Her voice clapped like a thunderbolt as her power fomented. A whirlwind of darkness and cold surrounded them. It howled like a hungry wolf gazing at the moon.

“What’s going on, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash cried, clutching at the Unicorn.

“I-I don’t know!” Twilight shouted, tactfully trying to free herself from the Pegasus’s grasp.

The power faded. “I have summoned the elements here,” Nightmare Moon said. “As the money supply tightens like a noose around Equestria, so the rope of my mercy tightens around your neck. Five tests I offer you, one for each Element of Equilibrium! Each will destroy an aspect of your pathetic economics, each will break your as I have broken my sister. Your mind in pieces and your heart full of hope, you will crawl into the chamber of my castle, hoping for the elements, for the return of your savior, and you will find that they no longer work for you.”

“I accept,” Twilight said. It was clearly a better deal than dying and letting Equestria be forever doomed. Adding a choice to her choice set could only make her better off…right?

“It is done. Face your fate in the Everfree Forest if you dare! HA HA HA HA HA!” With a clap of thunder and a flash of darkness, Nightmare Moon vanished along with the book, leaving only her laughter.

“Whoa.” Rainbow Dash wiped the sweat off her brow. “Glad she’s gone.”

“Rainbow Dash! Twilight Sparkle!” Pinkie Pie, Applejack with Spike on her back, Rarity, and Fluttershy appeared around the corner, running full tilt.

“You can’t fly ahead so fast, Rainbow Dash,” Applejack panted when they got near. “Who knows what that Nightmare Moon could have done?”

“Yeah, we’ve got to beat her up together,” Pinkie Pie snarled. “No pony threatens our friendship and gets away with it.”

“She’s after the economy,” Twilight said.

“That’s what I said.”

Twilight facehoofed. “I don’t have time for this. I have to stop Nightmare Moon and save Equestria!”

“And we’re going with you,” Rarity said in a regal voice that brooked no disagreement.

Fluttershy nodded. “If there’s no money left, how will I take care of all my animal friends?”

“No use sharing our secret apple-baking methods with all our friends if Sweet Apple Acres don’t run no more,” Applejack said.

“I can’t impress my friends will the latest fashion if I can’t afford new clothes,” Rarity said.

“How will I make all my friends smile with cake and balloons if there’s no market for them?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“And I can’t make friends with the whole world if there’s no stock exchange to play with them all,” Rainbow Dash said.

“See?” Pinkie Pie hopped in a circle. “It is about friendship after all!”

Twilight sighed. “Fine, you can come. I might need help anyway. Economists never turn down a division of the labor, especially when the opponent is a magically super powerful Alicorn nightmare who’s about to destroy the economy. That’s in one of my books. Well. The first part is.”

“I’ll come too.” Spike jumped off of Applejack’s back. “Nightmare Moon is actually messing with my friend.”

“No, Spike.” Twilight sank to her haunches, bringing her eyes level with his. “I need you to stay here and guard the library. If I don’t come back, you will be Equestria’s economist.”

“What about Trixie?”

“DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT MARE! She was probably the one who ratted me out to Nightmare Moon. Or it was Twinkleshine, that—”

“Let’s defeat Nightmare Moon and become filthy rich!” Rainbow Dash stuck her hoof out. One by one the other ponies placed their hoofs on top of hers. They looked at Twilight expectantly.

“Nope,” Twilight said. “Not doing that.”

Applejack's Test: Trust

The five friends and Twilight Sparkle set out south toward the Everfree Forest. It didn’t take long for Twilight to suspect that Nightmare Moon’s real plan was to saddle her with five crazy ponies and slowly drive her insane.

Rainbow Dash flew alongside her. “I can’t believe we need to adventure through the Everfree Forest, gather the Five Elements of Equilibrium and defeat Nightmare Moon to save the economy!”

“Thank you for the summary,” Twilight sighed.

“And all before dinner!”

Twilight frowned. “What?”

“I promised Scootaloo I would be home for dinner,” Rainbow Dash said. She wore a smug grin. “What, did nopony else think of that?”

Twilight flushed red. “We are going on a dangerous mission!”

“And the more dangerous the mission, the cooler I look making that promise,” Rainbow Dash said. “It’s called incentives. I read about it in some lame book about investing that didn't even have any good tips. Do you even know anything about economics?”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. Rarity sauntered past them.

“Now, now, Rainbow Dash,” she said. “Our dear economist probably never had the opportunity to apply her knowledge to the real world before. I am sure this is all very educational to her.”

Twilight gritted her teeth. “Yeah, textbook models are missing the part where evil Alicorns come back from the moon and threaten to destroy the world’s economy if you can’t gather the Elements of Equilibrium in time.”

“We all gotta learn at some point,” Applejack said. Apparently sarcasm was new to Ponyville. “You should write a better textbook when you get back, one with all the real world stuff in it.”

“I’ll help!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.

“NO! I mean…no. Just no.”

Twilight kept walking and tried not to think about the dead weight that insisted on accompanying her. Instead, she thought about the Everfree Forest.

The Everfree Forest existed about ten miles south of Ponyville—not much distance for a pony, especially one who exercised as regularly as Twilight (Twilight did everything regularly or not at all). Although, as Twilight understood it, the Everfree Forest had once covered Ponyville and, well, everything. It had been waiting for the Alicorns when they emerged from the caves after the Great Snow that ended the humans and their weird bicycles.

A gnarled tangle of black thorns that stretched across Equestria like Twilight’s hair across her pillow in the morning, the Everfree Forest was as magical as it was thoroughly hostile to pony life. Leading the surviving ponies, the Two Alicorns—for the Third had not yet ascended—strode forth, wielding the twin magicks of the sun and the moon to drive back the murderous weeds. Grass grew and flowers bloomed where the Everfree Forest gave way, and as the snow melted life returned. Ponies fed themselves on hay and oats and left plenty for the bunnies and mice. Hummingbirds and bees worked together to spread flowers across the fields, and one very confused bear stumbled out of a hollow log after a long and turbulent hibernation.

The Everfree Forest fought like a cat, sharp and biting from every angle, but the Diarchs could not be overcome—not until the Draconequus at its center revealed itself, but that was temporary and hardly worth mentioning. The Sisters shrunk the forest to a fraction of its size and sealed it off outside of what became Ponyville.

Perhaps, Twilight mused, some of its latent magic seeped through the ground into Applejack’s apple trees, and that was why the ponies there were so crazy.

This had all taken place over a thousand years ago. There were few reliable texts on the subject in the Canterlot library. Twilight’s information came straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Twilight had never been in the Everfree Forest. That dubious privilege was reserved to Princess Celestia. Rumor had it she sent misbehaving students at the Canterlot Academy for the Pony Sciences into the forest as a detention. It struck Twilight as wildly implausible, but since she had never received a single detention, she had never had the opportunity to find out for herself.

And now she was venturing into the Everfree Forest where Nightmare Moon waited with her five traps set, the fate of Equestria riding on her shoulders, and all she could think about was that they were br—br—breaking rules.

Pinkie Pie poked her head into Twilight’s expositional narrative. "Wow, you got really sweaty all of a sudden! Like, really sweaty—”

Twilight pushed her out. Princess Celestia herself was in trouble. They were allowed to br—breeaaa—the Princess would understand. She would.

Rules were not all that barred ponies from entering the forest. After defeating the draconequus, the Sisters set a guardian at the entrance to the forest to scare away nosy, inquisitive, or just plain foolish ponies. Twilight tried to remember what it was.

Imagine a dog. Bigger. Bigger, about the size of a house. Give it three heads. That’s all there is to the Cerberus. As monsters go, it’s rather unimaginative.

As dull and plain a guardian the Cerberus is, the few ponies nosy, inquisitive, or just plain foolish enough to have stood in front of it tended to think less about its literary merits and more about the fact that each head has a mouth wide enough to swallow a pony whole, with teeth sharp enough to puncture metal armor and paws heavy enough to mangle a pony with a single swipe. Only a collar attached to a leash made of vine exactly as eternal as the moon and sun that stretched out of the shadow of the forest kept the Cerberus from rampaging, a leash that Twilight was relieved to see still bound the monster even as she kicked herself for not thinking of it sooner. This could have been a very short adventure if not for Nightmare Moon's mercy.

The Cerberus lunged forward, straining at its choker. It snarled and swiped its paws at the six ponies just out of reach. They yelled in alarm and reared back. Twilight readied her horn, and the Cerberus began to speak.

“Who would enter the Everfree Forest must honestly answer me these questions three,” the Cerberus said in a deep, rumbling voice, “ere the other side you see.”

The magic around Twilight’s horn fizzled out. “What?”

“You have to answer three questions if you want to go in, or I’ll eat you.”

“No, that’s a sphinx!” Twilight said in terror. “You’ve got your mythological beasts mixed up.”

“What’s wrong with her?” the Cerberus said.

“Too many books,” Rainbow Dash answered. Twilight ran the phrase “too many books” through her mind and found that it didn’t parse.

“Shh, shh,” the Cerberus said. It put one toe of one paw over one mouth, another toe from a second paw over a second mouth, and its tail curled up over the third mouth, a strange shushing gesture. “I am the Cerberus, I’m stuck here 24/7, if you hadn’t noticed, and if I want to play a game to liven things up, I jolly well don’t want to hear any complaints. Now who is willing to face my questions?”

Applejack stepped forward. “I’m not afraid.”

Twilight facehoofed. “Applejack, could you let me come up with a plan first?”

“She has chosen to play the game," the Cerberus said. "She must answer or forfeit. Forfeit or answer any questions wrong, and the vine leash that binds me here will become as flexible as it needs to.”

“I’ve never known any pony more honest than Applejack,” Rarity said. She sounded confident, but her face looked even whiter than usual. “She can answer the monster’s questions.”

“But it could be lying,” Twilight said

Applejack gazed up at the Cerberus. “I believe it.”

“Oh, good, well that just settles everything,” Twilight said with the sarcastic tone ponies like her tend to adopt as an alternative to terrified squeaking. She leaned over to Rainbow Dash and whispered in her ear, “I’m ready with a vector beam any time. Be prepared to swoop in and grab Applejack.” Rainbow Dash nodded.

All three of the massive dog’s black heads regarded the orange pony walking toward it. The leftmost one spoke. “What is your name?”

Applejack stopped. “I’m Applejack, sir, and I’d shake your paw how-do if I thought you’d let me.”

The rightmost head spoke. “What is your quest?”

“To seek the Five Elements of Equilibrium and defeat Nightmare Moon.”

The middle head asked its question. “What is the square root of five hundred and forty-six?”

“Mistakes ain’t the same as being dishonest,” Applejack said.

“It’s a test of honesty and negligence,” the Cerberus answered quickly. “Who can say but that you should have learned math? That’s not one of the questions.”

“Applejack!” Twilight said, who had answered exactly that question on one of Princess Celestia’s old practice tests. “The answer is twenty-three point three six six six four two eight nine one zero nine!”

“Is that right?” Pinkie Pie asked. "Can we ever really know what truth is, or all we all merely gazing at shadows on the walls of a deep cave?"

“Yes, yes, no.”

“I trust Twilight." Applejack smiled up at the three drooling heads of the monster. “Negligence? Listen, sugar, I’ve got friends. I can’t do everything, but where I am weak, they are strong.”

“We’re not friends!” Twilight felt a need to clarify that. “Anyway, it’s called the law of comparative advantage—ponies are better off specializing in a few things and cooperating with other ponies who are specialized in different things than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. Even with you all.”

“Thank you, Twilight, and you too, Mr. Three Heads, for doing your duty,” Applejack said. She repeated Twilight’s answer.

“All right!” Rainbow Dash cheered. “Now we can enter the forest!”

But the Cerberus didn’t step aside. “No pony ever gets that,” it said. “I want a fourth question.”

“That’s not fair!” Twilight shouted. “You’re cheating.”

“He’s only cheating a little, Twilight,” Applejack said. “It’s all right if he only cheats a little.”

Twilight stared at the insane pony. "What?"

The three heads spoke. “What’s—”

“My—”

“Name?”

Applejack looked at the group of mortified ponies behind her. “I’m stumped. Y’all got any guesses?”

“One wrong guess and this leash of mine becomes very slack,” the Cerberus said. “Ponies run so slowly.”

“I…I don’t know!” Twilight rifled through her internal library, but nothing came up. The Cerberus didn’t have a…oh!

“It’s a trick question! It doesn’t have a name!”

“You don’t have a name,” Applejack said.

The three heads smiled. “Wrong.”

It stepped forward. The leash of vine stretched. Somepony screamed—probably Rarity—and Twilight nearly burnt out her horn trying to teleport and fire a vector at the same time. Even Rainbow Dash was barely a rainbow streak in the air when Applejack held out her hoof.

“Hold your horses. You cheated a little. I want to cheat a little too.”

To Twilight’s surprise, the Cerberus stopped. Great drops of drool that smelled like rotted meat and acid splashed around Applejack’s hoofs. “Go on.”

“I answered three of your questions, and so my friends deserve their passage through,” Applejack said. “That’s the honest truth and you know it. Now, I reckon it’s also true I didn’t answer your fourth question, but as I see it that’s on me and not them. You can eat me if you like, but fair’s fair. Let them pass.”

“Applejack, no!” Rainbow Dash was at her friend’s side in an instant. “You’re not sacrificing yourself!”

“I agreed to answer his questions or be eaten, and I always fulfill my obligations,” Applejack said. “But I reckon you ponies need me, so I don’t plan on being et just now.” She took off her hat and placed it on the ground in front of the giant dog, which sniffed at it with three sets of nostrils.

Applejack didn't lean away. "This is my hat. My mother wore it when she ran Sweet Apple Acres, and her mother wore it when she ran Sweet Apple Acres. I will come back for it, and then you can eat me if you want. Think of it as, uh…Twilight?”

Twilight started. “Huh?”

“What’s the word for a sort of thing that you lend a feller so as he allows you’re probably coming back?”

“Collateral,” Twilight said automatically.

“Right, that. So take my hat, and when we’re done saving Equestria, I’ll come back so we can finish our business.” Applejack looked the middle head in the eyes. “I trusted you. Now you’ve got to trust me.”

“Excuse me,” said the Cerberus in a soft, female voice. “But if you don’t let her go, I’ll destroy you. Um, but I hope we can still be friends.”

Twilight blinked. What was happening?

“Fluttershy!” Rarity said. “What are you doing on the monster’s head?”

Now Twilight saw the yellow Pegasus barely visible among the thick knotted fur on the middle head’s scalp. She wondered if it was worth trying to save her. She wondered if she could.

Rainbow Dash appeared in front of Fluttershy, who let out a sad little scream at the sudden sight of her friend.

“Fluttershy, what are you doing up here?”

“Well,” Fluttershy said, nervous at being the center of attention, “I had never seen a doggie-woggie this big before, so I just had to find out more about her. While you all were busy I was smoothing out the worst of the tangles in her fur and inspecting her skin. She has a very bad case of the fleas!”

“She?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I’m sure she's really a very sweet doggie.”

“Doggie?” Rainbow Dash squeezed Fluttershy’s cheeks exasperatedly. “It’s a giant killer monster!”

Fluttershy directed her quiet voice to the nearest humongous ear. “I’m sure she didn’t mean that. But, um, I have something to say.” She trotted over to the ear, which twitched and perked up. Twilight guessed this didn’t happen very often to the fearsome Cerberus.

“I bet you don’t eat regularly," Fluttershy said. “Poor doggie. Somepony ought to feed you a steak. In fact, if you eat my friend now, I’ll come back with a steak. A nice, big, juicy red steak.” The ear twitched again. Drool flooded out of the Cerberus’s three mouths like a stomach acid waterfall.

“But this will be a special steak,” Fluttershy continued. “It will have something funny in it. It will make you feel funny. Not in a good way. I’m telling you this now, but you won’t be able to resist, will you? A big, hungry dog like you? No, you’ll eat the steak, and the next one too, and the one after that. Each one will have something different. Each one will be worse.

“Maybe you won’t eat the next steak. But I’ll leave it there and come back with another one the day after. How long can you resist the smell of fresh, juicy steak? How long before the urge to rip into the tender, meaty flesh overwhelms you? You’ll whine, you’ll growl, you’ll tug at your collar and scratch at the ground, trying to distract yourself, to fight the desire, but you’ll lose. You’ll eat the steak. And guess what? It will be a normal, delicious steak.

“Now you don’t know what to think. Each steak hurts you, but you can’t stop eating them. When you try, you remember the one from before, the one that was just an ordinary steak, and you give in again. Every day is torture. Soon you learn to fear the sound of my wings. You hate the smell of meat. You bite the inside of your mouth to keep from eating. You bleed, and you still eat.

“One day, I bring you a particularly special steak. I tell you this. You know, and you eat it anyway. You’re glad. You’re happy it’s over. This one doesn’t hurt you at all. It puts you to sleep, a nice, gentle sleep. And the next day, Princess Celestia has to find a new guardian for the Everfree Forest.

“Applejack made a promise, and I’m making one too. Let her through…or I come back.”

It took a full minute before Twilight noticed her open mouth was aching. Everypony else was similarly affected, even the Cerberus, whose saliva had dried up in the wake of Fluttershy’s speech.

Slowly, carefully, the Cerberus plucked Applejack’s cowpony hat from the ground gingerly with its—her claws and placed it on her middle head. “Please—go. Even you, the answerer, I trust you to return. Take the yellow one and go.”

“Oh, that look is so not you!” Rarity exclaimed.

Everypony stared at her.

“What? That was terrifying!”

“Excuse me, but I’d like to come down now,” Fluttershy said.

Rainbow Dash slapped her on the back, eliciting an “Ow” from her fellow Pegasus. “That was awesome! Remind me never to get on your bad side. Need help?” Fluttershy nodded mutely, and Rainbow Dash carried her down.

Fluttershy was a Pegasus who was scared of heights but faced down a Cerberus like it was nothing. Twilight wasn’t sure what to make of that.

When she had deposited Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash jabbed Applejack in the chest. “Never do that again. We’re not letting you sacrifice yourself no matter what!”

Applejack smiled weakly. “You’re sweeter than an apple, but I always keep my promises. We’ll be heading on through now, Ms. I-Don't-Know-Your-Name.”

The guardian beast stepped aside. Surrounding Applejack on all sides, the ponies walked through the narrow opening between the black bramble and sharp thorn and were swallowed by the darkness.

Pinkie Pie's Test: Uncertainty

Twilight lit a light with her horn. “Nightmare Moon said there would be five tests. I think we just passed the first one.”

In the pink glow of Twilight’s magic, the forest felt almost warm…until the ponies looked past the fifteen feet or so of light to the dense darkness beyond. The canopy was so thick it cast the forest entirely in shadow. Twilight Sparkle’s horn was the only light the ponies had. Instinctively they bunched closer together.

After several minutes it became clear that no pony wanted to start moving through the forest. Applejack cleared her throat.

“Here’s a puzzler.” She looked younger without her hat on. “Why’s Nightmare Moon giving us the chance to beat her? Don’t make a lick of sense.”

“She wants to plunge Equestria’s economy into eternal depression,” Twilight said. “I don’t think she cares much about sense.”

“She likes playing a game,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering nearby. “I know the feeling.”

“Maybe she’s just being nice,” Fluttershy whispered.

“It’s a regal gesture,” Rarity said knowingly. “She has to give us a sporting chance. It’s in the rules somewhere, I’m sure.”

“I bet ol’ Nightmare Meanie just wants to be friends deep down,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Yeah…probably not that,” Twilight said. “Can we chalk it up to evil insanity and move on? I don’t think it matters.”

“Just a Northern minute now y’all,” Applejack said. “We can’t go off half-cocked. Remember how Nightmare Moon kept going on about her sister, Princess Celestia?”

“Well, Princess Celestia did lock her sister in the moon for a thousand years the last time Nightmare Moon tried something like this. She’s probably upset.”

“And Princess Celestia kept the money supply growing with the numbered garish domicile project,” Applejack said. Twilight winced at the way she butchered nominal gross domestic product. “Now Nightmare Moon is undoing that.”

“And she reversed the same punishment Princess Celestia inflicted on her and took her throne,” Twilight said. “Clearly she has a sister complex.”

Something clicked in Rarity’s eyes. “But don’t you see, Twilight? What remains of Princess Celestia’s legacy is you.”

Twilight blushed. “What?”

“Nightmare Moon has her sister’s throne and her sister’s Bank,” Rarity said. “She doesn’t have her sister's protégé.”

“If that Alicorn wanted to end this, it’d be over as fast and sure as a rattlesnake bite,” Applejack said. “So she wants you for something. Maybe she wants you to be hers the way you were Celestia’s. A…dark economist.”

There was a pause.

“Cooool,” Rainbow Dash said.

“That’s Princess Celestia,” Twilight said. “Anyway, I would never become Nightmare Moon’s ‘dark’ economist.”

“Celest—Princess Celestia probably never reckoned she’d see the inside of the sun,” Applejack countered.

Twilight didn’t have an answer to that.

She shivered. The temperature in the forest seemed to be dropping, the light of her horn dimming. The thorns looked sharper, longer, and not where they were a few minutes ago. The Everfree Forest was a magical forest, and one that hated ponies….

“We should keep moving.” Twilight peered her eyes, trying to see the dark path ahead. Her pink light didn’t penetrate far, but the trees and bush narrowed before them. “We’ll have to go single file. I’ll take lead since I’ve got the light.” But instead of walking forward, she turned to the other ponies. “Everypony okay with that?”

“I’ll go first,” Rainbow Dash said, “since I’m the fastest.”

“I’ll go first,” Applejack said, “since I’m the strongest.”

“I’ll go first,” Rarity said, “since I’m the most beautiful.”

“Rarity," Twilight sighed, "out of all the irrelevant criteria yet presented, that is the most irrelevant,”

“Nonsense.” Rarity tossed her hair, which didn’t work half as well in Twilight’s weak light. “Can you imagine any monster harming me?”

“I’ll go in the middle,” Fluttershy whispered, “since, uh, no pony is listening.”

“Girls, is anypony else here trained in economics?” Twilight paused. “Didn’t think so. I’ll take the lead.”

Rainbow Dash jabbed her hoof in Twilight’s direction. “I said I’m taking the lead! Doing awesome stuff is sort of my thing.”

“I should be in front,” Applejack said. “Worst case scenario the Cerberus doesn’t get to eat me.”

“No!” Twilight flared her horn’s light. “I’m taking lead, and that’s final.”

“I’m taking lead,” Pinkie Pie said, “because I’m already walking.” She trotted off into the blackness.

Twilight and the others stared as Pinkie Pie was swallowed by the shadows.

“W-Wait up!” Twilight raced after her, shining her Unicorn light on Pinkie Pie once more.

Pinkie turned her head at the sound of hooves clattering to catch up. “Oh, you girls are coming too? Neat!”

“Pinkie, don’t run ahead like that,” Twilight said. “The forest isn’t safe.”

“But you were going backwards,” Pinkie Pie said. “You all kept inching toward the entrance, and then we would have to answer those silly questions again.”

“I wasn’t afraid,” Rainbow Dash protested.

“Never said you were.”

Bathed in Twilight’s magical glow, Pinkie Pie took the lead, followed in single file by Twilight, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy, with Rainbow Dash hovering just above and behind her fellow Pegasus. They stopped at a fork in the path.

Twilight frowned. “Which path do we take? Nightmare Moon said she would be waiting in a castle…the castle of the Knights of Economics!”

Rainbow Dash perked up. “The what?”

“The Knights of Economics,” Twilight said. “Did you ever hear of Frankie Knight, the famous economist? She and some other econoponies built a castle right in the middle of the Everfree Forest, trying to purify its corrupt magic. But I don’t know which fork leads us to it.”

“Distract me,” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight hesitated. “What?”

“Distract me. It doesn’t work if I’m thinking.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Pinkie Sense. I’ll find our way if you just distract me.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I should have known better than to let the party pony take the lead.”

“Somepony had to.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Rainbow Dash huffed.

“Settle down, y’all,” Applejack said. “Pinkie Pie is the best businesspony in Ponyville. If she believes in Pinkie Sense, I believe in Pinkie Sense.”

Pinkie Pie hopped agitatedly. “Hurry up and distract me!”

“I’ll handle this,” Rarity said. “No pony can keep talking about nothing like I can. Pinkie, darling, do you remember the conversation we were having about Nightmare Moon corrupting Twilight and turning her into a dark economist? You know what it’s like to destroy a competitor. How would you get back at Princess Celestia if you were Nightmare Moon?”

“Oh, I would totally turn Twilight into a dark economist,” Pinkie said. “Yeah, and I would make her read dark books full of evil spells and fill her with hate and suffering and real business cycle theory. I would make her wear all black with lots of pale makeup and she’d have to drink blood instead of water and left! and call herself Shadow Twilight and….”

Twilight and the other ponies shared a stunned silence as Pinkie trotted off down the left fork, still talking. They ran to catch up with her.

“…Give out walnuts and pennies on Nightmare Night instead of candy!” Pinkie Pie inhaled. “And—”

“I ask, Pinkie,” Rarity said loudly, “because I know you’ve been rather successful yourself competing in the bakery industry. Whatever happened to dear Mr. Landbiscuit?”

The pace slowed as they approached another split in the road. This time they faced three paths. Pinkie Pie frowned. “Um…oh, I remember!” She trotted on the middle path. “He’s living a happy and fulfilling life in a psychiatric ward. I should visit him sometime.”

“I think that would be unwise,” Rarity said delicately.

So it went. The path continued to branch, split, and meander. It hid behind thorns and under rocks, wound across narrow bridges and through groves of trees with frightening faces—Twilight wasn’t sure how literally to interpret that. Pinkie Pie, chattering aimlessly with Rarity, led them past it all. With her in charge, the forest itself stopped seeming frightening. The obvious thorns and cliche darkness almost seemed…funny.

“This forest isn’t so scary,” Rainbow Dash said. She stuck her tongue out at a looming tree. “Blehhh!”

Twilight trotted after the pink earth pony with the incredible sixth sense. “Pinkie, this is amazing. Just how are you doing this?”

“LA LA LA!” Pinkie Pie shouted. “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Twilight frowned. “What—”

The light from her horn vanished. Absolute darkness fell over the ponies.

“AHHHHH!” Rainbow Dash screamed. There was the sound of two ponies colliding and falling to the ground, as if Rainbow Dash had tried to fly into the hoofs of a blind, unprepared, and nevertheless incapable Fluttershy.

“I can’t see my hoofs!” Applejack wailed. “I can’t see my hoofs!”

“No pony looks good with zero lighting!” Rarity gasped.

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie shouted. She sounded more serious than Twilight had ever heard her be. “Turn your light back on!”

Twilight concentrated. A few brief sparks fell from her horn, but that was all. “I can’t!”

“Why not?” Pinkie demanded. “We need your light!”

“I can’t!” Twilight cried. “It’s not working!”

“Then think! I’m an Earth Pony; I don’t know anything about magic! What could have happened?”

Twilight closed her eyes—the forest looked exactly the same, but it helped—and thought. She couldn’t have run out of magic with only a basic lamppost spell. “I don’t know!”

“Figure it out right now or we’re through!” Pinkie snapped. “You’re a powerful magician, right? What’s eating you?”

Twilight realized. She opened her eyes—pointless—and said, “We’re in the Everfree Forest. It hates ponies.”

“And?”

“It eats ponies and their magic. We’re in its belly…digesting.”

The temperature plummeted so fast it made Twilight’s head feel dizzy. All around them she heard the black thorns rustling, shifting, moving. Fear, real, mind-stealing fear ran through her and set her legs shaking.

“No!” Rarity panicked. “I can’t be eaten! Stomach acid does terrible things to my complexion!”

“I should have let that Cerberus finish me off,” Applejack moaned. “It’s a better fate than being et by a forest.”

“Angel, put that carrot down,” Fluttershy whimpered. Somepony beside her vomited noisily.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said numbly. “I brought you all here to be eaten. I’m so sorry.”

Twilight didn’t see it, but she felt Pinkie Pie’s hoof connect with her face. She fell backwards, stunned.

“All you ponies need to get it together!” Pinkie Pie said. “You’ve all been acting weird the minute we got in this forest, standing around discussing the villain's motives and plot rather than plunging ahead thoughtlessly like the ponies I know. I don’t think there even is any such thing as a dark economist, and if there were Twilight wouldn’t become one.”

Twilight blinked—at least she could feel the motion of her eyelids. Was Pinkie Pie seriously the voice of reason?

“Twilight wouldn’t become a dark economist,” Pinkie Pie continued. “She’d become a grey economist. Get it? Because twilight is in between the day and the night? Pretty good, huh? Been looking for an opportunity.”

Never mind.

Twilight started as hoofs lifted her from the ground. One yanked her tail. Twilight jumped in surprise, and a bright light flashed from her horn and faded.

“Got it!” Pinkie Pie pulled Twilight’s tail again, yielding another burst of light. She sped up, tugging Twilight like an obstinate gas-powered flashlight.

“Pinkie!” Twilight wailed. “What are you doing?”

“You think the forest is eating us? Twilight, you’re supposed to be smart! Nightmare Moon is here! The Knights of Whatever lived here! The forest doesn’t eat ponies. There’s a way to beat it. You knew that before we even stepped hoof in here!”

Twilight’s panicked brain couldn’t keep up with a lecture from Pinkie Pie on logic, not while her tail was being pumped and her horn emitting light like a schizophrenic light bulb. “Sto-o-op!”

Pinkie pulled. Light burst onto Applejack’s confused eyes. “All you ponies—”

FLASH. Pink light illuminated a startled Rarity’s pale face.

“Need to—”

FLASH. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy tucked their heads behind their wings.

“BUCK UP!”

And there was light. Not much of it, a weak pink glow that only gave shape and depth to the shadows that surrounded the trembling ponies, but there was light, and it came from Twilight Sparkle’s horn.

“Finally.” Pinkie Pie released Twilight’s tail. “Can we keep going now?”

Rainbow Dash coughed. “I wasn’t scared.”

“I was,” Twilight said. “Thank you, Pinkie.”

The pink pony’s eyes were bright and friendly. “No problem, Twilight. Remind me to throw you a party when we get back.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Duh! I never forget about a party appointment.”

Bathed in the cool glow of Twilight’s horn, the six ponies wound their way through the forest.

Pinkie Pie stopped suddenly.

“My Pinkie Sense is tingling,” she said. “We’re near something.”

Twilight gulped. “Nightmare Moon?”

“Doesn’t knarple like it.”

The narrow path of bramble in front of them split with a groaning rumble. The two forks split again, and those four multiplied, each heading off in a different direction. Even as the paths grew exponentially, others twisted, turned, closed off. Each road was lined with warped trees and bristled with ready thorn, and all of them were moving, changing and growing like a chameleon hydra made of spikes.

“There’s dozens of paths!” Twilight shined her horn on them, but the all looked the same, murky and foreboding.

“They’re splitting up farther ahead too,” Pinkie said. “Maybe a thousand in all.”

“I’ll scout ahead,” Rainbow Dash said.

“No,” Pinkie Pie said. “It’s playing me, and it’ll only cheat more if you try to help.”

“I’m sick of cheaters,” Twilight said. “How about I blast a hole in this forest?”

“It’s only cheating a little,” Pinkie Pie said. “Which means we keep playing.”

“Applejack said something like that too.”

“It’s the Knightian code,” Pinkie Pie said distractedly.

“It means we keep playing as long as there’s a game to play,” Rarity explained. “How else do you think a town that has the Carousel Boutique at one end and Sweet Apple Acres at the other ever survived?”

“So you have heard of Frankie Knight!”

“Who?”

“I can’t knorp anything,” Pinkie Pie said. “Let’s go.” She trotted off down the nearest path.

It took Twilight’s brain a moment to catch up with her ears. “Pinkie! Where are you going?”

“Don’t know! Keep up!”

They caught up with her. Pinkie Pie glanced back. “There’s no way to tell, but we’ve got to pick something. Don’t worry, if anything kneerps I’ll knorp it.”

The path Pinkie Pie chose was winding and hard. The ground pushed back at their hoofs with every step, the sharp prickling needles closed in from either side. Even walking in a line, the road was so narrow the bramble scraped their sides. Only thanks to Twilight’s magical glow did they manage to avoid losing an eye to thorns that waited in ambush like midair mines. Overhead the forest seemed to shrink in, the branches drawing over their path like the closing mouth of a great beast as they marched willingly into its belly.

“Pinkie,” Twilight whispered, “maybe we should go back?”

“And let Nightmare Moon win? No way!”

Twilight winced at how loud Pinkie Pie’s voice was. “I just mean maybe we picked the wrong direction.”

“I don’t think there is a right direction,” Pinkie Pie said. “Just a right destination.”

Twilight relented, but as the path went on with no sign of ending, she began to feel fear again. What if they were trapped in a maze with no way out? It would be an easy task for Nightmare Moon to doom them to endlessly wandering the forest. “Pinkie—”

“Just keep walking.”

The trail, if you could call it that, tapered even further. The sharp bramble constricted around them like a straightjacket made of knives, and the branches pressed down like the foot of a wooden giant timberwolf, intent on crushing them. It forced them down onto their bellies, crawling across the rough dirt and unforgiving rocks. Needles jabbed at them, thin branches whipped and drew blood.

Was this, Twilight wondered, how the forest digested ponies, flaying away their skin, forcing them to wear their own bodies to soft weakness until they were nothing but blood, bones and guts to be absorbed by the roots in the hard soil?

“Pinkie Pie,” Applejack’s voice trembled, “are you sure this is right?”

“Just keep crawling.”

“I can’t fly!” Rainbow Dash complained. “This hurts!”

“A bit of ground is good for you.”

“This is doing terrible things to my skin,” Rarity moaned.

“Calluses are in this year.”

“Meep,” Fluttershy meeped.

“Mope,” Pinkie Pie concurred.

“Pinkie!” Twilight whispered. “I could blast a hole in the wood. We could make a run for it.”

“Not if it means losing the light!”

Pinkie Pie crawled forward and disappeared into a mouth. Twilight blanched.

It ate Pinkie Pie!

Then she saw what was right in front of her eyes: an opening. She crawled forward, paying no mind to the rocks that dug at her ribs or the sharp bramble that poked holes in her side. She squeezed herself through the narrow hole and emerged into a wide-open space lit by a pale blue glow.

Pinkie Pie stood a distance away, gazing up at a statue of a tall Pegasus.

“You did it!” Twilight shrieked, running forward. “Come on, girls!”

“Yeehaw!” Applejack pulled herself through. “Pinkie did it, y’all!”

“Fabulous!” Rarity gasped, allowing Applejack to help her out. She was followed shortly by Fluttershy, who shot out of the opening as if she had been kicked by somepony. Rainbow Dash emerged and took to the air, whooping as she made a circuit around the other ponies.

Twilight trotted over to Pinkie Pie, who smiled at her. “Great job, Twilight. I knew you could do it.”

“It’s all thanks to you, Pinkie Pie. I’m sorry for doubting you.”

Pinkie Pie shrugged. “We had to pick something.”

Twilight nodded and looked up at the tall statue. The Pegasus’s wings were spread triumphantly open. It held a spear in one hoof and a book in the other. “Who is this?”

The other ponies crowded around them. Pinkie Pie pointed at an inscription at the base of the statue. “Frankie Knight.”

Twilight sucked in air. She looked up at the noble face of the Pegasus and then down at the inscription. It was faded and blurred, but she could make out one group of lines.

Knowledge shrinks what ignorance compounds
Uncertainty brought you here to-day
No profit led you, but profit you found
When the Night called you to play

Twilight frowned. “Seems vaguely ominous.”

Rarity gasped. “Look!”

They looked in the direction her hoof pointed. A glowing blue ball not even the size of an apple with bright green eyes and bug-like wings rose from the ground.

“It’s cute!” Fluttershy said.

“No,” Twilight said. “It’s a Parasprite.”

Rarity's Test: Gossip

As magical creatures go, the parasprite’s art direction might be even lazier than the Cerberus’s. It consists of one sphere, blue in this one’s case, perhaps the size of a tennis ball, and two smaller balls superimposed on top colored green so you know they’re eyes. Add some vaguely insectoid wings and legs, and you’re done.

Doesn’t sound very threatening, does it? Certainly Rarity and Fluttershy find something charming in its big-eyed simplicity. Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash are less taken by its cutesy-wutesy appeal. But you would be hard-pressed by reference to the parasprite’s appearance to explain why Twilight Sparkle is standing fore with her horn ready to fire or why she is shouting at the other ponies to flee.

Parasprites aren’t strong. They are fast. But what really scares Twilight is that parasprites lie…sometimes. It’s hard to tell. They confuse ponies and get them all mixed up.

One pony alone is weak. Only when they work together do ponies become capable of great things. Twilight calls it specialization and the division of labor, cooperation and exchange pushing ever-outward the extent of the market. The other ponies call it friendship.

What concentration of lies can a friendship survive? If I told you the answer was as low as ten percent…

…I’d be lying. And that would make the rest of this story rather useless as anything except entertainment, wouldn’t it?

That’s the point. And remember, all of this is

Just.

One.

Parasprite.

“Pinkie, take the girls and get out of here!” Twilight kept her glowing horn pointed level at the floating blue Parasprite. “Run!”

“Twilight, why are you so frightened?” Rarity sounded alarmed. “Look at the poor creature, it’s harmless.”

“No,” Twilight said. “It is very, very dangerous.”

“Then we’ll help you,” Rainbow Dash said.

“No! It’s more dangerous the more of us there are.”

“Twlight,” Pinkie Pie said, “I know the forest is scary, but I think you may be overreacting just the teensiest—”

“I’m not! I need you all to go! Now! I’m the only one who can fight it!”

“Listen very carefully, Twilight Sparkle,” Princess Celestia said. Twilight pulled her eyes away from the princess’s flowing mane that looked like the pulsing nebulae she sometimes saw in her telescope and focused. “As an economist you will go on many journeys and face all kinds of dangers, and through these trials you will grow. There are, however, a few threats, a very few, which you must never try to fight but instead flee as fast as you can and find me. These are the draconequus, though I pray you never meet one, other Alicorns, and the parasprites….”

That’s not an option now, Princess, Twilight thought grimly. My, uh, my specialized cooperation partners are standing behind me. I have to…guarantee the completion of our contract.

And if I’m going to face your sister, I need to get stronger.

“Please,” a trembling voice said. Twilight started. It took her a moment to realize it was the parasprite. “I’m so hungry.”

Twilight readied a laser from her horn. “I’ve got something for you to eat.”

“No!” Fluttershy threw herself in front of the parasprite. “You can’t hurt it!”

“Fluttershy, get out of the way!”

“No! It hasn’t done anything to threaten us. You should be ashamed of yourself, Twilight Sparkle!”

Fluttershy smiled and cooed softly as the parasprite’s legs touched her head. She giggled. “It likes me.”

“Fluttershy, I need to destroy it!” Twilight said.

“Oh, shut up, Twilight!” Applejack said. “You’re about the most untrusting pony I’ve ever met. Shame on you!”

Twilight turned, startled, to Applejack, who looked equally shocked. “Hold on y’all, that wasn’t me—”

“It’s gorgeous, really,” Rarity said. “We should all be so lucky as to have a parasprite of our very own, like Fluttershy.”

“What?” Rarity said. “That wasn’t me!”

“It’s the parasprite,” Twilight said. “Everything it says is a lie.”

“Was that you,” Rainbow Dash asked, “or the parasprite?”

“It was the parasprite.”

“Uh, was that you or the parasprite?”

“It was the parasprite,” Twilight said. “But before it was me!”

“Idiot,” Twilight’s voice added. “But of course you can’t keep up with an academic like me, Rainbow Dolt.”

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash said. “I may be a dropout, but I’m not stupid!”

“Actually, Rainbow, you kind of are stupid,” Applejack said. “No, I didn’t mean that! You’re really stupid.”

"Applejack! What—”

“Wait, I didn’t insult you,” Twilight said. “It was the parasprite. If I wanted to insult you, I’d point out how much of a coward you were earlier, jumping into Fluttershy’s hoofs like a frightened little baby.”

“Stop it, all of you!” Rarity said. “Am I the only one here with any class?”

“Probably!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Since you’re the only one here who’s so snooty!”

Twilight wasn’t even sure if that was the parasprite or the real Rainbow Dash talking. It didn’t matter. She took aim at the tiny monster floating just above Fluttershy’s head. “Fluttershy, duck!”

A beam of lavender magic burst from Twilight’s horn. Fluttershy barely had time to flinch before the blast struck the parasprite and threw it backwards.

“No!” Fluttershy screamed. “What have you done?”

But the parasprite didn’t vanish or lay dead. It…no, they rose from the ground. One blue parasprite and one red. Even as Twilight reader another beam, they multiplied again. Now there were four—no, eight. Green and purple and—make that one hundred and twenty eight, brown and orange and—

“Oh, no.” Twilight felt her heart plummet through her stomach. She turned to the other ponies. “We have to run, now!”

“Run toward the parasprites!” she added.

“That was the parasprites talking! Hold still, they want you to run!”

“I’m not afraid!” Rainbow Dash swooped toward the growing swarm of parasprites and was swallowed by them. The rolling mass of multiplying parasprites poured over Fluttershy and rumbled toward the remaining four ponies. Twilight could only teleport out of the way and watch as the others were swept up by the buzzing bug-like creatures. In an instant her view of them was blocked off entirely by the parasprites surrounding them.

And the parasprites began to speak. “Fluttershy—”

“Rainbow Dash—”

“Rarity—”

“Pinkie Pie—”

“Applejack—”

“It’s me—”

“Angel—”

“Fluttershy—”

“Sweetie Belle—”

“Twilight—”

“Apple Bloom—”

“And I want you to know—”

“You’re weak—”

“Stupid—”

“A terrible sister—”

“Contemptible—”

“Gullible—”

“Don’t listen!” Twilight shouted. “They’re lying! It’s the parasprites talking!”

“If I’m a parasprite, how could I know—”

“You’re scared to fly—”

“Failed every test, and you were trying—”

“Called me ugly—”

“Lonely—”

“Losing money—”

Twilight screamed. “STOP!”

She summoned more magic than she knew she had and teleported into the mass of parasprites. Her magic flung them outward, or at least that’s what she intended. They were heavy, tens of thousands of parasprites—Twilight couldn’t imagine how densely packed they must have been—and they were still talking.

“Girls!” Twilight gasped.

The other ponies didn’t respond. They all faced different directions, all turned away from her, all shouting, arguing, crying before the parasprite horde. Only then did Twilight notice how the parasprites were organized into the likenesses of different ponies even distorted by Twilight's magical push. She saw herself and the others, and a dozen other faces she didn’t recognize.

“Girls!” Twilight tried again. “We have to—”

The oxygen vanished from Twilight’s lungs. Pain took its place. Her magic collapsed and the glow from her horn faded as she tumbled over the dirt. She barely had time to register Applejack’s hoof drawing back in before the parasprites swooped down and surrounded them once more.

For a few panicked seconds all Twilight could think about was the fact that she couldn’t breathe, and when she finally managed to suck in a breath, all she could think about was how much it hurt. At least one rib was fractured, maybe two.

Right...too many lies breaks down social cohesion.

Twilight tried not to move. It hurt, but she readied her horn. The parasprites had beaten her, beaten all of them. Her magic was countered, her words drowned out amidst the torrent of lies and, even more destructively, truths. She should have listened to Princess Celestia and fled immediately. Now the fate of Equestria hung in the balance. She wracked her mind for spells she could use.

Something tickled her forehead. She shook her head, and a parasprite floated down in front of her.

No….

It multiplied. And again. Hundreds, then thousands of them. Green, blue, purple, white, gold and orange, and they began to take shape….

“Hello, Twilight Sparkle,” said Princess Celestia.

Even though she knew it was only the parasprites, hearing the princess’s voice warmed her heart and calmed her pain. If the parasprites thought they could break her by showing her the one person she loved and trusted above all, they were as stupid as they looked.

“I’m so sorry,” Princess Celestia said. “I never meant for this to happen.”

Twilight knew it was a lie; she also knew it was the voice of her princess. “I know. It’s okay.”

“I meant for you to die slowly,” Princess Celestia sighed. “Who knew that you would be so stupid as to challenge a parasprite head-on?”

“I should have run,” Twilight said. “I know that. My stupidity cost us everything.”

“Not everything,” Princess Celestia said. “Watching you die like this is amusing in its own way. As a student you were always lacking, but as a victim you’re quite delightful.”

“Talking won’t kill me.”

“No, you will. See that spear that stone econopony is carrying? It’s quite sharp, and you still have magic to teleport. Don’t worry, your friends will join you soon. A spit of ponies for the forest to feast on. Droll, don't you think?”

“If you think I’ll kill myself….”

“I know you will.” Princess Celestia’s voice was soft and warm. "Since it is my last request of you as your princess."

“You are cruel,” Twilight said, “but my princess is not, and you are not her.”

“But I am cruel.” A blue pony with a silver mane formed beside Princess Celestia.

Irrational anger filled Twilight, an even more effective cure for the pain in her ribs than the loving embrace of Princess Celestia. She pushed herself to her knees. “Trixie!”

“And I thought you’d die from boring yourself to death,” Trixie smirked. “But dying out of sheer stupidity? You never fail to embarrass.”

“Trixie was my best and favorite student,” Princess Celestia said. “Never you.”

Twilight laughed. “I know that isn’t true.”

“Twilight!” Princess Celestia’s voice snapped exactly like it did whenever Twilight made a critical mistake. It was so familiar and real she couldn’t help but freeze and backtrack, looking for her error before she disappointed her princess even more. “You know I never thought much of your attempts at adding to economic knowledge.”

“Hard to keep up with a pony who’s been doing it for a thousand years,” Twilight whispered.

Trixie sneered. “Why do you think you lost here? We’ve been doing this forever. Making ponies kill themselves isn’t even the best part, not when you can get them to turn on each other. Want to watch your friends kill each other? Or do you want to kill them yourself?”

“Not happening.”

“Twilight, try to keep up.” Princess Celestia’s disappointment was heavy. “We can read your mind. You will break in exactly the way we want, when we want. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Show me,” Princess Celestia ordered. “Repeat the lesson in your words.”

It was an old practice between them. “You knew everything once you touched my head, all the levers to pull, every strength and weakness, and you’ve been practicing for so long you know exactly how to manipulate them. My brain is putty in your hoofs.”

“How does it end?”

“With my death.”

“Good.” Princess Celestia sounded genuinely pleased. Even paralyzed with fear and buzzing with pain and hatred, there was nothing that made Twilight happier than her princess’s approval.

“Always a suck-up,” Trixie said. “That’s why no pony likes you. That, and your hair. And face. And…actually, what is there to like about you? Maybe if you knew the answer to that question, you’d be willing to talk to that cute blue-maned stallion instead of just stalking him.”

Twilight glared at Trixie. “Who?”

“Oh, but don’t pretend you don’t understand, stupid, I know everything. I even know that circuitous route you take through the courtyard three times a day just so you can see him standing guard. Wonder if he notices you? Want to know what he thinks about you? Nothing. Want to know what he would think about you if you ever had the courage to talk to him?” Trixie giggled. “But I think you already know the answer to that question or you would have found the courage by now, wouldn’t you?”

“Trixie,” Twilight said, “even when you weren’t a parasprite, I never believed a word you said.”

“But you believe me,” Princess Celestia said. “My faithful student, so eager, so ready to please, so unimaginative, so limited. Why do you think I sent you away to the NGDP Targeting Festival in Ponyville? Most plausible hypothesis.”

The pain in her side throbbed. “Knew Nightmare Moon was coming,” Twilight gasped. “Wanted to protect me.”

“Be serious.”

“Don’t know.”

“It’s simple. I can’t stand the way you spend every festival following me around like a dog. ‘Princess, oh Princess,’” now Princess Celestia’s voice was a cruel mockery of Twilight's, “‘can we study more theory together? Princess, I learned a new magic spell, want to see? Princess, what is that book? How about that one? Oh, Princess, Princess, Princess!’”

“I’ll list every bad thing you’ve ever done,” Trixie said. “Every moment of your life that brings you shame. You ate all the sugar out of the bowl, but your parents blamed your brother and you let them. You did this twice, actually, and the second time was worse because you knew he would be blamed for it. Everypony made fun of Nook for the way she talked, and you laughed with them. You spat out the food at the school in front of the very ponies who cooked it and said it tasted terrible. Ooh, and what you helped me do to Lemon Hearts—”

“Shut up,” Twilight trembled.

“Want me to skip ahead? Oh, I know just the thing. Since Princess Celestia is here, let’s tell her about what you do at night with that dust-covered algebra book—”

“Shut up!”

“Twilight,” Princess Celestia said. “I already know. Every shameful, embarrassing, disgusting thing you’ve ever done, I have always known and I have always loathed you for it. It can end on that spear anytime you want. Look at me, Twilight. I love you.”

Twilight shut her eyes. A dozen pairs of legs peeled them open.

“Don’t turn away,” Princess Celestia said gently. Her voice was forgiving and kind. “I love you, Twilight Sparkle, like a mother loves her daughter. I don't want to hurt you. I want your pain to end. I want you to finally make me proud. Show me how much your teleportation spell has improved. Do it! Do it, and let the last thing you hear be your loving princess telling you how much she despises you.”

Peals of high-pitched laughter burst like audible lightning from behind the princess and Trixie’s forms. Panic seized Twilight. Nightmare Moon had come.

But it was not Nightmare Moon who swept the parasprites away with her tail. It was Rarity.

“Come now, Twilight, they’re only bugs,” she said.

Twilight couldn’t believe her eyes. “Rarity?”

“Ponies usually are stunned to see me,” Rarity said. “Admittedly, not for the reasons you are.”

Twilight lowered her head. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Nonsense!” Rarity said. “You’re an econopony! Thinking is what you do. If you don’t have that, what are you?”

“Not much.”

“Exactly,” Rarity said. Twilight looked up sharply.

Rarity shook her head. “That was not me.”

“Shut up, Rarity!” Twilight snapped. “You don’t need parasprites to say nasty things about people.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Boring.”

“You ugly pony,” she added. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to keep from laughing when you stepped inside my shop?”

“You are beautiful,” Rarity said. “I normally can’t resist giving makeovers to first-timers, but the true you always shines through.”

“A lying coward.”

“The bravest pony I ever met.”

“Who let Applejack sacrifice herself to the Cerberus.”

“Who was courageous enough to trust her friend, and whose knowledge let us pass through.”

“Whose light failed in the maze of thorns.”

“Who followed first after Pinkie Pie, whose light restored itself in the blackest darkness.”

The second voice, the other Rarity, was splitting apart, becoming less Rarity and more its components. It began to fade. “Lost to the parasprites….”

“No,” Rarity said simply.

“Who…disappointed…her princess….”

“Princess Celestia relied on you to manage the NGDP Targeting Festival,” Rarity said. “She hid you from Nightmare Moon and trusted you to gather the Elements of Equilibrium and protect Equestria. I have never met the princess, Twilight, but I cannot understand how you would think that she feels anything but love and pride for you.”

Twilight craned her ears. No voice answered Rarity.

“They’re gone,” Rarity said. “Twilight, you can stand now.”

Twilight wiped her eyes. “Ow!”

“Twilight!” Applejack's voice called. Twilight looked up in surprise as Applejack raced over. “I’m so sorry, something funny was going on in my head, I reckon I must’ve—”

“It’s fine.” Twilight winced as Applejack helped her up. She leaned gratefully on the strong Earth Pony.

The ponies were all free, the parasprites gone, though the memories remained, etched on Applejack’s apologetic face and Rarity’s proud one, Fluttershy with Rainbow Dash’s head tucked under her wing and Pinkie Pie frowning like she was puzzling something out.

“What happened?” Twilight asked, bewildered. “How did you defeat the parasprites?”

“It was all Rarity,” Applejack said. “she started talking like…like the parasprites except not evil. Some real cutting stuff, and she laughed like…like a witch except more evil.” Her face twisted. “She tossed her hair real pretty, you should have seen it—”

“I have,” Twilight smiled.

“It shut them up quicker than hoof on a rattlesnake. Started…de-multiplying.”

“Dividing.”

“Ain’t that what they were doing before?”

Twilight frowned. “They were dividing, which caused them to multiply…uh, I’m going to have to think about this one.”

“Rarity said nice things too,” Fluttershy said. “Nicer than the parasprites could be mean.”

Twilight looked at Rarity, who beamed. “The answer to lies and deceit is sincere kindness, as much of it as possible.”

“But Parasprites are one of the most dangerous magical species in the world,” Twilight said. “They’ve had thousands of years to practice destroying people with falsehoods and cruelty!”

“And?” Rarity was unimpressed. “I went to high school.”

Pinkie Pie pointed a hoof. “It’s still there!”

Twilight gasped. Behind Rarity the single blue parasprite hovered.

“Hurt…ponies,” it said. Twilight strained to hear it.

“Some, yes,” Rarity said. She stepped forward. The parasprite shrunk back. “I can name them all before you can. But the difference between you and me, you rude little thing, is that I grew out of it. You never will.”

“Hunted…many ponies…how?”

“How?” Rarity laughed like the whine of a metal saw. “You chose the wrong ponies and paid the price. À bon cheval, non? Everything you said about my friends was utterly foolish.”

“Read…minds.”

“But it takes a true friend to read the heart,” Rarity said. “And you thought you tear us apart? Ânerie! No offense, Fluttershy.”

“None taken.”

“You see,” Rarity said, “Fluttershy, who you said is weak, tames bears. Rainbow Dash, who you said is stupid, makes mockeries of millionaires. Pinkie Pie, who you said is lonely, is the most beloved pony in Ponyville. Applejack, who you said is irresponsible, works from sunup to sundown gathering apples and running her family’s business. Twilight Sparkle, whom you tried to destroy in a most base and cowardly fashion, is the most brilliant econopony in Equestria, and it is far too important that her head be full of facts and figures for her to listen to any of your lies!”

“And me.” Rarity smiled. It was the smile of a shark. “You tried to use Sweetie Belle against me? Sweetie Belle is cute. I am not cute.

“Begone, foul creature, and trouble ponies nevermore. If you’re lucky, I shan’t say anything to my friends at the spa next week about your unbelievable tackiosity.”

The blue parasprite hesitated, floating in midair, and then it turned and fled past the thorns and into the shadows.

Rarity exhaled. “Au revoir. Not.”

“Let me at it!” Rainbow Dash shoved Fluttershy away and flew toward the impenetrable hedge of wooden teeth the parasprite had disappeared into. “Let me through!” She tried to push her way through, was repelled, and flew forward again, paying no regard to the blood that dripped from her legs and head.

“Stop it!” Fluttershy cried. “You’re hurting yourself!”

Twilight concentrated. A magical glow surrounded Rainbow Dash and pulled her back.

“Let me go!” Rainbow Dash screamed. Fresh tears poured over worn tracks down her cheeks. “Don’t hold me down!”

Twilight dropped her, shocked. “I just didn’t want you to hurt yourself!”

Rainbow Dash burst into the air and vanished. A rainbow trail marked her path to the other side of the clearing and beyond.

Rainbow Dash's Test: Optimization

Twilight leaned against Applejack. Fluttershy dragged her wings behind Rarity as Pinkie Pie led them out of the clearing and down the path. While still dark and frightening, the forest no longer seemed to be trying to eat them. Lit blue and green florescent, from what Twilight didn't know, the forest felt pleasantly indifferent to their presence. Twilight guessed it was because they were on the well-trodden path to the ancient castle of the Knights of Economics.

It had been an hour since Rainbow Dash had flown off on her own. Twilight was worried, but the other ponies seemed less concerned about their friend alone in a malevolent forest full of dangerous magical creatures and more about their flagging stamina.

“My hoofs ache,” Rarity whined.

“My wings ache,” Fluttershy sighed.

Twilight turned her neck. “Then get them off the ground!”

“My side aches,” Applejack complained.

“Then you shouldn’t have kicked me!”

“My Pinkie Sense aches,” Pinkie Pie said. “It feels really knurly.”

Twilight frowned. “A small protuberance?”

“Exactly! It’s like sitting on a ridge for a really long time but in my knapp instead of my rump.”

The stabbing pain in her ribs sucked Twilight’s patience away. “Aren’t any of you worried about Rainbow Dash? She could be—who knows what could have happened to her?”

“Rainbow Dash is faster than a rattlesnake in July,” Applejack said. “Nightmare Moon would have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch her.”

“There won’t be a morning if we don’t defeat Nightmare Moon!”

“No need to shout, sugar cube. I’m right here.”

“I shouldn’t have trusted that parasprite,” Fluttershy moaned. “I’m so sorry.”

“We were all taken in,” Twilight said.

“Except Rarity,” Applejack pointed out. “When she turned to Pinkie, whispered something and giggled, the parasprites shut up like their own granny had snapped a stick at them.”

Pinkie stopped. She tilted her head. “I sense water. A lot of it.”

“With your Pinkie Sense?” Twilight asked.

“No, with my ears, silly.”

They came to another clearing, much larger than before, one where the space extended all the way to the sky. The ponies blinked in the sunlight and squinted their eyes at a castle and the wide moat that surrounded it. There was the distant sound of rushing water. Twilight wondered where it came from.

The castle was tall and mostly grey, though Twilight thought she could make out what might have been chipped and faded paint on the distant stone. Conical spires topped the towers, and in the back of the bailey some kind of keep or library loomed. The drawbridge was raised.

“Rainbow Dash could fly us across if she was here,” Applejack said.

The water exploded like a latent tsunami. Twilight reared back at the unexpected torrent of rain.

“NOT MORE PONIES! GO AWAY!”

The scream was like the explosion of a volcano that spat fury instead of lava and gas, and it came from the mouth of a giant sea serpent.

Covered in glittering, damaged purple scales that looked like they had been dragged through a minefield of explosive soap, the serpent rose to a frightening height and roared. Its head was covered in odd tufts of orange hair, and it wore a fabulous mustache with utter panache.

Twilight and the others wilted at the sight and sound of an angry sea serpent, except for Fluttershy, who stepped forward.

“Wow!” she gushed. “A real sea serpent! What happened to you scales?”

“A flying pony happened,” the serpent snarled. It raised a hand tipped with four razor-sharp claws and brought it down. Twilight teleported so close to Fluttershy that they touched and teleported again before the claws closed around the space they had just occupied.

Her heart pumping, adrenaline drowning the pain in her ribs, Twilight left Fluttershy by the trees and teleported back to the other ponies, who wisely turned and fled for the forest.

The serpent’s tail whipped out of the moat with a huge burst of water and blocked their path. Rarity screamed.

Like the rest of the serpent’s body, the scales on its long, thick tail were damaged and cracked. Twilight wanted the serpent’s attention on her, so she fired a magical blast from her horn into one of the gaps. The serpent roared, nearly knocking her off her feet. Then it attacked.

The serpent slammed its hand down flat like it intended to crush her. She teleported onto the back of it. Its long arm stretched out invitingly, so she ran up it, sinking her hooves into the gaps among the scales. The serpent roared in pain and tried to shake her off, but it’s hard to unbalance a teleporting pony who’s relying on her magic as much as her hoofs to stay upright.

Besides, she wanted its attention on her, and teleporting made a good show. Fluttershy couldn’t carry them across, and it took too much time to charge the magic necessary for such a far teleportation if the serpent was attacking them. As long as the bridge was up and the serpent wasn’t down, they couldn’t get to the castle.

Had Rainbow Dash made it to the serpent? What had happened to her?

The serpent’s other claw reached for her; she teleported onto it instead and kept running. She teleported up the arm and into the air, biting onto the long hair of its mustache just in time. Again she vanished in a lavender flash, appearing on the top of the serpent’s snout. Her horn glowed with magical power.

She couldn’t win a fight with a sea serpent. But maybe she could force an injured and desperate animal to submit.

Twilight fired. The serpent screamed. So close to the serpent’s mouth, Twilight’s whole body shook with the incredible noise.

“S-s-stop fighting us,” Twilight chattered, “or I’ll blast you again!”

The serpent’s voice sounded distorted and odd from the top of its snout. “Instead of threatening me, little pony, you should be begging for the lives of your friends.”

Twilight looked over the edge of the serpent’s snout. Its tail coiled around Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Applejack, who bucked and struggled but to no avail.

It could crush them instantly. There was no way she could reach them in time.

“You’re so close to my mouth,” the serpent said. “Use your magic trick to get inside and I won’t hurt your little friends. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted pony flesh.”

So it hadn’t eaten Rainbow Dash. Where was she?

“You promise not to hurt the other ponies?”

“Twilight, don’t worry about us!” Applejack shouted. “You gotta stop Nightmare Moon!”

“Worry about us!” Rarity shrieked. “Worry about us!”

“Before I teleport into your mouth,” Twilight said, “did you see a rainbow-haired Pegasus fly by?”

The serpent snarled. “So you’re friends with it. Where is it hiding?”

“Right here!”

A rainbow streaked across the sky like a hippie lightning bolt. Before Twilight could even begin to shout her relief a pair of hoofs gathered her up and sped toward the ground. The skin on Twilight’s face stretched back as the earth approached at an incomprehensible yet clearly unhealthy rate.

“Teleport!” Rainbow Dash said.

“Huh?”

“Teleport!”

Twilight realized her hoofs were touching three different flanks. She concentrated her magic and teleported.

The five ponies reappeared fifteen feet away, gasping and elated.

“You sa-a-aved u-u-us!” Rarity wailed, clutching Rainbow Dash tight.

Rainbow Dash pushed her away. “Get off, you’ll slow me down!”

“Knew you’d come back,” Applejack said.

“Sometimes a pony just needs to fly,” Rainbow Dash answered.

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy appeared out of the safety of the trees, galloping toward them. “Are you all right?”

Twilight stepped in front of the others, lavender glow surrounding her horn. “Let’s not celebrate yet. We still have a serpent to beat.”

“I can get us all past the monster and to the other side,” Rainbow Dash said, “but I need you to teleport inside and open the gate so we can get into the castle. I can’t protect ponies on both sides.”

“Got it. Take me first.”

Rainbow Dash wrapped her legs around Twilight’s belly. As the serpent glared at them, heaving with anger, Twilight regretted all the fruit pies and chocolate pastries she had ever eaten.

The serpent’s hands slammed on the bank, rocking the ground. “Hold still, you miserable ponies!”

“Ready?” Rainbow Dash asked. Twilight could hear the grin.

“Not reallaaaahh!”

Twilight realized Rainbow Dash had taken off when her brain observed that her eyes were about to explode. The scream had died in her throat thirty feet back and a quarter of a second ago. Rainbow Dash dodged and swerved around the serpent’s swiping hands and deposited her on the other side. Twilight nearly wept for the feeling of solid, unmoving ground as Rainbow Dash saluted and, well, dashed off to the other side.

Twilight had her own job. She teleported through the wall and into the castle.

The interior was dusty and bare. Rats scurried along the floor and spiders took to the walls. Clearly no pony had lived in here for a long time.

She spied the windlass. Taking hold of it with her magic, she cranked the mechanism as fast as she could. The bridge groaned like Spike in the morning, but like Spike in the morning a liberal application of magic got it moving.

With a terrified squeak Fluttershy ducked under the grill and scampered into the gatehouse.

Twilight gestured to the windlass. “Keep cranking it!”

Twilight didn’t wait for Fluttershy’s breathless assent as she ran outside, but it was clear Rainbow Dash didn’t need her help. She dodged around the serpent like it was moving in slow motion, and maybe to her it was. She spun and twisted, pulled off death-daring dives, and if the situation hadn’t been urgent Twilight would have thought Rainbow Dash was showing off. Twilight was prepared to teleport or fire a beam, but Rainbow Dash had the serpent’s attention entirely on her and was handling it masterfully.

She deposited Applejack, who looked relieved to set her hoofs on the dirt, and Pinkie Pie, who hopped inside, and finally Rarity, who only stopped screaming to breathe so she could start screaming again. Twilight suspected Rainbow Dash had deliberately saved her for last.

With the four safely inside, Twilight called Rainbow Dash to her and regretted it immediately as she was lifted into the sky. The serpent faced them and bellowed, swiping its terrible claws. Twilight teleported. They appeared a few feet away from the serpent’s large eyes, which widened at the sight of Twilight’s pointy horn glowing with magic so near the vulnerable organ.

“Let us be,” Twilight said, “or face the consequences.”

They began to fall. “Twilight!” Rainbow Dash grunted. “You weight almost as much as Pinkie Pie! I can’t carry you for that long!”

Twilight teleported them up again. She wasn’t finished. “And when we come out after defeating Nightmare Moon, you’re not going to bother us.”

The serpent blinked. “Excuse me, but do you mean to say that you are not allied with that terrible Alicorn?”

Fluttershy's Test: Expected Utility

Safely on the ground once more, the six ponies stood back from the edge of the water and gazed up at the apologetic sea serpent.

“My name is Charles,” he said. “Please forgive me! I had no idea that you came here to vanquish that frightful creature.” He gestured at his damaged scales. “Ponies haven’t come this way in so long. When she did this to me, I thought ponies had changed and become terribly violent.”

“Nope, just Nightmare Moon and Twilight,” Applejack said. “Sometimes she threatens to put out a critter’s eye she just met. City folk move fast like that.”

Charles looked like he was about to cry. “Naturally I assumed you six were the Alicorn’s minions. I’m so sorry I tried to kill you!”

“Not at all,” Rarity beamed. “Sometimes ponies try to murder each other by mistake. These things happen.”

“It was kind of fun!” Pinkie Pie said.

“You got that right,” Rainbow Dash said. “I am definitely coming back after this for round two. I never get a chance to really fly.”

Charles sniffed. Twilight winced at the way he dragged a long claw just below his eye to wipe away a tear. “I would like that very much.”

“I’m so sorry about your scales,” Fluttershy said. She sounded more pained that Twilight had ever heard her. “I’ll have Rainbow Dash bring you a remedy I can make.”

Charles bowed his head. “I do not deserve it. You are too kind.”

Twilight was less inclined to forgive the sea serpent. Something about a monster trying to kill her put her off.

“Well, we should get going. Got an Alicorn to fight, so we’ll just move right along.”

“Wait.” Charles’s face looked haunted. “I…I have a request.”

“A request?” Hovering in the air, Rainbow Dash crossed her front legs. “You owe us, not the other way around.”

“I know,” Charles whispered in a voice louder than Twilight shouting. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t extremely urgent.”

“We’ll help,” Applejack said.

“What is it?” Fluttershy asked.

“My—my children.” The great serpent’s voice caught. “She took them. I tried to stop her from entering the castle, and after she did this to me,” he indicated his broken scales, “she took my children away. She said if I couldn’t protect the castle, I couldn’t protect them either. She took them into the forest, I don’t know where. They could be—who knows what could have happened to them?”

Twilight blinked.

“But you’re enormous," Rainbow Dash said. "What’s so scary about the forest to you guys?”

“They only just hatched,” Charles said, “and the forest is home to many threats beyond the mundanely physical.”

“That it is,” Rarity said quietly. “I can only imagine how frightened they must be.”

Pinkie Pie hopped angrily. “That terrible no-good rotten stupid mean Nightmare Muck! We’ll definitely rescue your kids for you!”

Twilight agreed with the sentiment if not the phrasing. What Nightmare Moon had done sickened Twilight to her core. Stealing foals and abandoning them in the forest was…there were no words. When you were dealing with ponies like that, calling them “evil,” was a waste of breath.

“A hunt!” Rainbow Dash saluted. “We’ll find your kids in a flash!”

“Absolutely we will,” Twilight said firmly. The other ponies nodded. “Where did she send them? Did she give a direction?”

“No.”

Twilight blinked. “Sorry?”

“No,” Fluttershy repeated. “No, we’re not doing this, not now.” She turned to Charles. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time.”

Rainbow Dash flew in front of her. “Fluttershy, are you nuts? We have to help him find his kids!”

“Every second matters,” Applejack said. “We should get started now.”

“No,” Fluttershy said.

“It is a matter of dignity, Fluttershy,” Rarity said. “We simply must.”

“You’re scared to go back into the forest,” Pinkie Pie said.

“No. Well, yes, but still no.”

Twilight strode angrily toward her. “Fluttershy, of all ponies I would never have expected this from you. An animal needs your help! Children are in danger! How can you turn him down?”

Fluttershy didn’t back down. She looked Twilight square in the eye. “Other animals need our help. Other children are in danger. Nightmare Moon is destroying the economy. I don’t know what that means! Only you really do.”

“Exactly! So—”

“So it should be you saying this, not me. Not me, who cares the most.” Fluttershy’s voice was hoarse. “You’re all being very selfish right now. It’s always the pony who cares the most who has to stick the knife in. No pony else is kind enough to do it.”

A dawning realization settled over Twilight. She felt nauseous.

“Right now Nightmare Moon is what we have to deal with,” Flutteshy said. “She’s threatening to tear apart all of Equestria. All the animals and their children are in danger, not just this one whose name we know and is close by. What if we can’t find them? What if you get hurt again, Twilight? Who will face Nightmare Moon?” Fluttershy turned her head away. “Don’t make me keep talking.”

Twilight started at the silence. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

“‘I’m sorry,’ would do.”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said instantly. “You’re right, and I should have known it.”

Fluttershy nodded. She walked past Twilight and faced the sea serpent.

“I’m sorry, Charles,” she said, “but we need to defeat Nightmare Moon as soon as possible. We can find your children afterward when Princess Celestia is free.”

Great teardrops like the clouds themselves had turned to sadness crashed into the moat. Fluttershy blinked off the water that sprayed onto her face and around her eyes.

“I understand,” Charles said. “I wish you the best of luck.” He turned away and sunk below the depths of the moat.

“Let’s go,” Fluttershy said, water from the spray dripping down her cheeks. “Now I’m angry.”

If You Can't Protect Your Friends Then Make More Friends

Aftermath: Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie:

It is not often that ponies get to see Princess Celestia’s magic unleashed. When they do it is usually a rather grim time to be appreciating the spectacle. But on the rare occasions ponies do get to watch the princess work, they describe golden light and four-colored rainbows, the growth of unknown plants and torrents of mist so thickly wet it wrinkles pony skin without even touching it.

Pinkie Pie wasn’t looking. None of the Bearers were. They were focused on Twilight. Her eyes were closed, and her breath came shallow and rapid.

They set her on the ground.

“This is all my fault,” Applejack said. “If I hadn’t kicked her….”

“Nightmare Moon wanted to hurt her, so she was hurt,” Rarity said. “Because of you Twilight was already accustomed to the pain and able to think through it.”

The click of hoofs on the stone floor distracted them. Princess Celestia regarded them.

“Well done, Bearers of the—”

Fluttershy interrupted. “The children of the sea serpent who guards the moat are lost in the forest."

Celestia vanished in a flash of golden light.

The throne room was empty of Alicorns. The stone walls were suddenly cold, as if there had always been no pony waiting within since the long-ago disbanding of the Knights of Economics. Rainbow Dash looked morose.

“She told off a sea serpent,” she said. “It was pretty awesome.”

“She’s not dead.” Fluttershy looked at Twilight with a practiced eye. “Most of the right side of her ribcage is fractured, but nothing vital was pierced. The princess will patch her up.”

They stared at her. Fluttershy shrugged.

“What? Ani…naturally evolved organisms get into all kinds of accidents. I’m a pretty good doctor.”

Celestia reappeared in another burst of light.

“Charles has been reunited with his children,” she said.

The expression on her face was unreadable. “Please give me my student now.”

They looked at her.

“I believe bows are customary,” Celestia said.

“No,” Pinkie Pie said.

The blurt surprised her, but she was already the crazy pony. It was best if she voiced their thoughts.

“I pay my voluntary defense funds. You owe us an explanation.”

“Please,” Celestia said.

Was she really begging? Pinkie Pie couldn’t knorp the Alicorn’s face.

Applejack stepped forward.

“The economy slumped! Business suffered! All the ponies who depend on us—”

“Twilight is in pain,” Fluttershy said. “And she will want the attention of her princess.”

The other ponies looked at her, then stepped away from Twilight. She vanished in a blaze of white light.

“She followed me.” Pinkie Pie looked Celestia in the eye. “I said my Pinkie Sense knew the way, and she followed. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“What happened to that ghastly Alicorn?” Rarity said.

“Gone,” Celestia said. “Resting. With Twilight Sparkle.”

Pinkie Pie willed her strength into the crystal. She could feel the other ponies doing the same.

Celestia shook her head. “The Elements require an econopony. Nor would it to be wise to direct them against me, for I maintain the Bank and therefore the equilibrium.”

“You put Twilight with the one who hurt her,” Pinkie Pie said.

“They will not see each other. I am not a fool, and they are the two ponies whom I love more dearly than any other who still lives. What have I done to earn your distrust?”

“It’s what you didn’t do,” Applejack said.

“The parasprites showed her you,” Rarity said.

“We’re her friends,” Pinkie Pie said.

Anypony who couldn’t understand their behavior from that one statement was…probably a lot like Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie realized.

Celestia was distracted. Her horn flashed intermittently with varying intensities like a dubstep star.

“Forgive me, Bearers,” she said. “Curing recessions is much harder than preventing them. Once the real has become intermingled with the nominal, it is not easy even for me to isolate and target the right aggregates in sufficient quantities….”

“Well, I’m still cool with you,” Rainbow Dash said. “Since I’m the only pony here who’s actually happy you didn’t show at the festival.”

“Ah.” A bright white light shined from Celestia’s horn. “That explains it. Thank you, Rainbow Dash. The economy will need much liquidity in the coming weeks and months.”

“Sure,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Go easy on debt.”

“Actually, I’m in a lot of—”

“Never mind.”

Pinkie Pie seethed.

“Do you need transport to Ponyville?” Celestia said.

They looked at Applejack.

“No,” Applejack said. “I reckon we’ll take the long way home.”

Celestia left.

The five ponies walked outside. The sunlight glinted off the crystals pinned to their chests. Charles was there, weeping profusely as he helped them across the moat.

“I cannot thank you enough,” he sobbed. “Please, let me repay you however I can.”

“Your thanks is reward enough,” Rarity said.

“Cash is good too,” Applejack added.

Charles gestured to one of his children, the smallest, only five or six times the size of a regular pony. “Please, take the runt of the litter. Normally I would look forward to eating her, but for you ponies I can make an exception.”

Pinkie Pie’s jaw dropped. Fluttershy beamed.

“Thank you! I would love to have a sea serpent of my own. But, um, I’m afraid I don’t have enough water.”

“Young serpents will adjust to the element they reside in,” Charles said. “You could have an earth or a sky serpent if you wish.”

Fluttershy’s pupils swelled to saucers in her eyes. “I…I could teach her to fly?”

Confused, the young serpent climbed out of the water at the insistence of her old father. She focused her attention on her new father, a yellow four-legged thing that flapped in the air on two wings.

“I’m so excited to have a sea serpent,” he said, fluttering back and forth in the air. “I have to get the right food! And you’ll need to meet all the other animals. And…and….”

The serpent didn’t know what Daddy was talking about. But she took note of how Daddy moved, not slithering on the ground but flying free in the air.

The serpent’s brain didn’t understand the physics of flight. What it did know, what some ancient instinct understood from a thousand thousand generations of practice and testing, was how to become more like Daddy.

Daddy had wings.

Deep within the serpent’s body, at a level so small bacteria were like titans, she began to change….

With their sixth member slithering embarrassed behind the still-squealing Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie led them to the edge of the maze of thorns.

“Last time we had Twilight giving us light,” Rainbow Dash said. Her voice trembled slightly. Probably no pony but Pinkie Pie noticed. “How are we going to see?”

“We could conga!” Pinkie Pie said. “Everypony put a hoof on the pony in front of them. Pinkie Sense will guide me.”

Their was much dismissive eye-rolling as usual, and they did what she said, as usual. Cupcakes were much easier to corral, although they weren’t as much fun to talk to, not even the Ultra Super Deluxe Choco-Plutium Butter Filled CupKookyz, which sometimes talked back.

Even without light, the forest seemed less threatening coming back the other way. Maybe it was the absence of Nightmare Moon’s influence. Maybe it gave up after being beaten once before. Or maybe…

It was harder this time. Not as scary, but more difficult. The forest threw all kinds of twists at her, sending the path in such roundabout circuits intermixed with so many dead ends that she almost wished she had taken Twilight up on her offer to just start blasting through the wood. Yet it was fun too. The forest challenged her Pinkie Sense in a way nothing since dominating Ponyville’s baking industry had.

She was almost disappointed to see the light streaming from the entrance to the cave. Rainbow Dash let out a whoop and flew past her to the entrance. For Applejack’s sake, Pinkie kept walking at a steady pace until the end.

As she began to lift her last hoof out of the forest, a tendril of vine snaked out and caught her around the leg. It pulled her high into the air and hoisted her upside-down.

“Hey, let her go!” Rainbow Dash grabbed the vine, tugging fruitlessly at it. Rarity’s horn glowed blue—what was she going to do, dress the vine in something stylish?—and Applejack tried to gnaw on it.

Pinkie Pie laughed. Maybe it was the blood flowing to her head, but it really did seem silly.

“Girls, don’t you know a friend when you see one? She just wants to play.”

Rainbow Dash nearly lost her grip. “What?”

“I think the forest never had anypony to play with,” Pinkie Pie said. “I’m her first friend.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Serious as a pinky promise.”

The ponies relented. They knew how seriously she took pinky promises.

Pinkie Pie managed to swing herself upright, clutching onto the vine with her forelegs.

“I had fun too, Evil Dark Scary Pony-Eating Forest! I’ll be sure to come back soon so we can play again. Cupcakes taste way better than ponies, you know.”

The vine’s grip on her leg loosened. Pinkie Pie smiled—she wasn’t sure how the forest was reading her behavior—and patted it on the…vine.

“Like a birthday, I’ll come back and with cake. I always wanted a pet forest!”

The vine released her. Pinkie Pie had a moment to realize that her relationship with gravity was not so negotiable.

“Rainbow Daaaaash!”

Aftermath: Applejack:

“Your hat,” the Cerberus said. She placed it on the ground.

Applejack picked it up and placed it on her head. It felt like reattaching a limb.

“Get going, girls,” she said to the ponies. “You especially, Rainbow Dash.”

Fluttershy snapped her teeth at the Cerberus. The guardian beast of the forest flinched.

”Be sure to brush more often!"

Then they were alone.

“You did not give your hat to one of your friends,” the Cerberus said.

“Was I supposed to?”

“I thought so. It was the hat of your mother and her mother. It is the reason I trusted you to return. Now it will end up in my stomach.”

“You haven’t been eating well these last thousand years or so, have you?” Applejack said. “Reckoned not. Not much good eating on an old cowpony hat.”

Drool gathered at the edges of the Cerberus’s mouth and spilled out. A waterfall of stomach acid called forth its own rainbow, one driven by centuries of malnourishment. It couldn’t compare to Nightmare Moon’s pain, but it was more desperate, more uncertain.

“Yes,” the Cerberus said. “I am hungry.”

Her ears perked up at the distant whine of something flying very, very fast.

“I ain’t the expert Fluttershy is,” Applejack said, “but we’ve always had animals helping us out on the farm, and I’ve picked up a thing or two. Most ponies figure dogs eat nothing but meat. Truth is, they need fruits and veggies too.”

The whine grew louder.

“A pony small as me wouldn’t sate your hunger for a single hour. You need something every day.”

In the distance, a rainbow streak. At the head of it, a flying pony.

“No!”

The Cerberus backed away.

“You called her here! You cheat! You liar! I didn’t—please, no, I won’t, you can go—”

The Pegasus landed, carrying a heavy bushel of apples around her neck.

“Sup,” said Rainbow Dash.

She wrinkled her nose at the fetid scent wafting from between the Cerberus’s legs. “Urgh, did she just p—”

“Eeyup.”

“She thought I was—”

“Eeyup.”

Applejack tipped the bushel of apples over in front of the Cerberus, who seemed faintly embarrassed.

“I, uh, I thought she was—”

“You guessed wrong,” Applejack said. “Sound familiar? Brought you a snack.”

The Cerberus sniffed nervously around the bright red fruit.

“They’re apples from my very own Sweet Apple Acres. Best apples in all of Equestria.”

“The…hat.”

“That’s right. The hat represents the Sweet Apple Acres guarantee of quality. You won’t find a more widely trusted symbol anywhere this side of the Everfree. I’d stake my life on the quality of our apples.”

The Cerberus sniffed the apples again. Her mouth opened.

It had been four hundred thirty-two years, seven months, four days, eighteen hours, nine minutes and fifty-two seconds since she had last eaten.

Two sets of eyes flickered over the pair of ponies.

All three mouths opened.

The Cerberus pounced.

Red skin burst open and flew into the air. Bright shining jewels of juice scattered and refracted the light, reflecting rainbows around the clearing. Brown seeds spurted from within the white meat, spreading across the soil that marked the ground between Ponyville and the Everfree Forest.

(In five years, maybe a field of red apples. A hoofshake between ponies and the forest. The mark of friendship, if by then Pinkie Pie wasn’t already wrapped in blankets with the forest at two in the morning telling each other ghost stories and giggling like mad ponies.)

The Cerberus’s long black tongues rolled out of its mouths and gathered half a dozen apples each, swallowing them so fast Applejack wasn’t sure she even stopped to chew until the wave of spittle and flecks of white meat that covered her and Rainbow Dash in a disgusting spray.

“Gross!” Rainbow Dash wiped at her face.

The Cerberus sniffed the ground for more apples. It pawed at the basket, sniffed it, and knocked it away with a frustrated whine.

She raised her three heads to the sky and howled at the sun and the moon for a very long time.

When it was over, Applejack and Rainbow Dash uncovered their ears.

“We grow durn good apples,” Applejack said.

An idea seemed to occur to her.

“So long as I’ve misanswered your question and you haven’t et me, that vine of yours is still stretchy, right?”

The Cerberus nodded. Juice dripped down her chins.

Applejack grinned.

“How do you feel about pulling a plow for Sweet Apple Acres? You can have ten percent of all the produce of the acreage you cover.”

“Fifty percent.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

Aftermath: Rarity:

The Invention Room of the Carousel Boutique was where Rarity designed and created her new dresses. Translucent purple curtains draped across the windows, casting the room in a meditative glow. Half-finished gowns hung on models ill-fittingly, and blueprints for new designs smothered the plain wooden table.

It was the one room in the Carousel Boutique that was not beautiful or elegant. Even Sweetie Belle was not allowed inside.

Somehow it reminded her of Twilight Sparkle. What an odd pony, simultaneously graceless and possessing remarkable poise. The way she had faced up to Nightmare Moon….

Rarity shuddered. They had come so close to dying, more than once, which was already more than she had ever experienced previously or ever wanted to again.

No pony had said it. That was the problem. It made her wonder if she was the only pony thinking it.

Rarity wanted to see Twilight again.

But she allowed everyone into her room, didn’t she? That was the whole point.

Or maybe she didn’t. How could Rarity know what Twilight was thinking? She wasn’t a parasprite.

The parasprites had attacked Twilight with the voice of her mentor. Nightmare Moon had done it again, tearing down Twilight’s concept of the princess.

Rarity had never asked Twilight just what her relationship with the princess was. None of them had. They had been too full of their own thoughts, and besides, the very idea of having a relationship with Princess Celestia was just too weird. Princess Celestia was a character in a story, a picture in a newspaper, not a real flesh-and-blood pony….

Except to Twilight Sparkle, her most faithful student.

Now what was she thinking, resting in whatever healing-place the princess had hidden somewhere?

“Think,” a voice said.

Rarity whirled. Her horn glowed blue, and in the light it cast she almost couldn’t see the tiny round ball with two overlarge green eyes, born aloft by insect wings.

“You!” she said. “You followed me from the forest? Vous êtes un grand cheval!”

“Think,” the parasprite said weakly. “Hungry….”

Rarity sniffed. “If you’re looking for an apology, you won’t find one here. I don’t regret a single mean thing I said about you.”

“No….”

“You like terrible words? Of course, I should have known. And here you are now, sniffing about for more. Pitiable creature.”

“Help….”

“No.”

“Trade.”

“What do you have that I could ever want?”

“Information….”

Rarity laughed. They had encountered the parasprite in a clearing in the Everfree Forest. As if it knew anything she wanted to know.

But then...the parasprite's advantage wasn't in the information it had but how quickly it learned. All it needed was the touch of a pony's head to know everything it needed to.

It was small, barely noticeable, easily dismissed as a bug. How many ponies could recognize a parasprite these days? It could go anywhere, over fences and under doors, gathering all the world's secrets....

Rarity laughed again for very different reasons.

But it wasn't just world domination. Rarity was vaguely aware that she was now part of some kind of group of magical girl ponies who could unite to vanquish evil.

Who knew what disgusting monsters still lurked in the Everfree Forest? Or where Nightmare Moon now was, or if there weren't other Alicorns somewhere, maybe with the dragons, who could come roaring out of their caves to set Equestria aflame....

Or other ponies, who might have their own pets and their own magic and their own intelligence. Surely there was more than one parasprite out there.

It occurred to Rarity for the first time just how dangerous a single pony with the right tools and the wrong motivations could be.

“À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents,” she murmured. Better to die la petit mort than la mort du petit cheval, non?

“You, parasprite, will search out information for me in every nook and cranny in all of Equestria,” Rarity said. “You will find my friends’ and my enemies so that we may destroy them. In return, I shall show you such cruel friendship as you have never experienced in a thousand years.”

She stuck out her hoof. “Deal?”

Aftermath: Rainbow Dash

Rainbow Dash didn’t need a highly impressionable giant serpent, a magical semi-intelligent forest, or a vicious pony-eating Cerberus for a pet.

She had a tank.

Well, she had Tank.

Tank was a tortoise.

Rainbow Dash had personally clocked Tank's land speed at a cool oh-point-eight miles per hour, which, though Rainbow Dash didn’t know it, made Tank the fastest tortoise in existence. She could tear apart a wedge of lettuce with her not-very-sharp teeth in well under an hour so long as the lettuce didn’t try to run away. Sometimes the lettuce did try to run away because Tank was a magic tortoise.

Tank did not have one magical power. She had seven, the first six of which had to do with lettuce. The seventh made her very, very good at accounting and law, and she was a necessary component of Rainbow Dash’s definitely legal and totally sound financial practice.

Sometimes Tank felt unappreciated.

“I could have had a cool pet!”

Rainbow Dash flew around the ceiling of their house, leaving rainbow trails in her wake.

“Everypony else comes back from the forest with an awesome magical sidekick, and I’m stuck with you!”

Rainbow Dash pointed an accusing hoof at the only tortoise that stood and occasionally walked very slowly between her and a long time behind bars.

“What can you do? You can’t even hunt lettuce properly! I have to buy it for you! What would you do without me?”

In fact, if Tank had been a wild free-roaming tortoise, or as much roaming as tortoises ever are, she would have been Queen, ruling with an iron claw over the kingdom of reptiles that recognized no Alicorn as master, though the slow talks of war were inevitably derailed by the onset of evening. Young male tortoises green of shell and stout of tail would spend years carrying their village’s best lettuce from yards away just for the opportunity to deliver it at her feet in the hopes that she might finish eating it before they died.

But Tank liked Rainbow Dash, a true if occasionally ungrateful, blind, and pig-headed friend who had saved her from being eaten by a gryphon years ago, and so she elected not to tell her that.

Besides, keeping up with Rainbow Dash’s finances was much more interesting than lording over a bunch of cold-blooded lizards. There were many ways to describe Rainbow Dash, but slow-moving was not one of them.

So Tank tapped her claw on the paper in front of her. She did it again until she had Rainbow Dash’s attention. Tortoises are patient creatures.

Rainbow Dash may have been a Pegasus with her head in the clouds, but she had learned that when Tank wanted her to look at something, it was worth looking at. She flew over and took a peek.

Her eyes widened. They gleamed with the unsophisticated greed of a child on Christmas Day.

“I almost forgot!” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m rich!”

Aftermath: Spike

Spike swept the floor of the treehouse Princess Celestia had purchased for him and Twilight Sparkle when she sent them to Ponyville. The wood was starting to wear away, as were the bristles on the broom. The scaly calluses on his palms, however, were only growing tougher.

What else was there to do? He had already disorganized the bookshelves so Twilight could organize them later. She thought libraries just had some kind of inertial drift toward entropy.

So Spike flossed his teeth and appreciated the feel of the new shampoo on his strengthening scales. He went through some of Twilight’s routine correspondence, worked his way through some of the dense paperwork she had been doing for the princess, and perused a catalog from the Carousel Boutique.

Nothing for dragons. Maybe he could ask for something tailor-made. She’d have to take his measurements….

(Though Twilight had never discussed with Spike certain aspects of growing up, the magical bond between the two combined with the thaumatic fluctuations that inevitably accompany both baby dragons and puissant Unicorns allowed certain aspects of her psyche to rub off on his without direct communication.)

Spike sat down at the table and poured himself a bowl of gemstones. He took a bite, chewed, and spat it out.

Rhodochrosite, gross! Twilight had gone shopping. She really didn’t understand some things….

The door creaked open. Spike looked up. A lavender leg stepped into the room, followed by a bottle of shampoo in a lavender purple glow.

Spike kicked away from the table and shot out of the chair.

“Twilight!”

Aftermath: Twilight Sparkle: Robustness

Twilight leaned nervously on her right side. It felt fine, she knew it was fine, but some part of her brain couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment her ribcage was going to shatter under her own weight.

No sign remained of their adventure through the forest and the final confrontation with Nightmare Moon. Her hair wasn’t cut short, no scar marked her face. Her cutie mark hadn’t transformed, no crystal did she bear.

Everything was the same again. The status quo had been restored. So why did it feel like something was still missing?

“It’s strange,” Twilight said. “I know we defeated Nightmare Moon. I saw it with my own eyes. But it still feels…it still feels like when she had you sealed away. I had to do anything to get you back.”

“And you did.”

Princess Celestia allowed the tips of her mane to touch Twilight’s side.

“I truly thought I faced a thousand years inside the sun. Thanks to you, that visit was brief.”

“It doesn’t feel like you’re back. Even though I’m here with you, I’m still missing somepony….” Twilight trailed off.

Student and mentor sat beside each other on the softly waving field of grass. Twilight didn’t know where they were. A place of healing, a place of thought, which were in many ways the same thing to ponies like them.

Twilight broke the silence. “Did you know your sister was coming back?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would you have done?”

“Gathered the Elements sooner.”

“And the Bearers?”

“We could have found them. You knew they were in Ponyville.”

“No.”

Twilight hesitated.

“What? But you sent me to Ponyville to find them, right?”

“No, I sent you to Ponyville because it is a dumpy backwater town full of rubes that doesn’t even have a university. It is the last place Nightmare Moon would think to look for an economist.”

“But…but what was your plan?”

Princess Celestia sighed.

“I didn’t have a plan. I knew I would not be able to defeat my sister, I knew the Bearers would not be revealed except in the act of their creation.”

Twilight blinked.

“So I resolved to raise an econopony who could hope to be my successor in time,” Princess Celestia continued. “Someone who might maintain the Equilibrium and contest my sister’s control over the Bank while she searched for the power to defeat her.”

Twilight noted the way Princess Celestia described her as her successor.

“But how could I have fought your sister? I can’t influence the Bank at all.”

“No? You didn’t notice those NGDP-controlling horns I had prepared at the festival in Ponyville? I felt you trigger one. Why do you think I was always so harsh on fakes and imitators? So that in a moment of need a seeming imitator would be a sign of my hoof.”

“Oh,” Twilight said. She felt stupid.

“But what could I have done after that?” she said. “It would still be a thousand years of misery.”

“I hoped you might go to Princess Cadance for help.”

Twilight was silent.

“Or your brother.”

Twilight didn’t answer.

Princess Celestia sighed. “Your stubbornness does you ill.”

The wind changed direction. Twilight stiffened. Sometimes the princess like to use the weather to illustrate a point, but she was not in the mood—

“I owe you an apology,” said Princess Celestia. “And my thanks.”

Twilight somehow managed to feel unsteady sitting down.

“I was mistaken to imprison my sister. I was mistaken to have no better plan that to hope one of my students could solve my own problem. But I was not mistaken to rely on you.”

It was some time before Twilight could look at her mentor and nod.

“I believe it is customary when a brave young pony rescues the princess that she makes a request of the kingdom.”

At first Twilight thought she didn’t need anything, and truly, she didn’t. But, oddly, she remembered her friends.

“You could cut the vine binding the Cerberus to the forest,” Twilight said. “It would make her work easier, and Applejack already figured out the loophole.”

The princess nodded. “I will have to find a new guardian.“

“Maybe not. Pinkie Pie sort of made friends with the forest.”

“Ah. The pink one. I don’t think she likes me very much. Wait, she what—”

“And Fluttershy needs a flight permit, the highest level one.”

“A military grade permit? But—”

“No. Higher. A new one with no maximum speed or altitude.”

Princess Celestia digested this. “What else?”

“No more sealing ponies in astronomical objects.”

“I have already sworn this to myself a thousand times over. And what about you?”

Twilight thought.

“I don’t need anything,” she said. “Just to be with Spike again and to assist you with the Bank.”

“Then you will be pleased to hear that I am making some changes to the organization of the Bank in light of recent events,” Princess Celestia said.

She smiled at the expression on Twilight’s face. “Yes. In over a thousand years the Bank has been the one constant. Now it too must change.

“My sister was able to threaten the world with the power of the One Bank. No pony could resist her. Therefore I will create nine daughter banks centered in economically strategic locations to aid and, if necessary, oppose the Bank. The Nine Daughters will make Equestria’s economy more stable and robust than ever before.”

“With the One Bank to rule them all?” Twilight said.

“Yes,” said Princess Celestia, “and with the rainbow bind them.”

Twilight felt a stir of excitement. “Sounds like overseeing the creation of the Nine will be quite the administrative task. Lots of organizing to do, items to be checked off of lists….”

“Not to mention choosing the Chief Executive Economists of each of the Nine,” said Princess Celestia. “I was thinking perhaps Twinkleshine for Manehattan?”

“Twinkleshine? That b—”

“Bright young pony,” Princess Celestia cut in, “which is exactly what Equestria needs at this time. And yes, Trixie will be getting one too.”

“Don’t talk to me about that mare!”

“And,” said Princess Celestia, “it has come to my attention that a certain dumpy backwater town full of rubes by the name of Ponyville is quite the hub of economic activity these days. Despite not even having a university, some of Equestria’s most successful and growing businesses are based there. Furthermore, it is located by the Everfree Forest, a subject of some concern. I need one of my daughters—one of the Daughters placed in Ponyville, of importance secondary only to the One Bank.”

“Smart thinking,” Twilight said. “Somepony needs to keep their eyes on Rainbow Dash. I think she might be playing with more money than exists.”

“To manage the bank in Ponyville will require an econopony of the utmost intellectual and moral qualities. She must be brave, kind, highly intelligent, with a proven history of wielding the Equilibrium for the betterment of all of Equestria, and she must be already familiar with Ponyville itself, particularly the most volatile yet successful businessponies who live there.”

“I’ll get the search started right away,” Twilight said.

Princess Celestia sighed.

“Twilight Sparkle, my dearest and most faithful student, I am offering the job to you.”

Aftermath: Ponyville

Twilight said yes, of course.

The construction of the Daughters began immediately. The flow of the bureaucracy and the stream of academic ponies to the new banks happened more gradually. Twinkleshine, that…well, you know, went to Manehattan, and Trixie to the Crystal Empire, and six other ponies to their places.

Twilight Sparkle went to Ponyville. There she survived her first party, helped to clean a Cerberus of her fleas, shook hoofs with a rather shifty tortoise, engaged in a hushed conversation about a parasprite, and barely prevented a giant serpent with growths like budding wings on its back from falling onto a house.

Then she invited her five friends to the first and last meeting of an ill-fated book club.

But even as Twilight winced when Applejack commented that Twilight’s library was the nicest outhouse she had ever seen, even when Rainbow Dash walked right out and it took Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie together to drag her back in, and even though Rarity seemed more interested in critiquing the library’s decor than anything Tina Malthushoof had to say about the formation of general gluts, some chamber hidden deep within her heart felt that it was almost as much fun as reading itself.

Almost. Well. Friends had their good points too. Maybe she wouldn't kick them out just yet.

(And the ponies of Ponyville hid away the stamps Silvia Gesell had suggested they issue and spoke no more of the matter. The princess had her pride, and she was much beloved by all the ponies. And that too is how an equilibrium is maintained.)

Economicon: Nightmare Moon

Dark power surged through the room, making the burning lights on the half-melted candles flicker and wave. There were skulls inside pentagrams that made a ring on the carpet, which seemed to be made of some unidentifiable fuzzy hide. Thick, leathery tomes were scattered on the floor, as if, once taken off the shelves, they were not easily put back. And—

“Is that blood?” Twilight shrieked.

“Nope, it’s jelly!” Pinkie Pie scooped some off the wall with her hoof and slurped it up. “Mmm!”

“I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for writing a book, Pinkie!” Twilight hunched back against the wall, then regretted it. She peeled herself off and hoped Spike could get it out with a brush and shampoo.

Pinkie Pie looked around.

“Isn’t it?”

“No! This looks like a place for an occult summoning of some unspeakable terror!”

“Yeah, we’re writing an economics textbook.”

“That’s funny. Real funny. Can you clear up some of this mess? And turn on the lights? It’s so dim in here. What’s this carpet, anyway?”

“Flattened, stale cake gone bad. I just scraped off the moldy parts that were growing hair and patted them down over the floor.”

“Great.” Twilight sat herself on a chair carefully and tried to keep her hoofs off the floor. “Can we just get started?”

Pinkie Pie bounced over, making squelching noises on the carpet and knocking over a skull. “I’m so excited to be your Vice Chief Executive Writer for this economics textbook with real-world stuff in it!”

“Uh huh…so let’s…what is that?”

Pinkie Pie hefted the thick book onto the table with an audible thump and opened it. It smelled of old attics and was apparently the home of a family of spiders, who scurried away with bitter eyes, all eight of them.

“This is some old book I found in the Cake’s attic when I first moved in,” Pinkie Pie said. “I stopped reading it because it was talking to me—”

“Talking to you?”

“—but I thought it would be useful. It’s all about evil stuff. Hey, whatcha writing?”

Twilight took her pen off the page and looked at the first words of the Economicon.

Chapter One: Nightmare Moon

Light flashed outside the windows. A moment later, thunder rumbled.

Twilight looked up. “Weather’s supposed to be clear tonight.”

“Yeah, these things happen when you’re being eldritch,” Pinkie Pie said with an air of unconcern.

“Eldritch? We’re just writing a book!”

“A book about the great evils that occur when you mess with the dark laws of social reality.”

“Y-Yeah….” Twilight frowned at the words. As usual from Pinkie Pie, it was a weirdly apt description. “Anyway, lets get started. What kind of things should we write about?”

“What kinds of things do you want to write about?”

How your mind can melt in front of a parasprite, and sharpen in front of an Alicorn. A pain in your ribs can keep you conscious, talking, thinking, to distract from the throbbing. Sometimes you can’t make a good move, and you just have to go for a winning one instead.

“How’d we do it?” Twilight stared at the four words. “We should have died so many times.”

“Friendship is magic?” Pinkie Pie said with a shrug.

“I…I don’t think that’s right, Pinkie. Sometimes at night I realize in my head I don’t take responsibility for what happened. It was all Princess Celestia’s plan and the magic of the Bearers. I…I can’t even say I just kept going forward or anything like that, because I didn’t in the forest. No courage, no particular intelligence or skill…I really should be dead.”

“We got lucky! It’s a Pinkie thing.” She wriggled her nose, as if smelling a particularly strong whiff of randomness.

“I thought maybe somepony was guiding us, or some magical force, or maybe Nightmare Moon was lying when she said she didn’t set the dangers in the forest, so I read about them. I couldn’t find a single thing in the Everfree Forest that couldn’t have been beaten by one of you girls.”

“Golly.”

“All of them would have killed me.” Her eyes narrowed, skin crinkling around the edges. “Couldn’t find anything I could beat if I was being honest with myself.”

“You sure showed Nightmare Moon.”

“She could have killed me at any moment, and I was powerless without you all behind me. That was luck.”

“You shouldn’t—”

“I shouldn’t lie to myself. This isn’t a story, there’s no guarantee the bad girl will want to talk or torture instead of killing.

“I’ve been thinking. Economists don’t do anything. We can’t build bridges, or cure diseases, or invent things. But the world needs us. We…keep it spinning.”

“Spinning? We’d get dizzy!”

“It’s a phrase from an old book, Princess Celestia is fond of it…never mind,” Twilight sighed. “An economist isn’t a piece of the puzzle, she makes sure there's a picture on the box. That’s what this book has to be about. The picture on the box, the instruction manual, a little sack so you don’t lose all the pieces.”

“Then let’s start!”

Twilight picked up her pen. “Name…Nightmare Moon. Aliases…Mare in the Moon, Princess Luna, um—”

“Um?!”

“I’m not writing that, I’m just saying um. She had some other names, I think she said them at the festival. We can skip it for now. Um…strengths…pretty much everything other than mental stability and coherent goals. Weaknesses…her sister, sound monetary policy, the Elements of Equilibrium….”

“What about HD?”

“HD?”

“Says HD here.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Um…happy days?”

Twilight scribbled “Maybe, over a thousand years ago.”

“What’s her STR?”

“Stir? She’s not a cook, Pinkie.”

“She is a CON, though, right?”

Twilight shrugged and wrote “Con: yes.”

“Would you say she has spells and spell-like abilities?”

“Of course, every Unicorn does.”

“How about the ritual for summoning her?”

“I don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t publish it in a textbook!”

“Oh, oh! I want to try making one up!”

Twilight listened. After a minute she got up, found a rubbish bin, and began dry heaving into it.

“So…maybe run it past an editor first?” Pinkie Pie watched Twilight retch.

“Pinkie,” Twilight said when she could talk, the air smelling faintly of stomach acid, “fillies might read this! Adults might read this!”

“It’s a cake recipe. I just used a goat’s—”

Twilight retched into the bin again.

“—instead of cinnamon, and then instead of stirring you subcutaneously—”

Mercifully, the sound of Twilight’s stomach trying to escape through her esophagus once again drowned Pinkie Pie out.

Finally Twilight sagged on her rump and closed her eyes. “That’s not a real ritual, Pinkie, and I’m not writing a word of it down.”

“Don’t worry, I scribbled it down,” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully, “although it’s good that you say it’s not real, since if it was, just writing it down could probably summon a small part of the real demonic entity.”

Laughter echoed through the room.

“It’s not funny, Pinkie,” Twilight said.

“That wasn’t me!”

Twilight’s eyes shot wide open.

Ha ha ha ha…HA HA HA HA HA!

Twilight jumped to her hoofs. “What was that?”

Pinkie Pie looked around nervously, teeth chattering. “I don’t know!”

You called me…what plane is this, mortal stock?

“The fifth one,” Twilight said automatically. “Third door on your left from the interplanar warping point Pinkie what did you do?”

“Wrote down a cake recipe,” Pinkie Pie answered honestly.

Ha ha ha…the livestock is chatty on this plane. You have summoned but a pale shadow of my true self. What are your desires, Food That Talks? I shall grant but one wish to the one who called me.

“I want a pony,” Pinkie Pie almost said, before Twilight magically clasped her lips shut.

“Listen, you, get out of our plane,” Twilight said as threateningly as she could with the smell of her own acids wafting across her nose. “We’ll get the Elements of Equilibrium and banish you!”

Open the pages of this book…write more, fill it with blood, feed my power! Rip your hoofs and write THIS INSTANT!

Pinkie Pie worked her lips free. “But then you’d need a substitute for the vanilla. Sorry!” She let Twilight’s magic hold them shut again.

Twilight glared at her, then cast her eyes on the Economicon. She walked over to it.

Yes…you hear my voice. I sense power within you, such magic for mere livestock, it was you who summoned me, I can tell, and you want power. I can give it to you, and wealth, fame, admiration, anything you desire.

Twilight stood in front of the book. A faint black haze surrounded it.

“Offer me money.”

Yes…yes!

“Twilight, no!” Pinkie Pie screamed. “Mmph!”

“And power too.”

I can give you more power than has ever been seen under your world’s sun!

Twilight placed her hoof under the cover.

“I want my book back, you son of a cake recipe!”

She slammed it shut.

Mmph! Mmmmmph!

The book bucked like an angry bull. Twilight held it down.

“Bother this occult stuff!” Twilight shouted, struggling to keep the book closed. “Let’s do this outside, in the daylight, next time!”

Mmmmph! Mmmmmmph!

“We are burning this copy and starting over,” Twilight announced. She let go of Pinkie Pie’s lips. “Well?”

Pinkie Pie always saw the opportunity for profit. “I have some ovens in my bakery that get really hot.”

“No.”

“But—”

“Absolutely not.”

“O-kay,” Twilight said. “That’s the first chapter.”

Pinkie Pie hopping around the table, puffy hair bouncing. “Let’s publish! Publish!” A sound like streamers going off burst from…somewhere on her.

“I think we need more than one chapter.” A little bit of Pinkie Pie’s infectious enthusiasm wormed inside her. “But it’s pretty exciting to have part of it written, even if it might be a very long time before we get to the end.”

“Loyal readers might have the opportunity to win a free tee shirt,” Pinkie Pie said with a straight face.

“But probably not,” Twilight added.

“We’re going to learn some neat stuff.”

“Could be.”

“Things that will be unveiled for the first time ever. Exclusive economic content, right here.”

“Very possible.”

“ An adventure to a mysterious foreign land where they eat fried potatoes with cheese curds in gravy.”

“Okay, no spoilers.”

She looked at the filled pages of their new book.

Chapter One: Nightmare Moon

Nightmare Moon is taller, stronger and smarter than anything you have ever faced, unless you have had the misfortune to fight Princess Celestia. Her horn is sharper than steel. Her eyes are as cold as the night.

I won’t tell you to run if you see her, because I didn’t. I won’t tell you to be prepared, because you won’t be. She is stronger, faster, better in every way than you. You will be as prepared as she lets you be.

There is really only one way to defeat Nightmare Moon, and that is to never let her into your world in the first place. Sound monetary policy is her one weakness, because it never lets her become strong to begin with.

If that doesn’t happen, you will need the Elements of Equilibrium. Here is what you must do….

It was something, Twilight thought. It was a start.

Canterlot Monthly, July: Lead Interview: Twilight Sparkle

Look at this Unicorn bouncing up and down by the mail box. She reminds one of a baby bird trying to fly for the first time. She has space to gain speed, and soft grass to land on, but seems to be stuck on next step, which is to spread her wings, so she vibrates and hops in place with impotent energy.

Flying down toward Ponyville is a Pegasus of a most curious nature. She will play a role in things later. For now she is the Deliverymare, and her name is Derpy.

The Deliverymare is what happens when you cross an occult ritual of the most dark and eldritch nature with a sense of can-do public-spiritedness. It is a promise, in fact, a Satisfaction Or Your Money Back guarantee, that's got, at this point, as much natural impetus in the world as the sun hasn’t.

Bubble-flanked Derpy became the Deliverymare the same way everything else happened in her life: by accident, starting with her birth. Neither Derpy’s mother nor father had intended her to exist, and in fact had not expected her to exist until shortly before she did, as the mother had failed to notice her pregnancy.

Derpy was held back in the second grade because a dog ate her homework. When she complained, she was made to take a class on sensitivity to critters. Later she would credit this as the reason for her interest in sociology.

Derpy developed a fondness for muffins because she messed up a cupcake recipe. She still has never managed to bake a cupcake.

She was offered a job at the post office because, amazingly, when she crashed headfirst into the boxes in the Canterlot mailroom after taking a wrong turn on her scooter bike, all the mail fell out sorted, which it hadn’t been.

Now she has incredible power over space and time because the old Deliverymare ate an under-baked muffin and was sick for a week, and in the meantime somepony had to do her job.

The Deliverymare…delivers. Always. Never missed a single one. She flies overhead, trailing a rain of muffin crumbs. If you look closely on a moonlit night, you might see her hovering above us all, looking around as if she’s not quite sure where she is or where’s she’s going.

The Unicorn below, unaware of the incredible powers she was trifling with, stamped her hoofs impatiently.

Finally the postmare circled down, her satchel stuffed full of letters and empty muffin wrappers. She smiled at the lavender Unicorn.

“Hi-I’m-Twilight-Sparkle-do-you-have-anything-for-me?” the Unicorn said in a single rush.

“Let me check.”

Twilight Sparkle’s eyebrows rose. The postmare’s eyes pointed in different directions. She took an agonizingly long time go through the contents of her satchel, more out of clumsiness than any deficiency of her eyes—she just kept dropping the darn things, and getting muffin crumbs everywhere. Twilight impatiently began organizing the letter she’d already checked.

Finally the postmare triumphantly clutched a mouthful of letters and other things and gave them to Twilight, who thanked her hurriedly. The postmare left everything else in the mail box[1] and flew away to the next town on her route. Only as she was leaving did Twilight notice the sticker on the back of her satchel.

[1] They had tried individual mail boxes until they realized it just made it easier to choose who’s mail you wanted to read.

Ask Me About My Surveys!

Don’t laugh, Twilight scolded herself. She was probably born with some kind of condition.

She spread the mail out in front of her with magic. First she scanned for anything with the royal sun seal, which meant a letter from Princess Celestia. Disappointed, she sorted the reports and information and letters about the new daughter bank, and calmly crumpled up and vaporized an unopened letter from Shining Armor. With a sudden stab of excitement and fear she spied the latest job market rumors, which she stuffed hastily away before anypony could see. She hoped her clever comparison of a certain famous economist to an amnesiac walrus had been well-accepted. Then she saw it. The latest Canterlot Monthly.

The magazine was plain enough as magazines go, but a beautiful smiling lavender pony adorned the front cover. Exclusive Interview With A Hero! the bold text read. Twilight Sparkle talks Elements, economics, and the future of Equestria!

She couldn’t wait to get home with it, literally. Twilight flipped to the interview with a trembling horn and settled on the grass to read….

The Daughter Bank of Ponyville is a surprisingly unassuming building, shorter than some of the houses and without ostentatious decoration. It lack a statue, a motto, an insignia, or even neighbors: It sits isolated on the west side down a path that looks as though it has become a path from ponies walking to and fro the bank. An old stallion raps on the wall outside with his cane, grumbling about his savings. Eventually the doors fly open and a flustered lavender Unicorn stamps out and says with a sigh, “Mr. Knickerbocker, we’re not that kind of a bank. I told you I dug up the money you buried here and gave it back to your wife. In fact, we don’t have any money here!”

“No money? I’ll tell everypony to start panicking,” the old stallion says, and ambles off, still grumbling. The Unicorn shouts after him, “I control expectations! I control everything!”

I nervously introduce myself, my reporter’s intuition serving me rightly: This is Twilight Sparkle, the Unicorn economist who saved the world. Suddenly I feel I am in the presence of greatness.

She is surprisingly humble. “I’m not great,” she says, waving a hoof and laughing. “Is that what they’re saying about me? That I’m great?” Her embarrassed chuckles are filled with snorts. “Who am I to argue? Wisdom of crowds!” More snorting. I jot this down. She jots down that I jot this down. When I ask why she has a notepad of her own, she says, “Of course I’m going to take notes! I was only ever interviewed once before when I did better on Princess Celestia’s first-year final exam than anypony in 500 years.” (I looked up this claim later, and she’s right: the list of top performers goes back almost a millennium, and only somepony named Sunset Shimmer ever matched her.)

She is inquisitive to the point of annoyance, asking me about my hat (fedora), my choice of pen (fountain, black), my assistant’s name, who chatters in her unplaceable accent while she takes photographs of Ms. Sparkle, who obliges so long as we keep answering her questions.

“But how did your parents know you were going to be a photographer?” she says, ruining yet another picture. We are wasting so much film.

“Da, darling, they did not know, is fake name,” says Picture Perfect. “Stage name, in this case, name of stage, ha ha.”

Ms. Sparkle laughs for an uncomfortably long time, snorts and all. “I get it! That’s funny!”

“Da, darling, is joke. Also truth. Is why funny.”

Eager to see the inside of the daughter bank and to begin the interview, I ask if we can step inside. Twilight ushers us in.

It is dark. Before my eyes can adjust to the gloom, I am struck by the smell of ink and paper and new furniture. As she hastens to relight the lamp and open the shades, I realize why: the bank is small, and empty.

There is one room.

There is one desk.

There is one chair.

“Isn’t it cozy?” she says. “Oh—um, sorry, I only have the one chair.”

At that moment, due to my own mounting horror and stupidity, the interview began.

Isn’t this horrifyingly claustrophobic and isolating?

(Laughs) What? No! I love it here! It’s the perfect place to do work. Princess Celestia knows me so well!

(At this point my assistant clucks. I remember myself and get back to my interview notes.)

Ah…yes, ahem, Princess Celestia…what happened during the NGDP Targeting Festival? How did our nation’s monetary institution fail?

It didn’t fail! That sort of talk would cause lapses in confidence if Princess Celestia…and I (laughs) weren’t so good at our jobs.

But the economy crashed….

Yeah, well, a nightmare Alicorn attacked it.

What was your role in defeating Nightmare Moon and restoring the economic equilibrium?

Hm, that raises the interesting question of whether the economy was restored to its equilibrium or a new equilibrium. I suppose theoretically….

[For the sake of brevity and clarity, we removed a five-page rambling philosophical inquiry involving comparing the economy to a boat and other absurdities. —Ed]

Did you write all that down? Anyway, when Nightmare Moon attacked, I knew I had to do something. So my friends and I went through the Everfree Forest, gathered the Elements of Equilibrium, and defeated her. All it took was a bit of Contract, Entrepreneurship, Information, Finance, and Rationality.

Were you frightened?

No.

Why not?

Well…I suppose I was. I felt a lot of dread. But…look, it was me and my friends traveling through the dark forest to seek the five ancient artifacts that could seal the ancient horror. All I needed was them.

That’s very sweet.

They’re great. Look, I have a picture of us.

(Ms. Sparkle and five colorful ponies, along with some kind of odd green-purple lizard, are in a picture framed on the desk, the only visible personal affect. Her smile is inexperienced but genuine.)

What can be done to protect the economy from Nightmare Moon-like events in the future? How can we prevent another so-called “Great Succession?”

That’s exactly what Princess Celestia intends the Daughter Banks to do. Even if Nightmare Moon seizes control of the One Bank, the Nine Daughter Banks of Equestria can still oppose her.

And oppose Princess Celestia as well.

What?

Ah—supposing the Daughter Banks are used to oppose the One Bank when Princess Celestia is in control?

No.

Um—can you explain how your daughter bank works? How much money do you keep in your vaults?

(Laughs) No, it doesn’t work like that. We don’t have any money here at all. What we do is manage expectations. The market tells us how much money ponies need to achieve some growth trajectory, and then we supply it to them. The One Bank does that too, but the Nine are a bit more versatile.

So if a pony came asking for a loan…?

We’d point them to a real bank. (Laughs) This isn’t really a bank at all. That’s just a historical word. It’s a…well, a sort of…hm. I just think of it as a Daughter.

There are skeptics angry with the One Bank’s failure. For example—

It didn’t fail.

The economy—

Was attacked.

Okay…there are skeptics angry with what happened to the One Bank. The Porcius research institute—

Please. It’s a think tank.

—funded largely by the Flim Flam Brothers has released a new book arguing the One Bank is responsible for Equestria’s economic disaster. They recommend a return to the Snow Standard. What would you say to such skeptics?

First of all, about the Snow Standard, it never actually happened, and it couldn’t possibly work anyway. What would you do when the snow melted? How would you carry it around? Ponies used to use gold and silver, and then they used certificates that could be exchanged for “a bit of” gold and silver, and now they just use bits.

Second, the One Bank is the only reason Equestria’s economy was so stable for a thousand years. The Really Great Moderation was entirely a result of Princess Celestia’s skill, wisdom, and power in guiding the economy. Now thanks to the Daughter Banks, our economy will be more stable and robust than ever.

Suppose Nightmare Moon does return. Can you tell us anything about the security plans?

Princess Celestia is stronger than ever. The Elements of Equilibrium are glowing healthily. I don’t think we have much to worry about.

I’d like to switch now to asking you about the economy more generally and trends in economics.

Fine.

What are the growing economic sectors? Where should ponies look to invest?

Cakes, dresses, and fruit businesses are doing amazingly in this economic climate. Personally I’m surprised by how high a fraction of consumption composes GDP, but it’s hard to argue with the taste of a Sweet Apple Acres apple or the delight of a Sugarcube Corner treat. And to relax in a Carousel Boutique bath towel while you’re enjoying it—what could possibly be better?

Did your friends pay you to say that?

Hey, your magazine is full of paid advertisements.

True. What—

I like paid advertisements!

Me too. What do you think the economy is going to look like in 30 years?

Growing. Beyond that, who can say?

Are you worried at all about western expansion? There are reports of ponies clashing with buffaloes as they move into what are traditionally thought of as buffalo lands. And the trend of ponies moving west is rising rapidly. Is there a bubble in housing?

First of all, that’s not what a bubble is. Second, buffaloes don’t believe in land ownership, so I don’t see how ponies could move onto their land. Third, hey, if buffaloes want them to go away, they can pay them to. They don’t, so they don’t.

Any plans for next year’s NGDP Targeting Festival?

Yes, but it’s a surprise!

What are the growing trends in economic research? What fields are hot right now?

Obviously the recent crisis has been a big boost to macro. Trixie [Lulamoon, the new chief vice executive economist of the Crystal Empire’s daughter bank] has a new paper out about the crisis, but it’s dumb.

Generally speaking, magical modeling and data analysis tools are becoming more and more necessary to do cutting-edge research. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your perspective, although I think it’s a good thing. Unfortunately that does mean Earth Ponies and Pegasi are finding it harder to publish in the top journals.

We get a lot of letters from fillies who want to become economists. What would you say to them?

Read Foundations of Economic Analysis! And believe in yourself. If you work hard, were born a Unicorn, and have an IQ above 130, you can do it!

Any last words?

Die, villainous scum! Also, thanks for stopping by.

Author's Note

Canterlot Monthly is a monthly magazine on the latest hot trends in economics. Naturally, it is read by millions.

The interviewer's name is Tocqueville. I don't know why either.

Shining Armor is a character who has been mentioned but not yet seen, in case you were wondering.

Charley and the Coase Theorem

On a rain-battered street in a dim, shuttered-off quadrant of Longedon, the sort that, if the city were a house being shown off to guests, would be the part that makes its hosts laugh nervously about how that room isn’t quite finished yet, a young colt stepped out into the gloom. Unshielded by a rain-coat or an umbrella, he made his way past the despondent street-sweeps huddled under an overhang, dodging splashing carts as he went.

Curious observers might wonder why a young colt had decided a storm like this is the time for a stroll. Observant observers might wonder why the young colt had such a look of singular intent upon his face.

He stepped into a candy shop. The owner awoke with a grunt.

“You again, Charley Horse?” He eyed the young colt suspiciously. “Best have some money this time.”

Charley slapped a hoofful of wet bits onto the counter. It was money he earned from scrounging, scrimping, and squeezing every bit for what it was worth, a practice his grandfather proudly called The Three Esses. “That’s how we get by, Charley, you and me and everyone else in this forgotten city-within-a-city,” he would say. “O the world she is wretched sometimes but how she does try,” and so on and so forth. It is also money Charley earned from slaving for rich old mares, sobbing to rich old mares, and stealing from rich old mares. The Other, More Reliable Three Esses, Charley privately thought. It was money he had earned for a reason.

“One Toffee Apple, please,” he said.

The owner had his doubts about the money, but he didn’t doubt that it was money. It disappeared into a drawer, and he plucked a Toffee Apple from a plate.

It deserved the capitalization. Sweet Apple Acres’ Toffee Apples were bright red like a flag and coated in a thick, sticky toffee that sealed your jaw shut for a sugary experience that lasted hours and did a lot for the income of dentists. Yet the toffee somehow melted in your mouth if you could just get it past your teeth, yielding a flavor so rich and complex that candy makers across the nation spent years striving to reproduce the secret recipe the Apple family published in their cookbooks you could buy most anywhere. And of course underneath the toffee you had a Sweet Apple Acres apple, which was worth its weight in cocaine and often compared to it.

But that wasn’t why Charley wanted a Toffee Apple. He was after a golden core.

He got it.

“Cor,” said the owner, agog. “Is that….”

“A golden core?” Charley struggled around a mouthful of toffee. “Yes, it is.”

“I never thought I’d see one in my shop,” the owner admitted, staring at the gooey golden mess. “In my little shop.” He chuckled. “There’s only five of those in the whole world, you know, and you’ve found the last one. You’ll be going to Sweet Apple Acres. What I would have given when I was a colt your age to catch a glimpse of Sweet Apple Acres. I suppose you’ll be meeting Applejack, then?” He sounded nervous, like the prospect of anypony meeting her was a thought too exciting to bear.

“I suppose that’s the idea,” Charley said. “Say, what would you have given anyway?”

“Huh?” The shopkeeper glared at him. “Don’t be smart with me. That core was found in my shop, which makes it my property. I didn’t know what I was selling you—get back here!”

Charley ran out into the rain, the golden core hidden within his mouth. Holding onto a very scarce resource was a very scary prospect.

The next day a golden core went on auction. Charley, his grandfather and the rest of their family watched the numbers climb. One hundred bits, one thousand, ten thousand….

What they were competing for Charley didn’t know. The status of being associated with Sweet Apple Acres? A rare opportunity? The prospect of learning the public secrets of the Apple family, or simply a love of candy?

Charley didn’t know. He didn’t really care, either. His grandfather topped off his milk.

“Well done, my boy,” he said. “I always said if you stick by the Three Esses, the Rainbow smiles upon you.”

“Natural phenomena don’t have intentionality, grandfather.”

“Drink your milk and don’t talk back.”

Charley sipped his milk and said nothing. The numbers continued to rise.

CM August Lead Interview: Twinkleshine

I meet Twinkleshine in the bustling coffee shop on the second floor of the massive Manehattan Daughter. The surfaces gleam like they have been freshly scrubbed—they have, she assures me—and the food is much better fare than at the crowded Coffee Buck across the street. Our meeting got off to a bad start when I smiled at her, asked her if she was visiting her mother here, and looked around for my scheduled interviewee.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you were, like, busy,” she snarled with a schoolgirl tick. She looks at something on my neck. A slow grin spreads across her face like rumors of my bed-wetting habit had across the popular girls in middle school.

Hot self-consciousness floods my face. Surreptitiously touching the spot on my neck, I detect nothing. She giggles. I have nowhere to look. My legs shift like they want to get away from the fire spreading down my cheeks and neck.

“I am a gosh-darned adult,” I tell myself, censored out of awareness that I might transcribe my own thoughts for this interview you are now reading. “I cannot be made to feel embarrassed by pretty high school girls.” It is something I had believed, and like a good scientist, Twinkleshine falsified my hypothesis.

“Are you done being stupid?” she says kindly, taking mercy on me. “I am the Chief Executive Economist of the Daughter Bank of Manehattan.”

The sheer scale of the Manehattan Daughter is nothing short of astounding. Five stories tall, with a clear glass elevator that zips up and down at sickening speeds, it towers over the (in)famous Manehattan financial district like a black monolith here to bring civilization to the animalistic chaos. The lobby has a fountain of water spouting out of the horn of a marble Unicorn. Coins glitter at the bottom and patterns of light play on the marble columns. I am told the bank already employs over one hundred economists. The line of applicants for job openings bends around the street.

She is a schoolfilly, I can’t help thinking. Her mane style is immature, she has a terrible habit of checking some automated message device that whirs along the wall with short letters. I wonder if she wears those fuzzy winter boots that are so popular. Her voice has a habit of going up? At the end of a sentence? Like she’s always asking a question? It’s starting to infect me as well, and slowly drives me mad.

A background chorus of derivatives and interest rates and something that blurs together into hedge-pension-index-premium provides a suitable refrain for our lunch. Twinkleshine treats it all like the conductor of a school choir with an unruly filly on the bassinet: controlling yet dismissive, and utterly unconcerned.

“My job is making sure that no matter what silliness they get up to, the symphony goes on without a single note missed,” she says, sipping her coffee, some ethereal and flowery concoction of cream and sugar. I’ve elected for an actual coffee, no milk, two sugars: A reporter’s coffee should look black and taste sweet. It’s good, and more importantly, doesn’t look like something that should have a little plastic umbrella on top.

“Everypony got the financial crisis totally wrong.” She levitates a bit of whipped cream into her mouth, swallows. It’s extremely disconcerting. “You have to, like, see the bigger picture.”

Twinkleshine is the bigger picture. A student of Princess Celestia’s less than six months ago, she leapfrogged over the usual series of bureaucratic or low-level academic positions to wind up as chief executive economist of the biggest daughter bank. Her eggshell white coat and solid pink mane and tail give the appearance of somepony girlish and approachable, and she does giggle and simper like a champion. But her mind is like a rock lying wait in gushing white water. Sharp, and deadly.

“They need to be afraid of me,” she says, now blowing bubbles into the milky remains of her drink. “At the beginning a lot of, like, incentives and rules were suggested, but I didn’t like that. The ponies on the corner of Fourth and Wall Street, I taught them not to make me unhappy. They know better than me, like, what they would be doing to make me unhappy and how to keep themselves from doing it.”

I do not ask if she knows what “like” means or if she has Tourette's syndrome. Either way, it’s very tragic.

“How do you maintain control?”

“By showing no weakness, no mercy.”

“Isn’t that lonely?”

She blows bubbles, apparently unconcerned.

Caffeine rushes into my bloodstream. I’m ready to begin the interview.

Let’s start with the obvious. You saved the world from a financial crisis. Princess Celestia commended you. How does it feel to be a national hero?

Wait, wait. We can’t have the interview here; I can barely concentrate. Let’s go up to my office.

I follow her into the elevator and up to the fifth floor. There is only one door here, and it is guarded by a pair of monsters.

“Don’t mind my Diamond Dogs.” She pats one on its stony arm. “You get a pet if you save the world, you know.”

I can’t remember if the same was true of Twilight Sparkle, but I decide not to argue with the mare who commands golems. The Diamond Dogs are almost as tall as an Alicorn and much more massive, hunched over far enough that their glittering gemstone claws almost touch the ground. Two pairs of coal-black eyes turn my way, but the golems offer no resistance as Twinkleshine ushers me into her office. It is well-furnished, has a nice view and a comfortable chair to sit in while I ask her questions, a definite upgrade from the Ponyville daughter bank.

Less than two weeks ago the world’s economy teetered on the brink of collapse…again. This time it was a financial crisis. How would you explain what happened?

I wouldn’t.

Pardon?

I will not tell you what caused the financial crisis.

Um…why not?

Financial crises are old, possibly older than the Bank itself if we follow the few, knotted and burnt threads of history remaining to us. But all it really means is that the financial institutions are not doing well, at least the loudest and most obvious ones. They declare the crisis, not us. You can fake a financial crisis, you know, if the financial “leaders” (she makes hoofquotes) are willing to run about like chickens. No offense to any critters.

[Out of sensitivity to the concerns and welfare of critters, a remark about chickens has been edited. —Ed]

Is that what happened?

No.

Aha! If you’re willing to say no, then I can go down the list asking every possible explanation until you can’t say no.

Fine, do that. List every possible explanation.

(She looks at me bored and slightly disgusted. She has played intellectual games before, she seems to be saying, chess and greater, and here I am challenging her to a game of tic-tac-toe and immediately connecting three of her own marks for her. I find myself apologizing, feeling like the colt I was back in school when I accidentally sat next to the popular filly at lunch.)

How were the concerns of the affected financial institutions addressed?

The usual method. (Singing) Lend at high interest on all good securities! (Laughs)

What about more direct aid?

Aid? We’re a bank; we don’t aid anypony. Only, like, fillies think we’re trying to save businesses. The businesses will save themselves or die, and good riddance.

(The untouchable scorn in her voice amazes me; she is so effortlessly above other ponies it can only be the result of great effort. I have the strangest desire to ask her to a dance in a squeaky voice and be summarily rejected.)

When something totally bad happens, somepony’s got to be worse off, or what’s the point of calling it a bad thing? If the financial institutions, like, need to be held up by my bank, then the financial institutions don’t work.

On the personal side of things, how do you feel about running Equestria’s biggest daughter bank? You were a student only months ago.

Economics is a meritocracy.

So the ‘crats would say. How did you convince a bunch of stallions in the financial sector, most of whom are old enough to be your father, that you’re the boss?

For the first time since the interview started, she looks actually interested in answering.

Lunch tables.

Lunch tables…?

I sat them in lunch tables. A table, B table, C table, and so on. It was a, like, requirement of the new bank if they wanted to eat on Fourth and Wall. I put a chart on the wall, names to seats.

They obeyed?

(Laughs) We had a lot of fun at A table. And why would somepony from B table want to sit with C table ponies? See, I picked it so everypony knew the A table ponies were a little smarter, a little more successful than the B table ponies. And B table ponies were a little younger, a little more ambitious than C table ponies. Don’t even ask about the losers at D table.

Sometimes an A table pony would find her name on a seat at B table. Who knows why? Never a lot of them all at once, only one, maaaaybe two. I don’t know what kinds of conversations they’d have with their new table, but I can’t imagine it was very fun. Oh, and of course, sometimes the tables would be full.

I was the one constant. I was the only one who wasn’t afraid. They didn’t fear me. They clung to me like shipwrecked ponies clinging to driftwood in a storm.

If the tables were full, where did ponies eat?

(Smiles) The, like, janitors told me they kept finding food and plates dumped in the bathroom disposals. Who knows?

You are evil.

Thank you.

Why do you think your first instinct was control, rather than, say, friendship?

Hm?

She looks at the clock; we have at least fifteen minutes scheduled left.

I have time for one more question.

Do you wear those fluffy boots in winter that are so popular with fillies?

Are you seriously a reporter?

[Not in the presence of a pretty mare, apparently. —Ed]

Author's Note

Incidentally, when Twinkleshine was just a filly, she heard a voice coming from a copy of The Theory of Interest in the library and ended up reading it.

The Knightian Code

Author's Note

To paraphrase Mark Twain, anyone attempting to find a moral in this story will be shot.

The Knightian Code

Three months had passed since Twilight and her friends had defeated Nightmare Moon and restored monetary equilibrium to the economy. August was past, and with September and the new school year, Twilight's friends suddenly had a lot of free time on their hoofs while their younger sisters were in school. Twilight was mildly pleased to learn that being friends, in addition to teaming up to save the world from the forces of economic evil, also entailed playing board games together in her treehouse.

Twilight liked games. Games had rules.

Rainbow Dash rolled the dice between her hooves.

“Come on, give me a twelve!” she said.

“You know that’ll land you in jail, right?” Applejack said.

“It’s not a race, Dashie,” Fluttershy said.

“You’re just saying that because I’m in first,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’ve already made seven laps!” She rolled a four. “Darn! Just a dumb old chance card. What?! I have to pay a 15 bit poor voluntary defense fund! I’m not poor!”

“How does she have half the properties?” Rarity said.

It was a good question. Twilight, the banker and rule-enforcer by default, considered the board. Rainbow Dash’s empire was, well, a rainbow of property cards, a smattering of green houses, and two red hotels, all organized on their colored bars by Rarity, who Twilight felt didn’t quite get Monopoly.

“Ooh, a trip to Manehattan Avenue!” Rarity said, moving her piece to where the dice commanded. “How delightful! I wonder if I can find a decent salon.”

“Have fun,” Applejack grinned. “That’ll be sixteen bits. It’s an all-inclusive package.”

“Overpriced tourist trap,” Rarity muttered, hoofing the bits to Applejack.

“You do all know this is just a board game, right?” Twilight said.

“Do you want to play with us?” Pinkie Pie said. “You can be the carriage.”

“No, thanks.”

The race for second place was tight. Applejack held on with her railroads. Pinkie Pie ran the utilities, Rarity only bought properties that fit her color scheme, and Fluttershy was protesting Boardwalk’s excessive price-gouging. She didn’t have any money or property herself, refusing to buy any in case somepony else wanted it, and giving all her excess bits to the Free Parking space.

“Oh, no!” Rainbow Dash said, landing on the voluntary defense fund square. “I’m going to have to mortgage my properties!”

“And you’ve rolled three snake-eyes,” Applejack said. “It’s off to jail with you.”

“No! Twilight, please, help me out!” Rainbow Dash turned to her, eyes wide. “If you don’t bail me out, the game will end!”

“Good,” Fluttershy said.

“No, it won’t,” Pinkie Pie said at the same time.

“Pleeeeease,” Rainbow Dash said. “I really don’t want to go to jail. And I want to have all my money and not pay anypony anything.”

“Fine,” Twilight said, giving Rainbow Dash an extra pair of 500 bit bills. “But spend it sensibly—”

Rainbow Dash bought a second hotel and placed it on top of the one she already had on Boardwalk.

“That’s against the rules,” Fluttershy gasped.

“Okay, okay, maybe that’s what’s written down,” Rainbow Dash said quickly, looking at Twilight. “But who enforces the rules?”

“I do,” Twilight said.

“And you’re great at it.” Twilight preened. “So as my friend, maybe we could…?”

“I’ll allow it.”

“Eep,” Fluttershy eeped. “There are no rules!”

“Can I have 500 bits?” Applejack asked sardonically.

“No.”

“What’s the difference?” Rarity said.

“Your turn, Pinkie Pie!” Twilight said loudly.

Pinkie Pie rolled. “Oh, no!”

“Yes!” Rainbow Dash laughed, taking her token for her and placing it on Boardwalk. “That’s 3000 bits, Pinkie Pie.”

Pinkie Pie’s ears drooped. “I…I don’t have that much money.”

“You can pay me in installments,” Rainbow Dash decided. “I’ll take your token as collateral.”

“But…but that represents my soul!”

“So?!”

“Are you gonna let her get away with that?” Applejack said to Twilight.

“Yes.”

There was a bit of a protest after that, with four ponies against two. Fluttershy tried to occupy Boardwalk, but no pony cared. Finally the game continued, albeit slowly, until Fluttershy flipped over the game board with an apology and walked out.

“I was winning!” Rainbow Dash said.

“You can’t win,” Rarity said. “The game just continues until everypony else dies.”

“I was winning,” Rainbow Dash repeated.

The End.

CM September Lead Interview: Gamma Glisten

Beautiful weather, extravagant houses, and private omnicarriages—I must be in Silipone Valley. As an information specialist myself, being in the heart of the information capital of Equestria is awe-inspiring—and makes me more than a little nervous for my job. I hear talk of relays, algorithms, and data. Lots and lots of data. Where it comes from, what to do with it, and how to make more from less. Does a picture tell a story? Not today maybe, but I’ve been told that’s just a matter of finding the right algorithm and feeding it the right data. One day a reporter’s job might be done with a camera and a pocket horn.

You read that right: a pocket horn. Whether they’re working at a giant corporation like Billion Jillion Gazillion or just a couple of ponies experimenting with their horns in a dusty garage, the innovators and inventors here are pushing magitechnology to limits hitherto undreamed of. I asked one pony at the Microhorn research institute if she had any concerns about the moral implications, and she told me, “It’s all right, we have an algorithm for ethics.”

Should everypony have access to a Unicorn’s magic at their whim? As an Earth Pony myself, I’d love to be freed of the trouble of having to pick something up rather than levitate it, or being stuck pounding helplessly on a locked door when I’ve forgotten my keys rather than teleporting through it. Yet I also worry that one-third of the population having forehead lasers is more than enough. Ponies who can’t afford the latest and greatest pocket horns will not be able to keep up. Unicorns will be born with inherent advantages, able to practice their magical craft at a much younger age. I was told by one such Unicorn that the march of time is always forward. He also told me that if his hunch is right, he might be able to change that. Then he asked me for a grant for 50 million.

Maybe it was just my stuck-in-the-mud ways, but the inhabitants of Silipone Valley struck me as…not smug, but self-assured without quite being proud. They knew they were right, they knew their doubters were wrong, and they knew the gulf between them was like that between the Southeastern Jut and the lower lands to the south beyond our national borders. Asking about the Great Crash punctured a few inflated egos, and maybe I was too anxious to do so as a result. But one pony puffed up when I mentioned it to her, proud, even eager. Rightly so, for she was Gamma Glisten, and she saved the world.

Gamma Glisten is chartreuse, not light green, and envious of information she doesn’t have. She shares gossip as generously as she does slices of the exquisite key lime pie to be had at the bakery on the ground floor of the Daughter Bank of San Franciscolt. Yet she has the most incredible way of niggling any details from even a reporter as taciturn as myself. Then from tidbits and rumors she constructs a grand picture that surpasses my own more informed speculations in every respect. Forget pocket horns and algorithms—if this Unicorn wants my job, I can’t stop her!

After pie and chatter, she takes me on a tour of the daughter bank. It isn’t gaudy and enormous like the Manehattan Daughter or small and unassuming like the Ponyville Daughter. This bank is sleek, efficient; all sharp angles and open offices to encourage “synergy,” a word as common to Silipone Valley as rain isn’t. It is mostly Unicorns, some Pegasi. A pair of gray Earth Pony sisters run the Mascarpony Bakery on the first floor.

Her office alone has an opaque wall, an incredible mass of colored dots on a canvas meters long. She tells me she likes to look for patterns. She also tells me there aren’t any.

I was eager to ask her about the Great Crash. I also wanted to know about the pocket horns, and the private omnibuses, and the ponies, mostly Earth, who suddenly found the price of living unaffordable due to the influx of high-earning Unicorn researchers and Pegasus capitalists. I also wanted to keep her from stealing the hat off my head, and to make a stand for old-fashioned ways.

Then she shows me the list of questions I am about to ask her. She says she fed an algorithm data from my past interviews. It’s accurate. Scarily accurate.

I’m flustered and annoyed. Maybe that’s why I asked her what I did.

Isn’t your drive to break down the universe and understand everything just playing God?

I think they stopped playing when they got an Earth Pony to teleport without any Unicorn interference. She split herself into, oh, quite a few pieces.

But she’s all right now?

Mm-hm.

What is the future of magic? And what does an economy where magic is readily available to everypony look like?

I don’t research magical technology, I just tell them that if their horns mess with the money supply, I’ll break their horns in two, and not the ones in their pockets.

You don’t see yourself as one of the innovators here pushing ponykind relentlessly forward?

(Shudders) Celestia no. I want to keep things working. They want to break things and go, “Ohh, that’s why!” And lately I think they add, “Better not tell Gamma!”

Tell me about the Great Crash. What happened, and what was your role in saving the world?

I, I think Princess Celestia must have sent me here for a reason. Her mane is different every time, did you know that? The wave of colors, the little sparkles and curves, it’s galactic, slow, tiny changes, but I notice. I came here, and I saw that there was too much…too many ponies willing to argue economics not with me, but with the economy itself. Who thought that they could see how the world ought to be, and if the world disagreed….

Yes?

I’ve given up on psychoanalysis. My psychologist says it causes me stress.

Does the job wear you out?

You know the legend that a Unicorn can only be tamed by a virgin? I’m surrounded by them. I feel phantom iron bars around me, like a prison amputee.

About the Great Crash….

Yes, yes, look, at some point you have to make some money or admit you’re destroying value. Without anything to sell, mere patter about technology and the future, today! are so many empty promises. It was simple fraud that brought it all crashing down. Strange, don’t you think? It’s as if a single pinch was enough to wake everypony from their collective dream. A cautious wind, er, critter spirits, you might say, I don’t wish to be offensive. And so every fleck of foam on the wave of the future crashed on the shore and faded on the sand.

What steps did you take to prevent the destruction of the world?

Put out pamphlets that explained about P/E ratios, what a dividend is, that sort of thing. Smiled from under a wide-brim hat while frantic ponies made pathetic pleas in my office. Lent at high interest on all good securities! (Laughs) It’s banking, you know, only banking.

You’re from Louisireana, correct? San Franciscolt must be quite the contrast. Do you have any thoughts or concerns about the visible inequality on the rise here?

I say let them eat cake. The bakery downstairs is quite good. We are making an effort to hire Earth Ponies. Not a successful effort, aha, but an effort. They just can’t, hmmm, do anything.

We can talk, chat, if you will, about inequality in Coasean terms, and then we would say—

(A cloud of multicolored butterflies slam into the window, making a very delicate racket. “Come in, sweeties!” Gamma says, her horn glowing. The window opens, and they flood in, filling the room. I hold my mouth closed, afraid I might swallow one. On closer inspection, they’re not butterflies at all. They’re ponies, tiny ponies with large, fragile wings. Gamma engages in a dozen conversations all at once, exchanging information with the high-pitched, chattering perversions of nature. I can’t follow a word of it.)

What are these?

Meet the Breezies! They helped me during the Crash, you know, they distributed pamphlets everyone and flapped annoying ponies out of my office. I can’t wait to try a real helicopter drop with them, Princess Celestia will be so delighted. They’re magical creatures, the wings look fragile but they’re immensely powerful. That whole stretch of country they called Tornado Boulevard was just Breezie territory before ponies, ah, helped them relocate.

What lessons do you take from the Great Crash moving forward?

If you’re convinced the world does or is about to work by entirely new and different rules, you had better know what those rules are and be able to test them before you start investing bits.

(The Breezies, who have been chattering in their high-pitched little voices the whole time, earn a sharp reaction from their chartreuse master. She jabbers at them, starting one sentence directed at one Breezy and finishing another aimed at two on the opposite side. It’s incomprehensible gibberish. I catch something about a countess, some kind of coruscant letter, and an order of figs that seems to have been waylaid.)

Any closing comment?

You must find those figs, Seabreeze!

Author's Note

Curiously, when Gamma was quite young, she swore she heard a voice speaking to her from a copy of Prices and Production in her mother's library. She ended up reading it.

The Nightmare Attribution Error

September passed with a minimum of homework[1], and October rolled on, bringing with it a change of leaves and a chill easterly wind, one that, if you listened to it blow, seemed to moan faintly about the ineffectiveness of foreign aid.

[1] Apple Bloom, Applejack's little sister, Sweetie Belle, Rarity's little sister, and Scootaloo, who must have been Rainbow Dash's little sister, had quickly learned that Twilight knew all the answers and, more importantly, could be very easily made to part with them. She couldn't resist. An incomplete and imperfect homework assignment made her horn itch.

Fillies had stopped gorging themselves on cherries and started on the new harvest of apples instead, a relief to their mothers, who were sick of pit-spitting contests. Ponyville was bursting with gourds, cauliflower, and a slow-building, buzzing excitement. Twilight was somewhat baffled by the idea of foods having seasons. She was also bemused, albeit mollified, by the number of ponies who brought her baskets of produce, or fresh-baked cabbage-and-carrot pies, or newly knitted clothes.

"I didn't know everypony thought so highly of me," Twilight had said, making embarrassed but pleased horse noises.

"Oh, it's because of the daughter bank!" Pinkie Pie had explained. "They're all just saying thanks, you know."

"Oh...kay," Twilight said, and wondered how she might do something in return.

October rolled to its end...a dark one.

~~~

October 31, Year 0 of Princess Celestia's Unbroken Reign

Ponyville is all the darker tonight for the orange glow of the candles. Had there been no candles, there would have been no shapes. But the flickering orange light made shadows. And the pony mind gave those shadows life.

Which was perfect...for Nightmare Night.

Fly down the path leading from the Carousel Boutique, wreathed in glittering skulls with glinting violet eyes, toward the schoolhouse, its fields guarded by a host of grinning jack-o’-lanterns, their fiery eyes lit with a demonic blaze, along to the bowling alley where a lone skeleton, its fingers splints of shattered pins, menaces the entrance, and past the rows of houses, wrapped in cobweb and warded by ghouls. Drop-down spiders hide in the trees, and spooky monsters perched on fences, eyes glowing red.

(Is it...gratifying? Tonight, Nightmare Night, wouldn't it be scarier if Ponyville were without the fiends and frights?)

The town is ready, and now the ponies must prepare themselves for the trials ahead.

(And amidst all this darkness and flame are three pale lights hovering at the edge of the graveyard. The only word I can offer by way of explanation is yearning, and that is all we will say of them for now.)

But...something is missing. There is still one thing left to do, one thing to make Ponyville right on Nightmare Night. Yet, at this very moment, one pony is diligently attending to it.

Twilight Sparkle, Unicorn economist, sets a small bowl piled high with sugar cubes by the corner of the door to her treehouse. Even though no pony remembers what it is for, they will remember not to disturb the bowl with sugar cubes piled high by a door on Nightmare Night. For it is true that a filly’s nightmares are the scars of their foremares.

The sugar cubes glitter faintly like distant stars in the reflected light of her eyes, which hang above the bowl like the full moon in the sky. She makes a sound that isn’t quite a word, yet it yearns powerfully.

It is the best she can do.

And when she turns in again, the door swings closed behind her with an exaggerated creeeeeak. As it does, a disembodied voice moans, “Welcome to your nightmare, little filly.”

You see, Twilight Sparkle understands two things about Nightmare Night in Ponyville:

It is about scary things.
Fillies come up to your door and knock and ask for candy.

So Twilight has used her magic to make a trap around the entrance to the treehouse. Any filly who blunders in will fall into a shallow pool of water. There are ladders for the fillies to climb up, but they are slippery and wobbly, like the disturbed expectations of the damp fillies. Only those who are truly determined will be able to escape the liquidity trap (they, and those who cry to their mothers).

If the fillies still wish to venture within Twilight Sparkle’s domain, they will find themselves inside a treehouse. And a treehouse is…a tree, but made more suitable to the comfort of ponies. And trees, as every filly learns on Nightmare Night, are quite frightening things, with faces that follow you down the road and long jagged claws that arc out camouflaged against the dark sky and curve down sharply like hooks.

Old, big, libraries, late at night, empty of ponies, and so, so quiet but for an nonrhythmic tap on the ground, a shuffle amongst the shelves…are really scary.

Get to know your local library, little fillies. You never know when you will be wanting something from it, not the least of which is to escape with your life….

Should the fillies pass through the terrible path of entrepreneurship and wish to brave further the treehouse and the twisted mind that made it, they will find a set of stairs that creak and moan with every prime numbered step. Upstairs they will hear the heavy, leathery breathing that their nightmares embedded deep in their genes will understand is a dragon, and the threat of hot, instant nothing is near.

At the end of the long corridor is a bowl. It is full of chocolates—and not just any chocolates. Canterlot chocolates, ethereal concoctions of sugar, chocolate, and cream, some sticky with caramel and others shielded with a layer of exquisite nuts that do valiant but futile battle against the chomp of eager teeth. But no matter how far a filly may stick her hoof in, she never reaches the candy.

“You must pay the price,” a voice hisses, but when the filly turns around no pony is there. Trembling, she reaches for her bag of candy, ready to make a sacrifice at the alter of a Canterlot chocolate.

(Twilight doesn’t see why she shouldn’t benefit from the arrangement.)

(Twilight has never dealt with parents before.)

(Twilight is going to learn an important lesson about public choice theory.)

Away from that horror, the horror of a choice, and back along the path until we reach the end where the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres blanket the hills. Heavy with fruit though they were mere weeks ago, the reaper has since passed through, her scythe cutting the apples from their boughs, often with the help of a good solid buck from a pony below. Ghost whispers are the leaves rustling in the breeze, and a few, rare apples tremble on their branches. They are the lucky few that survived the Scourge of Apple Bobbing and the Toffee Plague (or so it is remembered in the nightmares of apples). There we fade in through the glow of a window inside the house where Applejack is struggling into a rather odd costume. Behind her, Apple Bloom is doing much the same.

Look at these two sisters who strive together.

May you heed yourself, Twilight Sparkle! It is better to eat candy than to eat your heart out on Nightmare Night.

Applejack squeezed her head through the narrowing opening of the costume and wobbled unsteadily before finding her balance.

“Got it,” she said. “Okay, Apple Bloom, let’s take a gander.”

But when Applejack turned around, her jaw dropped.

“Apple Bloom? What kind of apple is that?”

“Tain’t no apple,” Apple Bloom said. “I’m Gum Disease.”

“What in tarnation are you thinking? We’re supposed to dress up as apples together.”

“Apples ain’t scary.”

“This ain’t about being scary, Apple Bloom. This is advertising.”

“Name one pony who don’t know about apples.”

“It’s about connecting with the customer base,” Applejack said. “Do I have to explain this again? We have to keep ponies thinking about apples. It's always gotta be the first thing on their minds.”

“Well I’m Gum Disease,” Apple Bloom said. “After everypony gets cavities from eating too much candy they’ll be glad to satisfy their sweet tooth with an apple. Besides, I’m advertising our new service.”

“New service?”

“For the low, low price of three bits, ponies can have the once-in-a-lifetime guaranteed opportunity to brush a Cerberus’s teeth and gums. That’s a savings of five bits!”

“Five bits? Where’d that come from?”

“I just made it up.” Apple Bloom beamed. “I reckon it ain’t lying if there’s no truth to it in the first place.”

Applejack frowned.

“And, and, she’s all ready tonight,” Apple Bloom said quickly. “I got everything set up proper when all the fillies come by for their caramel apples and the Apple Games.”

Applejack grinned. Nightmare Night was going to be something special at Sweet Apple Acres this year. For one, no pony would need to stop to pee halfway through. (“It’ll be real good for the dirt,” Apple Bloom had said.) Fluttershy was doing the same thing she did every year, blindfolding the fillies and having them touch the different animals…uh, naturally something whatevers, and having the fillies guess what it was. It wasn’t any good, though, because Fluttershy always got too excited and blurted the answer. And as for Pinkie Pie…Applejack shuddered. She didn’t even want to know what that pony had gotten up to this year with all the forest’s resources at hoof.

At least she didn’t have to worry about any competition from Twilight. She was the sort of pony who handed out pennies and pamphlets on the dangers of eating too much sugar on Nightmare Night.

“Fine, you can be Gum Disease,” Applejack said. “Just be sure to tell your friends you ate too many oranges.”

“They won’t believe that. Can I go now?”

Applejack looked outside. “Fine, fine. I got to get going too. Let’s meet up at Rainbow Dash’s house later, okay?”

“Urgh, no way,” Apple Bloom said as she trotted out. “It’s all pranks. Who wants to hang out when every seat’ll zap ya and all the food is pretending to be worms? We’ll meet by Rarity’s place! I know you just want my candy….” Apple Bloom’s voice faded as she ran out and the door shut behind her.

Applejack shook her head. That pony was too stubborn for her own good. But she had her own friends to meet, and Applejack’s mind turned to the fun ahead.

So Applejack squeezed through the door and tottered down to one of the Sugarcube Corners where they planned to meet. There she saw Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity.

“Howdy, y’all—Whooaa!” Applejack stumbled as she quickened her pace. She ended up rolling the rest of the way to Rainbow Dash, who stopped her forward momentum and helped her up. “Thanks. What’re y’all dressed up as OH MY CELESTIA!”

“What’s wrong?” Rarity asked.

Applejack pointed. “Your, uh, uh….”

“Yes?”

“Rarity, your rump is showing.”

“And?” Rarity inspected herself. “Isn’t it always?”

“Fluttershy, that shirt is mighty sheer. Ain’t you afraid somepony is going to see something and think, well…you know….”

“Ooh, is this a guessing game? That I’m yellow? That my cutie mark is butterflies?” Fluttershy shut her eyes tight and squealed happily. “I’m so excited for Nightmare Night!”

“Applejack has a point,” Pinkie Pie said, lifting her mask to speak. “Ponies look a lot more revealing with clothes on. It’s kind of funny!” The mask slammed closed again.

“Funny?” Applejack said. “More like creepy if you ask me.”

A lavender flash marked Twilight Sparkle’s arrival.

“Hi, girls,” Twilight said.

“Hi,” they chorused.

“Twilight,” Applejack said, “have you seen the costumes these ponies are wearing? I swear every year it gets worse. Mares have no standards these days.”

Twilight looked at the group. “Fluttershy, are you a bunny?”

“You guessed!”

“Very nice. Rarity…Marelyn Monroe, am I wrong?”

“You are not.” Rarity twirled her skirt, eliciting a “Hey, now,” from Applejack.

“Guess what I am?” Rainbow Dash struck a pose in the air.

“Wonderbolts.” Twilight didn’t even look. “And….” She stared at Pinkie Pie.

“I’m the spirit of madness that haunts this dark town. Tee hee!”

“Got it. And, Applejack, you are…a lemon.”

“I am not!” Applejack said crossly while the ponies giggled. “I’m an apple—but not just any apple. I’m the sweetest, freshest, plumpest, roundest, reddest apple that you can only get at Sweet Apple Acres—”

“You can’t give her a lead like that or she’ll just keep going,” Rainbow Dash said. “And what are you?”

“What do you mean?” said Twilight.

“What did you dress up as?” Rarity said.

“Was I supposed to?”

“It’s traditional,” Fluttershy said. “Although I’m sure no pony will mind.”

“We don’t normally dress up in Canterlot,” Twilight said.

“What do you do?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Canterlot must have the awesomest parties!”

“Not…really. Nightmare Night is something for fillies in Canterlot. And I was always too busy studying even when I was that young.”

“Then your first official real Nightmare Night is here in Ponyville with your best friends!” Pinkie Pie cheered.

“First we gotta sort these costumes out,” Applejack said. “I can’t be seen in public with a couple of…of…you know, the sort of mare who goes about dressed like that! Why do mares dress like that anyway?”

“Oh, are we doing economics now?” Twilight didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s take it for granted that a typical stallion and a typical mare have the same amount of total sex capital to spend on whatever they wish. But, we might observe that a typical stallion’s sex capital increases steadily with age after the initial endowment they receive during puberty. A mare’s sex capital, on the other hand, quickly peaks and then drops back down.”

“It’s terribly shallow,” Rarity sniffed.

“But it is, which is more important,” Twilight said. “And we can deduce some likely consequences. What this model suggests is that a young mare’s sexuality is very marketable, but as she ages this fades quickly. A stallion, meanwhile, will be awkward and not very desirable in his youth, but as he ages he will mature and attract mares much more easily. This is all a gross simplification, of course, but it has the ring of truth to it, doesn’t it?

“Now let’s suppose that there are, for whatever reason, a variety of norms and laws that discourage mares from spending their sex capital as they wish during its peak. This will not change the fact that mares want to spend their capital while it is available, and stallions want to buy! And so we might expect to see the development of certain focal points, or Schelling points, where the sex capital market can work relatively unhindered.”

“What’s a Schelling point?”

“A Schelling point is a point of a coordination ponies will be able to reach in the absence of communication. If you want a good time to give a pony a present, when will you do it?”

“Their birthday,” everypony said. “Unless Winter Wrap Up comes first.”

“Exactly,” Twilight said. “Everypony knows it, and everypony knows everypony knows it, so there’s no need to talk about it. If there are five ponies all in a line, all of which are the same height except for one who is much taller than the others, and Applejack and Rarity have to each guess which pony the other will select, and they can’t communicate, which one will they both pick?”

“The tall one,” Applejack said. Rarity nodded.

“Bingo,” Twilight said. “That’s a Schelling point. And so’s Nightmare Night. Just like it’s okay to give presents to a pony on their birthday, and it’s okay to knock on ponies’ doors and sing carols to them on Winter Wrap Up, it’s also okay to dress kind of slutty on Nightmare Night. It’s the sort of amazing coordination that can come about without any kind of explicit communication or central guidance that economists call spontaneous order. No pony had to plan to make Ponyville scary tonight. Ponies didn’t need to confirm to each other that they would all dress up and distribute candy. It just happens because everypony knows that everypony knows that everypony knows that this is what ponies do on Nightmare Night.”

“Except for you,” Rainbow Dash sniggered.

“The point is, it’s misleading to say that mares dress slutty on Nightmare Night,” Twilight continued, slightly louder. “Have you ever heard of the fundamental attribution error?”

Applejack sighed. “Nope.”

“When a pony is mad she tends to attribute that to her situation. ‘I’m mad because so-and-so was late and I had a bad night’s sleep and somepony was rude to me,’ she thinks. But when a pony sees some other pony, say, kicking a fencepost in frustration, she tends to think that that’s just an angry pony. That’s the fundamental attribution error, where ponies tend to explain the behaviors of others by their fundamental nature rather than their situation. Ponies often place too much emphasis on the internal and too little on the external when judging others.

“So are these mares slutty? Maybe, but another way of looking at it is that they’re rationally using a Schelling point to spend their sex capital during the relatively brief window they have available. It’s no surprise that there’s a huge jump in the ‘sluttiness’ of mares on such a night. Mares want to maximize the use of their assets.”

Applejack chuckled.

“Huh?” Twilight said.

“Oh, uh, I thought you were making a joke.”

“I never joke about economics. Suppose there was a tree full of delicious red apples, but you could only pick it once a year. On that one night, you’d grab as many as you could. And if we assume mares are generally of sound mind and able to make decisions for themselves, what’s the harm? Some sound economic logic might tend to inure ponies to all the implicit sexism in this talk of sluttiness.”

“I ain’t sexist!“

“I know. I’m not making the fundamental attribution error!”

“All this talk about sluts is super interesting,” Rainbow Dash said, “but while we’re sitting here everypony else is getting a head start on the candy. We need to hurry if we want to get any of the good stuff.”

“Good point,” said Pinkie Pie, “but first we need a costume for Twilight. She’d look so weird around all the vampires and skeletons, and then everypony would do the factor arbitrage eradicator and think she’s weird, and that would be so sad.”

“Fundamental attribution—”

“No science! Now there is only fear!”

Cackling, Pinkie Pie dragged Twilight inside the dark maw of the Sugarcube Corner, followed closely by the other ponies. She would emerge later with a costume of sorts, a balance of the influences of her five friends. And overhead the full moon shined bright on the night of terror and candy that lasted into the morning, and when Twilight returned home exhausted with a pulsing headache from too much sugar and a weird happiness in her chest that carried her up and into bed, she failed to notice that a small bowl by the door to the treehouse was empty.

CM October Lead Interview: Cherry Jubilee

“The title never mattered,” Cherry Jubilee says in her slow, Southern drawl. She talks like her vocal cords are made out of molasses and lubricated with sweet tea. “I admire your, ah, monthly magazine,” she draws out the word “magazine” to at least fourteens syllables, “but if we fruit-growers had to leave it up to writers to know good fruit from bad, we’d just contract the whole business to you.”

“Then why compete at all?”

“And let Sweet Apple Acres win? Or Venti Vineyards? It used to be Viente Vineyards. And if some orange grove went away with the prize, I might have declared some kind of secession from Equestria.”

“So Nightmare Moon is on your mind?”

She shudders politely. “I’m only joking, I’m sure. Nightmare Moon was a terror, however brief. I only report with satisfaction that she displayed no taste for cherries. We keep the Montmorency ”

Talking to Cherry Jubilee is like taking a sailboat out on the murky, turbulent waters of a social ocean. Giant squid lurk beneath, but you’ll never see them coming until their tendrils are already wrapped around the hull. She talks like a butler drinking syrup—pronounced “sirrup”—who thinks she’s better than you. I’ve never felt more welcomed and at home, and never more nervous that my rump is permanently tarnishing her chair. This is what it means to be in the presence of Your Betters. Not Princess Celestia or anypony like that, who is simply better than me at basically everything, but Your Betters, ponies who are up a rank on you because they always have been. (Who promoted them? Can they be court-martialed?)

Her legendary, and Canterlot Monthly award-winning, cherry orchard rolls on for miles. Trees burst with red and yellow fruit even in October. She scoffs, however, at the notion of seasons for fruit.

“We tell the skies to rain, the trees to change, the critters to birth and die,” she says, taking a sip of tea. “Why shouldn’t we tell the fruit trees when to bear fruit?” She points at a set of tall trees. “Those are Chelans, and over there are our Critalins. The Reginas we planted will be ready to bear fruit soon. We keep the Montmorency trees away from the others, they tend to upset them.”

She gives me a bowl of rich black cherries smoldering in some simmering red sauce. They’re sweet, delicious, and my mouth runneth over with juice.

As I make a mess of myself, she tells me her life story.

“I started with nothing but a pit in my stomach.” She looks toward the trees, a distant look on her face. “It’s the pit I get when I look at the world and feel absolutely sick. It’s nerves, twisting inside me. It’s the sense of things not fitting, like when the cherries aren’t sorted right. I fought to push the world into place.”

“With a cherry orchard?”

Maybe the skepticism shows in my voice. The look she gives me is withering, and I hope that’s cherry juice I feel between my legs.

“Sir, I forget you are from the city, and used to thinks appearing in shops as if by magic.” Her mane and tail are a deep blood-red. I suddenly wonder what is this sauce the cherries are cooked in. “There were no cherries in Equestria until I planted the first trees. I saw a void in the world and filled it. I found my lever and moved the world. More tea?”

“N-No thank you.”

“It’s sweet.”

“I know.”

I know what everypony knows about Cherry Jubilee. She was propertyless growing up, moving around the big plantations working the fields with the other laborers. I know she bought her first plot of land partly by selling a shovel she had made herself with broken wood and iron scraps she got at the shipyard near the port. Her first seeds were planted by hoof, literally. Now she owns one of the biggest fruit orchards in Equestria. Her formal events are incredibly select. She hosts balls. Who does that?

And Princess Celestia herself chose Cherry Jubilee to organize next year’s Grand Galloping Gala after this year’s was canceled due to the Great Succession. I can tell she is very proud because she hasn’t mentioned it to me even once. It wouldn’t do, you see. I don’t know what it wouldn’t do, but it’s the sort of thing that wouldn’t.

Can you tell me anything about your plans for the Grand Galloping Gala next year?

Oh, I don’t want to ruin any surprises. I’ve consulted with my niece to keep things, oh, what did she say? Hip? Possibly knee joint. Yes, the gala is going to be knee joint. I’ve been negotiation with a band she likes. Burst music, I think.

“Pop,” probably.

You may be right.

Why do you think we see such strong segregation of pony types in industries? I was in Silipone Valley last month where almost everypony in business there are Unicorns funded by Pegasi, yet the owners of every major fruit orchard are Earth Ponies.

We keep our hoofs on the ground and the shade on our faces. The earth needs attention. The trees need care. What Pegasus has time to notice the rustling life beneath her? What Unicorn can bear to concentrate on the slow ripening of soil when she has the world of magic at her horntip?

Rising trends in inequality don’t bother you?

Bother me? Everypony has their place. It’s just becoming easier for them to find it.

Next year’s Grand Galloping Gala coincides with the decennial Fruit Salad, doesn’t it? Are there plans to combine the two, or will you not attend the Salad?

I thought I might bring the ladies to Canterlot. It will be good to see everypony again.

The whole coven back together, eh?

(She treats me to a stony glare. I fully anticipate the next glass of sweet tea will have some saliva in it.)

Ahem…what do you say to rumors of witchcraft? Your competitors might accusing you of, ahem, juicing, if you'll pardon the pun.

If I were a witch, would it really be wise to ask me that?

Is that why the creek we passed has so many tadpoles? Equestria wants an answer, Ms. Jubilee!

I employ a number of burly stallions who help me around the farm. I’m sure they’d be delighted to help you get a better look at the creek.

Let’s move on. The economy has been rocked by a succession, a financial crisis, and a technology bubble in recent months. As a business owner, how does this affect your outlook on the future? What do you want to see more of from the leaders of our economy?

It’s not confidence-inspiring, of course, but I do like to take the long view of things. I reckon as long as ponies are inclined to make money, then no matter how bumpy the path, we’ll get to where we’re going in the end.

And that is…?

Well, they say there’s a special destination for witches.

Ah ha…any comments on rising tensions between ponies and buffaloes in the southwest? There’s a lot of Apples there….

Yes, the Apple family, fine old family, hm, met Granny Smith at several Salads, fine mare. Fine family. No, I haven’t heard anything anypony doesn’t already know. I’m sure I wouldn’t know what a buffalo thinks about the matter.

Thank you for your time.

Author's Note

There was more to the interview, but the same boring questions that Cherry Jubilee answers in every interview, like "what was the best crop you ever had?" and "what is your favorite kind of cherry?"

CM November Lead Interview: Vela Flicker

Sirecago is possibly the worst city in the world. I do not know why anypony lives here.

I am cold. This is not snow, it is ice, and it is everywhere.

The police stole my wallet.

The skyline is nice, I suppose.

A dour secretary greets me at an ugly wooden desk. I heard that Vela Flicker goes through secretaries like a sick pony goes through tissues. The last one apparently lost her job for smiling.

The interior is an unpleasant mix of wood and rust-colored brick. There are doors along the walls, and a secretary’s desk that looks like somepony just dragged in from outside and put in an unused corner. The walls curve in, making the space feel cramped, yet it’s actually big enough for the misuses of space to be obvious.

This daughter bank is so ugly. Not plain like the Ponyville bank. Just ugly, like no pony cared.

“Ms. Flicker?” the secretary quavers, clearly aware that this could be her last moment as an employed mare. She knocks. “The reporter is here to interview you.”

The unmarked wooden door does not open at first. I swear it is located next to a door marked “supply closet.” There are stairs. I’m told Ms. Flicker had an office on the highest floor.

Finally it opens. I hear the weariest sigh. “What?”

“It’s the—”

“Not talking to you.” Louder: “What?”

I realize she is speaking to me. “I’m here to interview you for Canterlot Monthly. We arranged the appointment—”

“What appointment? You’re wasting my time!”

“There’s an appointment with a reporter now,” the secretary says in the strangely calm voice of those who see the end approaching fast and accept their fate. “I told you, I left you a note, I wrote it in the schedule you asked me to keep.”

“You did what?” I’m shocked to hear what sounds like genuine unhappiness in Vela Flicker’s voice. She sounds like a filly who’s been surprised with a doctor’s appointment for her birthday.

“I did what you told me to.”

“I didn’t tell you to do that! I’m busy! I don’t want to talk to some stupid reporter!”

I take exception to that, but it is my task to write down what I observe, so here it is, faithful subscribers: Vela Flicker, who recently saved the world, thinks I’m stupid.

“We had this conversation—”

“We did not! Get out! Close the door!”

“Ms. Flicker—”

“Now!” She is screaming.

“Do not shout at me!”

“You’re worthless!”

“I quit!”

“You can’t quit!” A brown Unicorn with a blotchy face distorted with rage follows her out of the office, the secretary storming away, her hoofs pounding across the brick floor. “You’re fired!”

The secretary brushes past me and disappears out the door.

Vela Flicker is the plainest-looking Unicorn I’ve ever seen. Her brown hair falls over her brown coat with no style or cut. She wears no makeup, and she looks at me with no expression.

“You lost me a secretary.” Her voice is as calm as a rattlesnake’s stare.

“Hi, I’m the stupid reporter.”

She walks back into her office, slams the door shut so hard that it bangs off the wall and opens back up. I hear something slam on what is probably a table and an angry, frustrated scream. Then silence, then two dry sobs, then silence.

I poke the door further open. “We do, in fact, have an interview scheduled right now.” She fixes me in a red-rimmed glare. “Is everything okay?”

“Drop dead.”

I take it as an invitation and sit down. There’s a letter on the table, which she quickly sweeps onto the floor behind the desk. “What’s that?”

She stares at the table. There are dents in it about the size and shape of a mare’s hoofs. “A very confusing letter,” she says after a long pause, surprising me. “From Cumulosa Coruscanta.”

“Who?”

“The economist.”

“Does she work at a daughter bank?”

She shrugs. “Maybe things are different over there, I don’t know.”

“Can I ask you some ahhh-ahhhh. Oh Celestia.”

Lounging in the corner of the room, more claustrophobic than actually small, is a giant Cragadile. One stony eye rolls toward me. I wish I could say that my eyes roamed up the green-brown crags on its back that shudder with each long, slow breath, a miniature mountain inflating and compressing, but my eyes were fixated on its teeth, the sharp teeth hanging outside its closed mouth.

Many thoughts flash through a pony’s mind when his life is about to end. Will my wife move on? Will ponies cry at my funeral? Does my life insurance policy cover giant rock lizards?

“Don’t mind Murdertooth,” Vela says. My eyes snap on hers. Slowly, a wry smile emerges on the plain face.

“Actually, his name is Grandfather. Named after the first thing he ate out of my office. He saves on waste by chewing up papers that don’t replicate.”

It takes a few squeaks for me to find my voice. There are tooth marks in the wall. The brick wall.

“C-C-Can I ask you some questions?”

“You’re cute.”

“Y-Yes.”

“Ask.”

Can we please move away from the Cragadile?

No.

I will urinate. I mean it.

That’s not a question.

[Removed a long debate about where to hold the interview. Suffice to say Ms. Flicker won. —Ed]

There, are you happy? Your office is going to smell for days.

Don’t throw those paper towels in my rubbish bin! Put it outside!

Fine, can we start the interview now? Can you explain a little bit about the Crisis of Faith?

That’s overblown. It would have only destroyed the world eventually. A lot of things are going to destroy the world eventually. All that really happened was a lot of garbage papers that didn’t replicate or prove what they claimed. No, that’s not what concerns me.

What about the Crisis seems important to you?

For every cheat, there were two fools.

Do you think standards should be raised?

I’m an economist. I believe in incentives. Standards and regulations don’t address incentives. Could worsen them, actually, if they hurt competition, or change what margins economists compete on.

Your former classmate Nova Flare described the problem in a recent article as “too many papers, not enough criticism.” Do you agree with that?

Criticism is costly. And written by the same ponies whose studies are failing.

Some critics have said your strategy in dealing with the crisis consisted primarily of mass firings. How would you characterize your actions?

Mass firings.

Okay. Why is that not a bad thing?

Is it a good use of voluntary defense funds to pay researchers whose research is less than worthless? I said incentives matter. The quality of papers has risen noticeably already; I’ll have an analysis out next week.

Is fear really the best motivator?

Part of it’s selection. We don’t have to waste our time on the bad ones now. Honestly I estimate about 2 percent of economists are responsible for at least fifty percent of the research in terms of scientific value.

But I don’t think fear is the best motivator. Laziness is. Scientists will produce the least passable research. If passable research is bad research, then you get lots of bad research.

How is that different from raising standards?

Because I didn’t raise standards. There’s no new rules to game, no new criteria to target. I just get rid of everypony I don’t like, and then I’m happy. Well. I’m never happy.

What about the researchers? Don’t you feel bad for them?

Do you want me to feel things, or do you want me to be good at my job?

Onto other subjects. It’s nearly the start of a New Year. How would you evaluate the performance of the daughter banks at this time?

Princess Celestia couldn’t have picked a better group to head the banks. Every macroeconomic indicator is in good shape. The only problem is how disagreeable some ponies are being, but once they see how right we are, they’ll stop arguing. Or just get fired. Isn’t that right, Grandfather?

I see…and Nightmare Moon, are the Daughters actively looking for her? Princess Celestia has not announced her capture.

Nightmare Moon is somepony only Princess Celestia can deal with. Our role is to make sure she can never seize too much power at once if she ever gains the upper hoof again.

Then—

I have work to do.

But—

I’m done. The interview is over.

How about a last comment?

Empty my rubbish bin before you leave.

Author's Note

Vela Flicker steadfastly ignored The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection talking to her for almost a month before she gave in and read it.

No December edition this year.

Deadweight Loss

The sounds of winter echo through the spiral hallways of genetic memory. It sounds like tn-tn-tn, the sound of a squirrel scurrying across the tree branch unmuffled by the rustling leaves. It sounds like ssuh—ssuh—ssuh, a pony pushing through knee-high snow. It sounds like tsee…tsee…tsee, the distant, solitary, fading bird. And it sounds like the wail of a filly, hungry, and cold, but mostly hungry….

It has been a thousand years since a pony has felt the fear and pain of winter from outside their skin. Princess Celestia does her job pretty well. But the memories of Winter Wrap Up remain.

Memories change, or perhaps are constantly reinvented. Maybe once a long time ago during winter or just before it ponies scavenged what remnants of spring they could and took them inside their caves. Maybe they gathered around these tokens with their families because there is something about being around other ponies who are also alive that does something for a pony’s health. Maybe they even exchanged gifts, whatever paltry things they could muster, even though gift-giving is terribly inefficient. It was proof that no matter how cold things were on the outside, here in the cave among the embers and scraps of greenery, friendship lived.

Now the festival has become…merry. Ponyville lights up on Winter Wrap Up. There is even a song, sung by caroling fillies who travel door to door. Outside. In the snow.

Winter Wrap Up did not lose its meaning. But as the generations of ponies piled up like the layers of a Winter Wrap Up tree, so did new meanings blanket the old like sheets of snow covering the ground. But underneath the fun and games of the modern incarnation of the holiday, the old meanings and the ancient fears still found ways to push to the surface like the rotting hand of an animated corpse….

Hang a wreath on your door, or you might find yourself buried under one….

Now Twilight Sparkle looks out through the window of the top floor of the Golden Oak Tree as the first snow of winter falls. Her heart feels like it is a ship in the storm, tossed and beaten by the waves, or dough in Pinkie Pie’s hoofs, restlessly squeezed and stretched. Twilight Sparkle misses her princess very much, and wonders if she will get a letter for Winter Wrap Up.

There is a knock at the door. Twilight Sparkle sighs, magics her hair into something slightly more presentable than what Rarity might optimistically call war-chic, and trots down the stairs before Pinkie Pie’s frenetic knocking can disturb the wreath hanging on the door. Spike is in the kitchen making hot chocolate with peppermint and little marshmallows. The ground floor smells of ginger and pumpkin, and a Winter Wrap Up tree, amateurishly decorated with ribbon and jangling colorful ornaments enchanted to sparkle, stands tall in the center of the room.

Twilight Sparkle opens the door. Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rarity are carrying squarish things wrapped in colorful paper. But there is nothing under Twilight’s Winter Wrap Up tree.

Twilight Sparkle has not gotten her friends any presents for Winter Wrap Up.

~~~

Rarity took a drink of hot chocolate, carefully sipping around the marshmallows. Spike sat on the arm of her chair, holding his own mug with trembling claws. So far he had managed a “gnngh” and two “huh huhs” in response to Rarity’s chatter. A true lady, Rarity had only kind words for the hot chocolate he made and the smell of the ginger cookies fresh out of the oven.

Pinkie Pie was still giggling as she jostles the sparkling tree, the ornaments clinking gently. Applejack was wondering if anypony will mind if she polishes off the last couple of cookies.

Twilight Sparkle was girding her loins for battle, rehearsing a lecture in her head. Finally it happened.

“I’m bored,” Pinkie Pie announced. “Hey, let’s open presents!”

Twilight sat still while her friends begin parceling out their gifts. Rarity hoofed something to Applejack, Applejack hoofed something to Rarity, and Pinkie Pie hoofed something to Twilight, who took it awkwardly and set it down.

When all the gifts were distributed, Rarity suggested that everypony open a gift at the same time. Twilight Sparkle realized that this is her only chance, and she played her best card at once.

“Giving gifts is inefficient,” she said. “Winter Wrap Up is the source of so much deadweight loss every year.”

Her friends stared at her.

“Twilight,” Applejack said in a voice she normally reserved for Apple Bloom when she e.g. has just tried to do her chores faster by treating a plow as a broom with a wider spread, “what in tarnation are you talking about?”

Twilight explained. “Suppose you get robbed and lose five bits. That’s bad for you, but it’s not a net loss for the economy as a whole because your thief is now five bits richer. So why is theft bad? Because there are other losses caused by theft that don’t necessarily make anypony else equally better off. Theft makes some ponies afraid without making others braver. It forces ponies to spend bits on fences, locks, and police rather than the things they would rather buy if they didn’t have to worry about theft. That loss from being forced to spend on security rather than other things isn’t made up for elsewhere.”

“The police and, uh, fence makers and so on make more money,” Applejack objected.

“But the money would have been spent on other things,” Twilight said quickly. “All the money spent on security is money not spent on other things, so those ponies lose by the same amount the police and fence makers gain. And since the theft victim herself isn’t as satisfied by her purchases, there is a loss to one pony that isn’t made up by a corresponding benefit to anypony else. That loss that comes with no corresponding benefit is called deadweight loss. Stealing benefits at least one pony—it does, it really does—“

“I know,” Applejack said. “I don’t think all those thieving fillies are out to make me miserable. They just like the refreshing crunch of a juicy Sweet Apple Acres apple.”

“Uh, right. So the real problem of stealing isn’t a transfer of bits from one pony to another per se—although I’m sure the victim would object to that—but the other harms imposed by stealing like fear and the shift of resources to producing security instead of things ponies would rather have if they didn’t have to spend on security. Those harms, those losses that aren’t made up for by a corresponding benefit to other ponies are called deadweight losses.”

“So stealing is bad, you say.” Pinkie Pie rubbed her chin skeptically. “What’s that got to do with Winter Wrap Up?”

Twilight answered. “Well, most of the time ponies are better at making decisions for themselves than other ponies are. You'd probably rather go grocery shopping yourself than ask another pony to do it unless you knew they would stick to a list. There are exceptions, like an adult buying for a filly who might not be sufficiently persuaded by long-term concerns, but most of the time, especially when it comes to, well, frivolities like you usually get on Winter Wrap Up, ponies would be better off buying things for themselves rather than having others guess as to what they would want.”

“But it’s nice to be treated,” Rarity said.

“It’s inefficient,” Twilight said. “The best gift is money. At best you can buy your friends what they would have bought themselves with the cash. More likely, you’ll buy something they wouldn’t have bought themselves. This creates deadweight loss because the same amount of money could have been used to create more value—that is, if ponies would just give each other money instead of presents.”

“But it’s boring always buying the same old things you already know you like,” Pinkie Pie said. “One of the best parts about Winter Wrap Up is being introduced to new things.”

“If you really wanted that you could just buy yourself something different!”

“It’s not like going shopping is free,” Applejack said. “I send Apple Bloom because it takes so long.”

“Have you ever seen a gift exchange go quickly?” Twilight countered.

Rarity sat back, seeming rather put out. “This all sounds absurd. Giving presents on Winter Wrap Up is a tradition, and it’s fun. I don’t see what efficiency has to do with it.”

“Efficiency is what powers your Elements of Equilibrium,” Twilight said. “If we’re being inefficient, then that means we’re just destroying value. Value is the stuff ponies care about. If we’re destroying value, we’re destroying the things we care about. That’s why efficiency matters.”

“So did you get us money?”

“What?”

“Did you get us money?” Pinkie Pie repeated. “I mean, it’s only logical. We all get each other presents on Winter Wrap Up. Since you said money is the best gift, that means you got all of us money, right?”

Twilight recovered quickly. “But if we all did the right thing, we’d all just end up giving each other money. You’d give away as much money as you got and it would all be a big waste of time.”

“So out of concern for the welfare of all of ponydom you didn’t get us any presents is what you’re saying,” Applejack said.

“Um, yes, well. Yes.”

“Hm.” Rarity took a sip of hot chocolate. The room seemed about twenty degrees colder.

“It’s only rational,” Twilight explained.

Applejack finished off the last of the cookies. There was an edge to the way she chewd.

“You can still all share your presents with each other,” Twilight added.

Pinkie Pie gave the tree another shake, a troubled look on her face.

“I mean, it’s not my fault you all celebrate this holiday with an irrational and economically harmful tradition,” Twilight clarified.

“You’re a jerk,” Applejack said.

“It’s a stupid holiday, and presents are for fillies! I—”

Spike burped; green flame roared out of his mouth, not nearly loud enough to muffle Rarity’s scream. Setting his hot chocolate down, he grabbed the letter that came out with the flame and looked at it.

“It’s from Princess—”

Twilight magically yanked the letter out of his grip. She levitated it to herself, opened the envelope, unfolded the letter…her eyes flitted left to right and then down and left and right. Only Spike, who had spent a fair amount of his life watching Twilight read, recognized when she went back to the top and started rereading.

“Did she wish you a happy Winter Wrap Up?” he said.

Twilight’s horn glowed again. She and the letter vanished in a flash of lavender light.

“Quite rude, really,” Rarity said.

Spike slid off the chair onto the floor. “I’ll just go check on her.”

Twilight was in her room, pacing back and forth. She jumped when Spike opened the door. He walked in, holding his tail still to express uncertainty, a lizard display often lost on ponies, including Twilight. Even Spike didn’t know why he held his tail still like that, only that it was frightening not to.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I should have got them presents, Spike,” Twilight said in a worried voice. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Spike noticed Twilight was still holding the letter from Princess Celestia. “Maybe too much thinking was your problem to begin with.”

“I can fix this, right? I can still get them presents. Didn’t I used to do that for Shining Armor on his birthdays before I learned economics and he betrayed me utterly?”

“Don’t ask me. I wasn’t there.”

“I did. I can do this. What stores are open now?”

“On Winter Wrap Up? Only your library, I think.”

“We never close.”

“Nope. Even though no pony has checked out a book in three months.”

There was a knock at the door. Twilight jumped again.

The door opened. Pinkie Pie stuck her head in. “Hey, Twilight. Did Princess Celestia get you something awesome for Winter Wrap Up? We’re going to start sharing presents now, so come down to the tree with us.”

“I—I’m not feeling well.”

“Come down. There’s something I want you to see.”

There was something about Pinkie Pie’s tone that made Twilight hesitate. Twilight realized it would be utterly ridiculous to be more afraid of her friends than a murderous pony-eating forest. Still, it took a gentle smile and a beckoning hoof from Pinkie Pie to break Twilight free of her paralysis. She followed Pinkie Pie out the door, Spike behind them.

As they walk down the hall, Twilight found the courage to speak. “You’re not mad?”

“Furious,” Pinkie Pie said. Twilight did not flinch and was surprised by this. “You must have had the most boring Winter Wrap Up parties in Canterlot. Boy I’d like to talk to whoever planned them.”

“I should have gotten you all presents.”

“Yeah, well, for the best student of the science of friendship in Equestria you’re pretty bad at putting your theories into practice. But don’t worry, I’m the best at friendship in Ponyville, the friendliest town there is. I’ll guide you through the darkness.”

“I trust you.”

“I know.” They started down the stairs. “Have you ever heard the idea that when two ponies become friends, when they part they leave a piece of themselves with the other pony?”

“It sounds like the sort of thing ponies say about friendship,” Twilight said carefully.

“Well, since I’ve got so many friends, it’s only logical that I have all these pony pieces inside me. Pretty soon I’ll grow too big for Ponyville and morph into some kind of friendship singularity. All the friendship won’t be able to fit inside my Earth Pony body. It’ll squeeze out however it can: wings, a horn, whatever.”

Twilight frowned. “Pinkie, you don’t really think you’ll become an—“

She stopped. They were at the hoof of the stairs. Twilight saw Rarity and Applejack by the tree exchanging gifts. Pinkie Pie led her over while the two ponies tore apart the wrapping paper.

“What the—what is this?” Applejack held up a purple box with writing on it. “Rarity, what in tarnation is a Glitter Dream Starter Set, and what am I supposed to do with it?”

Rarity was levitating at leg’s length a quadruple of garish yellow boots. “Applejack,” she said in a scandalized voice, “did you mix up the gift boots with the ones you meant to incinerate?”

“Those are perfectly good boots,” Applejack said. “They’ll keep your hoofs dry and clean of mud no matter how hard it rains.”

“What on earth would I be doing out in the rain, and what would I be doing ever in the mud?”

“Finding a place to bury this glitter doodad, I reckon.”

“I thought you might want to decorate your, ah, wheelbarrows, and, uh, what do you call those things, with the little metal claws—”

“Plows, Rarity. They’re called plows.”

“Yes, well, they’d stand out a lot more if they had some sparkle and shine to them. I won’t talk with you about paint and colors yet—”

“Paint? Colors? They’re tools, Rarity!”

“Yes, well, clearly you have no appreciation for the aesthetic side of things.” Rarity eyed the boots distastefully and set them down away from her.

“The boots’ll be too covered with mud for anypony too see how they look.” Rarity’s head jerked up sharply at that, and Applejack burst out laughing.

“Oh, very funny,” Rarity said, crossing her forelegs and looking away. Twilight caught a glimpse of a smile on her face.

“I reckon I’ll give the glitter to Apple Bloom,” Applejack said. “I know she’ll find some use for it. Thanks for the present, Rare.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. And thank you, Applejack, for the…boots.”

Both ponies smiled at each other while Twilight tried to understand what just happened.

“Why are you two happy?” she said. “Neither of you got what you wanted. The deadweight loss is practically the whole value of the presents!”

“We’ve been getting each other terrible presents for years,” Applejack said. “It’s like a tradition.”

Rarity beamed. “Only a true friend could get me something as awful as these boots.”

“But…the deadweight loss….”

“If I really wanted something I would just ask for it,” Rarity said. “You can always be honest with a friend like Applejack.”

“Sharing gifts with Rarity ain’t about what we get,” Applejack said. “It’s about what it says about the special bond between us.”

Pinkie Pie laid a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Anypony can give another pony ten bits for Winter Wrap Up. But there is a real decency in getting another pony a present from the heart.” Pinkie Pie giggled. “Even those ugly boots!”

“Hey now,” Applejack grumbled. “I’ve got a quadruple just like those.”

Twilight Sparkle realized something, and blurted it. “That’s why I didn’t buy you girls presents. I didn’t know what to get you all. I was afraid, and I rationalized my inaction by telling myself gift-giving is an economic crime. I’m sorry. I didn’t even get you anything, Spike.”

“That’s okay. You gave me two birthday presents last year.”

“I did? Why?”

“You thought it was my birthday twice. And you were wrong both times.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Two birthdays! You even got me ice cream.”

“I’m a bad friend.”

“Yup,” Applejack said. Rarity swatted her on the flank.

“It’s okay,” Twilight said. “Applejack’s honesty is a gift of its own, and one I’d willingly pay for.”

Pinkie Pie wore a big smile. Her teeth were as white as the snow and gleamed like the ornaments on the Winter Wrap Up tree. “But you did get us a gift, Twilight, one straight from the heart. I’m always happy to get an economics lecture from you, and this one was extra special. Until today I hadn’t really thought about the true meaning of Winter Wrap Up. Now I know. I can’t wait to learn more economics from you next year!”

Twilight smiled gratefully. Pinkie Pie was grinning now. “Besides, two birthdays every year?” She gave Spike a significant look, who nodded back.

“Ha ha,” Twilight said. “Very funny, you two. I’ll definitely keep track of your birthdays on my calendar now.”

“We know we can depend on you when it comes to economics, Twilight,” Applejack said. “You give us the gift of a healthy macroeconomy up at the Daughter everyday. And if the other stuff comes slower, well, that’s the pace of life in Ponyville. We ain’t going nowhere.”

“Bright minds, bright hearts,” Rarity said. “That’s, ah, specialization, I think you call it, dear. And that’s why you have friends, so they can support you where you are weakest.”

“We love you, is what we’re trying to say,” Pinkie Pie said. “We got you presents so that you’ll believe us.”

Twilight tried to answer and could not. Tears ran down her cheeks like melted frost.

Gifts were given. Twilight kept her head down as she opened each one—a makeup set from Rarity, a can of varnish from Applejack, a gift card to the Sugarcube Corner and a tee shirt that read “Funky” in colorful letters from Pinkie Pie, and a new pen from Spike—and her friends wisely said nothing. At one point Twilight levitated the shirt in front of her face and drew Spike to her. What, if anything, was said or done from behind the new tee shirt cannot be said. Then Twilight released him, and it was time to light the Memorah.

The Memorah is a symbol of the phoenix, whose light and fire outlasted the winter. It is a testament to the ponies who did not outlast the winter. And it is bright and unique, and Spike has a great deal of fun in sucking in a belly full of air and expelling a line of flame over the row of nine candles, lighting them all with a merry blaze. He also finds it a pretty good way to disgorge any backed-up letters from his stomach.

“It’s beautiful,” Rarity said. Spike tried to say, “Aw, shucks,” and “Not as beautiful as you,” at the same time and ended up with “Naw shucks as you.” Rarity seemed, however, to have momentarily gone deaf, so suddenly entranced was she by the Memorah’s flame.

“It’s great!” Pinkie Pie said. “Good job, Spikey.”

Spike rubbed the back of his head. “Why do they call it Winter Wrap Up, anyway?”

“It’s because you wrap everything up when winter begins,” Applejack said. “Granny Smith always said you work to last through the winter. If it’s winter and you still have things to do then you’re in a heap of trouble.”

“I thought it was because we wrap the tree in decorations,” Rarity said. “By the way, Twilight, I could make a suggestion or two for next year. Not that it wasn’t a courageous attempt….”

“I just assumed it was because we wrap up presents to share with each other,” Pinkie Pie said.

“It’s better than calling it ‘We’re All Going to Die,'” Twilight said. “I love you all, by the way.”

“Awww!” Pinkie Pie nudged her. “Twilight, you’re so sappy!”

There were hugs then, and Spike making faces, and there were songs and light and fire, and finally it was time to part. One by one the ponies left, all of them, even Pinkie Pie, careful not to disturb, hanging on Twilight’s door, the Winter Wrap Up wreath.

Author's Note

Theft is bad for other reasons too, of course.

Spontaneous order

Equestria hadn’t had a new year for a long time. It had one very old year. The sun’s journey around the earth hadn’t ended, so why should the year? There was a counting of seasons: “Haven’t had a frost like this since the 955th winter,” and so on.

This year Equestria had a new year. Nightmare Moon had imprisoned Princess Celestia, however briefly, and so while one revolution proceeded, the sun's ended.

The current winter, instead of being the thousand-and-first, was the first winter, the second first winter ever. The New Year should have been celebrated as soon as Princess Celestia was restored to the One Bank, but with the normal slow pace of bureaucracy at Canterlot reduced to a snail’s crawl without Twilight Sparkle there to manage and intimidate, the official date for the new year had been delayed and delayed until January 1. No pony was sure how to celebrate a new year. Princess Celestia was the only pony who had ever been at a New Year’s celebration before, and she only spoke of a phoenix’s fire and the pooling water of melted snow around her hoofs.

Twilight didn’t know how to manage a New Year’s celebration either, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.

~~~

“So that’s the plan,” Twilight said. “A history lecture delivered by me, of course, on the nature and meaning of years, the reason and significance of a new one, and then an hour of questions and discussion, followed by an hour of perusing the selected readings I will provide, then we shall all face east and sing the Equestrian anthem, followed by a period of reflective and worshipful silence as we watch the new sun rise. Fillies will have to be in bed before then, of course.”

Her friends, sitting in a semicircle around her, exchanged looks.

“That’s a wonderful plan,” Rarity said, taking lead by the tacit simultaneous communication her friends were capable of. It made Twilight feel left out, although she couldn’t see how they were excluding her. “Allow me to suggest a better one.”

“This is the plan,” Twilight said firmly. “It is educational, tasteful, and quiet.”

“Educational?” Rainbow Dash said. “I thought this was a celebration, not a punishment.”

“Tasteful?” Applejack said. “You hain’t even mentioned apples.”

“Quiet?” Pinkie Pie practically shouted. “Who wants quiet?”

“That’s your plan,” Rarity said. “What about our plans?”

“Suggestions can be placed in the suggestion box,” Twilight indicated Spike, who was sitting to her left, “and the Princess of the New Year Celebration Committee will take them into consideration.”

“But that’s you. By self-appointment!”

Twilight shrugged helplessly.

“Calendars are arbitrary social conventions,” Fluttershy said. “There’s nothing worse or less correct about the ones naturally evolved organisms use.”

“What one do they use?” Twilight asked.

“Critters aren’t a species,” Fluttershy said scathingly. “They could all use different calendars.”

“Fine, what calendar do any of them use?”

“Well, they all use our one, but they have a right not to!”

“I must warn you, Twilight,” Rarity said as they began to stand, “I intend to put up my own decorations.”

“Yeah, we want to throw a real party,” Pinkie Pie said.

“That’s a freedom the princess affords you,” Twilight said stiffly.

“Which princess is that? Her or you?”

“Yes.”

It was New Year's Eve. Twilight stood on a box she had borrowed from the soap stand and looked at the rows of empty chairs. The event was scheduled to begin now, and she had put up fliers everywhere, often next to or over the fliers other ponies had put up for their own New Year's celebrations.

Her design was perfect. After all, she couldn’t see any problems with it, and who was better qualified to know? So when everypony had filled up the New Year Celebration Committee's suggestion box with complaints and suggestions until a weary, aching Spike had quit, she had felt very much like van Gogh might have if he had been constantly harassed by people saying things like, “That’s not what stars look like, you bloody idiot.”

“Welcome, welcome, thanks for coming,” Twilight said to the empty air. “Ahem. A joke: how many princesses does it take to bring a new year?”

Silence.

“Just one.” Not even the crickets were there to chirp. Distantly Twilight heard Pinkie Pie’s voice carried on the wind, “That’s not how jokes work!”

No pony had ever laughed at her jokes before. Considering that there wasn’t anypony here to not laugh, this was progress. “The history of New Year’s Day is an interesting one. Etymologically, a year refers to the creation of a new ant hive….”

"Okay, everypony!" Pinkie Pie said as the moon rose and the lights turned on. Ponyville was wrapped in ribbon and sparkled with a million flames, a sort of reverse sky celebrating the last time they would be looking at the old one. "Everypony parrrtay!"

She was running a party with Rarity, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack had their own competing party on the other side of town. Twilight was off in a corner doing her own thing because it had the best view of the stars far away from the lights and not because it was where anypony actually wanted to be, and Fluttershy was refusing to pick and sitting under the giant crystal ball on a pole they had put up in the center of the town.

Then the party did in fact start, and Pinkie Pie got to work.

“That’s an excellent question,” Twilight said to her imagination, who was an attractive stallion standing near the stage. “In fact, I’ve already got several dates lined up for Hearts and Hooves Day.”

Fluttersy stumbled after Rainbow Dash, one hoof holding the Pegasus's rainbow tail and the other a bottle of apple cider, which she had taken two small sips from, hiccuping as she went. Applejack enjoyed her own drink with Big Mac, watching the revelers dance through the streets.

"Now this is a party," Applejack said, holding up her bottle.

"Eeyup," Big Mac said. The bottles clinked as the first fireworks began to go off.

“Now this is a party,” Twilight said as she leafed through A History of Years, which would soon need a new edition and a second chapter.

"This is so much fun!" Apple Bloom screamed to her friends. The sky was totally dark, the town lit with merry fire. Applejack had let her stay up late tonight, and the fireworks popped in the air like balloons filled with light. It was the greatest night in her life, and soon it would be dawn.

It wasn’t a party if all your friends weren’t there to celebrate

The last of the fireworks exploded in the sky, a sort of Viking funeral for the glittering sea overhead. Pinkie Pie clapped her hoofs. Dancers, drinkers, and the simply delighted followed her in twos and threes down the street, clapping, holding each other, and singing the one song everypony in Equestria knew.

From the chains of scarcity
That tie you to this land,
We rise, Equestria, through optimal allocation.
Efficiently we fight the many foes of our values.

Twilight was singing, her hoof pressed hard enough on her chest to bruise it, her body and face oriented eastward like a compass points north.

Smite, crush the inefficiencies,
Reallocate capital, create new contracts.
Spread the wealth from sea to sea,
All we earn is marginal productivity.

Twilight heard behind her a rising, swelling song of hundreds of voices joining in unison and getting closer, and she almost turned and looked.

Equestria, Equestria! How we give our voluntary defense funds to thee!
In the land of friendly ponies,
Friendship is all we see!
Equestria, Equestria! You make our friendships true,
And Equestria, Equestria, we reciprocate to you.

“You suck at parties,” Pinkie Pie grinned, nudging her. Twilight kept singing, because you didn’t stop singing the Equestrian anthem. And when every other pony stopped, she went on through the second verse, the third and the fourth. Even Princess Celestia didn’t know the words, and had spent many a morning sighing and tapping her hoof impatiently while Twilight went on doing things properly. The memory, the ache of longing, cut her suddenly—

"Hey, look," Pinkie Pie said, her hair smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, and Twilight saw the colors rising over the horizon.

She stopped singing.

Dawn was a blaze of red and gold all around them, and flickering orange and rays shining through golden glowing dust above. The air swelled, flickered, and erupted suddenly with flames, but burned only on the inside like the warmth of good friends and strong drink, as for the second time in history, Philomena set the world on fire.

Author's Note

Princess Celestia won't always wake up that early, of course, but she doesn't want to make everypony in Equestria stay up too late.

The Very Important Princess Cadance Origin Story

Let me tell you the story of an empire that began with a pencil. The story does not begin with a pencil. The story begins with colors: pink, purple and yellow, and how beautiful one pony looked….

Her name was Piera Pareta. She was the most beautiful mare in the world, and no stallion could view her face without falling in love.

This proved to be quite bothersome. Piera thought economics was a lot more interesting than stallions and did her best to avoid them. That was why she was annoyed one day to see a stallion enter the library after almost a year of solitude. She would have to find a new hiding spot.

Piera was struggling to stuff her tent into her Edgeworth Box when she heard the stallion come up the stairs. She hid her face against the wall, but the stallion walked past her without even glancing her way.

The first fish to evolve legs and flop awkwardly out of the water probably wasn’t half as surprised as Piera. Hesitantly, she turned around and watched the stallion feel his way along the shelves. Eventually he selected a book and sat down at a table with it. A few hours later, he returned the book and left.

Piera considered running, but she had nowhere to go. The dusty upper floor of the library was her home—well, it was the cat’s home, but Piera had fought tooth and hoof for her corner, and she was keeping it. After a while she relaxed and started to read again.

Piera had the oddest habit. When she was thinking, she spoke out loud, carrying on a conversation with herself. This caused her no end of trouble, as she would often be nodding and mumbling, “Yes, yes, that works,” as a suitor or three knelt before her, jostling with each other and making promises, offers and declarations of their love. Piera tended not to notice these things while she was lost in thought, and she was often horrified to wake up the next day to find a severed dragon’s head and perhaps a suitor or two's laid atop a pile of bloodstained jewels outside her door. That was why she almost didn’t notice when the stallion returned.

Piera held her breath. The stallion climbed the stairs, turned past her without looking, and felt his way through the shelves again until he found a book he liked. Then he sat down, opened the book up, looked at it, returned it a few hours later, and left.

This continued for several days. Eventually Piera hardly noticed him anymore, treating him much like how a cat treats a human without a food-opener, i.e., not at all.. She read her books, argued with herself, and she screamed when he tapped her on the shoulder.

“Quiet down!” the librarian snapped from below. Piera’s face burned hotter than the sun. The sight of her blushing was like a sunset viewed through a lot of air pollution. It was deeply beautiful and profoundly moving, and it made her life very difficult.

“Excuse me,” the stallion said, “I heard you talking—“

“Sorry!” Piera whispered, wishing she didn't sound so much like an angel singing a lullaby to a little foal on Hearth's Warming Eve just as the first snow began to fall. “I’ll keep it down.” She hoped he wasn’t the sort who would try to fight an ursa major to impress her. Piera always felt vaguely guilty when she saw the smear on the ground.

“It’s fine, actually. I thought what you had to say about the natural rate of interest was very interesting.”

“Oh, that." Piera blushed for the first time in her life without being afraid she might start a war. “Some ideas are just begging to be refute—wait, what?”

“It is an exciting time to be an economist,” the stallion agreed. “I heard young Frankie Knight speak a year ago about her ideas on the source of profits. It set my all my hairs on edge, and I have quite a lot of them.”

“Uh, hello?” Piera gestured at her face. “Anypony in there? Can you see me?”

“I can’t, in fact.”

Piera blushed again, hoping that a war might start to draw their attention away. “Oh, um—sorry. It’s just—I saw you reading. Um. I’m not ableist.”

“I never said you were. In fact, I like to look at books.”

“But you can’t read them?”

“No. But if I can’t see anything, I would like it to at least be a book. Generally, I strive to be as metaphorical as possible.”

Piera waved a hoof in front of his face.

“Stop that.”

“You can see!”

“No, but sighted ponies are incredibly predictable. Why does anypony think it’s a good idea to ‘test’ a pony’s blindness?”

Piera looked desperately out the window. “I think a war is starting—“

“Tell me more about the natural rate of interest.”

Piera did.

So it went. The stallion visited the library and Piera everyday. They discussed the latest economics research and debated everything from interest rates to the trade cycle. They even befriended the cat.[1]

[1] Historians later disputed this point.

They had one debate that never ended.

“I can make a pencil,” he said.

“From scratch? Alone? Commercial grade? You cannot.”

“I can,” he insisted.

Finally she challenged him to prove it. So the next day, he didn’t return. Piera shook her head wryly and began another book.

The stallion’s journey began in the cedar forest of Ostleregon. To cut down the tree he needed a saw made of metal. So he went to the iron ore mines of Whinnysota. He needed a shovel, and a pickaxe, both made of metal with wooden handles.

He was beginning to get the feeling the problem was circular.

While he scrabbled for ore with his bare hoofs, he began to get hungry. But he could not buy food without forfeiting the challenge. He had to make it himself.

He scavenged, but it was time-consuming and forced him to roam away from the mines. He dedicated himself to learning the seasons and the soil, planting crops and waiting to harvest them. He stamped on grain until it became flour, and added water he gathered to turn it into dough. This all became a lot easier when he finally had a shovel, but before he could have his shovel he needed a smelter and a mold. This took some time.

Finally he had his pick-axe too, and soon his saw. He gathered up his things and, carrying as much seed as he could, returned to the forests of Ostleregon. He cut down a small cedar tree and turned it into lumber. He knew by studying commercial pencils (cheating, but unavoidable) that he needed to cut the log into a pencil length slat not one-fourth inch thick. It took many tries to get this exactly right. Then he realized he needed to return to Whinnysota to make a kiln, which he then hauled back to Ostleregon to dry the slat. He learned how to tint the wood, and then he kiln-dried it again. Then he learned to make wax from a plant, which he applied to the slat, and then dried it again in the kiln. Now he had a wooden slat the length and thickness of a pencil that looked pretty, like a commercial-quality one, instead of a natural sickly white. All of this was complicated somewhat by his blindness.

Piera checked her watch.

The next part was difficult. He made another tool with the ore in Whinnysota and used it to cut eight grooves into the wooden slat. He made another slat and cut eight grooves into it as well. Then he went to Broncodale to gather graphite. He still wasn’t sure how he would glue the slats together. In the meantime he mined graphite and mixed it with clay from Mareissippi. He went to Mexicolt and learned to make wax from leaves, which he mixed with the graphite as well. He returned to find his wood, equipment and machines had all been stolen, including the wooden slats. So he started over.

When he had two slats again and the graphite, he laid the graphite in one of the slats. Now he needed glue, but he didn’t know how glue was made. When he found out, he decided to opt instead for a glue made out of wheat. He planted the wheat and waited.

He used the glue to hold slats together. From this he cut eight pencils. This proved to be important, as weather, accidents, mishaps and crime took seven of them over the years.

He learned to grow castor beans and refine the oil. He used them to make the lacquer, although getting it to turn yellow stumped him for a while. He learned to make a film formed by applying heat to carbon black to make a label on the pencil.

He mined zinc and copper and transformed it into sheet brass to make the ferrule. He built a ship—another long story—to take him across oceans to gather rapeseed oil and reacted it with sulfur chloride to make the factice, the ingredient to make the eraser (boy, was he surprised to learn that). Pumice and cadmium sulfide were also involved, and rubber as a binding agent. Finally he had his pencil.

A long time had passed. Piera was curious to see the result of the experiment, so she became immortal, still waiting every day at the library for the stallion to return. The cat died, which was sad. Piera buried her at night when no pony would see her face.

The stallion returned. He presented the pencil to Piera, who frowned skeptically at it, but it looked close enough. She was willing to concede the point.

“Let’s get married,” she suggested.

“I don’t love you,” he said. “I just wanted to see if I could falsify your hypothesis.”

This story is mostly true, or at least it contains most of the truth. What the pencil might have been traded for is anypony's guess. But it is known to every student of economics, the story of how a pencil is made, the incredible vast amounts of knowledge and labor it takes to create a single, simple pencil.[2]

[2] Some other things happened afterward. He died. She built an empire. And so on. Science continued its work.

It is a solemn tradition in Equestria that when this story is told, everypony who hears it breaks a pencil in half. For the most amazing thing about a pencil is that for all the effort and knowledge it takes to create one, you can buy a dozen for a bit these days. Where are you shopping? Oh, yeah, the deals are pretty good there right now. Yeah, well, you know how it is when the school year starts up again. Hey, can I borrow your pencil? I’ll give it back—thanks. Hey, look, if I shake it like this it looks all floppy….

Author's Note

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil

The Exogenous

Oh, Princess! That it were possible
To undo things done; to call back yesterday;
That Time could turn up her swift sandy glass,
To untell the days, and to redeem these hours!

Or that the sun
Could, rising from the west, draw her coach

backward;
Take from th' account of time so many minutes,
Till she had all these seasons call'd again,
Those minutes, and those actions done in them,
Even from her first offence; that I might take

her
As spotless as an angel in my arms!
But, oh! I talk of things impossible,
And cast beyond the moon.

The mare had eyes that saw in modals, and they gazed dispassionately at yet another despairing pony. It was damp and muddy, and the pony’s white coat was smudged with dirt. Two long cuts ran down the pony’s flank in angry red streaks.

“I can’t,” the pony whimpered to herself. “I cannot, will not, do this.”

The mare’s eyes looked left, then right. The world was bulging noticeably in her modal vision as a second world threatened to split at the marginal seam. It bore a striking resemblance to mitosis, and it was her job to cut the seam at the very moment of the split. Otherwise the universe would end.

“If I choose to fight him, my sister will be destroyed,” the pony was saying. Tears stained her cheeks. “If I do not, I will lose everything but her. He did this on purpose, I know it.”

Time was running out. It would happen soon.

The mare’s blade hummed in her hoofs. Now, now!

And the white pony’s head whipped around. She stared at the mare with hatred. “You skeleton! You mute! You’re the one responsible for all this!”

The mare swung her instrument in a full circle, and the worlds were separated, each spinning on their different path through the modal space.

The pony blinked. “Where did you go?” She looked around wildly. “Mare? Mare? Where are you?”

The mare had no eyelids to shut her the black void of her eyes, which glowed in the center with twin blue sparks, but she winced at the tearing pain where her heart would have been. “Goodbye,” she didn’t actually say, and walked off through space, time, and possibility.

It was hard making friends when you were the Ultimate Reality, the Inevitable, the Cost to their Opportunity. Ponies tended to get upset when they realized she existed, and by extension, that they were about to lose something forever. Most happily failed to notice her altogether, and when that was no longer tenable, they blamed it all on her. Some lasted longer than others, but no pony could resist forever the allure of just not having to choose.

Even though that meant losing everything. Ponies were funny like that.

It wasn’t like she wanted to make friends anyway. It just looked like fun, that’s all. Birthday parties. Holding hoofs. Laughing together. She had a whole list of all the things she'd seen friends do.

She didn’t care that another November 2 had gone by without anypony wishing her a happy birthday. She had even worn a party hat to remind them, just in case any of them wanted to wish her a happy birthday, she didn’t care, but hardly anypony could even see her, and those who could wished they couldn't.

On the rare occasions she had to do a Reaping, when Death was busy (he was soooo popular. Good for him. She didn’t care), the difference was painful. Ponies might not have wanted to die, but once they were dead, they were pretty accepting about the whole thing. Hello, is this it? End of the line, so to speak? I was expecting a pony with a scythe. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that’s a—

And then with a heavy swing of her shovel, which had a very sharp edge, they would disappear to…a birthday party, probably.

No pony ever said, “My word, I was terribly afraid of this whole choosing business, but once I did it, it’s not so bad! Er, which way to the Great Big Retirement Home In The Sky?”

It was all to do with modals, and a loss more permanent than death.

Sometimes, in her black moods, she considered the world from far above. She pictured herself as kneeling on the edge of a black hole, with a pulley, weight, and platform. She could pull things out, but only by lowering something in.

She thought about all the worlds she had consigned to the realm of Lost Beyond Lost.

She thought about what would have happened if she hadn’t.

She thought about it while wearing a purple dress with yellow stripes and bright pink polka dots. It was the only piece of fashion advice she had ever gotten, from a pony who had long since tired of her. It didn’t fit—she was too skinny, too boney. It made her look like a clown.

Clowns had lots of friends, didn’t they?

That wasn’t the reason she kept wearing it, she just liked how it was too long and made her trip when she walked.

So dressed like a clown and utterly alone, she did the thankless work of cutting worlds apart.

Until she wasn’t alone. Until there was a pony who thanked her, smiled at her, treated her like a f…a f….

Easy. Steady. Good thing she didn’t have a heart, or it’d be beating so fast you could hear it.

The first thing she noticed about Twilight was that Twilight noticed her.

“I like your dress. It’s really pretty.”

Fitting how the first words Twilight ever spoke to her were in a library. The mare hadn’t answered. She wasn’t much for conversation, and it wasn’t so strange to be noticed. It happened, not as often as it did for Mr. Popular, and it was usually fillies who did the noticing. They cried a bit and complained, and their parents would endeavor to convince them the mare didn’t exist, often, ironically, with a purchase. In time she would cease to be noticed. The filly could only see her now because she was choosing among mere books. When the choices became heavier, her eyes would dim.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk,” Twilight had said. “I must seem really weird to you, huh, all fleshy like this?” Her tongue was a little slower than her lips, giving the words a stretched quality. “You’re always around, but you never say anything. Is it because I look weird?”

The mare gazed at Twilight.

Seeing that she wasn’t going to answer, the filly turned back to the shelves, contemplating. “I want the best book here,” Twilight had said to herself. “Hm, hm….”

The mare was there that day in the library because she had to be to make the cut when the worlds separated. She didn’t have to be there for every decision, just like Super Scythe didn’t have to be there for every death. But she had to be there for this.

Death had hourglasses filled with sand.

She had a tiny little Earth spinning gently in the air beside her head.

The air crackled. The mare looked up sharply.

“Ow!”

Twilight stepped back. The tip of her purple horn was blackened, smoldering slightly. Even as it faded, Twilight’s eyes, and the mare’s, were drawn to the book that had fallen on the floor before her.

The words on the dark, worn cover burned with raw power.

FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

The mare couldn’t hear the book speak, if it spoke at all. But everything Twilight did was etched into the tiny spinning world by the mare’s head, and Twilight heard something.

What she heard was probably this: Hello, Twilight Sparkle.

“Uh,” Twilight said, “hello.” They were in a library, so she didn’t shout or stumble away.

We have been waiting for you.

“Well…you are a book. I can’t imagine there’s much to do other than wait to be read.”

Twilight took the book to be checked out at the desk.

“I choose this one,” she announced to the old librarian. The mare, who felt she ought to say something, could think of nothing more appropriate than, “As you wish,” and she took her blade and slashed the worlds apart; one that came to be, and one that never was….

The mare was always with Twilight, but in another sense, she was usually busy. The next time she was attentively with Twilight was at the academy entrance exams.

Twilight smiled when she saw the mare walk in. The mare tripped over her dress and stumbled into a seat near the back

“Please face forward,” the examiner said severely. Twilight turned her head back, but noticed out of the corner of her eye the seat the mare chose. Another world was spinning gently by her head.

The mare watched Twilight with more than professional interest.

“Are you ready for the next test, Ms. Sparkle?” the examiner said. She was sitting at a desk behind a forbidding stack of papers, rather cowardly. “It covers the mathematical foundations you will need to succeed in your economics studies here.”

“Fine,” said Twilight, who knew all the mathematics in the world, so far as she knew. The library by her house was in fact much smaller than the Canterlot royal library,

Three-quarters of an hour later, exhausted, chastened, and more than a little humiliated, Twilight watched as the examiner wheeled away a chair that the filly had turned into a wheelbarrow in a failed bid at topology. The examiner was gone for a few minutes. She returned carrying a cup of coffee and dabbing at her brow with a cloth glowing in her trembling magic.

“That was—” she fell into her chair with a loud thump— “quite…yes…ahem.” She set the cup down, and dropped the cloth into it. “Oh, drat….”

“I didn’t fail, did I?” Twilight said nervously. She looked at the mare, then back to the examiner. “This isn’t it?”

The examiner set the cup aside with a nervous sigh and twice failed to straighten her crooked glasses with a shaking hoof. “Young filly, the test—it isn’t designed to be passed, you see…we just want to know what you can do…and how you react when there are things you cannot…ahem!”

“I passed?” Twilight said excitedly.

The examiner straightened up and took a moment to collect herself. “Before I give you your final results, there is one more test I must ask you to take.”

Her horn glowed again. The doors opened, and in floated a basket with a blanket, and in the blanket was a large spotted lavender egg.

“This is a test Princess Celestia has been giving to potential economists for two hundred and seventeen years,” the examiner said. “Everypony has failed it, and so will you most likely, but try anyway.”

“What do I have to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What…what’s the test?”

The examiner shrugged.

She waited.

“That’s not a test,” Twilight said.

The examiner’s horn glowed. She sent the basket toward the door. It slammed shut, glowing lavender, before the basket could pass through.

Twilight released her magic. “That’s not a test.”

The examiner shot up. She glared at the impertinent filly. “Ms. Sparkle, that will be quite enough from you! The test is over, and—”

the bitter scent of crushed apple seeds

“…and…and….”

the bite of teeth on an old applewood pipe

Twilight Sparkle lifted into the air unsupported, surrounded by a magical glow. Her head was pulled back, pointing to the ceiling, showering the room in lavender sparkles bursting from her horn. White light shot from her eyes, bathing the room in something wild and free.

Magic, a great deal of it, had been released into the world. It was no business of the mare’s, and such things happened often enough in her, for lack of a better word, lifetime.

The egg cracked. It broke open. A head popped out, purple with green spikes, and immediately began to wail.

A flash of golden light lit the room. Princess Celestia surveyed the scene in an instant: the glowing filly, eyes burning white and lavender sparks erupting from her horn; a baby dragon, howling his distress at a rather rough introduction to the world; an examiner, coffee spilt over the table, gibbering against the wall.

Her horn glowed, and when it faded, so had Twilight’s.

“Hello…what is your name?” Princess Celestia said kindly.

Twilight had never seen Princess Celestia in person before. Her coat was whiter than an angel’s robes. Her crown was superior to any halo. She was as bigger than other ponies as a princess properly ought to be, and her mane rippled with the colors of the cosmos of creation.

“…Twilight Sparkle,” she said when she remembered to speak. “I mean, I am Twilight Sparkle.” She bowed.

Princess Celestia called the whining baby to her. A few gems materialized: The baby seized one and began to munch on it messily with a surprisingly loud crunching sound, the sound of rock crushing rock. His crying ceased at once.

“Dragons eat rocks,” she said. “And their teeth are quite strong, even from birth.” She looked at Twilight with interest. “You awoke this egg. I myself could not do it. I have waited a long time for this…for you.”

Twilight’s ears shot up and her tail went as stiff as a board. “I—I didn’t mean to! I mean, I didn’t—” she bowed— “your Princessship, I didn’t—” bow— “mean to…to cause any trouble, or…I didn’t know what I was doing!”

“I’m quite pleased, and yet not overly enthusiastic,” Princess Celestia said, smiling easily. “If a few millennia aren’t enough for a proper calibration, one might as well quit trying. And you don’t have to keep bowing. Once is enough.”

“Yes, Princess!” Twilight’s neck jerked down before seizing abruptly; her knees locked in panic mode as her brain tried to catch up with itself.

“Congratulations on your cutie mark,” Princess Celestia said.

Twilight spasmed, looked down at her flank where a light brilliant raspberry mark in the shape of a beaming star, surrounded by five smaller starbursts, now showed on her coat.

“I…I….”

“Yes?”

“I wanted a supply and demand graph!”

Princess Celestia laughed. After a stunned moment, so did Twilight, somewhat breathlessly.

The mare watched stonily. Even Twilight had forgotten her in the excitement. Princess Celestia had not seen her when she entered the room, nor could she see her now.

“Twilight Sparkle, would you like to come study economics with me in Canterlot?” Princess Celestia said. The baby dragon started greedily on another gem, filling the silence with his loud crunching.

The mare leaned forward, blade ready.

“Yes!” Twilight actually jumped, then hit the ground rather suddenly as her legs lunged for the earth in panicked embarrassment while her brain screamed at them for nearly ruining everything.

The mare sat back. That hadn’t been it.

“And,” Princess Celestia, “will you raise this dragon as your own? You don’t have to, but he seems to be yours.”

The mare’s blade leapt into her hoof. Twilight answered; the mare cut:

“YE

ES!”

“As you wish,” the mare murmured in a voice only she could hear, already getting up to leave.

“Now he needs a name,” Princess Celestia said as one world spun into nothingness, and another subsumed reality, “and his spikes will need to be trimmed, and as for food….”

The mare met Twilight again in the library of the Canterlot university. Twilight studied economics there with the most talented fillies in the world, none quite as talented as she. She hadn’t made any friends yet and hadn’t noticed this, just as she hadn’t noticed that she hadn’t spontaneously begun speaking Spanish.

“I saw you picking your nose, Minuette!” The voice carried through the aisles.

“Go away, Twinkleshine!”

“We saw you!”

“Shut up, Lemon Hearts!”

Twilight slammed her book shut. Somepony was interrupting her reading.

She noticed the mare as she headed over and smiled. “Hi. I like how you carry a shovel, it’s really unique. Are you here to help me? It’s fine if you just want to watch like normal.”

The mare could count on one hoof the number of ponies who smiled when they saw her. She counted one.

She followed Twilight through the aisle and into the area where two ponies were harassing a third, and a fourth was approaching from the shelf one over from Twilight’s.

“I picked my nose,” Twilight said, looking from the bullies to their victim and back. “All the noses were laid out on a table, and I picked this one.” Her speech was smooth now; no sign of her previous impediment remained.

“I lost my nose in a sneeze,” said the filly from the other shelf. Her hair was tied back in a slapdash way; it was red and purple and badly combed. “This one’s fake.”

Twilight grinned at her. “If you lost it in a sneeze, maybe you can go back and find it in a sneeze.”

They laughed, and Lemon Hearts snorted as well before remembering herself, and Twinkleshine was bright enough to understand the advantage of numbers. They backed off, and Minuette, now embarrassed, retreated to a corner with the first book she found big enough to obscure her face.

“I’m Moondancer,” said the Unicorn filly with the badly combed hair. “You’re funny.”

“I’m Twilight Sparkle. I saw you reading at the table. It looked pretty interesting. I would have asked you about it, only…reading.”

“I understand.”

The mare’s shovel was suddenly humming. She frowned. She couldn’t see what….

Twilight gestured toward the table she had been sitting at, where archipelagoes of table could be seen amidst an ocean of books. “Want to sit with me? We can talk about economics. Or just read next to each other.”

“Is reading next to each other like reading alone?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said seriously. “I’ve never tried. But I think it’s more like

reading alone with a friend.”

“As you wish,” the mare said, a puzzled look on her face as Twilight and Moondancer went to enjoy each other’s company in a silence that was no longer cold, a stillness that held no fear.

The same acceptance Twilight had cast on the mare was freely offered to another. The mare found this disconcerting.

It was two years later. The mare stared at the cardboard box outside the door of Twilight’s house. Then she straightened her dress and raised her hoof to knock.

The colt in the box knocked first. The door opened.

“Hi!” Twilight smiled at the mare. Then she frowned. “Who’re you?”

The mare opened her mouth, but the colt in the box answered.

“I’m Shining Armor. I live in this box!”

“That’s neat.”

I don’t have a name, the mare didn’t say. But I’ve cared for you for a very long time.

“I’ll say.” Shining Armor shifted and leaned a leg on the edge of the box. “I was told I would meet somepony important here. Are your parents home? Do you live here?” His coat was a messy brown, though it was mostly dirt, and his mane badly needed to be scrubbed, combed, and quite possibly shaved off and incinerated.

“Yes, most ponies live in houses, not cardboard boxes.”

“Well, excuuuuse me, princess.” Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry for not knowing how you ponies do things in Canterlot. I’m from the Crystal Empire.”

“Wow! What’re you doing all the way down here?”

Shining Armor leaned back smugly, resting against a cardboard wall. “I go where I want. I’m a free pony. And one day I’m going to be the best economist in the world! That’s why I came to Canterlot, to study.”

“You can’t be the best economist in the world,” Twilight said hotly, disliking this smug colt at once. “Princess Celestia already is, and she’s not going anywhere.”

The colt made a fair impression of pointing a thumb at himself. “Not once this bad boy gets himself inside the library. I figure it’ll only take me a few years to start publishing in the top journals.”

“It—you—it takes years of hard work just to get a revise-and-resubmit in the Equestrian Economic Review!”

The colt smirked. “For everypony else, maybe. Check out how strong my instrumental variables are.” He flexed his legs, which did bulge impressively.

Twilight was open-mouthed. “That…that’s…do you even know what an instrumental variable is?”

“Do you?” He leaned forward. “Why, do you think you know something about economics, little filly?”

The sneer on Twilight’s face stretched wider. “Yes, I do, actually. I’m the highest-scoring filly in half a millennium in Princess Celestia’s select cohort.”

“Oh ho! So you’re an economist too! I wonder which one of us is better.”

“I don’t, because I know it’s me.”

“Ha! You’ve got an attitude, sis. I wonder if you can calculate the present value of an asset.”

“Present value? Ha! Can you prove Brouwer’s fixed-point theorem?”

“All right, sis, not bad,” he said grudgingly. “Maybe Princess Celestia knows a thing or two.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn. Come in—I’ve got juice. What’re you studying? I’m learning macroeconomics so I can help Princess Celestia with the One Bank someday.”

Shining Armor rocked inside his cardboard box, pushing it forward in jerks. “I study whatever’s available. I go with the flow, like a wave, you know? Also, I want to try surfing.”

Twilight giggled. “I go with the optimal decision rule. By the way, you really need a bath.”

“I hear baths have good acoustics. I want to work on my singing for my popular colt band where I'll be lead singer.”

Twilight laughed again. “You want to be an economist, not a singer!”

The mare stared, flabbergasted, as the door closed in her face. This colt was rude, arrogant, and disagreeable. Why was he invited inside? How had this crude interloper said more words to Twilight in a short meeting than the mare had in years of knowing her? How had he made her laugh?

Why did it hurt so much?

Worlds were coming apart, tugging at the seam on the margin, demanding her attention. Her shovel felt heavier than normal as she sliced away the worlds where Shining Armor did not become an older brother to Twilight.

The mare spent more and more time with Twilight as she grew into a young mare. The mare paid sharp attention now, seeking understanding. She studied the friends Twilight made, the tests she exceeded, and the cohort of strange fillies who grew around her and Princess Celestia, the little eddy and the great whirlpool.

“I don’t like those girls you study with,” Moondancer said to her one day. “Twinkleshine is awful, and Trixie is worse, and the rest of them are just bizarre. They’re cruel, Twilight, what they did to Lemon Hearts….”

“It was just a prank,” Twilight said uncomfortably. “We knew she was failing out, so we wanted to sort of see her out our own way. Something to remember us by.”

“I bumped into her the other day. She said she still has nightmares.”

“She wasn’t actually locked in the cage. If she had just been smart enough to realize—”

“It doesn’t matter! It’s wrong, it’s sick, and it makes me mad that you helped them. And I’m next.”

“You’re not,” Twilight said unconvincingly. Moondancer was as dedicated a reader as anypony Twilight knew, but she couldn’t keep up with her and Trixie and the rest, and that was a fact. There was Twilight, then the eight, and then, far below, was everypony else.

“It happened when Minuette failed out,” Moondancer insisted. “She wasn’t the same after, and my grades are borderline, everypony knows that. Don’t—it’s true.”

“No pony’s going to hurt you. I’ll make sure of that.”

“I don’t want you to hurt anypony!” Moondancer cried. “Trixie’s changed you. I miss the Twilight who would stand up to bullies in the library for a pony she had never met.”

Twilight leaned her neck to one side and scrunched her face. “We don’t hurt anypony. It’s just a prank….”

Twilight didn’t think she had done anything wrong. If anything, they had done Lemon Hearts a favor. But Moondancer was decent and funny and good, so she nodded and agreed that they might have gone too far. She didn’t say that Lemon Hearts had no business still being at the university; she couldn’t keep up and it was better for her to be out because she had quit than because she had failed, because it kept her in charge of herself. The cohort was shrinking every month now, and the loss was accelerating.

Moondancer wouldn’t last much longer. Twilight planned to shield her from Trixie and the others. But she couldn’t save her.

Later she asked the mare not to make the cut hurt too bad. The mare almost answered, and her answer was almost yes.

A very peculiar series of events began when Princess Cadance arrived in Canterlot to visit.

Princess Cadance ruled the Crystal Empire, a vast land to the north of Canterlot. Princess Celestia spared nothing on the fanfare and welcome. The guards were even more bumbling and ineffectual than usual, for Princess Cadance was rumored to be the most beautiful mare in the world, and that her beauty was a thousand times greater than any image could show.

They were wrong. It was not a thousand times greater. That estimate was low.

Twilight stood with the cohort, watching the formal reception in Canterlot. Moondancer was on her right side with her nose in a book as usual. Trixie was on her left, whispering something nasty about the sort of idiot stallions who became guards, as usual. She was, Twilight suspected, saying this in fact because Twilight's brother, Shining Armor, had become a guard, his peculiar way of getting closer to Princess Celestia. Recognized for his economics prowess (the Canterlot guards couldn't, and weren't expected to guard so much as piggy bank, let alone the One Bank), he had been promoted to captain.

The hapless stallions finally managed to seat Princess Cadance next to Princess Celestia without knocking anything else over. Then the guards performed their ceremonial spear-presenting…thing that involved a lot of stepping around very stiffly and twirling their spears and, Trixie snickered, looking like idiots, and then Princess Cadance pointed at the captain marching along the field and said something to Princess Celestia and the ceremony stopped.

Shining Armor was brought up to the princesses, looking strong and stoic, but Twilight knew he only ever looked serious when he was nervous. Then Princess Cadance smiled and for a moment even Twilight fell in love, even Moondancer looked up from her book, even Trixie could think of nothing nasty to say.

The mare was unmoved. Princess Cadance could not see her.

That was how Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire and Shining Armor, Captain of the Canterlot Royal Guard, started dating.

Part 1: The Date

“So I guess you two are dating, huh,” Twilight said at lunch the next week with her older brother and Princess Cadance, whose macroeconomics textbook Twilight had read. She knew what sex was because the library. She also knew in a matter-of-fact way that it had nothing to do with her, and it had nothing to do with Shining Armor.

“That’s right!” Shining Armor’s hoof couldn’t seem to leave Princess Cadance’s. His voice was all wrong, his face shiny and a weird color. “Cadance and I are getting along really well.”

Princess Cadance smiled at her—not a heart-stopping smile, just a regular mind-blowing one. “I hope you don’t mind sharing Shiny with me. I really appreciate how mature you’re being. I know this isn’t easy.”

“Uh huh.” Twilight was mentally erasing the word Shiny from her vocabulary every time Princess Cadance introduced it. “Are you two in love?”

Shining Armor was grinning as broadly as Twilight had ever seen until he finally broke into laughter. It took him a while to stop. He looked happy. Weird happy.

Twilight had never seen him this way before.

“Are you two in true love?” Twilight said.

Princess Cadance’s smile was smaller, tinged with the wisdom of loss. An aging mouse eating nearby whose wife had passed away years ago took one look, keeled over, and died. “I think so. Why do you ask?”

“Only because I read this book called The Princess Bride—”

“Any good?”

“It’s blasphemous filth,” Twilight said calmly. “But I read it, and it’s about true love, and the kind of power it contains.”

“Love isn’t about power, Twilight,” Princess Cadance said gently.

Twilight hesitated. She hadn’t said it was.

“Twilight’s still at the age where colts have cooties,” Shining Armor said.

“I do not believe in cooties,” Twilight objected. “It happens to be an observable fact that colts care nothing for proper hygiene. Your room, for example—”

“Is very clean, and always has been,” Shining Armor said quickly.

“Spike passed out from the fumes.”

“Completely untrue,” Shining Armor said to Princess Cadance, who giggled. Something spread across Shining Armor’s face like butter. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t thinking. The look on his face….

Twilight shivered.

Nearby, a couple was bickering at a table.

“Go on, show her,” Shining Armor said. “Twily doesn’t know how amazing you are.”

“I know all about Princess Cadance’s research,” Twilight said. “It’s very pedantic.”

“It’s important to always be right,” Princess Cadance smiled softly. “That way you’re never wrong.”

“Show her!” Shining Armor said.

“Oh, all right.” Princess Cadance gave him an adoring look, then pointed her horn at the couple. It glowed, and something heart-shaped shot out almost too fast for Twilight to see.

“Well, I’m sick of your mother,” the stallion was saying. “If she doesn’t like my job, then she can go—”

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They kissed.

After a while, they were still kissing.

Twilight frowned. “How are they supposed to kiss if he’s standing behind her?”

“Maybe you should stop,” Shining Armor said hurriedly.

Cadance’s horn glowed again. The couple started, gave each other mortified looks. Faces bright red, they didn’t wait for a check, instead stuffing some bits into the waiter’s hoof as they hurried away.

Twilight made the connection.

Princess Cadance has mind control magic.

Then Twilight understood.

PRINCESS CADANCE HAS MIND CONTROL MAGIC!

Her mind raced ahead.

Why is a seven-hundred year-old Alicorn princess interested in dating a stallion with no special magic and who has to study economics by night with me because he works as a guard all day?

She isn’t.

Would a 700 year-old Alicorn princess be interested in the brightest young economics student Canterlot has seen in 500 years?

Maybe.

Twilight shoved away from the table, horn glowing.

“Twilight!” Shining Armor looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Stomachache,” Twilight said immediately. What kind of magic was Princess Cadance using? How could she prevent it?

She’s already used it on Shining Armor.

“I’ll make it better!” Princess Cadance said. Her horn glowed again. Twilight’s muscles seized, but she couldn’t even feel anything happen.

“That should clear up your stomachache." Princess Cadance smiled gently.

“Th-Thank you,” Twilight mumbled, her heart racing. Was this what it felt like to be mind controlled? She thought: I don’t like Princess Cadance. Did that mean she was free? Or that Princess Cadance, for whatever reason, was letting her think that thought?

Princess Cadance was looking at her.

She knows, Twilight realized. I might as well have told her.

Not a minute into her first battle, and she had already lost the war. Was that fair?

Princess Cadance yawned. “Now I’m tired” she pouted, leaning on Shining Armor’s shoulder. “You’ll carry me home, won’t you, Shiny?” She closed her eyes, face like a sleeping angel.

“Of course, my love,” said Shining Armor, who couldn’t seem to look away.

Princess Cadance opened one eye, looked at Twilight, and closed it again.

No need to say anything, Princess, Twilight thought viciously. I know what you’re saying: “I can make your brother do anything.” I won’t let you take him from me. This battle’s just beginning!

The mare watched as Twilight’s war against Princess Cadance began. She watched Twilight losing.

“I have something very important that I need to tell you,” Twilight said to Princess Celestia in her private office. “Princess Cadance is evil!”

“Please explain,” Princess Celestia said in a tone of voice that meant, “You know I have a country to run, don’t you?”

“She has mind control magic!” After that didn’t seen to have the intended effect, she added, “And I think she’s dating my older brother just to get to me and to you through me.”

“I see.”

Twilight paused. “Has she already used mind control on you?”

“No.”

“So…what should I do?”

“Try to get to know her, Twilight. She will be your sister-in-law, after all.”

“I….” Twilight turned red. “This isn’t about that!”

“No?” Princess Celestia turned to her papers in a final sort of way. “If you do lose a sibling, Twilight, it will not be in the way you expect. That is my warning to you.”

Princess Cadance’s stay in Canterlot lasted a lot longer than the original one week that had been announced. This was to do with her budding romance with Shining Armor, which the newspapers reported, speculated, and outright invented on with shameless glee. Every day Twilight’s desk was stuffed full of the worst ones until she changed the magical lock, and when it was brute-forced open and the newspapers piled in again she did the same to Trixie’s, threw the lock in there, and started carrying everything with her.

Twilight began her own letter campaign against Princess Cadance under a pseudonym. Strangely, her perfectly valid and well-documented concerns about a known emotions-manipulator dating the captain of Princess Celestia’s royal guard drew far less attention than the latest pictures of Princess Cadance and Shining Armor rubbing their snouts together. She doubled the number of statistics she used. It didn't help.

Princess Cadance was even invited to give a lecture on economics at the university. Twilight’s cohort, the dozen or so who remained of it, attended, Twilight under protest. When Princess Celestia pointed out that Twilight wasn’t required to attend, she huffily responded that somepony needed to keep an eye on the enemy.

She needn’t have worried about any sneaking around once inside the university walls. Princess Cadance’s ideas were as bright and solid as crystal. After the lecture the question-and-answer session went on into the night.

“She’s amazing,” said Twinkleshine, voicing the general, but not unanimous opinion as they gathered together in an empty study hall. “And very pretty, not that I’m into mares or anything.”

“I think she’s planning a war against Canterlot,” Twilight blurted.

They looked at her.

“Wow, all that from her dating your brother?” Trixie said. “Geez, Twilight, I knew you were paranoid, but I think that’s a new record.”

“It’s not the end of the world, Twilight,” said Twinkleshine. “Perhaps she’ll make you a duchess of the Crystal Empire. You might as well milk it for all it’s worth now in case they break up. Personally I’m surprised they’ve lasted this long.”

“You don’t understand,” Twilight said urgently. “I’ve been reading internal reports from the Crystal Empire—”

“How?” Moondancer asked.

Trixie laughed wickedly. “You’ve been reading Princess Cadance’s mail!”

Twilight turned a redder shade of purple. “I haven’t—there was good reason to believe—”

“All’s fair in love and war,” Trixie said faux-soothingly. “Remind us all which one this is for you?”

Twilight’s mouth open and closed. “I-I-I do not have a crush on my brother!”

“It’ll be okay,” Trixie said, oozing raw gloat with every word. “Even though you were raised side-by-side, technically he was adopted so this isn’t weird at all.”

They were laughing. Twilight closed her eyes, and, moments later opened them again in the safety of a familiar room. As the lavender sparks fell and faded around her, she wondered just what kind of pony took a crisis to be an opportunity for pointless cruelty, and decided that kind of pony was Trixie.

A few minutes later, Moondancer walked into the old room they had slept in together for years at the Canterlot Academy of Pony Sciences. Now Moondancer slept in it alone.

"Hey, 'Dancer," Twilight said, flopping onto a pile of books. Glancing about for a new title, she didn't notice the lack of a smile on Moondancer's face as the other filly swept books off her bed to make room to sit.

Moondancer swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Hey.”

Twilight grabbed something interesting-looking with her horn and floated it over. “Guess who’s the worst?”

“…Trixie?”

“Only by default. Second guess?” Moondancer didn’t answer. Twilight barely waited as she began to scan a table in the back of the book. “Ding ding ding! It’s Princess ‘Notevil Goodpony’ herself!”

“Princess who?”

“It’s what my brother calls her.” Twilight turned now to the third chapter with a critical eye. “Something to do with somepony calling her Princess Evil Badpony around him.”

“Is that...helpful?”

“He’s under her mind control power,” Twilight said firmly. “Things can’t get worse. Maybe this way the part of him that’s still him won’t give up hope.”

“How do you know that part exists? Maybe it doesn’t work that way.”

Twilight hurled the book against the wall, its pages flapping like a damaged bird. Moondancer winced at the loud thudding sound and the possible damage to one of her books. She hadn’t realized how angry Twilight was. Somehow it had all seemed…silly. As if Princess Cadance and Shining Armor were just dating.

“I don’t know, to answer your question,” Twilight said acidly. Her horn seemed unusually pointed. “For all I know Princess Cadance just wiped his mind blank and replaced it with one of her own. I tried looking up what kind of spell she might be using, but it sounds like she was just born with this power. It’s odd, though.”

Moondancer tore her eyes away from the fallen book. “What?”

“I saw her use a spell with her horn like a Unicorn would. But everypony writes as though her face itself radiated the magic. She’s supposed to be so beautiful everypony falls in love with her on sight, blah blah blah. And no, I don’t know that she isn't just making me think that she cast a spell when it was really just her magic face. Or maybe she convinced them it was her magic face when really she was casting spells.”

Moondancer played her trump card. “Princess Celestia doesn’t seem worried.”

Twilight’s face twisted. “I-I think she might be…testing me. Maybe this is all a trap for Princess Cadance. Or maybe I’m useful bait.”

“That doesn’t sound very falsifiable.”

“We’re already dealing with a pony who makes every observation suspect. Falsifiability was thrown out the window the minute she started messing with ponies’ minds. If she doesn’t want to be the subject of unfalsifiable accusations, she ought to leave everypony’s brains alone.”

Moondancer didn’t answer, just looked at the book laying crumpled against the wall. The mare shifted, leaning on her shovel. Moondancer had not been able to see her since she was a young filly.

“I know she’s planning something,” Twilight said. A picture of she and Moondancer holding up their passing exams from the first year was framed on a small desk by the bed. “Look at the interest rates in the Crystal Empire. I gave you the data. Did you ever look at them?”

“Mmhmm….”

“I’m not crazy. Everypony says I’m crazy. In the newspapers—but could a crazy pony stay up for three nights in a row examining unusual interest rate movements? Well? Could they?!”

“Uh…I guess not,” Moondancer murmured. She usually entertained Twilight’s wild rants, but tonight she was strangely reticent.

“You think she’s planning something,” Twilight said.

She waited for the confirmation.

“Um,” Moondancer said. She turned her head away, looked for something on her desk. It seemed to take her a while to find it, pushing the same few pieces of paper back and forth. “I…I should show you this.”

Twilight took the offered paper.

“…A job offer,” Twilight said. Every cell in her body felt numb. “In the Crystal Empire.”

“I haven’t accepted,” Moondancer said quickly. “Only she said that she needed economists…and let’s be honest, I’m going to fail out soon here.”

“You need to study more,” Twilight said numbly. She couldn’t feel her horn, though its magical was visible around the paper. “I’ll help you.”

“You are helping me. I would have failed out last year if you weren’t helping me.”

The mare glanced at the spinning miniature world by her side.

“It seems like a really good opportunity,” Moondancer said unhappily.

“You’re my only friend.” It was strange. She was sitting down, so why was she dizzy?

“I…I suppose I could try to tough it out,” said a voice from Moondancer’s blurring face.

“I need you.”

“I…could stay….”

This is it, the mare thought with a swell of dread. The last time she will be able to see me.

Twilight closed her eyes. She opened them, and they were wet. “No. You’re going to fail out.” She couldn’t make out Moondancer’s face. She didn’t want to either, so she kept talking and didn’t wipe her eyes. “Your choices should be about you. I’m an economist. I won’t ask you to give that up.”

The mare almost missed the moment. Her swing was clumsy, but that had never mattered. “As you wish,” she mouthed, and this time she meant it.

She didn’t stay for the rest of the conversation. It didn’t last very long anyway.

The mare walked in a strange, giddy haze. She passed through walls, ponies, and the ground, paying no attention to what plane her hoofs found. Direction had no meaning when gravity was only a matter of politeness.

Lost in the strange glow of acceptance, the mare missed seventy-seven important choices. The worlds bunched up. Far away, conventionally speaking, as distance held no meaning to the mare, a zebra made an impossible discovery…..

When the mare reemerged into the world, she was standing by Twilight Sparkle.

“Shining Armor?” she said quietly, closing the door to his room behind her. “Can we talk?”

“Logically my response is affirmation, but by the same logic, my response could never be negation, so—”

She looked at him. The playful grin wavered, fell from his face.

“I don’t know how to tell you this….”

“You can tell me anything. Unless it’s something bad about Cadie!” He laughed.

Twilight flinched.

“Ah, Twily, I didn’t mean that.” He put a hoof around her shoulder and drew her near. “You know you can tell me anything. Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about you and me and Cadie.”

Twilight squeezed her head through the space between his leg and body so she could see his face. “You’re breaking up with her?”

He chuckled. “No…but I want to apologize, and thank you. I know this has been a big change for you. That’s why, before I ask her, I want your permission to marry Princess Cadance.” Even as he said it a bizarre rosy color flooded his cheeks.

Twilight stared at him.

“I know this is a big shock,” he said carefully, still fighting down the blush, “and a really scary change, but I’m your big brother, and I’m not leaving you—”

“This isn’t about that!” Twilight screamed. She wrenched herself out of his grip. “I don’t care who you date! This has never been about that!”

He looked baffled. “Then why hasn’t my Twily been smiley?”

“BECAUSE SHE’S A MIND-CONTROLLING EMPRESS WHO WANTS TO TAKE OVER ALL OF EQUESTRIA, YOU DOLT!” Twilight took a deep breath. “She made you love her! With her mind control magic!”

He began to laugh. “Twily, Cadie is a pretty pony princess. She doesn’t need magic to make ponies love her.”

Twilight stumbled over whatever half-formed counterargument she was already preparing. She had forgotten that there could be a reason he liked her.

“Look, Twily!” Shining Armor pulled something sleek and glittery off the bed. “Shiny, your favorite! Cadance made these for us!”

“Us?” Twilight said. It was clothes. She didn’t think much of clothes on stallions.

“For the band, of course!” He put it on, swept back his blue mane, and struck a surfing pose. “Check out these moves!”

He began to gyrate his hips to some imaginary beat. For the sake of decency and the continued T rating of this story, she quickly stopped him. “I thought you wanted to be an economist!”

“Yeah, but I want to be in a band too. It’s my dream to be in the biggest colt band in all of Equestria!” He tried to shake his hips again despite Twilight’s magical hold.

“You never said that before!”

“Yes, I did. You just thought I was joking.”

“You were joking!”

“Because you got really upset when I said it seriously.”

Twilight faltered. Was it true? She couldn’t remember.

She can control your mind.

“Want to see a poster? She had them done up all glossy with FFBBB on the top, although the name still needs some work…I look the best, obviously….”

She grabbed his face and pulled it close to hers. She peered desperately into his wide eyes, searching for a sign of her brother, her real brother. “Are you in there, Shining Armor? Can you hear me? I swear I’ll find a way to save you!”

“Twily, it’s the real me, no mind control.”

“She’s controlling you, using you—”

“Prove it—”

That snap in his voice. Some of the analytical genius she had loved him for. Was it the real him? Was Princess Cadance letting it surface, to fool her? To torment her?

“Are you seriously going to marry her?” said somepony with Twilight’s voice.

A stallion wearing Shining Armor’s body answered, “Yes.”

“I don’t give you permission,” Twilight thought she said. It was hard to tell if she had spoken or not because the world was spinning on tilt. Why did that make it hard to hear herself? In her mind an endless stream can control your mind she can control your mind she can control your control your mind control your mind

and the two of them, snouts nuzzling, lips touching, the ghost in her brother that couldn’t work the face right, couldn’t make the voice sound like his….

Her legs crumpled. She had been wrong to think losing Moondancer would make her brave. It only made her hurt.

“If I lose you, I won’t have anypony,” she must have said, because Shining Armor was kneeling down beside her, saying,

“You’re not losing me…and Spike’s not going anywhere.”

“Touring the country…living in the Crystal Empire with her….”

“You’ll visit! I’ll visit! You can even come live with us, that’d be amazing!”

She didn’t think she was moving, even though the floor was tilting up higher and higher. Nothing was actually sliding, though the vertigo filled her head and made her weak.

“Princess Cadance?” she said in a quiet sob, her face hidden in her legs, covered by her mane. “Please…I don’t know why you’re doing this…please give me my brother back…please…at least let me say goodbye to the real him….”

His body holding hers didn’t warm her. “Twilight, I won’t marry her if you don’t want me to.”

Twilight didn’t answer for a long time. “If you’re the real you…it would hurt you…if I make the second-worst mistake….” She was trying to think in terms of probabilities and finding it incredibly difficult. She couldn’t begin to put an estimate on Princess Cadance’s plans, if she had plans.

There’s a way out, the mare thought desperately. Seeing Twilight like this…. The mare stepped out of the shadows, not that Shining Armor could see her regardless. Trying to make herself more obvious to Twilight, who was wrapped up in her own little world of hurt and confusion and fear, one threatening to tear away from all the others, There’s me! There’s me you can throw away!

Twilight didn’t even look at her.

“You can marry Princess Cadance,” she said, her body utterly still against his. “I won’t attend. You’re moving out…Princess Cadance will make arrangements. I’m…going to go…now.”

The triumphant slice! AS YOU WISH! screamed into the sky.

Twilight stumbled out in a fog, head hanging low like a weight was tied to her neck. Behind her the mare followed, crowing with strange emotions.

Yes! Yes! Yes! the mare thought savagely. Me! Me! I am all that you care about!

Twilight leaned against an elderly pony, who squawked in surprise. Twilight started and jumped away, mumbling an apology. She continued to drift, twice walking into ponies, and suddenly had to sit. It was hard to breathe, and she couldn’t see the grass in front of her eyes. It felt like when she had gotten the flu as a filly, only this time it was the vomiting that made her ill.

And above her, the mare exultant:

Make more friends! Find more brothers! Reject them all! Discard them like trash!

Twilight wasn’t crying. She was breaking.

Cast them out of your house! Throw them aside, demand unto them why they should have a place in your life! They are the worthless ones! ALWAYS LOOK AT ME! ALWAYS LOOK AT ME! ALWAYS LOOK AT ME!

From that moment on the mare always had some facet of her attention with Twilight. And so though the instance meant nothing to her, she was thus with Twilight on the week before Shining Armor and Princess Cadance’s wedding, when Twilight went to confront her brother’s fiancée.

Author's Note

If you think about it, if someone would rather have nothing than have you, they must dislike you a lot.

I expect this mare's had quite a lot of time to do quite a lot of thinking.

The Exogenous 2: Opportunities

Part 2: The Meeting

“Hello, Chrysalis.”

They were standing in the office Princess Celestia had loaned to Princess Cadance for her stay. Twilight shut the door behind her.

“Hello, Twilight,” Princess Cadance said mildly. She didn’t react at all to the name. “Where’s Princess Celestia?”

“She’s out.”

“So we’re all alone.”

Twilight locked the door. “That’s right.”

“Just the brave Unicorn girl, locked in a room with a super powerful self-made Alicorn princess. No witnesses. No pony to protect her.”

Twilight didn’t miss a beat. “If you wanted to mind control me, you already would have.”

“I was talking about myself, of course,” Princess Cadance said sweetly. “But, and this is entirely hypothetical, suppose for some reason I can’t mind control you, and have been waiting for an opportunity to kill you instead? Doesn’t this meeting suddenly seem like a terrible mistake?”

“So you admit you have mind control powers?”

Princess Cadance hesitated. “Ah, a recording device.” She levitated the small black instrument out of Twilight’s saddlebag and crushed it.

Twilight did her best to look disappointed.

Princess Cadance smiled at her. “So what do you want to discuss, sister? I can call you sister, I hope?”

“If I can call you Chrysalis.”

Princess Cadance’s face didn’t so much as twitch. “What’s that, dear sister?”

“Her name is Chrysalis. I read about it in one of my books. She’s a shapeshifting monster who feeds on ponies’ love.”

“Uh huh….”

Twilight began to pace. “It’s interesting. There are books about you going back to the start of the Crystal Empire. The older the are, the more they talk about your…curse.”

Princess Cadance tilted her head, her smiling showing real amusement now. Like a tiger watching a mouse strut.

“They don’t call it a curse,” Twilight said. “Most of the books are annoyingly fawning, to be honest. It’s almost weird how little criticism your 700-year life has brought. But the older books talk about a strange power you possess…or possessed. Supposedly, whenever a pony looked upon your face, they would fall in love with you. Instantly. Mare, stallion, didn’t matter.”

Princess Cadance looked near to laughter. “And from this you deduce…that I’m no longer Princess Cadance, but this monster Chrysalis wearing her body. And that is why my face has lost its power.”

“And that’s why you’re marrying my brother. To steal his love so you can feast on it like the demonic shapeshifter you really are.”

Now Princess Cadance’s yellow teeth showed in her smile. “And if all that were true, what would your plan be now?”

“Every economist’s first plan…I am going to do nothing.”

Now she finally saw the look of baffled surprise on Princess Cadance’s face that she had wanted. “Nothing?

Twilight shrugged. “What I know, Princess Celestia knows. Ever heard of the efficient villains hypothesis? By the time information about the latest threat to Equestria is public, Princess Celestia has already set into motion the optimal response.”

“Then why say anything?”

Twilight’s horn glowed; she vanished in a flash of lavender light and reappeared behind Princess Cadance, her horn pressed against the shapeshifting monster’s neck.

“Because I want you to know that I know,” Twilight growled, her voice low. “I want you to know that if you hurt Shining Armor, I will know. You can take away my friends…you can steal my brother…but that’s as far as you’ll go. If you want a war with the best economist Canterlot has seen in half a millennium, you’ll get what you wish for. I’ll make sure of it.”

Princess Cadance, or Chrysalis, or whatever she was, only smiled. “Are you hoping to get a picture of us with my magic wrapped around you? Very cute leaving your saddlebag pointed at us. Whom does that work on?”

The camera flashed, its timer having gone off. Twilight vanished and reappeared beside her saddlebag, mentally nonchalant. It had been a long shot.

“Can you see her?”

Twilight stopped on her way out the door, wary of a trap. “See who?”

Princess Cadance regarded her. “The mare. Tall, a bit thin, carries a blade everywhere. Quite fond of those little spinning globes.”

Twilight blanked for a moment. “You mean—her?” She pointed at the mare, who was indeed standing by the wall, leaning idly on her shovel. “Yes, I can see her. I can also see my hoof if you’re wondering.” She waved it in front of her face to demonstrate.

Now Princess Cadance smiled sadly. “Yes, of course. She’s right there. Any fool can see that.”

“O-kay. I’m going now.”

“Good night, Twilight. Good work. Sleep well.”

Twilight glanced back, then left, the inevitable following behind her.

A week later Princess Cadance and Shining Armor married in the Crystal Empire. Twilight vaporized the pictures that came in the mail without a glance and told Spike not to give her any more of “Shining Armor’s” letters.

Years passed. Twilight, sworn off friends and brothers, accepted only a single companion, her baby dragon, whom Princess Celestia herself had entrusted to Twilight. A coldness settled on her like snow that wouldn’t melt. Her social skills melted like a rock popsicle in a baby dragon’s mouth. And she became very, very good at economics.

The mare was happy. She was with Twilight Sparkle all the time, who could still see her even into adulthood. Nothing could change that.

Not even four tickets that didn’t even exist.

Several years later

It was odd being Princess, Twilight reflected in her throne of ice overlooking Ponyville. It was even odder for how utterly miserable she was.

Pinkie Pie bowed, the pink-and-white-striped boots on her legs sinking into the snow, then turned it into a series of somersaults across the snow to Twilight’s frozen throne. “Hi, Princess!”

She reached into her poofy pink hair and pulled out a basket of cupcakes. “I baked these for you!”

“Thank you, Pinkie Pie.” Twilight took the basket. She wished her nose wasn’t so stuffed up. They looked like they smelled incredible.

“How’s life being Princess?” Pinkie Pie said conversationally, head still bowed, although her eyes were so big it didn’t hinder her effort to look at Twilight, or really at the tickets sealed behind her.

Twilight shivered violently. “Cold. I can’t remember why I decided to sit on this chair made of ice all day,”

Pinkie Pie’s head popped up. “It’s because Princess Celestia sent you an invitation to the Grand Galloping Gala with a ticket for you and one extra to bring a friend but you have five friends not counting Spike so we all wanted it and after about 22 minutes of shenanigans and a really interesting diversion where we listened to somepony tell us to buy the Princess Castle Pony Playset™, you sealed the tickets in a block of ice but since you knew we’d fight over it when you left you decided to turn it into a chair and sit there till we went away and now it’s become sort of a throne and we’re all fawning over you so much hoping you’ll pick us that you called yourself Princess ironically but also sort of hopefully and kind of sadly like maybe there’s somepony you haven’t seen in longer than you’re used to and you miss her a lot and also I think you’re catching a cold.”

She bowed again. “I think that about covers it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Twilight looked through the cupcakes tiredly. Chocolate, peanut butter, raspberry…and…no…it couldn’t be…but there wasn’t supposed to be any more! Pinkie Pie had run out! Was it possible…?

Was that a pumpkin spice cupcake?

“I know you like them,” Pinkie Pie said brightly. “Turns out there was still a little bit of pumpkin spice left in the Everfree Forest. Don’t let anypony see it, though. That stuff’s addictive.”

Twilight’s saliva froze on her chin. She was torn between a desire to gulp it down in a single bite and the knowledge that she wouldn’t actually be able to taste it.

“I know my cupcakes make ponies happy,” Pinkie Pie said while Twilight went on forming stalactites from her bottom lip. “I wish I could bring them to all of Equestria. Showing them off at the Grand Galloping Gala would be the perfect opportunity! I just know I could make every little filly and colt smile if I….”

“Uhh huhhh uhuhhuhhhh….”

“If I just…you know what, I’ll come back when you’re functional. Bye!”

Rarity visited her only an hour later carrying a heavy winter coat. She swept a perfect bow and presented the offering to Twilight, who grunted her assent.

“You must be freezing in that awful chair,” the fashionista with the diamond rump said as she wrapped the coat around Twilight. “I thought this might help.”

“T-T-Thank you,” Twilight chattered. Her stomach was full of cake and pumpkin spice, which, regrettably, had gone unnoticed by her taste buds.

“Clothing ponies is what I do,” Rarity said, brushing, well, pushing back Twilight’s stiff mane. She herself had a green-and-white coat that was fluffy and fabulous, and a scarf wound expertly around her neck. “Clothes warm the body and warm the heart. You know, they say the first thing ponies did with their brains is notice their nakedness and rush for some fig leaves.”

“Fig leaves?”

“Yes, I can’t imagine why either. Silk, surely, something lacy or flowing, not some tough old leaf with a bit of fruit dripping off.”

Twilight sneezed. Every exhalation dripped snot from her nose that dribbled down and froze unpleasantly. The coat was so warm she couldn’t bring herself to lift a leg to wipe it away.

“You have such a regal bearing,” Rarity said, standing back and beaming at her hoofiwork. “Princesshood suits you, and I know a thing or two about suits! And hoods. Imagine you and me at the gala together! We’d be unstoppable! My latest line of dresses at the fashion show—for charity, of course—on the greatest Princess-economist in Equestria—”

“Second greatest.”

“—second greatest Princess economist in Equestria, we’d be sure to take first prize!”

Twilight reverted to breathing in through her mouth and winced as the cold winter chill swirled up into her head painfully. Strangely, it just seemed to make her head hotter. “How does that benefit me?”

“It, ah…well…it would be good for the local economy!”

“No, Rarity.”

“Um…ah, I’ve forgotten the tiara I made you! Wait for meeeeeee!”

She dashed away through the snow. Twilight sighed and closed her eyes, leaning against the cold hard ice of her throne—

“Twiliiiight!”

Twilight’s eyes shot open. A rainbow blur was streaking toward her, with something blue-and-yellow waiving in the sky. Rainbow Dash stopped short just in front of Twilight and snapped a salute. “Give me the ticket because I’m your best friend and the fastest pony and my hair is rainbows!”

Twilight took one look at the Wonderbolts bed sheet that Rainbow Dash apparently used as winter wear in the form of a cape and closed her eyes. “No.”

Rainbow Dash scratched her head. Why hadn’t that worked?

Later that day Twilight was stretched out on her icy throne, grunting in beat to Fluttershy’s surprisingly strong hooves. Snot sprayed from her nose with ever firm yet gentle, well-aimed blow, which Fluttershy declined to mention.

“Sometimes I give Mr. Bear a massage like this when he’s sleepy,” Fluttershy said. Her ear muffs were as fluffy and white as a rabbit’s rump. “And Little Widdy Biddy Sky Snake likes it too, I’m pretty sure.”

Twilight had almost forgotten that Fluttershy had a giant baby sky snake with budding wings. The still-growing serpent had spent most of the winter sleeping buried in the snow, or as much as the snow could bury something bigger than a house. “How-w-w ah-ah-are th-th-th-i-i-ings at thththe sanctu-u-u-uhhhhh yeah right there.”

“They’re doing all right,” Fluttershy said as her hoofs continued to beat out the knots in Twilight’s back she hadn’t even known she had. Twilight almost wanted to do something to hurt herself just for some more of Fluttershy’s magic touch. “Sometimes it’s hard, though.”

“H-h-haaaard?”

Fluttershy kneaded her back in circles. “I have so many critters to take care of, and during winter it’s always harder. I need more money, and ponies are less willing to give. All the richest charitable ponies attend functions in places like Canterlot. They’d never come here, and they don’t answer my letters, even the ones I sent with the picture of the crocodile kissing the baby lamb.”

Twilight was finding it difficult to listen as Fluttershy slowly rocked her world. She bit her lip. “Ohhh, Fluttershy, right there!”

“I think that’s enough,” Fluttershy said hastily, taking her hoofs off Twilight’s back. “Can I do anything else for you, Princess of the Gala?”

Twilight struggled to sit up. Her body felt like it was melting against the throne, although it was in fact sticking to it. “Fluttershy…were you talking about the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“I wouldn’t ever ask for anything,” Fluttershy said honestly, “but a lot of critters wouldn’t have to shiver through the next winter.”

“Everypony wants it.”

Twilight straightened as best she could against the backrest where the tickets were sealed. She looked at Fluttershy with tired eyes. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “Everypony wants it, and I don’t know who to give it to!”

“I never know what to do,” Fluttershy whispered back. “Everypony wants everything, and I can’t help any of them, not really, not the way they’d use me to help themselves.”

“Wow, that’s, um, that’s also a problem.”

“It would be a real shame if I lost any critters because I couldn’t do my fundraising at the gala.” Fluttershy turned to leave, remembered to bow, then slowly shambled away. “All those poor, orphan critters…and I’m just one sad, lonely Pegasus, no pony invites me anywhere anyway….”

Twilight groaned. All the stress that Fluttershy’s hoofs had rubbed out of her returned like the winter breeze through a crack in the walls.

Applejack was last in her supplications that evening, possibly because she had apparently dragged a heavy wooden keg all the way through the snow from Sweet Apple Acres.

“Howdy, Princess!” she said cheerfully, naked as the day she was born except for the weather-beaten cowpony hat atop her head. Well, Twilight assumed Applejack hadn’t been born with it. She had never actually seen her without it.

Twilight did her best to look regal, or at least conscious. “That’s not the formal…never mind. What gift is that, subject?”

Applejack lifted the top of the jug. Twilight’s sinuses instantly cleared, flooding snot down her face. She lifted an aching leg to wipe it off.

“What’s in that?” Now her nostrils were burning.

“Apples,” Applejack grinned. “Well. Mostly apples.”

Twilight sighed. It came out as a bubbly snort. “I suppose you’re going to explain why you want…say, aren’t you cold? Even Rainbow Dash had a cloak, sort of.”

“Apple ponies always go naked the way we were created,” Applejack said.

“You’ve got your hat though,” Twilight sniffled. She wiped her nose again on the back of her leg, which by now had a frozen crust of snot lining it.

“I’ve got what now?”

Twilight gestured to the brown, weathered thing that was always on Applejack’s head. “That.” Talking exhausted her.

“This? I ain’t wearing it. It’s wearing me.”

“Uh…pardon?”

“This hat has been passed down in my family for generations. It contains the memory of every single Apple who e’er wore it. Every time a Hat Bearer dies the hat chooses a new one, and it chose me. I can talk to my ancestors if I need advice, although they mostly speak just Applenese, and most Applenese words just mean apple.”

Twilight blinked her eyes until the spots went away and Applejack’s face was clear. “Uh…wow…I didn’t know that.”

Applejack held her slipping gaze for a moment, then chuckled. “I’m just fooling, Twilight.”

Twilight coughed out a sort of laugh. “Oh, of course, how silly—”

“You can say pretty much anything in Applenese.”

“Oh. Uh…uh….” Twilight struck out for familiar waters. “Ticket?”

“Funny you mention it. I was just about to ask. I don’t know if you’ve been thinking about who you’re going to give that ticket to….”

“Not really.”

“I don’t really have a reason for wanting it,” Applejack admitted. “Ponyville’s a market big enough for this mare. I just know that everypony else wants it, so I want it to. I want to be considered as an equal friend. I may not look good in a dress or know how to talk all fancy, but I reckon I have just as much right to be considered as anypony else.”

“That’s it?”

“Well…I heard through the apple branch—”

“The grape vine?”

“Land’s sake, no!” Applejack made a gagging noise. “Yecckhh! ‘Sides, can’t trust grapes. Shifty little devils. No, I heard through the apple branch that Lemonduke, Pearspade, Orangeace, and those creepy octuplets who grow grapes in the western valley are all going to be there. Cherry Jubilee herself’s doing the organizing. Seems like there ought to be an Apple representative. But that ain’t no business of yours, and I won’t ask you to do nothing for me. I’m as self-reliant as a rattlesnake on its backside.”

“Okay, Applejack.” Twilight closed her eyes.

“You want me to leave you alone to contemplate stately matters on your forbidding ice throne?”

“Yes, please,” Twilight murmured.

“All right. ‘Scuse me, Princess.” She tipped her hat, which Twilight didn’t see, and must have gone away, because when Twilight woke up, it was very dark, and she was all alone.

After a moment of blurry disjunction, Twilight slowly turned her head, shined a light from her horn, and saw the two tickets still sealed in the ice.

Then she turned back around.

Who was Princess, and who was serf? Her throne was a jail cell, and her princess was in another castle.

Ponyville was much quieter than Canterlot. Ponyville at night held only the sounds of crickets, bats, and Spike snoring, which one of these days Twilight was going to record and play back for him just to prove he did it.

Ponyville at night in winter when the snow blanketed everything was as quiet and still as the afterlife. That is, it was as loud and busy as nothing at all. Just endless slopes of white rolling on forever.

Twilight seized the sides of her captor throne. For a moment vertigo had taken her. She felt like she really was rolling down an endless slope.

What was at the bottom…?

A pony named Hobbes had described the natural state of ponies as one of violence and perpetual conflict. When ponies didn’t have ways to come to mutual agreement about how to use the scarce resources available, they tore each other apart.

An extra ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala was about as scarce as resources got.

Twilight felt like a piece of meat tied to a tree. And the howling of the wind might have had a bit of wolf in it, baying at the moon.

What was the saying? A pony is a wolf to other ponies? That…didn’t make much sense….

Besides, it was the sort of thing that upset Fluttershy. Twilight shivered. Now that was something to be scared of.

Twilight turned her neck and smiled weakly at the mare, who stood just behind her and to the side as usual. “You don’t want the ticket, do you? No…but I’m sure you’d like to see Canterlot again.”

The mare managed to indicate with a shuffle of legs and a wave of her stick that she visited Canterlot all the time.

“Oh, really? That’s nice, you should take me with you sometime….”

“Twilight? Twilight!”

Twilight woke up to a blurry bunch of dots that slowly congealed into Spike’s worried face. Or at least she could recognize his voice. She couldn’t quite tell if she was shining a light to see him, or if her brain was just filling in the details it knew had to be there.

“Hnn?” she said.

“You should stop sitting in a chair made of ice. I thought you were taking the Princess thing too far, but this is ridiculous! Come inside, Twilight!”

“I’m a princess.”

“Sure, yes, the prettiest pony princess in all of Equestria, but your castle is a building and you should be inside it.”

“‘Cept Princess Cel’sia,” Twilight mumbled as Spike peeled her off the ice and started to lead her home.

The warmth of the Golden Oak Library enveloped her like no coat ever could. Every nerve in her body instinctively understood a library was home. A cup of hot cocoa also helped.

The Golden Oak Tree was the oldest structure in Ponyville. Princess Celestia had bought it for Twilight, or lent it to her, or maybe just given it to her. There was no record of previous inhabitants or ownership, yet it seemed like it must have been lived in. Twilight had turned it into a library, naturally, and had spent many an evening reading by the fire. But right now Twilight only cared that upstairs was a bed and a soft pillow and a warm blanket and a scaly dragon with hot breath and who didn’t snore all that much….

For a groggy moment Twilight didn’t know if she had even gone to sleep. She had closed her eyes only a moment ago, and the window showed nothing but darkness. She rolled over and didn’t see Spike. Now worried, she lurched to her feet and started downstairs.

“Surprise!” her friends shouted. They were all gathered around the dining table with Spike.

Twilight jumped; her vision swam. “Oh, hello,” she said, leaning on the railing for dear life. “Fancy meeting you all here.”

“You were sound asleep all day, so I didn’t want to bother you,” Spike explained as Twilight finished making her way to them. “But enough is enough. I invited everypony here so we can settle this extra ticket business once and for all.” Her friends nodded.

“Okay,” Twilight said. “Just excuse me one moment while I get a drink of water.”

Spike watched her go, then turned to Rarity and the others. “She never takes care of her health. Cooking, cleaning, anything practical she doesn’t ever think to do. If I wasn’t around she’d eat books.”

They waited.

“I don’t hear water running,” Applejack said.

A icy winter draft blew into the room, blowing napkins into the air and ruffling the pages of errant books. Spike dashed into the kitchen with the others behind him and saw the open window.

Twilight ran. She fell down from the window into the snow, skidded on the ice, flailed to regain balance, stumbled and dove into a snow bank, quite by accident.

“Get her!” she heard Rainbow Dash’s distant voice. Struggling free, she pulled herself up and made it all of two steps before Rainbow Dash tackled her from behind. They tumbled and slid on the ice. Twilight squirmed out of her grip and bucked wildly.

“Ow! Twilight, you almost hit me!”

Twilight ran. She wasn’t fast in the snow, but she could teleport: She vanished and reappeared in bursts of lavender light, skidding, almost tripping, vanishing again; she was almost to the frozen throne where the two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala were sealed when something hit her from behind. The combined force of Rainbow Dash’s speeding body and Twilight’s own forward momentum propelled them forward through the air like a cannonball and hit something very cold, and very hard, which broke.

Twilight lay groaning in the wreckage of her former throne. Something in her head felt like it was going to burst. She heard Rainbow Dash cursing nearby. A pair of golden papery things fluttered in the snow, blurring in and out of her vision..

Rainbow Dash got to her wings, fluttering angrily over Twilight. “Are you crazy?It’s below zero and dark! You get lost in the woods walking back from Fluttershy’s!”

Twilight was too stunned to answer as their friends caught up.

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie said. “What’d you go running off for? Hey, what happened to your chair?”

Twilight wondered what she was talking about.

“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack scolded as they gathered around her. “You hurt her!”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Move aside,” Fluttershy said firmly. She crouched beside Twilight. “Twilight, how many hoofs am I holding up?”

Twilight mostly managed to look at her.

“So that’s a yes to concussion,” Fluttershy muttered. “I’ll bring you some medicine from my cottage, okay? No economics for a week, even if your head feels better.”

Twilight groaned.

“You should have taken my coat,” Rarity admonished as Applejack carried Twilight back to the treehouse as easily as a bushel of apples. Twilight clutched the tickets to her breast.

“And my axe,” Pinkie Pie said. She tugged it out of her hair. “Never go anywhere without an axe, I always say.”

“You do that to your hair?” Rarity said in horror.

“It grows around it.”

The mare walked behind them, unbothered by the cold. A small world spun by her head. She did not slip on the ice. Nor did she leave hoofprints in the snow. No matter how deep it was, her gliding pace remained steady. She was very near to Twilight. Her friends had hurt her. But soon they wouldn’t ever again.

The mare’s blade cut through the ice without leaving a mark. Her eyes burned with twin blue sparks.

“Twilight, I’m sorry,” Spike said morosely. “I didn’t realize—”

“Didn’t realize what?” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “She’s just got to pick who to give the ticket to. We all know it’s true,” she added defensively. “You can stop looking at me like that.”

Twilight clutched the tickets close. Rainbow Dash was right. Twisting her head, ignoring Fluttershy’s sharp command, Twilight looked wildly for something, for any anchor she could throw away—the tickets—her friends—the moon—the mare—

The Exclusive Worlds of the Social and the Economic

Twilight looked into those twin blue sparks.

“I’ll auction it off.”

“Hold still!” Fluttershy said.

The mare wasn’t breathing.

“Take me inside,” Twilight said. “I’ll sell it to the highest bidder.”

“Sorry for how this turned out,” Spike said while Fluttershy held a bag of ice to Twilight’s head. Their friends surrounded them in a circle, looking on. “Can everypony go home now? Twilight needs to sleep.”

“We just need to make sure she’s okay,” Pinkie Pie said. Her eyes flitted back and forth from Twilight to the tickets and back.

“We should go,” Applejack said reluctantly.

“She’s just going to make another ice chair and sit herself on it,” Rainbow Dash objected. “Let’s take ten seconds to sort it out. Come on, Twilight, who are you going to give it to?”

Spike grabbed some pastel-colored rump and started pushing. “Will you all leave already?”

Rarity wasn’t budged. “Yes, of course. Coming, Rainbow Dash?”

“Right after Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash said quickly.

“I’m not leaving yet!” Fluttershy said. “I need to make sure she’s all right.”

“Then I’ll keep you company,” Rainbow Dash said to the tickets.

“You’d get bored and start flying around distressing Twilight,” Applejack said. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”

“A sleepover at Twilight’s does sound grand,” Rarity said.

“There’s no sleepover!” Spike said.

“Not without Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight’s head throbbed. Despite Fluttershy’s insistence that she rest her head, it was running down a worrying track of thought.

When Shining Armor had first moved in, he sat in her chair, he was singing in the bath when she needed to brush her teeth, he ate the last pancake. After a month though, the heat from his rump was how the seat had always been. It would have been weird for it not to be there. The ritual battle over the last pancake did as much for her budding magical powers as library study. And she didn’t even know she was humming his dumb songs in class until Moondancer asked what it was.

Friendship was an equilibrium, a collection of patterns, habits, rituals, expectations, rules and norms that all added up to a Sunday afternoon picnicking in the grass.

And now she observed that in the presence of overt economic motives, behavior became calculating instead of practiced.

Which was good, of course. Rational behavior. Incentives. Maximization.

It didn’t feel good.

Maybe she could add a feel term to the model.

Maybe then she would know why dogs turned into wolves at the scent of fresh meat.

She still loved them. Once the tickets were gone, they would be themselves again.

The mare met her gaze, penetrating and curious.

“I said I would auction them off,” Twilight coughed. “I’ve thought about it, and this is what we need to do.”

“Stop thinking,” Fluttershy said. “It’s bad for you.”

“I need to think.”

“I’m pretty sure thinking is literally killing you right now.”

“My life is mine to spend,” Twilight said. The pounding in her head suggested that this was very much true. “And I’m sick of these stupid tickets. So rather than ask you all how much you want the ticket and try to compare it that way, you’re all going to tell me. You see….”

And Twilight tried to explain price theory to her friends.

She explained that most of the things ponies want to use have alternative uses. This is called scarcity, she sneezed, and it is often considered the fundamental quality of economics.

She pointed out, rather lightheaded, that ponies needed some way of allocating those scarce resources in a rational manner.

Dribbling snot, she proposed that a system that allowed ponies to freely attach numerical weights to each and every resource for sales so that the resources would be pulled in the direction of the greatest weights would maximize the value of the resources, if the ponies each had a finite amount of weight such that assigning a weight to one good meant less weight could be assigned to another good. That way ponies would assign the most weight to their most valued resources, and less weight to their less valued resources, ensuring the resources would go where they are most valued and away from where they are least valued. Maximizing the value of the resources, Twilight said breathlessly, was a good thing, the very best thing.

The mare stared while Twilight explained that such a system was called a price system, and it was the reason all the ponies here were alive today. Her eyes wide with a worshipful adoration she normally reserved for Princess Celestia, she gushed about the complex problem of global coordination among ponies so diverse that, that, that you don’t even know how diverse they are, and how a price system makes solving this impossible problem so easy that you pay less attention to it than you do the weather.

She slumped against Fluttershy, utterly spent. Everything ached, even her tail. She hadn’t known her tail could do that.

“Huh?!” Pinkie Pie said, voicing the general sentiment in the room. “What did that mean?”

“I’m not choosing,” Twilight said tiredly. “The way it works is you all bid until all but one of you don’t want to keep bidding because the price is too high. That pony gets the ticket. So it’s you all settling things among yourselves. I don’t have to say a word. I don’t even have to listen, just wait until you all stop. So I don’t have to make this choice.”

The mare squeezed her shovel.

Twilight closed her eyes. “Wake me up when you’ve settled on something. Actually, don’t….”

Silence, except for the gurgling of a congested Unicorn. Then:

“That’s weird,” Rainbow Dash said.

“She’s right,” Rarity said uncomfortably. “One does not ask one’s friends to buy their gift. It’s rather cold, actually.”

Twilight groaned and opened her eyes. “It’s not about buying it, it’s about deciding amongst yourselves who should have it.”

“So we wouldn’t have to actually pay?”

“No, you’d have to or it wouldn’t work.”

“Then…no.”

“I can prove with math that this is the best option for everypony.”

“No math,” Fluttershy said firmly.

“Never bought a favor before,” Applejack said. “Ain’t sure I want to.”

“Friends don’t make friends pay for things,” Fluttershy explained gently. “That’s basically what it means to be friends. You do things for them even when there’s nothing in it for you.”

Pinkie Pie, who was pretty sure making ponies pay for things was how she made friends, said nothing.

Twilight’s patience was dying, along with possibly several critical systems inside of her. “Fine!” she snapped, struggling up to her hoofs and wavering without Fluttershy’s support. “If you won’t to make this choice, then I won’t either!”

Her horn flared; a lavender beam flashed: The vaporized ashes of two former tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala lay scattered on the floor.

“Now really!” Fluttershy said. “No magic!”

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie gasped. “You didn’t have to do that!”

Twilight drew herself up to most of her full height. “You all want to pretend these choices don’t exist! Why shouldn’t I get to do the same, huh? Why think, why know, why try when you can just stuff your hoofs in your ears! Now—” she doubled over as a wave of pain washed through her head— “get out…so I can sleep!”

“How am I supposed to brag to the Wonderbolts how rich I am now?” Rainbow Dash demanded.

“Rainbow Dash,” Applejack sighed. “Let’s go, y’all. Night, Twilight.”

Spike opened the door pointedly. He watched everypony shuffle out. Twilight collapsed the instant they were gone.

“Don’t tell Princess Celestia I didn’t use the price system,” she said. Spike cracked a smile. Thinking, Twilight turned and looked, but she couldn’t find her. Had that bone-thin mare thought Twilight meant her when she said to get out?

It was strange. Twilight couldn’t remember the mare not being there before.

But she was too tired to worry about it, and fell asleep soon after.

Twilight! the mare screamed. Twilight! Twilight! Look at me!

But Twilight did not answer. Twilight did not turn her head. And when her vision had passed over her, the eyes had not seen.

Twilight! Twilight!

The lavender mare dozed under the blanket Spike had wearily fetched.

Twilight! Listen to me! Twilight!

But she went on sleeping.

The mare did not, could not stumble. She did not falter and slump against the bookshelves. But the walls rippled. The air fogged. The house turned upside down—no, she was standing that way, and suddenly everything was hurtling too fast, dangerous, deadly speeds through space—

It flung her out of the Golden Oak Library, out into the freezing wind and biting ice. It flung her farther than that, bouncing along the ground and slamming through mountains, trees ripping her dress, an ocean filling her bones, giant fish with dim glowing eyes—

The mare hung on to nothing, and when the world no longer appeared to be spinning, no longer seemed to be an enormous mossy, puddled rock burning through a vacuum of dust and magic, she slowly, slowly let go. She let physics resettle over her like a party guest who spilled her wine in shock and slowly straightens her glass again.

She didn’t take a deep breath.

The mare stepped forward and was standing by Twilight Sparkle’s friends, watching them talk until one by one they turned away to their own separate paths through the night.

Her Ponyville friends, whom Twilight had chosen over her. Who through their own selfishness and stupidity had driven Twilight to physical and then mental exhaustion over a party the Unicorn had attended most years that she didn’t have anything better to do, such as a good book to read. Who had taken—

The mare couldn’t think it.

Who had blinded—

No.

No!

There must be a way. There must be. She could get Twilight back. They would go somewhere, far away from other ponies, where nothing would get between them. The harshest choice Twilight would face would be which of many books to read that evening.

Stupid Twilight! To choose her friends over her! To choose nothing over something! Death over life!

Twilight had always been stupid. Economics, economics, it was always economics with her, and yet when it came down to it, who was always there to sever the worlds so that her choices meant something? What had Twilight ever said in thanks? “Duhhhhh, tanks.” Her stupid, malformed mouth hadn’t even managed that much. Greedy, lazy, whining, she could have kept her friend and her brother if she had only fought better. She had the Ultimate Reality standing beside her the whole time and failed to use even a fraction of her powers.

What kind of a friend was Twilight anyway? She had chosen to throw away the pony who had always been there for her just so that she wouldn’t have to give anything to her friends! She had cut their legs off and gouged out her own eyes at the same time! How foolish to flee the Ultimate Reality: To throw away nothing means giving up everything! Choose nothing, and get what you wished for!

The mare scowled, glanced about. Her dress was gone. Good. Foolish thing, useless thing. She didn’t need it. Something simpler, more elegant, with a hood. And black. Black was good. Black was mysterious. Black was dangerous.

Ponies in black were too cool for birthday parties anyway.

Her shovel sliced through the air, and the wavy, lustrous darkness it left in its wake she took and pulled to the proper length. She severed it with another swing of her shovel and wrapped it around herself. There, a cloak of shadowed possibility, of Lagrangian otherwiseness. A cloak of sheer stupidity.

How fitting for one who had loved.

Her friends…Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy. The mare knew all names. And as a Reaper knew all lifespans by something baser than instinct, she perceived in an instant all their desires. What ponies called dreams, hopes, and fears the mare saw as plainly as the night sky.

She had seen what they had done to Twilight to hurt her, and what Twilight had done to hurt them back. A plan began to form.

The mare in black knew she could love. And the wrenching pain inside told her she must never love again.

Now she hated.

The Everfree Forest woke up shivering and covered in sweat.

Not literally, of course. She’s a forest. But she did the forest version of waking up shivering and covered and sweat, which involves a lot of branches shaking.

Was it time, yet…?

The Everfree Forest lost her leaves in winter because she’d seen the other forests doing it and wanted to fit in. She didn’t understand that normal trees lost their leaves in winter for actual reasons, the same way she didn’t understand adjustable rate mortgages or overdraft fees on a checking account. The Everfree Forest put a lot of store in symbols, possibly because she had never been to a store before and wouldn’t have known what to make of the all the Hot Bargains.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to do this….

She sent a few vines slithering beneath the earth, past where the apple seeds patiently waited to become trees and into the earth of Ponyville. She wasn’t in Ponyville, she was under it, so she wasn’t breaking the agreement. And when her vines pushed up into the ground floor of Pinkie Pie’s house, that was also allowed, because Pinkie Pie could go into the forest whenever she pleased, so it stood to reason that the forest could go into Pinkie Pie whenever she pleased.

Pinkie Pie was sleeping peacefully, one leg dangling off the bed, a curl of wild pink hair dipping inside her mouth, which she chewed on unconsciously, mumbling something about cotton candy.

It was not time yet.

The vines retreated.

The Everfree Forest went back to sleep.

Author's Note

Twilight is not Fluttershy, and only knows that wolves are fast and hungry and have lots of sharp teeth.

She also knows that ponies who turn into wolves are very, hm, thrilling, if imaginary, and, yes, she is writing a fanfic titled Taylor Laungfang, Werewolf Economist. She can't wait to get to the chapter where he starts to write his own fanfic about a pixie economist....

Applejack's Cutie Mark: Responsibility

“Your brother and I are just dating, Twilight. Seriously. Get over yourself.”

Twilight awoke to a knock on the door. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, the dream already fading from memory.

“Is Twilight awake?” she heard Applejack say.

Spike’s voice answered. “She’s still sleeping.”

Twilight checked her horn. Using it barely hurt at all. It glowed, and she teleported downstairs, surprising them in a lavender flash of magic sparkles.

“Twilight!” Spike said. “You’re awake!” He rushed to hug her. “Are you feeling better?”

Twilight smiled. “Mostly. As long as nothing too stressful happens, I’ll be ready to get back to work in no time.”

Applejack looked strained. “Maybe this is a bad time then.”

“What is it?”

Applejack coughed into her hoof, her hat slid down over her face, and she mumbled something that didn’t quite get past the brim.

Twilight frowned. “Spike, can you go make us some juice?”

When Spike was gone, Applejack lifted the hat up and almost managed to look Twilight in the eye. “It’s, uh, well, I heard what you were saying about prices or whatever when we were bothering you about the ticket…sorry about that….”

“It’s fine, no pony died. What’s going on?”

“Well….” Applejack took a deep breath. “It’s Sweet Apple Acres. She’s going broke.”

A P P L E J A C K

“You don’t choose the hat, girl,” Granny Smith said.

“Does the hat choose me?” Applejack asked.

“No, I choose!” Granny Smith glanced around, then grabbed a brown cowpony hat off the rack and stuffed it on Applejack’s head.

“Do I look like a real cowfilly?” Applejack asked.

“You look like a filly trying to look like her Granny. Which you is.”

Granny Smith had a hat too, a beaten straw thing with a faded red ribbon, and Applejack was trying to look like her. She didn’t have an apple cutie mark yet, and might never have the green coat even after she and Big Mac had tried bathing her in green apples skins every day for a whole week.

She didn’t live with Granny Smith, who had a cottage on the hill. Instead she lived with her parents and her older brother, Big Mac. They had relatives in the northeast too, her aunts who came to visit sometimes.

Aunt Hypanthium sat in Mother’s chair, nibbling dried apples as she watched Applejack sweep the floor. “How’s your granny’s health?” she said in her raspy voice. She put her hoofs up on the table. “Getting along all right? Must be writing her will soon if she hain’t.”

Aunt Stemma laughed. It was a wet, choking noise, like there was something in her lungs trying to get out. She was perched birdlike on a stool, wearing her boots that dented the wood floor with their sharp heels.

“That harridan won’t share a cent with anypony. Mark my words, she’ll burn every bit she’s got before she sees another pony with something of hers. She’ll bury it, like she buried that other treasure of hers.”

Applejack bent down with the pan. “Buried treasure?”

“That’s right,” Aunt Hypanthium said sharply. “The Apples have a buried treasure here. No pony knows what it is.” She gave Applejack a knowing look. “I suspect you’d like to get your hoofs on that treasure, you greedy little girl. Sweep up!”

Applejack didn’t care about any buried treasure. She emptied the dustpan and kept sweeping because it was work to be done, not because Aunt Hypanthium said so.

Aunt Stemma hunched over, watching Applejack like a vulture. “Your fool mother never dared ask about it. Once Granny Smith is dead, we’ll dig it up! We’ll turn over this whole farm if we have to.”

“Granny Smith ain’t gonna die.”

Her aunts burst out laughing.

“That old witch will be dead soon!” Aunt Hypanthium said.

“Witch?”

“She’s a witch!” Aunt Stemma said. “Ask anypony. That’s how these apples grow so fine, she don’t raise ‘em! I could’ve grown apples just as well, only she never taught me any magic.”

Applejack nodded to herself. Granny Smith was a witch.

“But all witches get what’s coming to ‘em,” Aunt Hypanthium said. “Granny Smith will be buried soon, and then that treasure’s ours!”

“Ain’t gonna die.”

“She will, you foolish little girl. Don’t talk back! Fetch more dried apples, girl, and clean this table off, it’s filthy.”

Applejack didn’t like her aunts much. When they talked about Granny Smith that way, she didn’t like them at all.

Besides, it was true. There couldn’t be a world without Granny Smith in it.

The Apple family owned an apple orchard that went on for miles, rolling green to the horizon and bursting with red in the summertime. It was Granny Smith’s orchard, everypony knew, though Mother ran it. But it was Granny Smith’s orchard.

Applejack loved her because she wasn’t just Applejack’s Granny. She was everypony’s. Applejack said as much, and got a wallop for it. “Some would take that the wrong way,” Granny had said, her black-pitted teeth showing, and Applejack rubbed where it smarted and didn’t say nothing.

But it was true. Granny Smith walloped anypony if she had reason to. Like that stallion, Buridan, who had been so cruel to his donkey, and Granny had snatched up a stick and whipped him twice across his face so fast Applejack couldn’t blink another tear before it was done.

Buridan had stumbled back, touched his cheeks in shock, but it was Granny Smith who’d whipped him. He couldn’t have complained any less if it was God who’d struck him.

If Granny Smith wasn’t everypony’s Granny, how come they all came to her when they needed something? She’d sit in her rocking chair smoking her applewood pipe with the apple ‘baccy so foul it made Applejack cry, but when Granny told her to go on and shoo if the smoke was too much Applejack said it was just allergies and stayed. That’s why she got to listen to all the ponies come to Granny Smith with their problems, and she got to watch Granny Smith do magic.

It’d be health, or money, or their marriages, and they’d talk and talk but after a while Applejack could see the patterns. Granny Smith never needed to ask no questions. She’d just chew on her pipe and nod and then snap at them to leave and come back in one week. When they did she’d have her magic potion ready.

There was the mare who kept in-vest-ing her money bad. Granny Smith made this bubbling green slimy stuff that smelled like apples, mostly apples, and told her to drink it every time she was about to spend her money. It’d give her wisdom, she said. The mare looked more grateful than dreading, and came back in a month with a quadruple of rain-boots saying that Granny Smith had done a miracle; every time she drunk that potion she suddenly didn’t want to spend her money no more.

Or there had been the stallion whose wife was at her wit’s end with him. Granny listened to him say how she worked long hours and would come home real tired and he’d want to talk and talk but she’d soon snap at him. Granny Smith didn’t need for him to wait a week. She told him to fit as many apples into his mouth as he could and start chewing when his wife came home. Said it’d give him luck. He came back too with a sack of nails and plenty of twine almost crying cuz he and his wife were getting along so good.

The gifts were always good, and it seemed to happen regular. Even when Granny Smith hadn’t done nothing recent for somepony they’d still go out of their way to holler a how-do and find something they weren’t using much that Granny Smith might like.

Some ponies made the mistake of bringing her fruits though, and withered under her glare. One mare brought a basket of plums, and when Granny Smith looked at her, chomping fierce on that applewood pipe, she let out an “Oh, God,” dropped the basket, and fled. She didn’t come home for a year, though rumor had it a pony by her appearance had showed up in Whinnyapolis only weeks later. When she did come back to the farm, she found Granny Smith on her rocking chair, biting her applewood pipe, the basket where it had always been. Granny Smith took a puff and said, “You forgot your plums, girl.”

Applejack loved her because of the gravel in her voice and the stoop in her walk. She loved her because of the sound her teeth made biting that applewood pipe and the squeak of the rocking chair. Even the smell of the apple ‘baccy and the bitter smell of the crushed apple seeds in her teeth when her mouth got too close, Applejack loved her for.

The fillies called Granny a witch, and Applejack made them eat mud. ‘Cept for Rainbow Dash, who could fly which wasn’t fair and didn’t seem to know what she was saying anyway, and a filly from the family up at the northern end of Ponyville who bothered her with the strangest things.

“Granny! Granny!” Applejack came running in.

“Would you rush an apple pie?” Granny said harshly.

“No, Granny—”

“Then take at least as much care of yourself.”

Applejack forced herself to slow down. “Granny there’s a Unicorn with big purple hair and a hat e’en bigger’n mine and she said my hat wasn’t in sty-y-yle!”

“So what?” Granny snapped.

“Well, what’s style?”

“Tain’t nothing important.” At risk of repeating herself, she added, “Ain’t got nothing to do with apples.”

“She said hats this season are tall, not wide, and have beads in ‘em, not apples, and I was just saving this one for a snack, it ain’t even part of my hat really and I said my hat’s good for keeping off rain and she said why would anypony be out in the raaaaaaain!”

“She making fun of you? Disparaging remarks and such?”

“I ain’t sure. That’s why I’m asking.”

Granny Smith thought.

Granny Smith’s thinking was the stuff of legends. It was why ponies came from miles carrying winter cloaks and bushels of hay and sacks of cloth and anything else they thought she might like. Not that she ever asked for anything. Just sometimes she’d give ponies a bit of an eye if they hadn’t brought her anything a while after she’d done some thinking for them, and suddenly it was like it was the most important thing in the world that they run home and get her a spare wheel in case the wagon ever broke.

She wasn’t in charge of anything. She wasn’t no pony’s boss. It just seemed that whenever they were building new houses or the mayor had some bright idea, Granny Smith was always sort of there, biting her applewood pipe or chewing apple seeds, looking at stuff, and maybe she’d nod, and then everypony’d let out a breath they didn’t know they’d been holding in.

When Applejack got older she started hearing about other ponies in cities and towns far away who sounded a bit like Granny. Like the Lemon Lady, or the Kumquat Queen. Folks didn’t say they were witches, but somehow everypony knew that’s what folks weren’t saying.

“C’mere, girl,” Granny Smith had said roughly, holding a thick, ancient book, and took Applejack up to the hills where they could see Sweet Apple Acres spread out red and green like a colorful bird asleep, its feathers rippling in the wind.

“Ponyville’s town enough for me, girl,” she said in response to Applejack’s unasked question. “Never did much get along with the others.”

“Is it because you’re a witch?” Applejack asked.

“Ain’t a witch!” Granny Smith said harshly. She bit her pipe. “‘Sides, it’s a foolish question to ask a witch if she’s a witch.”

Applejack nodded and adjusted her hat so it was more at the angle of Granny Smith’s.

“Your mother’s a fine girl, don’t tell her I said that,” Granny Smith said. “But she don’t got the knack. And Big Mac’s a stallion. Even if he weren’t, he’s strong but thicker than apple molasses. When I die, the farm is yours to care for.”

“Everything that the light touches is our orchard?” Applejack asked.

“Just the part with the apple trees, fool!”

They sat down and Granny Smith opened The Book.

Applejack had heard of The Book in the same sense that a Christian has heard of God. She had never actually seen it before, and the sight of it filled her with wonder.

It was old. The cracks in the faded cover made Granny Smith’s wrinkles look like a baby’s folds. Many of the pages were hanging loose from the binding or free of it altogether. The ink was dark and chipped and smelled acidic.

Granny Smith hunched over it, concentrating fiercely. “Ye…shall…take the mare…or…or filly…if she…be….”

“…and show her the orchard, and teach her the meaning of the trees, yea, and the taste of the apple in the tongue of the mind, so too shall she be Hatted and learned in the ways of the Book,” finished Applejack, who was getting a fine modern education over at the schoolhouse.

Granny Smith glared at her. “No use rushing. I was only being dramatic.”

“Sorry, Granny.”

Granny Smith turned the pages with a humph. “Consarn this old book anyway. Never could make heads or tails of all the jabbering and prophecy in the beginning. Look here, girl! The rules! ’S called Leviticus, on account of how livid and cussing I’ll be if you forget a single one.”

Applejack’s eyes widened. Was Granny Smith going to bring her into the coven?

“And this is Numbers, on account of…numbers. Listen: Prices in summer are two bits per bushel gen’rally, and three in winter on account of ponies needing to bake pies, and in spring and fall if it ain’t raining it’s two bits, but if it is raining then it depends on whether she’s got an umbrella and a place to stay….”

Oh.

Every night Applejack learned from The Book with Granny Smith. She learned the commandments of Prices and Quantities and Quarterly Reports. She learned the sacraments of Buy One Get One Free and Big Summer Blowout. She even learned a bit of nome-speak along with Applenese, although it wasn’t clear that nomes existed, let alone what they did.

And then there was the witching.

Granny Smith didn’t teach her witching. Witching was just something Granny Smith did. In bits and pieces, Applejack learned witching like foals learned talking.

”You been lying, girl?

Applejack shook her head. Granny Smith looked her in the eye some, and Applejack nodded her head.

“Apples don’t lie.”

Shake head.

“You could at least do as well as an apple, girl.”

Didn’t call it witching.

”You been mucking in the mud with that rainbow-mane Pegasus filly?”

Applejack wouldn’t lie. ”Yes,” she said.

Granny Smith bit her pipe thoughtfully. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

But witching it was.

The stick flashed twice in Granny Smith’s hoof while Applejack watched frozen with a tear trailing down her cheek. The stallion Buridan stumbled and fell back, drops of blood falling from his face.

Granny Smith didn’t speak. But she did give the donkey the stick.

Pure magic.

And when the donkey came down with the switch on old Buridan, it stopped short on Granny Smith’s foreleg.

“Ain’t no way to behave,” she said calmly. “You could’ve bucked his rump anytime. Going to say you couldn’t choose which cheek to buck? That’s a lie. You knew that, but now you been told. That’s why you’re hitting him, and that’s why you can’t.”

The donkey bowed his head. Granny Smith led Applejack away, muttering about apples.

“Was that a magic wand, Granny?” Applejack said.

“Just a stick, child.”

Applejack looked at Granny Smith’s foreleg. Weren’t no blood. Weren’t even a mark.

Now Granny Pipe sucked her pipe while Applejack danced on her hoofs, and finally she said,

“That Unicorn filly? Next time she talks about your hat, push her in the mud.”

“That’ll make her leave me alone?”

“It might. Or she might push you back.” Granny Smith grinned like an apple wedge, black seeds and all. The next day Applejack and Rarity became the worst of enemies, and by the end of the week, the best of friends.

Applejack got a bit older, and Mommy’s stomach got fatter and fatter. She and Daddy went on a business trip ‘spite Granny’s muttering’ about no need for franchisin’ and such, and Mommy had finally given up trying to explain the difference between, uh, whatever franchisin’ was and just trying to do a bit of business shipping apples to other cities and towns, and when they came back two months later they were being carried on account of all the blood. Timberwolves, ponies said.

They took them up to Granny Smith’s cottage, and she made ponies wet rags and stoke a fire and then slammed the door shut and told them all to go away. Applejack waited with Rarity while Rainbow Dash flew around in agitated circles overhead.

It was dark, and the flickering orange glow from Granny Smith’s cottage hadn’t gone out. Applejack told Rarity and Rainbow Dash to go home. The stars came out, and Applejack shivered a bit. She decided to head on up to Granny Smith’s cottage and see about her parents.

The door creaked open at her touch. It was dark, and for a moment she was blinded by a hungry orange fire. Its crackle and sudden pops filled the silence. Long shadows loomed on the walls and stretched up the ceiling. Then she saw the blood.

There was blood on the floor and blood on the walls. There was blood on the—on the—the lumps—on the floor, covered in bloody red rags. There was blood on the figure hunched over the lumps, looking away from the door, in a black cloak, whose shadow on the back wall loomed over herself like the shadow of Death.

Applejack’s heart leaped. The tin smell of blood was in her head and made her legs weak—she turned to run—

“Girl.”

Applejack froze.

“Girl, come here.”

Applejack shook her head. Then she stepped inside and closed the door, taking one slow breath through her mouth till her stomach shook, and held it in.

“Your stubborn, foolish mother married a stubborn, foolish fool.” Granny Smith still faced away. “Went through wild woods where Timberwolves live. Got away, but lost too much blood.”

A wailing cry pierced the quiet of the crackling orange fire. It went on with its own strength that paid no mind to the blood on the walls or the shocked, frozen filly by the door.

“Had to pick,” Granny Smith said when it mostly ended, and the air was still again, and the crackle and pop of the fire filled Applejack’s mind. There was a bundle, something swaddled in blankets Granny Smith was carrying. “And I did. I think it’s what my daughter would have chosen. But I chose.”

It was too much. Applejack turned to flee.

“Come here, Applejack!”

Applejack’s legs froze. They turned her around and forced her forward until she could see by the flickering blaze of the fire the terrible shadow on Granny Smith’s face and the sight of Granny’s shadow looming over them both like it might bend down and swallow them whole.

Granny Smith held out the bundle. “Say how-do to your little sister.”

Applejack didn’t remember much of the funeral. The days were a blur after that. Big Mac didn’t say much anyway, and he said even less after. Only Granny Smith seemed the same, though she wore her black cloak more’n before.

Wasn’t Apple Bloom’s fault. She was a fine foal, didn’t cry too much, even if she had to drink different mares’ milk. Granny Smith said it would put funny ideas in her head. But Granny Smith also said eating pears’d give you cholera.

Applejack was getting to be the age where most fillies had their cutie marks. Rainbow Dash had a lightning bolt rainbow on her flank and couldn’t stop showing it off. Granny was getting slower all of a sudden, walking less and resting in her rocking chair more, though her eyes were as sharp as ever, and so was her tongue.

“Let’s go up on the hill, girl,” she told Applejack, though she let Applejack lead for once, and twice made them stop to “look around a bit, girl, don’t be rushing all the time.” And at the top of the hill they just looked out for a while on the sleeping feathered bird that Sweet Apple Acres was when the wind was blowing, and Granny Smith took the applewood pipe out of her mouth and said,

“Listen to the apples, girl. Listen to the apples.”

“They’re just apples, Granny.”

She expected a wallop, but Granny Smith just got all quiet and looked off real thoughtful.

“Huh,” she said to herself.

The next day they found Granny Smith dead in her cottage. The night of, Applejack had dreamed the smell of crushed apple seed breath and woken up suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of a final bite of teeth on an old applewood pipe. She hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. Few hours later when the sun rose and she was out bucking trees they came and told her Granny Smith was dead.

Then they touched their forelocks. Talked real respectful. And waited for her to tell them what to do.

She told them to have an applewood casket made. There was going to be a funeral.

The whole town was there for the funeral. Even ponies from out of town came to see Granny Smith laid to rest. There were ponies who wore yellow or orange or green and had fruits on their flanks. Applejack felt their eyes on her as she talked about Granny Smith. As she talked about Granny Smith who was lying in an applewood casket in the ground. Big Mac was holding Apple Bloom, and Applejack was wearing Granny Smith’s straw hat with the faded red ribbon. She had taken it and the applewood pipe and a few other things that she reckoned were hers while the adults were running about. It kept slipping over her face.

Even the trees were bent over.

The day after the funeral Aunt Hypanthium and Aunt Stemma arrived in town by train. Applejack met them at the station, Granny Smith’s straw hat in a small brown sack, and took their luggage. They smelled of old paint and looked at Applejack with eyes that were by turns suspicious and greedy as they walked.

“This home will fetch a nice price,” Aunt Stemma said. They had Granny Smith’s will on the table, hunched over it like vultures. “I despise the idea of farming, but the land will sell too once we tear down these trees.”

“We’ll need bulldozers to turn over all the land,” Aunt Hypanthium scowled. “That cursed witch had to go and bury that treasure! It’ll take ages to dig it up.”

Applejack scrubbed the floor where their boots had tracked in mud.

Then Aunt Hypanthium shrieked, making Applejack jump. “Stemma, look at this!” She pointed at something in the will. Aunt Stemma looked and squawked.

“What is it?” Applejack said.

“Quiet, girl, it don’t concern you!” Aunt Hypanthium snapped.

“Where is the hat?” Aunt Stemma looked around, then at Applejack, hawklike. “Where is it, eavesdropper?”

“What hat?”

“The hat, silly girl, the hat! The symbol of Sweet Apple Acres.”

Applejack slowly rose. “You need that hat for Sweet Apple Acres to belong to you.”

“Stupid girl, it’s just a hat. A symbol. We own the farm.”

“But you don’t own the trees.”

Applejack reached slowly into the small brown sack and drew out the straw hat with the faded red ribbon and hatted herself. Aunt Stemma saw it and froze.

“She’s got the hat, Hypanthium!”

“Give it here, you little thief!” Aunt Hypanthium said.

“It’s mine.”

“It is not, you liar! Now give it here, girlie, it ain’t magic.”

“You seem mighty bothered by it.”

“Listen here, thief, these papers make me owner of Sweet Apple Acres and everything in it, and that includes that hat, and that includes you! Now give it to me!”

“Granny Smith didn’t give you this hat.”

“She's dead!” Aunt Stemma screamed. “Dead like the witch deserved!”

“Only dead when the apples are.”

Applejack stood taller. “Only as dead as the green hills. Only dead if the sky is dead, if the earth is dead, if little Apple Bloom and every wailing thing is dead, only when no pony don’t need her Granny no more will she truly be dead.”

She advanced. Her aunts retreated, falling off their chairs and stumbling backwards.

“You talk of destroying land, but you never had no mud in your hoofs. You talk of death, but you don’t know life.”

A wind began to howl. Applejack could see the trees blowing in the breeze in the eye of her mind and knew she wasn’t alone.

“You came here to claim a buried treasure, but you want to cut down the treasure growing from the earth. You came here for an inheritance, but you couldn’t make your own mother’s funeral.”

The breeze was growing. Something rising, soaring, built inside her. She saw a bird with red and green feathers, felt its wings spread as if they were her own.

She moved forward and they moved back, cowering from the switch that was her tongue, bleeding shame and fury from their cheeks.

“Greedy.”

They flinched.

“Jealous.”

Aunt Stemma wrenched the door open.

“And you’ll never know the taste of an apple, not how it really tastes, the one you make for yourself.”

Aunt Hypanthium drew herself up.

“ENOUGH!”

Applejack stopped, and stared at her from under the hat of Granny Smith.

Her face was bright red and distorted with anger. “Listen, you girl, we are coming back for our property! If your business, you ungrateful filly, ever goes under, we are coming BACK and we are going to BURN this orchard and BURN this farmhouse and burn YOU, you thieving, lying, stealing, WITCH!”

Applejack felt the breeze stream across the bird’s red and green feathers.

“The hat didn’t pick you,” she said, and they fled through the open door.

Applejack watched them disappear beyond the hill. They had even forgotten their luggage.

“The hat don’t pick,” Applejack whispered. “I do.”

She threw their luggage outside, got the mop and scrubbed every inch of the floor their hoofs had touched. Only then did she read the will, and saw what was at the end, and laughed.

Don’t try nothing without that hat, foolish daughters of mine.

—The last words of the final will and testament of Granny Smith.

The next day a pony came from far away lugging a fine piece of metal for a plowshare. He saw the eldest mare of the Apple farm sitting on a rocking chair sucking an applewood pipe.

“She’s dead,” Applejack said when he was close enough.

“Oh!” For a moment he looked stunned. “I—I didn’t know.”

“Don’t matter none. She only ever listened to the apples. I can help you just as well.”

He looked uneasy. “No, it’s not a big deal. I’ll go.”

Applejack took the pipe out of her mouth. “You came pretty far away for no big deal. What’s the matter? Your foal sick? Your wife unhappy?”

“Yes…yes, it is my wife. She’s terribly sad. Our,” he swallowed, “our foal died, and…it’s like she’s a ghost, just empty, won’t talk, won’t eat….”

Applejack listened to him. And said,

“Feed…feed her some apples.”

He stared at her.

“You should eat some too.”

He just looked at her.

The hat slid lower over Applejack’s face. “But I reckon you should go now.”

Applejack bit hard on the applewood pipe so the tears didn’t start until he’d left with the metal. She felt herself begin to shake and knew there were things gone into that applewood casket that couldn’t never be brought back.

Something burned inside her. The bitter smell of crushed apple seeds flooded her nose.

That night she knocked on Rarity’s door.

“Applejack! How…how are you?”

Applejack turned slightly. Rarity gasped.

“Applejack, your cutie mark! It’s three apples! It’s…wonderful!”

“I’m the eldest mare of the Apple family,” Applejack said hoarsely. “My grandmother is dead.” The hat slid low over her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Applejack threw herself down at Twilight’s hoofs. “Please, you gotta help me…I can’t lose the farm…I don’t know nothing about this stuff, The Book won’t tell me….”

“Don’t worry,” Twilight said firmly. “I’m an economist; we’re great at giving practical advice to businesses.”

She fetched a scarf, and together the two of them headed out into the snow to save Sweet Apple Acres.

Allocating Scarce Resources

Twilight stepped outside and was instantly reminded of the cold of Second Winter.

Twilight hadn’t believed in First Winter since she and Shining Armor had proved a causal link between the number of gifts Santa Hoofs brought to fillies and their parents’ income.[1] But Second Winter she had believed in the way other fillies believed the sky was blue. She only named it when she realized they didn’t.

[1] She later criticized their approach in a followup paper, saying it was too reliant on self-reporting.

The way Twilight saw it, winter could be neatly divided into two parts: the period lasting the last week-and-a-half of December until January 1, and the period from January 2 until the first day of spring. First Winter was a magical time of snow and wishes and presents and candy and having to explain that no, she didn’t want to go outside and throw snowballs, books didn’t just stop working in winter.

Second Winter was reality settling over the world as surely as the snow. It was looking outside the window and realizing that though the earth and sky were inviting you to play, you still had to go to work. It was remembering that snow wasn’t just pretty, it was incredibly inconvenient. It was the feeling of wet socks.

Twilight and her cohort back at the Canterlot academy had taken a certain dark delight in proving the economic inefficiency of gift-giving and winter cheer in general. It hadn’t been since Shining Armor, and wasn’t until her friends in Ponyville that she had seen the joy in, well, joy.

There was nothing joyous about Twilight and Applejack struggling through the snow in the dark that Second Winter morning. Morning came late and night came early in Second Winter, probably because Princess Celestia just wanted to snuggle under the covers with a hot cup of cocoa and the latest Daring Do book[2]. Walking to and from the daughter bank every day had gotten Twilight used to heavy exposure to fresh air, which she had previously considered a carcinogen. But she seemed to be over her pneumonia, and the struggle was worth helping a friend.

[2] Freedom of speech was a protected right in Canterlot, except for one rule, which Princess Celestia enforced mercilessly[3]: No spoilers.

Was it worth five bits?

[3] Violators were spanked.[4]

No. She wasn’t going to think about this. It was stupid, stupid, and she wasn’t going to.

[4] Capital punishment was legal in Equestria, “capital punishment” being what Princess Celestia called market competition when she was feeling ironic. A collective of “business interests” had seized on this as a largely futile re-branding of the market process in the hopes of putting a stop to said process once they were on top of it. Princess Celestia tolerated this, as she tolerated most things, because, being an immortal Alicorn demigoddess, she was pleasantly free to ignore the stupid things in life.

Ten bits? Twelve? Wouldn’t you rather be sleeping in? Under the warm, heavy blanket, Spike downstairs making pancakes and hot chocolate….

Shut up, me!

Does Applejack know how much your time is worth to you? How much you hate slogging through the snow? You didn’t tell her, and she didn’t ask.

La la la, I can’t hear you!

You’ve done the math. You know right from wrong, even if they don’t. You’ll let them die unknowing? The mistake is thinking the fruit of the tree of knowledge brought death to us…death was already here…the fruit just let us see it. Also how would that even work you’re not hearing this with your ears!

Twilight struggled on as the wind whipped her scarf into her face.

To die unknowing, like an animal…ponies deserve better. You destroyed the tickets! Not only what could have been given to a friend, but also your own, just so they wouldn’t think you were being selfish! This isn’t even jumping off a bridge because everypony else did, this is like jumping off a bridge because you wouldn’t want anypony to think that you thought your life was worth something!

Hey, remember that awful paper about simulating optimal voluntary defense funds? Wasn’t it just the worst?

Ugh, so much—ha. Nice try. Go on, ask her if you’re so sure.

Twilight slid down a small hill of snow and bumped up against Applejack, who braced her.

“You all right, Twilight?” Applejack stretched her lips like a smile. “Almost there.”

“Yeah, thanks. Applejack, how much would you pay me to keep going with you and not, say, turn around and go home and eat pancakes?”

Applejack forced herself to chuckle. “I’d pay you anything in the world to help me save my farm.”

“Yeah but how about five bits?”

Applejack frowned as she started walking. “This about the ticket? I didn’t quite get all that stuff about scary resources.”

“Scarce…scarce resources. No, I was, uh, just wondering.”

See? See????

We don’t know that she won’t pay! She didn’t actually say no!

Uh huh. How much are you going to pay me when she refuses?

I can’t pay you! We’re the same pony!

If you win, I’ll give you an hour of silence. If I win, we get to read Foundations again instead of doing actual work.

I like doing that too!

Twilight used her magic to keep the scarf out of her face. “Applejack…if I asked you seriously to pay me five bits or I’m leaving…what would you do?”

Applejack stopped and turned to look at her, a strange expression on your face. “I reckon I’d stop and think a bit, being in no more need to rush than an apple is. I reckon I’d remember we’re your first friends, and maybe they did things different in Canterlot than we do here in Ponyville. I’d tell you that if you have to pay your friend to help you save your business, she ain’t your friend, she’s a consultant.”

Twilight wet her lips.

Say it.

Shut up!

Say it say it say it! Oh you know what’s going to happen if you do! We both know!

Twilight opened her mouth to say, “But what about me? Don’t you care about me?” and said, “Okay, sorry Applejack—let’s keep going. I was just wondering, you know, always thinking about economics.”

“I understand,” Applejack said as they started walking again. “I’m the same way about apples.”

Coward! Cowaaard! Haha, Foundations it is! Starting with the introductions, and the prefaces, for every edition! And the whole appendix, no skipping!

It’s just signaling, Twilight protested to herself, feeling she was both halves of a good cop, bad cop routine on her imprisoned mind. Paying money wipes away the information of friendship, so it’s just a transaction cost, nothing to freak out about. All this death stuff is exaggeration, it’s not like it’s going to cause a dragon to come swooping in out of nowhere and eat us alive. It’s like blood.

Blood, Twilight knew, was supplied to a large extent through voluntary donations, as opposed to sold on the marketplace. Economists had done studies about the effects of economic incentives on the quantity and quality of the blood supply—basically, what happens when you pay ponies for blood. And the studies showed that fewer ponies sold blood than freely gave, and the blood they sold wasn’t always the sort of blood you would want to stick in somepony else.

It didn’t make economic sense that ponies should have sold less blood than they gave. Selling blood was the same as giving blood, only the giver also benefited. But, Twilight had reasoned a few months into her new life with friends while reading the study in bed one night, when blood was a commodity to sell rather than a gift to give, the economic incentive overwhelmed the friendship motive. You don’t sell blood to your friends. And ponies who do sell blood aren’t friendly.

It showed that more economics could mean less friendship. It also showed that the tradeoff could be not worth it.

Ohhh yeah, likely story. Blah blah, paying means no friends, how about actually thinking for two seconds? Why can’t you just send a strong signal of friendship early on, like say by saving the world together from Nightmare Moon, and then use markets to negotiate among friends? You know, like if your explanation were actually true.

Twilight hated arguing with herself. She was too smart.

“Here we are,” Applejack said, and threw up.

“Applejack!” Twilight knelt down beside her. “Are you okay?”

Applejack’s legs were shaky and her face pale. “I’m going to lose it. I don’t—I don’t have anything left of—of—” She retched this time, and sagged. If not for the snow, she might have collapsed.

“Applejack!” Twilight looked around desperately. The farmhouse was maybe thirty yards away, but in the snow and with Applejack to drag it might as well have been ten miles.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Hello? Big, uh, Big Red?[5] Applejack needs help!”

[5] As far as Twilight was concerned, there were names worth knowing, names she needed to know, and names that other ponies also had.

The snow began to vibrate. The ground rumbled.

Twilight’s horn glowed. She had no idea what spell to cast. “Applejack, what—”

What Twilight had thought was a hill of snow burst apart. A giant, three-headed dog the size of a house sprinted toward them in an explosion of powder, apparently unfazed by the snow. Twilight barely had time to freeze up before she was assaulted by three long tongues bigger than she was covering every inch of her lavender coat in smelly dog drool.

“Okay, okay!” she gasped, trying to breathe without having to actually open her mouth or smell anything through her nose. “Good doggy! Help Applejack!”

The three tongues treated Applejack similarly, then a couple of giant noses sniffed at the steaming vomit, licked cautiously—

“No!” Twilight said, trying not to gag. “Bad doggie!”

The Cerberus drew up and looked at her reproachfully, except for the third head, which was sniffing the vomit now. “I am a thousand years old, you know.”

“Fine, I’ll swat your noses with a very old newspaper. Help me carry Applejack to the farmhouse, please.”

The Cerberus’s tail whipped up a small snowstorm while Twilight took Applejack in. Applejack slumped in a chair, groaning and rubbing her head.

“Are you okay?” Twilight said. “Should…should I get you some…applesauce?” She cringed, but Applejack just looked at her hat sitting in her lap.

“I never had much sense for business, I reckon. Acres seemed to run herself. I just made sure everything kept happening. Maybe—maybe I was a little stubborn.”

A yellow head poked out from under the stairwell.

“A little?” Apple Bloom cried, indignant. “Just a little? You never change nothing!”

Twilight winced at the assault on grammar, but Applejack rose to the challenge.

“I brought the Cerberus here, didn’t I? And let the ponies pay to take pictures!”

“That was my idea! And I had to brush her teeth ‘cuz you were scared!”

“You try climbing inside the mouth of a monster that tried to eat you!”

“A thousand years of plaque! A thousand years!”

By this point they were both red-faced and huffing. Twilight watched in rising dread as the sisters faced off.

“Anyway, you’re too young to understand business matters,” Applejack muttered. She put her hat on the table and turned away. “Ain’t even got your cutie mark.”

That was when Applejack found herself pinned to the wall, surrounded by the glow of lavender magic.

“Listen to your little sister,” Twilight said. “She—is concerned. About your choices.”

“Some choices!” Apple Bloom humphed. “Tain’t a choice if it’s just reading out of a book.”

“All right, all right!" Applejack waved her legs frantically. “You can put me down now. Don’t you know it’s rude to go hoisting ponies up in their own homes?”

Twilight let her down, and, wisely, Apple Bloom let her gather herself.

“We’re losing money, and that’s a fact,” Applejack said, looking somewhere to the left of Twilight’s ear. “And I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I have some ideas,” Apple Bloom began, but a look from Twilight hushed her.

“If you’re losing money, that just means you’re not bringing in as much as you’re spending. How much money are you losing when you sell an apple?”

“Right now we lose a bit every bushel we sell.”

Right now?

“Why don’t you just raise the price of a bushel?”

Applejack had a look on her face like Twilight had just suggested that she learn to fly. After a moment’s silence, Twilight coughed.

“Applejack?”

“Huh?”

“I said, why don’t you raise the price?”

“The price is three bits.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Because that’s our low low bargain offer guarantee one time only buy now and get a free copy of Secret Recipes of the Apple Family—”

“You can’t ask her that!” Apple Bloom said scornfully. “She just starts reciting out of that d-d-durned book again.”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack snapped. “Don’t talk about the Book that way! I’ll wash your mouth out with apple soap!”

“Yeah!” Twilight said. “Don’t talk about books that way! I mean, uh, wait a second, Applejack, does this mean you never change the price of your apples?”

“Never,” Applejack said proudly.

Twilight stared.

Talk about the law of one price.

“Applejack, you can’t charge the same price for a good no matter what. You just can’t.”

“Why not?”

~~~

Wait.

I should warn you.

What follows is a conversation in which Twilight Sparkle, a Unicorn economist, attempts to convince Applejack, her pony friend, of a thesis in economics.

There is no magic. No fights with monsters. And certainly no wider application to the practice of friendship.

Only economics.

Just thought you should know.

~~~

Twilight took a moment. It wasn’t that she didn’t know the answer. But now she needed to tell it to a pony who communicated primarily through rattlesnake aphorisms.

Reach across the void…she doesn’t need to pass a test, she needs to save her farm.

Reach across the void…show her that she doesn't need to know what to do.

Shout across the void...show her that ponies will TELL HER WHAT TO DO!

“Remember,” she said slowly, “in the treehouse, when I wanted you all to bid on the ticket?”

Applejack nodded.

“I didn’t know how to decide who should get the ticket. But there was a way for you all to decide together. Not by talking, not directly, at least. With money.”

“Money!” Apple Bloom tugged on Applejack. “We need that. Listen up!”

“Settle down, sugar cube.”

Twilight went on. “I realized that even though I was the one selling the ticket, I didn't have to be an active participant. So long as the highest bidder had to pay what she offered, I could let you all decide amongst yourselves who should get it and how much she should pay for it.”

“We’d never agree,” Applejack said. “That’s why we kept arguing.”

“You all came to me with your different points of view. But I was the wrong pony to talk to! If you all had been talking to each other, one of you would have eventually realized the winning bid. The only thing I had to do actively was grant the ticket to the highest bidder. Otherwise I could kick back, sneeze a lot, and relax while you all competed.

“Do you know why Princess Celestia doesn’t call herself a queen? Because the customer is sovereign, Applejack. The customer decides. All you have to do is hear their royal decree.”

“So the royal customers decreed my farm is going out of business? Sounds like it's time for this mare to revolt and declare a republic. The first rule is that if you ain't got property, you can't vote.”

“They had their reasons. You just need to understand that in order to sell your apples, ponies need to buy them. But the things ponies buy from you are things they don’t buy from other ponies.”

Twilight was concentrating fiercely; she didn’t want to get technical with somepony who kicked trees for a living.

“I don’t just mean that they don’t buy apples from other places if they get them from you. I mean anything you can spend bits on. If a pony buys some of your apples, she has to buy less of something.”

“’S always worth it for a Sweet Apple Acres apple,” Apple Bloom piped up loyally.

“Could be. But how can anypony know that?”

“By trying one, of course!”

“No…no, that’s not enough. They also need to know what they’re giving up. They need to know what they’re not buying when they buy your apples.”

“But you said it could be anything,” Applejack said.

“Exactly! But they probably know what other kinds of things they’d like to do with their bits. What they need to know from you is how many bits they’d have to spend on your apples.”

“That’s the price!” Apple Bloom said, while Applejack looked confused. “We tell ‘em up front, and they try and negotiate and we don’t let ‘em!”

Twilight nodded. “The price of something tells ponies what they’d have to give up to buy it.”

“Then it’s a good thing it don’t change,” Applejack said.

“Not…exactly. Because…they don’t just sort out who wants to buy your apples. They also sort out whether they want your farm to exist.”

“It ain’t up to them!”

“No? Then why are you going out of business? Do you want to?”

“‘Course not!”

“Then it’s not your choice! Listen, listen, listen.” Twilight forced herself to breathe. “Whether a pony wants to buy your apples or not depends on what they have to give up to get it. Only ponies who value your apples more highly than other things they can do with their bits will buy them. That’s true for all resources…even the resources that go into making your farm run. The work you do, the tools you buy, the carts and workers for shipping…all of it could be spent on other things. It could be spent on other ponies and the things they want instead of the things you want.

“That day in the treehouse I said to get the ticket any of you would have to convince the others to let you have it. Your farm is in the same situation. You have to convince everypony in the world to let you have it.”

“They can’t take it from me. I mean it. They really can’t.”

Twilight shook her head. “You only have it because they let you. I mean it when I say Sweet Apple Acres is a reflection of their wishes, not yours. Now listen! Really, please.”

“You can talk, sugar cube, Celestia knows I need your help. But no pony’s taking my farm.”

Twilight nodded, licked her lips. “The money you spend to run the farm comes from selling apples. So the only way you can keep running the farm is if you make more money selling apples than you spend making apples. All the labor and tools could be going to other ponies, so it’s just like asking for the extra ticket. And just like the ticket, the way our economy decides who gets those resources is if everypony talks it out honestly and sincerely and decides they’d rather let you have them because they want other things more.”

Snow was visible through the window falling slowly. Little flakes of reality...

...reality, flaking....

“And when ponies buy your apples at some price, it’s because they want them more than other things. So in order to make your farm work, you need to take things ponies don’t want so much relative to other things and transform them into things ponies do want relative to other things. You have to be able to sell something at a higher price that ponies weren’t willing to buy at a lower price!

“And that price isn’t really something you can decide. You can set it, sure, but ponies don’t have to buy it. Because the price you’re looking for is the price at which everypony else decides your farm is worth keeping, the price at which you make more selling apples than you spend creating them. The price when you’re giving more than you take….”

Somewhere outside a Cerberus’s tail wagged up a snowstorm.

“And that’s the scary thing, Applejack, because maybe that price doesn’t exist. Maybe ponies have looked at your farm and decided they’d rather do other things with the resources than put them into the Applejack Mixer. Because it’s not your choice. And they’ll take it all away. Because it’s not up to you.

“But if that price exists…you must find it. You don’t have a choice. Change or die. It’s that simple. That’s your choice.”

Apple Bloom looked up at Applejack, then at Twilight. “How do we find that price?”

“Oh, just set marginal revenue equal to marginal cost.”

“Oh, right. Uh…what’s that mean?”

Twilight was about to answer when Applejack spoke.

“The Apple Book don’t say nothing about the price we oughta pay for Sweet Apple Acres,” the farmer said slowly.

Twilight needed a moment to understand. “What you ought to anything is up to you. But whatever that ought is, the fact remains that everything that goes into Sweet Apple Acres is a kind of buying, since you could do other things with the land, your money, and yourselves. Is it worth buying? If it’s not…then the continued existence of Sweet Apple Acres is like buying an apple for three bits when you only value it at two.”

“Now stop it!” Apple Bloom said.

Applejack’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t think you’ve ever come into my house without managing to insult everything in it.”

Twilight stamped her hoof.

“Damn it, Applejack!”

Apple Bloom’s hoofs flew to her ears. She squeaked.

“I-I mean, darn it, Applejack.” Twilight took a deep breath. “I’m not the one saying Sweet Apple Acres isn’t worth it. You are. When you charge a price that isn’t enough to cover the costs of your business, you send a signal to everypony that Sweet Apple Acres isn’t worth the cost of its existing. If you want to change everypony’s mind, you need to charge a price that earns your business a profit. If such a price exists.”

“Of course it does!”

“Good. Then find it.”

Twilight left Applejack in the questionable care of Apple Bloom. Both sisters had a major mental adjustment to make. And she never liked to spend much time around the two of them together.

Shivering in the wind, Twilight trudged through the snowy Ponyville roads. So wrapped up was she in her own world of cold and thought that at first she didn’t notice the lines of agitated ponies standing outside, restless and clamoring.

“Excuse me,” she said tiredly to a mare with a candy-wrapper cutie mark and a pink-and-navy mane. “What are you all lining up for?”

“You didn’t hear?” the mare said. “Sugarcube Corner is going out of business![6] It’s their final clearance sale!”

[6] Or “busin,” as the civil rights organization, Stallions for Equestrian Equality[7] insisted on calling them. The word “business,” they insisted, implied the inherent female dominance of economic society. Twilight thought this sort of thing was nonsense, although she knew Fluttershy took it seriously.

[7] “We SEE equality! We SEE opportunity! Join up now and you can SEE!”

Twilight looked down the row of buildings. At each corner was a Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie Pie’s giant face gazing out from the transparent glass window, and down the line the speech bubbles read, in bubbly pink letters:

“Our final sale in snow and hail!”

“Everything must go! So everypony should come!”

“Bitterness is Sweetness!”

First Applejack, now Pinkie Pie? What is happening to this town?

“Which one is Pinkie Pie in?” she said to the mare.

She pointed. “The one with all the ponies weeping and crying and trying to break through the glass windows.”

“Thank you…” Name. Candy. Alliterative. “…Peppermint Patty.”

The mare looked surprised, probably impressed that somepony as important as Twilight remembered her name. Twilight waved goodbye and trotted off to save the Sugarcube Corner.

Price Discrimination

It was the most Hobbesian thing Twilight had seen since graduate school.

A path of trampled snow marked the line ponies must have been standing in before order broke down. The doors were open but impassible due to the sheer mass of overweight bodies, writhing and groaning like in paintings of Hell that Twilight had seen in the Canterlot art museum. Others had taken to throwing things at the windows: Small rocks and pieces of wood bounced off harmlessly. Shouts of protest filled the air. Things were on fire.

“You swore you’d never leave us!” a filly sobbed amid the chaos. “You were supposed to take us all to Cakeland with you!”

Twilight resolved to talk to Pinkie Pie about her advertising strategy later. Right now she needed to find out why Sugarcube Corner was going out of business. Closing her eyes, she activated her horn and teleported inside the clear glass doors.

And into the calm.

The heat shocked her, setting her gasping and sweating profusely. She was surrounded by ponies—sweating, fat ponies, milling around stands of cakes, talking excitedly—

No violence.

Twilight straightened up. Through a gap in the crowd she could see the madness just outside the clear glass windows. But inside, ponies shopped.

Twilight struggled to push her way to the front. She needed to find Pinkie Pie. And she needed to get away from the sort of pony who ate at Sugarcube Corner.

“—what I like about the piCake is that it has such a great eater interface—”

“—no worms—”

“—I love being able to customize my own—”

“—and it’s only slightly more expensive—”

Twilight shut her ears to the insanity. The whole place was a madhouse, a private galaxy warped by the sheer mass of Pinkie’s craziness. Pinkie was the star of the local cake scene, and like planets trapped in their doomed orbits, ponies swirled around Pinkie like moths to the light. And eventually enough cake had pretty much the same effect on ponies as fire did on moths.

She pushed her way past an obstinate and severely overweight stallion lamenting that he had just updated to the Premium Dessert Plan Star Plus Extra, which meant that he could get icing anywhere, and stopped to lean against a long counter crowded with ponies and cakes.

“How can I help you today, miss?” said a bright young pony behind the counter.

“Just catching my breath,” Twilight panted. Her head felt light. She couldn’t get a proper breath in. “What—“ cough— “what do you do here, anyway?”

“I help customers, of course!”

“Aren’t you going out of business? Like, right now?”

“That’s right, miss!”

Twilight looked at her. “What do you help ponies with?”

“With cake and cake accessories! This is the Party Bar. Cakes, batters, icing, spoons, whisks, bowls, pans, spatulas, eggs, egg beaters, egg-beating technique—”

“No!”

The fat stallion from before lumbered up to the bar, not exactly pushing so much as rolling Twilight away.

“Hey, uh, I really like Sugarcube Corner cakes and stuff,” he said, sweating profusely.

“Wonderful, sir. How can I help you?”

“Well, I got into cakes the usual way. Baking birthday cakes, that sort of thing. I knew some of my friends were into Sugarcube Corner, but I didn’t know much about it. Well, one day I tried the, uh, I think it was a peanut butter brittle cupcake, and wow, it was just amazing.”

“Oh, great!”

“So I started branching out, made some apple cakes, gave a Marechusetts cream pie a shot, and, you know, I got the cake bug in me. Bought all the Sugarcube Corner equipment and books, and of course I come here every day for at least one square meal of cake. So now I’m working on a better than clop cake—”

“Very good, sir!”

Twilight still hadn’t caught her breath, but the knowledge that the opportunity cost of waiting was listening to more of this drivel sent adrenaline flooding through her. She had fought past pony-snatching vines; she could get through a crowd of cake-filled, terribly sweaty ponies.

She was almost to a counter lined with cakes with a cash register in the center when she heard a pony say, “Well, muffins simply don’t have the same eater interface, you know, it’s all about the eater interface—”

And inside Twilight Sparkle, something snapped.

“What,” she said loudly, “is an eater interface?”

The pony turned to look at her, surprised.

“You know, the way your hoofs and mouth interact with the cake.”

Twilight stared at her.

“It’s very important,” the pony said. “Only Sugarcube Corner does it right. Have you never eaten a cupcake before?” She snickered, elbowing her friend.

“Cake is okay every once in a while, but most of the time I’d rather have a muffin or something, honestly,” Twilight said.

The silence blasted through the room like the rage of an Alicorn.

“HEY, EVERYPONY! YOU BETTER BE READY TO PARRRRTAY!”

The ceiling exploded into pink. Balloons fell like bombs in a machine-gun rain of confetti and streamers. In the center of it all was the pinkest pony, standing on the counter.

“PINKIE!” the assembled ponies cheered.

Pinkie Pie spread her hoofs over the mass of frenzied fanatics.

“I’m so glad to see you all at my final clearance sale ever! Who’s ready for some cake?!”

The crowd’s response was incoherent. Some ponies were screaming, others openly weeping.

“It’s really her!” said a weeping filly. “She really is real!”

“We can’t eat cake on a cold stomach!” Pinkie said. “We have to work up an appetite! Let’s all do the Physical Perks!”

Twilight struggled lamely to keep her last hold on reality from sliding away entirely. Pinkie was leading the entire store in calisthenics.

“And one two three four one two three four!” Pinkie leaned up from one leg, bringing her front hoofs around in a tall arc and down until they were touching the other hind hoof. The worshipful ponies below followed in creepy unison. “And one two three four two three four one….”

Pinkie Pie blew on a whistle to signal the end of the Physical Perks.

“Who’s hungry?”

The crowd roared.

“But first we have to do one thing! One last time!”

Pinkie Pie pointed to a monitor that lowered down onto the west wall. The still image of a tired, harassed-looking stallion whom Twilight didn’t recognize flickered onto the screen.

“Oh no, it’s Mr. Landbiscuit! He wants to compete for Sugarcube Corner’s market share!”

Ponies hissed. Others screamed. After just ten seconds of his image on the screen, expressions of rage erupted from the ponies. They hopped up and down, howling their fury and fright.

“Swine!” a pony screamed. “Swine! Swine!”

Twilight was suddenly glad Fluttershy wasn’t there. On second thought, Twilight fervently wished Fluttershy was there. She could have used a bodyguard.

The ponies didn’t rest. The noise intensified, built to a crescendo, and as Twilight stuffed her hoofs over her ears and tried to hide, a spoon bounced off of the monitor. The ponies threw spatulas, pans, forks, anything they could get their hoofs on, but not cake, never cake.

They stopped.

Pinkie Pie had spoken.

“That was fun,” she said. She sighed a little. "I'm going to miss that."

The monitor withdrew, and, shakily, so did Twilight’s hoofs from her ears. She looked up at Pinkie Pie.

She was standing on two legs.

In her hoof she held a streamer.

“Let’s eat cake,” Pinkie Pie said.

Ponies crowded around the counter, but they didn’t push. They seemed to know exactly where to go and how to make maximum use of the space as if they had done this a thousand times in exactly the same way before.

“I’d like a Ultra Super Deluxe Choco-Plutium Butter Filled CupKooky,” a pony said. A tear fell down her face. “I’ll savor it, Leader, I swear!”

“Plutium-95 or 97?” Pinkie Pie said, smiling with teeth so white Twilight could hear them gleam.

“Well—”

“97 has sprinkles!”

It was 97, then. The pony was funneled to the back and another flowed in to fill the space.

“I’ll have a JokeCream Cupcake, please,” said the next pony. “And—Oh, Pinkie Pie, your cakes mean the world to me, more precious than my own foals—”

“You got it, mister! Two bits.”

Money and cake changed hoofs.

“I’ll take a JokeCream Cupcake!”

“Hmm…three bits!”

Twilight blinked.

More JokeCream Cupcake orders followed. Every time, Pinkie Pie charged a different price. Different items were ordered, but nothing was priced the same as itself. Pinkie Pie didn’t name a consistent price for anything.

Twilight couldn’t take any more of it. Pushing, shoving and teleporting her way to the front, drawing angry complaints, Twilight stood in front of Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie!” she said, hopping behind the counter. “What is going on? Why is Sugarcube Corner going out of business? I thought it was your dream to have a Sugarcube Corner on every corner in Equestria!”

Pinkie Pie put a hoof to her chin. “You know, it’s the funniest thing. It’s like I woke up this morning and the money just wasn’t there! So we’re having a big closing sale. Then it’s over. No more Sugarcube Corner.”

Hearing Pinkie Pie talk in such a cavalier way about the loss of her store brought unexpected tears to Twilight’s eyes. Sugarcube Corner had been such a reliable provider of cake and coffee in the morning[1], and it was Pinkie Pie’s way of making friends with everypony. She couldn’t imagine Ponyville without the giant glass cubes on every corner.

[1] And in the evening…and sometimes for lunch, but Twilight wasn’t going to admit it.

“Don’t worry about me, Twilight,” Pinkie Pie said, beaming, but this time there was a note of sadness to her words. “I’ll just work for Applejack until I can start my new venture. It’ll be a party store. Balloons, confetti, masks and things. You can be my first investor!”

“I…I don’t think that will work…Pinkie! Why are you losing money?”

“Oh, I don’t know much about that sort of thing. I always thought that if my cakes were good enough to bring ponies together, they’d also be good enough to make money.”

So that’s two of them who don’t know a thing about price theory. Just how do they stay in business?

“I…I might have an idea about how you could be making more money. Or at least why you’re losing money.”

“Oooh! Let me guess: more buttercream?”

“No…no…Pinkie,” Twilight said, and there was a little voice inside Twilight’s head telling her that she was about to pull the rug out from under the universe, but she ignored it and said, “You can’t charge a different price each time for the same good. You just can’t.”

“Why not?”

Twilight cast a meaningful glance behind her at the impatient customers.

“Everypony think about your favorite kind of icing,” Pinkie Pie instructed the impatient ponies behind them. At once they obeyed, and the background clangor became excited variations on the theme of “Chocolate, you can’t beat chocolate,” and “Of course a chocolate eater would think about beating others. Vanilla is pure, like the ponies who eat it!”

“What are you talking about?” Pinkie Pie said. “Having the same price every time would be boring!”

(“Strawberry is the best icing! It is pink, like the Leader!”)

“Maybe for you, but it would also be better for your bottom line.”

(“Oh, again with the strawberry, will you shut up about strawberry?”)

“You mean…the amount of money I make selling a cupcake has something to do with making money? That’s crazy!” said the leader of the local pastry cult.

(The room was thick with tension; there were now three factions, the Chocolates, the Vanillas, and the Strawberries, and among them two major philosophical systems, those who saw the universe as inherently tending toward buttercream, and those who saw it as tending toward cream cheese. They watched each other, and themselves, suspicious of traitors, daring any to make the first move to the deadlier of the baking utensils behind the toppings and food dyes.)

“No….” Twilight tried to concentrate. It was hard: She could feel the eyes burning into the back of her head, trying to determine if she was with the Chocolates or not. “Pinkie Pie, it goes like this….”

What followed was a familiar conversation about the role of prices in allocating scarce resources…

…Pinkie Pie seemed to understand eventually….

“How do I find that price anyway?” she said. “It sounds neat!”

“Set marginal revenue equal to marginal cost and then it’s simple.”

“Okay, thanks!!!”

Twilight wished her friend good luck, grabbed a few cupcakes for the road, and teleported out. She had an economist’s hunch that she should talk to Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy before the day was over.

And meanwhile, still inside the Sugarcube Corner:

“Marginal what? Hey, what did any of that mean? Hold on, I’m getting your cupcakes! And stop crying!”

Twilight stared up at the beautifully draped banner reading “Carousel Boutique’s Final Week! Come and weep at la mort du petit cheval!” And below it, in tiny glittering letters, “La nuit, tous les chevaux sont gris.”

And beside it, at the window, a pony plummeting out, hurtling to the ground, a scream of regret tearing from her lips—

Author's Note

The story of Pinkie Pie's cutie mark will come later. For now, enjoy Rarity's....

Rarity's Cutie Mark: Beauty

R A R I T Y

You can put a dress on a corpse, but that don't stop the maggots.

Applejack’s face, Rarity decided, was in terrible need of some makeup.

There was nothing she could do about the eyes. But the wrinkles underneath could be smoothed out and hidden; blush could distract from the twisting lips; and a hat, set at the right angle, could cause her expression to seem more mysterious than despairing.

The hat Applejack had was really awful. Straw? Seriously? And it was too big, and kept falling down her face. Even when she pushed it up, the shadow was there, making her eyes look drawn, her cheeks flat, and the red ribbon just didn’t go with her orange flank and new cutie mark.

They were sitting on the bed in Rarity’s room listening to the distant rumble of the coming storm. Applejack wasn’t saying much, and Rarity was running out of things to say.

“The yellow Pegasus filly, uh, Fluttershy, mentioned something in school about a pet frog dying,” Rarity said. “Maybe you should talk to her.”

“Don’t think so, Rare.”

Rarity followed Applejack’s persistent gaze. There was nothing of interest on the far wall.

“She was quite old,” Rarity said uncomfortably. “These things happen.”

“You said.”

That bothered her a little. Applejack had shown up unannounced. She couldn’t be expected to be the perfect host at the drop of an ugly hat.

“What do you want me to say?” Rarity said sharply. “Since nothing I say seems to be what you came here for. It’s not as though I don’t have a dress I could be sewing.”

Applejack’s response was slow and halting. “I don’t entirely have much I’m feeling,” she said. “Like I’m an apple left in the sun to dry.”

“Do you think anypony noticed the veil I wore at the funeral?” Rarity said. “Rather than even squares, I had them more open around the face and a pattern that tightened as your eyes track to the side, it keeps the eye more focused, I think—”

“Rarity.”

“What?”

“I don’t care.”

“Applejack! I’m doing my best!”

“What do you do when it ain’t enough? Who do you go to?”

“What? I do just fine thank you, anypony but you would be grateful to have a host as patient and understanding as I!”

“And here I am talking to you since hating you means not looking at the farm from the porch while the rain comes down wondering how in Equestria I’m supposed to run the blamed thing. Reckon I’d start crying again, and she’d scold me for it, only she ain’t here to scold me, she—” Applejack was crying now— “she ain’t never going to scold me again.”

Rarity blinked. “Who?”

Applejack slid off the bed and walked out the door.

Light flashed through the windows, thunder boomed, and it began to rain.

It was fine, Rarity told herself, once she was over the shock and offense, the rain drumming steadily on the roof. They had said mean and hurtful things to each other, which would only make their reconciliation stronger. She would talk to Applejack and school, and they would fall into each other’s legs, weeping tears, each insisting on giving their apology and refusing the other’s.

Applejack wasn’t at school the next day. The teacher said she was busy running Sweet Apple Acres and probably wouldn’t come to school anymore.

Now Rarity understood. She would go to the Apple farm, throw herself at Applejack’s hoofs, and tearily apologize. Applejack would say something suitably rustic in a sardonic tone of voice, and take off that terrible straw hat and place it on Rarity’s head. “Reckon I don’t need this old thing no more,” she’d say. “Oh, Applejack!” Rarity would cry, embracing her closely as only best friends do. “I’ll make you a new hat, the biggest, most beautiful hat in Equestria!” “Aw, shucks, you don’t have to do that, Rare,” Applejack would say with an apple blush on her cheeks and Rarity would look her deep in the eye and say, “Yes, I do, my dearest friend, it is what generosity requires,” and Applejack would respond, “Rarity, if Generosity asks one more thing of you I reckon she’s being unreasonable. Reckon I’ve been unreasonable, too….” And they would talk and talk well into the night….

Rarity bolted for Sweet Apple Acres the instant school let out for lunch. She took a moment to set her hat and then knocked on the door.

She waited nervously for an answer. The instant the door opened she threw herself down.

“Applejack, oh Applejack,” she wailed, “my truest friend, I beg you—”

“Nope.”

“—I…I beg…hello, Big Mac. Is Applejack in?” Rarity coughed and straightened up, adjusting her hat.

“Yup.”

“Be a dear and fetch her, will you?”

Rarity waited while Big Macintosh went in search of his younger sister. The instant she saw the awful straw hat coming around the stairs, she prostrated herself on the doorstep.

“Applejack, oh Applejack, my truest friend, I beg you forgive me!”

Applejack’s hoofsteps were by her head, then past it.

Rarity looked behind her. “Applejack? I’m apologizing! Get back here!”

“Us Apples got work to do,” said the shrinking back of Applejack’s head. “If you ain’t got business here, you’d best leave.”

“Applejack!” Rarity shouted. She was on her hoofs, and furious. “If you don’t come back and listen to me, then we…then we won’t be friends anymore!”

It was only as she said it that Rarity realized they might not be friends anymore.

The ugly straw hat disappeared into the orchard.

Rarity spent the next week discovering that Applejack hadn’t just been her best friend, she had been her only friend. Rainbow Dash and she only had Applejack in common, and without her they were like jewels without a necklace, nothing connecting them.

She tried making friends, but, well, really. They were practically foals. The most popular pony was the one who could fit the most worms up her snout. When she tried to discuss how lines and curves could set a dress’s tone and focus, they just looked at her like, well, like she had suggested they all stuff worms up their snouts.

Yes, Applejack had been like that too, but it was different. There was a solemness about Applejack, an awareness of greater things that reminded Rarity of herself. When Applejack joined their games, she did so with the knowledge that one day, the games would end.

Probably. Rarity hadn’t actually asked her.

There was a lot she had taken for granted.

So she spent a lot of time reading Filly Magazine in class, which came from the Crystal Empire and was about sophisticated things like celebrity gossip and the latest fashion trends, and at home she spent her afternoons in her room, designing. It wasn’t the best for her complexion, but she could work with pale. A bit of shadow, a bit of blush, and a giant hat were all she needed.

It would be okay, she told herself. Applejack was just as lonely as she was. This was just the part in the story where they realized how much they missed each other in their lives. Applejack was probably looking at her dirty old boots and sighing, wishing she had something prettier with a bit of heel. Any day now, Applejack was going to come knocking on her door, and they would apologize, and try on hats….

Any week now.

Three months later, Applejack was leaving for Ostleregon. It was the decennial Fruit Salad, and the eldest Apple mare would attend. In that awful hat.

“Applejack!” Rarity kicked the door open, intent on making an entrance. “I won’t let our friendship die. So I’ve come to give you something.”

A piercing wail made her wince. Applejack sighed and hurried over to a crib, leaned down, one hoof keeping the ugly straw hat on her head, made cooing noises and jangled something until the wailing stopped.

Rarity looked at the table Applejack had been sitting at. Papers full of red ink covered the surface.

Applejack turned to her tiredly. “I’ve got to tell Big Mac not to let ponies up when I'm working. What, Rare?”

“You...ah, you simply can't attend the Fruit Salad with that hat. It looks like something an old mare would wear to do yard work!”

“Okay.” Applejack went back to the table, picked up a pen, stared at the papers.

“So I've made you a new one.”

“Okay.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Okay.”

“Applejack!” Rarity seized Applejack's ugly straw hat in the blue glow of her magic and tugged it off.

“Rarity!” Applejack tackled her; it felt like being run over by a cart. She slammed her against the wall. Her head hit the wood with a crunch that made the world turn black and spotty for a long, disorienting moment.

“Rarity!” Applejack shouted over the shrieking foal. “Don't touch my hat!” Her eyes were wide with anger and bagged with lack of sleep. “You're the most selfish—”

Rarity's horn glowed: She levitated the hat she had made onto Applejack's head.

“—the most...the most…this is a very comfortable hat.”

“It was made for you.” Rarity meant to smile but grimaced inelegantly. "I designed it after your mother's. I noticed you never had a hat that actually fit….”

“My Granny always picked 'em out for me.”

“She had no taste.” Rarity wondered at the suicidal idiot in control of her tongue.

Applejack looked at her. “Her mouth was mostly full of apple seeds.”

“That explains it then.”

“They taste awful bitter,” Applejack said, and began to cry, her voice mingling with the wailing foal in the crib.

“I’m surprised you came to see me before I go,” Applejack admitted. They sat together on her bed, legs touching, with a near-emptied tissue box, Apple Bloom sleeping nearby. “It's been a few months. Afraid I wasn't coming back?”

“Coming back a witch,” Rarity smiled.

“Nah,” Applejack grinned. “Besides, it’s foolish to tell a witch not to come back a witch.”

The windows flashed with light. A few seconds later thunder rumbled through the room. Rain began to beat a steady drum on the roof.

“Shoot, looks like you'll have to sleep over,” Applejack said immediately.

Rarity clapped her hoofs. “We can play—”

“Apples to apples?”

“Actually, I wasn't going to—”

“I’ll go get the apples.”

“But that's not how...never mind,” Rarity sighed as Applejack got up to fetch the fruit.

The door closed. A moment later, it shot open.

“Come with me,” Applejack said. “To the Fruit Salad.”

Rarity gasped. “I’ll make us dresses!”

“No, you don't have to—”

“I’ll go get the fabric right now!”

The train leading west rumbled and blew another shrill whistle. Rarity hugged her parents, gave baby Sweetie Belle, who dozed in their mother's legs, a peck on the cheek and turned to Applejack. Together they boarded the train.

“Don't argue,” Applejack said when they had taken their seats. She took out a pouch and opened. Rarity gasped at the sight of so many bits. “It's for the dress. That must've been your best fabric.”

“My best fabric, and next year’s,” Rarity said unthinkingly. Mother and Father hadn't been willing to pay for such expensive silk without a few compromises.

“I can see in the dress how hard you worked. I've never looked finer. So go on, take them.”

“No.”

“Rarity, I'm not—I'm not paying you to be friends or anything like that. But you're going to be a businessmare like me, ain't you? So you've got to get paid sometime. It'd be an honor to be your first customer.”

“Applejack...to me, the dress I made you is priceless. You couldn't afford it if you sold Sweet Apple Acres. The price of that dress is the price of our friendship. When you have enough bits to pay for that, I will accept them.”

Applejack looked like she was going to argue, then closed the pouch and put it away.

Rarity opened the travel bag with the dresses and levitated out Applejack's. The shimmering green and red silk unfolded in front of them. Applejack sighed a little at the sight of it.

“Dresses,” Rarity said, “should not be sold for less than they are worth.”

Something burned inside her like the glow of Applejack's touch. A flickering electric rush shivered from her tail up to her horn and erupted in a shower of blue-white sparks.

“Rarity!” Applejack said when the world returned. “Your cutie mark! It's diamonds! Three of 'em!”

Rarity looked, then nodded as if confirming to herself. “The durability of our friendship and its worth. I didn't expect anything less! True friends are as rare as diamonds, and you, Applejack, are this girl's best friend.”

They embraced, and the dress went back into its bag, and the snacks came out as the train thundered on to Ostleregon. The invitees of the Fruit Salad began arriving the next day.

Fluttershy's Cutie Mark: Destiny

F L U T T E R S H Y

“She died in her bed of natural causes,” the doctor said. His voice was deep and certain. He turned around with some difficulty in the small cottage and faced the group of ponies who had hastened him here with news of Granny Smith’s death. “There’s no mistaking it.”

“But doctor, her bed is made!” a mare quavered.

“Doctor, she is sitting in her chair!” shrieked another.

The doctor frowned. “Yes, I was wondering about that.”

“Doctor, what does it mean?”

“I suppose she wanted to face Death sitting upright. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to my daughter.” He grabbed his medicine box, tightened the white coat about himself, and began to push past them out the door.

“But there's a dead body here!” somepony said.

“Rather out of my jurisdiction, I think. You want a priest, or perhaps an especially innovative zebra.”

“Wait!” said another pony who was new to town and had followed the crowd into the cottage. “Who are you?”

He stopped halfway out the door and turned. “I’m a doctor. Name of Shy.”

“What?”

“Name's Shy.”

“Pardon, I keep missing the last word.”

“Shy!” He shook his head. “Never mind, it’s a blasted speech impediment. I’ll be off, then, unless you have somepony I can actually cure….”

Fluttershy was sitting in the garden letting the birds sit on her and the pigs sniff her and the dogs lick her face when Daddy came home with news of Granny Smith’s death. Fluttershy knew what death was because only half an hour earlier Mister Ribbit Tickles had croaked, or rather, hadn’t.

The toad had been getting less green for weeks. Not jumping like he used to. Just sleeping when she talked to him about her day and the fillies at school.

“Mister Tickles?” she had said, poking him gently. The amphibian didn’t react. “Mister Tickles?” She tickled him.

He didn’t so much as ribbit.

“MISTER RIBBIT TICKLES!”

The funeral was the next week. Fluttershy watched through a thicket of legs as they carried the casket and gently lowered it into the ground. The whole town was there.

Mr. Ribbit Tickles had been buried in a small hole in the garden. Only Fluttershy had been there.

Applejack, a filly from school, wearing a straw hat that was too big for her, stood in front of everypony and said some things about apples. No pony even asked about Mr. Ribbit Tickles. Even Rarity, who had listened politely in class while Fluttershy whispered to her why amphibians were her favorite kind of animal, just looked distracted and said, “Who?”

Amphibians could live in the water and on dry land. They lived in places where life seemed like it started from nothing. A puddle of still water could explode with murky green activity by the time you came home from school. And if you got up in the middle of the night to see if it was still there, you might find things crawling in the mud, waiting to meet a friend.

A friend like Mr. Ribbit Tickles.

Fluttershy would have quite liked to be an amphibian that could also fly. That way she could be friends with the critters in the sea, and on land, and in the air. It was her favorite daydream. She thought about it now while the funeral went on and only noticed she was crying when Rainbow Dash bumped her wing against hers. Rainbow Dash was her only pony friend. Rainbow Dash was sort of everypony’s friend and even already had her cutie mark, but she stuck up for Fluttershy and tried to help her get better at flying.

“I didn’t know you were friends with Applejack,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Mr. Ribbit Tickles is dead.”

“I thought Applejack called her Granny Smith.”

Fluttershy wiped her tears. They weren’t helping.

Fluttershy made herself sleep. Staying awake wasn’t helping.

Fluttershy made herself eat. Starving wasn’t helping.

She sat in the garden not far from where Mr. Ribbit Tickles was decomposing in a hole in the ground. The birds tweeted nervously in the trees. The pigs stayed away. The sheep baa’d. The bees stayed in their hives. The dogs scratched and whined to come inside.

The weather was lovely. Not a cloud in the sky.

A storm swirled inside Fluttershy.

She let it grow. It was helping.

“Would anypony else like to present for Show and Tell?” the teacher asked.

Fluttershy raised her hoof.

“No pony? Oh, sorry, Fluttershy, I didn’t see you. You usually never volunteer.”

Fluttershy brought her box with her to the front of the room and took out a cloth. She laid the cloth on a table and opened it up.

“There was a cart accident yesterday.”

There were a number of strange fleshy wobbly tubes and lumps on the cloth, yellow and pale-purple and pink.

“No pony stopped or noticed the victim bleeding on the side of the road.”

She held up a yellow wobbly bit. “This is what a toad’s stomach looks like.”

“Ewwwww!” the class said.

She put it down and picked up another. “This is its liver.”

“Gross!” Most of the fillies and colts leaned away or made faces at each other.

“Fluttershy!” her teacher said. “This is not appropriate for school.”

Fluttershy held up a pink toad lung, shaking. “I, I can’t find the part—”

“Urgh!” a colt said. “It’s slimy!”

“Fluttershy, I will be having a word with your father about this,” the teacher said.

Fluttershy’s vision blurred as hot tears swam in her eyes. “I can’t find the part of the toad that makes them less than us.” She set the lung down blindly and groped for the dead toad’s heart. “I-It’s not there, and we h-have to k-keep being the things,” she cut off, throat burning, and wiped her eyes. “We have to keep b-being the things we thought we were, so, so….”

“She’s crying!” a highly observant colt pointed out to murmurs and giggles.

“Fluttershy, if you need a moment, you can step outside,” the teacher said uncomfortably. She stood up to take up the center-front of the room where Fluttershy and her gory cloth were the spectacle of the schoolhouse.

Fluttershy didn’t budge. In her mind's eye the storm clouds were darkening, their weight on the sky threatening to break. But she wouldn't let it. Not until the waters were enough to flood the whole earth.

It wasn’t as easy as just saying it.

It wasn’t as easy as seeing it, or feeling it, or holding a dying toad in her hoofs while his vocal sac expanded and contracted for the last time.

Not what the world was meant to be, but what she meant the world to be.

Did destiny choose her?

No. She chose her destiny.

Something burned on both sides of her flank, not like the burning in her throat or in her eyes. It burned like in her heart.

The fillies oohed. Fluttershy sniffled, wiped her eyes, and gazed at all the things gathered on her cloth that weren’t enough to make a toad alive, and weren’t what made it matter, either.

“Fluttershy, congratulations!” the teacher said. “Your cutie mark is three butterflies!”

“Far more than three,” Fluttershy said, not to anypony there, but to her future self, who would not be allowed to forget this day. “Far more than three….”

Author's Note

If you're wondering why Fluttershy's cutie mark is three butterflies rather than three toads, it's because cutie marks are genetically coded to be cutesy. They do their best with the symbolism under that constraint. It's also why Applejack's cutie mark isn't a tall, pointed hat, and Rarity's mark isn't a mare sitting at a table with a strong drink and several cats.

Fluttershy's mother died of an illness when Fluttershy was very young. Mr. Shy has not yet forgiven himself. Some of this attitude might have been picked up by Fluttershy, who blames herself when somepony on the opposite side of the world has a bad day.

Marginalism

Mr. Bear deposited Twilight in a chair, accepted a biscuit from Fluttershy, and shuffled out to do bear things.

“I’m so pleased you visited me.” Fluttershy bustled about lighting a fire and fetching blankets and tea. “Do you have a headache?”

“Can't remember. Why are there two of you?”

“Just sit, sweetie.” Fluttershy draped a heavy blanket over her. She tapped Twilight on the shoulder, watched her slow reaction, pulled her chair closer to the fire. “I’m going to brush your fur, okay?”

“Fluttershy, I'm not a critter!”

“Sorry! It's a habit. Now you just rest your head.”

“Fluttershy….” Twilight stopped. Fluttershy was staring at her. Her big eyes seemed to expand until they filled the whole room. Twilight felt herself growing sleepy, very sleepy, although not too sleepy to remember to donate something to Fluttershy's animal sanctuary....

...Oh. That was right. Fluttershy's animal sanctuary had run out of money. They had no choice but to close up....

Water flooded inside the walls of Fluttershy's cottage.

“Waaaaaaaahhhh!”

Twilight snapped out of her trance. “Fluttershy, what's wrong?”

“I’b—going—to—lose—by—adibals!” This confession induced another round of sobbing.

“There, there.” Fluttershy crying was an odd sight; it looked loud, but all that came out of her mouth was an extended squeak, like a door rocking back and forth on a rusted hinge. “Is it because your pricing strategy is irrational?”

“You are really bad at cheering ponies up,” Fluttershy sniffled.

“It's good news. Imagine if your sanctuary were simply economically nonviable. We can fix this.” Probably.

The sad yellow Pegasus wiped her eyes. “No talking, go to sleep.”

“Flut—”

“I mean it.”

The words were spoken with such conviction that Twilight did stop talking. She got the impression Fluttershy wouldn't let her keep talking even at the expense of her animal sanctuary, not if it meant a friend, or maybe even just a critter, hurt....

...But they'll all hurt if you don't talk to me. Stuck between a snuggle and a soft place, eh, Fluttershy?

“What if I told you I knew one weird trick that could save your sanctuary?”

“R-Really?” Fluttershy blew her nose into a tissue, which made a sad pffl.

“Economists hate me,” Twilight assured her. “But I'll have to talk.”

Fluttershy looked torn.

“Stopping me from talking won't stop me from thinking,” Twilight said. “I’ll stress out more if I can't help you and never get to sleep.”

“Oh, fine,” Fluttershy said. “But not for long!”

"Then I need you to answer a question: where is everything?" Twilight's head hurt too much to actually look around, but she was working on a hunch.

“Oh, you noticed.” Fluttershy sat in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair nearby. “It’s normal, I'm always out of pet supplies.”

“You probably charge the lowest prices of anypony.”

“I want everypony to be able to take care of the critters in their life even if they can't afford to.”

"That doesn't work. If you want to make money—”

“I don’t care about money.”

“Really? You raise so much of it. Seems like every store in Ponyville has a little cup where you can donate to your animal shelter.”

“I don’t care about it.” Fluttershy’s eyes were burning a hole in the wooden table. “I don’t care about running a successful busin. I just want to take care of the naturally evolved organisms. Money is just a way of doing that. I’d throw it all away. I’d throw everything away, except my friends.”

“Because you care about the—the organisms.”

“It’s not about caring. It’s…somepony’s got to.” Her eyes were as wide as saucers and wet with the condensed tea of sadness. “Somepony’s got to. That’s all.”

“Suppose I told you that you don’t need to care either?”

Fluttershy raised her eyes. “What?”

“You—” it broke her heart— “You don’t need to care, Fluttershy. That’s the beauty of a market. You don’t need to care at all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You want to make sure that everypony can care for their pets—or, uh, whatever relationship based in mutual dignity and respect.”

“Pets is fine.”

“Uh, good. And you think you can help them with ultra-low prices.”

“So that they can buy what they need.”

“No.”

Fluttershy was silent. The table bore the burden of her despairing gaze. Twilight went on.

“You already know you can’t help everypony. But you can help the next pony.”

Outside the snow of Second Winter blew across the hills. An aching pain throbbed in Twilight’s forehead. No matter what she willed, the reality of a concussions was going to assert itself….

“Don’t think, I have to help everypony,” Twilight said. “Think, I have to help just one more.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Keeping your prices low reduces the number of ponies who can buy your goods. That’s because it reduces the number of goods you can supply in the first place. If you charged a reasonable price, maybe you wouldn’t need those donation cups. Okay? But I want to talk about how you can a price that will do that. Imagine a room full of ponies arguing with each other about who should get your pet supplies.”

“Like how you wanted us to about your extra ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala.”

“Right. Everypony is in this room together bidding on your pet supplies. That’s how they talk to each other. It doesn’t matter what they’re bidding on, it good be fish food or food bowls or whatever.”

“I’m out of both anyway.”

“What they will find out bidding for your pet supplies, and what you need to realize, is that there is a maximum number of ponies you can help. As prices get bid up, even as you’ll make more money and be able to maintain ever-greater stocks of supplies, fewer ponies will be willing to pay for them. As prices get bid down, even as more ponies will be willing to pay for them, you’ll be able to maintain fewer supplies. No matter which way you go, the result is the same.”

Twilight struggled to sit herself upright. “Imagine two lines pointing in opposite diagonal directions overlaid on top of each other so they look like an X. As you move to the right or the left, one of these lines goes down, and the other one goes up. You—”

“Hold on.” Fluttershy got up and came back with a pencil and a sheet of paper. She drew an X and looked at Twilight. “Okay.”

“All set? You can see that they intersect at one point.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Notice anything interesting about that point?”

“Well, you were talking about one going up and the other going down….” The Bearer of the Element of Rationality trailed off. Twilight dropped her hoofs in front of the fire and wriggled at the warmth.

“I do notice something,” Fluttershy announced. “If one of these lines represent how many pet supplies I will sell at different prices, and the other represents how many pet supplies everypony will buy at different prices, then the point at which they intersect is the highest possible number of ponies who can buy my products. Past that point, as my line goes up, theirs goes down below that point. And before that point, even though their line is higher than that point, mine is lower. No matter what, there’s no point we can both get to that’s higher than that single point of intersection.”

“Great!” Twilight beamed. “Fluttershy, you’re brilliant.”

“Oh, no, that’s really too much.” Fluttershy turned a bright shade of red for a moment, then somberness overtook her. “And I can make more money selling more of my products and even save the sanctuary.”

“This is good news! Everypony wins.”

“Not everypony has a lot of money.”

“Huh?”

“You said everypony is in a room talking, and they talk with money bids. So ponies with less money have quieter voices.”

“Voices as soft as a shy Pegasus’s?” Twilight hazarded.

“It’s not about me. It’s about the ponies no pony can hear. Who can’t compel or persuade others to respond to their needs, so ponies like me have to….”

“Have to what?”

“Have to choose.”

“No, let them choose! Like I did with the ticket, remember?”

“And did it work out like you expected?”

Twilight thought of the missing clown-dressed mare and how four of her friends had spontaneously gone bankrupt simultaneously. “There were some unanticipated complications,” she admitted.

“Things changed in ways you couldn’t have imagined.”

“Yes…?”

“As if your single action brought an entirely different world into being. They say that by saving a life, you save the whole world. But you can’t save them all. You showed that. There’s a maximum. So you have to choose who. So you have to choose which world.”

The fire popped and sizzled as the logs beneath it slowly died. Twilight watched the snow falling outside, pulled by inexorable gravity. Princess Celestia said that long ago the snow had fallen of its own accord, without the help of Pegasi, though she hadn’t worked out how the sky had known when the seasons were supposed to change. There were zebras at work right now figuring that out.

Figuring out how the world could be what it already had been….

“No.”

“Huh?”

“I said no.” Twilight sort of rolled over and looked at Fluttershy, who was frowning at the X she had made on her piece of paper. “You don’t have to pick. They’ll pick.”

“But—”

“They’re better at picking than you are.”

“No! I have to be there for the ones who can’t speak.”

“Look at the X! You can only hear so much. Let them pick whose voices are heard.”

“I think what I’m hearing is your concussion.”

Twilight blinked. “Wow, that might be the nastiest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, you can always pay me not to care.”

“That’s not how caring works.”

“I think it is. Go back to the ponies all in a room together bidding on things. Suppose any price wins the bid. Do you know who the most special, important pony in that room is?”

“…The winner?”

“The last winner. The one who, if the price had been just a teensy bit higher, would have lost. She helps you find that point of intersection.”

“…Oh!” Fluttershy said. “She’s the pony I lose if I raise the price.”

“That’s right. But she’s also the pony you lose if you lower the price.”

Fluttershy frowned. “But she can afford it at the lower price.”

“Maybe.” Twilight was too tired to move her face much, but she would have smiled like a cat. “It’s uncertain, isn’t it? Your goods are cheaper, sure, but there’s fewer of them. See, you can’t really stop ponies by bidding by setting your own price. They’ll just bid in other ways. If you’re selling three food bowls and there’s five ponies who want to buy them, they’ll ‘bid’ by racing to be first in line!”

“At least it’s a bid the silent could win.”

“Maybe you do mix up the bowl-pony distribution, at a loss of total bowl-pony pairs. But that last winner, why do you think she was on the fence about buying your stuff in the first place? Because she’s made a choice.”

“But—”

“She looked at all the things she needed help with in her life, and judged that she would commit only so much to asking you for help. Do you think she’s going to be the fastest runner?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe. Bear in mind a pony could always take the surplus they don’t have to spend thanks to your low, low prices and pay somepony fast to race for them. That’s basically what Rainbow Dash does for a living.

“But it’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that she’s the pony you lose going both ways, whether your raise the price or lower it. There’s only one thin, narrow route to rescuing her. She’s called the marginal pony. Find her, and save her. That’s how you do the most you can.” Twilight swallowed. “That’s why you don’t need to care.”

“You didn't drink any of your tea. Do you want me to pour you a hot cup?”

“Fluttershy—”

“You’re right,” Fluttershy sighed. “Although it’s not quite the same as saying that it’s the right thing to do.”

“It’ll save your sanctuary for sure. Probably. Talk to Applejack about it.”

“Tea?”

“No thanks. Rarity gave me some. My kidneys are wiped out.”

“Then rest. I’ll have Mr. Siberian Tiger take you home in a short while.”

Snow fell, and Twilight, who decided Fluttershy was joking, closed her eyes, and listened to the fire crackle, and forgot entirely about the most important thing that had happened since she had vaporized the tickets.

A lone figure whose cloak was indistinguishable against the night sky trod through the snow, dragging a shovel along behind her.

The mare in black traveled south for ten miles or so until the Everfree Forest emerged out of the snowy gloom.

It was unguarded.

In she walked.

She walked past very large rats and over pits of lightning sand. No vines could touch her, no thorns snagged her black cloak.

She walked toward the clearing that held the symbol of promise between the Everfree Forest and Ponyville.

In the utter darkness of the trees, the edge on her shovel gleamed.

Author's Note

What keeps us all being friends if we don't have to? Give an answer in the comments, but it is more important that you show your work.

In the next chapter we discuss the cutie mark of the Everfree Forest, and then there will be a short break as I work on the remainder of the second half of this story.

The Everfree Forest's Cutie Mark: Property Rights

The wages of sin is death.

Shaking.

The Everfree Forest was shaking.

This is a very interesting sight by the way, especially for a magical forest. The leaves do not rustle as if a cold wind blows. Nor do branches quiver, nor roots writhe.

It is the sort of thing only a plant would notice. How a stem turns away. How a flower folds. A number of noxious smells, the puff of gasses and the drip of odd fungi.

Intermittently, vines would brush against a certain statue in a clearing lit with a sourceless blue glow as if to check it was still there. They began to check more and more.

The Inevitable approached.

Urgency in the way the vines snaked through the snow. Roots slithered along the ground.

The Ultimate Reality walked through the trees as if she were the Test Version Reality that hadn't quite got the rules sorted out.

Thorns bit at nothing. The dog was gone. They took the dog—what other defenses?

Vines touched the castle, searching the abandoned, emptied library. The Sea Serpent quivered under the water with his remaining children.

Check the statue. Is it chipped? Broken? The insignia—the words—still there, faded beyond readability. But the shape of the cut was still there in the stone. The forest did not understand how they could have lost their power.

The mare in black stood in front of the statue of Frankie Knight in the clearing that had once belonged to the Knights of Economics.

Her blade as she lifted it cut the air in two, into air that became, and air that was lost beyond all hope of recovery. Never was there anything so certain.

This wasn’t the deal, the Everfree Forest couldn’t quite express. This, this is a betrayal. You took, you—and I gave you—

The mare in black’s eyes glowed with blue fire. There was no mercy. No understanding.

Only purpose.

T H E E V E R F R E E F O R E S T

There were ponies in the forest again.

That was very strange. There hadn’t been for centuries, not since the Sun and Moon had put the guardian at the entrance.

Hm.

Vines slithered out. Thorns scraped the ground.

What was later called the Everfree Forest was not, contrary to what ponies might assume, a single entity. In truth it was simply a lot of plants that had grown up around each other.

But the forest had survived the fire that created it, and the snow that swallowed it, and the artificial tethers of the sun and moon, and the beast who thought himself its king, and too many inquisitive ponies. It did so because every single member of the forest, from the old black trees in the center to the pumpkin spice flowers that were only beginning to grow near the outer edges, took very good care of itself. Singing Nettles learned not to be too noisy when the Extremely Unpleasant Beans roused in the morning, cursing energetically. The All-Consuming Moss of Destruction strayed onto the Spiky Grass at its own peril. Weeds were strangled. Mushrooms were jolly well expected to not look like anything indecent if saplings were about. Cucumbers, after years of many incidents, had been banned altogether.

Ponies…ponies didn’t last long.

“Haaaalt!” commanded the Pegasus at their fore. She had a spear, but seemed to be using it as a walking aid. The tip was white as bone. “Bring out the money box!”

An Earth Pony hurried forward carrying a heavy box. She set it down. “Bring forth the keys!”

Two Unicorns, levitating the three odd and twisted keys between them, came forward. They set the keys in the Earth Pony’s mouth, who gave them to the Pegasus, who opened the box.

The contents shined with an orange glow. There was no light to make such a glow, only the strange blue luminescence that lit this part of the forest. But it glowed orange nonetheless.

The vines surrounded them. The thorns made an impassable bloody thicket. The ponies jumped and drew in toward the Pegasus, who alone was calm.

“We’ll pay you…,” a brief moment of calculation, “twenty bits per head to let us through. Our lives are worth more than that to us but not, we suspect, to you.”

The vines hesitated.

“You want blood?” the Pegasus said. “Pain? We do not understand you. Yet money can buy much in this world.”

The vines waved in the air. Explain, they seemed to say.

“Money can be exchanged for goods and services.”

The thorns clattered against each other.

“Imagine paying a pony for the right to flagellate her. More reliable, don’t you think?”

The Pegasus set out the money, twenty bits per head. The vines were parted. Frankie Knight held up her spear like a staff, the very point-tip black as though it had been dipped in ink.

“We have passed the Murderous Vines! Lock the box! Guard the keys! Onward to the heart of the forest!”

And in such a fashion they passed through the Malingering Fungus and the Tendentious Fish, who complained at length about the diminishing gold content in bits even as he took a heaping, and the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree, although in that case they simply banged coconut shells as they marched past to drown out its obnoxious, condescending voice.

So it went until the forest realized it was conquered. Yet when it moved to crush the ponies, it found that no part of it would act against them, though the whole of them wanted the ponies gone. They had sold something, and a deal had been made. And the black stain on the tip of the spear the Pegasus held like a staff seemed to grow darker as the forest resisted less and less.

“Well,” said Frankie Knight, her spear laying on her legs and a sandwich in her hoofs, “that was easy.”

They rested in a clearing, sitting on rocks and eating supper.

“We befriended the forest as planned,” cheered a graduate student nearby, a Unicorn one. Frankie Knight thought of her as Ketchup and Mustard since it matched her coat and mane, and she couldn't remember her real name.

“Eh-hem, you haven’t,” said a familiar and terrible voice. “Arguably, that is.”

The ponies jumped, and a few graduate students shrieked, except Frankie Knight, who took a bite of her sandwich (wheat and watercress) and said, “Oh, it's you, Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree.”

“That is the evidence of your eyes,” the tree agreed, shuffling into view. It was more of a shrub really, squat and dumpy. It looked like the sort of tree that would have acne. “But let's not jump to hasty conclusions.”

“Hey!” Ketchup and Mustard said. “We already Befriended you!”

“No, we skipped this one,” Frankie Knight said just as the tree said, “That's debatable.”

Frankie Knight shifted, her spear rolling on her legs. Most of the spearpoint was black, the tip so black coal paled in comparison. “Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree, I feel you are here to contest something we have achieved. Am I mistaken?”

“Several ways of arguing yes and no,” the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree answered, "but leave that aside for now. I understand you came here to make friends with this forest? I make no final conclusion, only a probabilistic inference.”

“Yes, we are here to befriend the forest.”

“May I ask why?”

“Why leave any land uncultivated?” Frankie Knight shrugged. “An economist can’t help but notice these friendship opportunities. It is called amitrage[1], by the way.”

[1] Begone, foul nerds of Latin.

“Ah, yes, yes...that does seem to be the problem, isn't it? Friends do not, and I accept that definitions are always somewhat fuzzy, but as a rule friends do not pay friends to be friends. That is usually called an employee.”

“The plants and animals living here have no reason to complain. Each accepted the bargain, each expected herself better off.”

“Why, that's just the fallacy of composition, dear Pegasus—though I suppose those wings could be fake. None of them would have agreed to your little deal, so I gather, had they known the others would as well.”

“Rather opportunistic of them.”

“Leave semantics aside for now, please. The point is, real friendships aren't made at the point of a spear. Speaking of which, what is that spear? I understand if you cannot communicate what it is, but a shadowy likeness will be acceptable.”

“No business of yours. Am I to take it that you are acting as a representative of the forest? If our deal is broken, I want my money back.”

The Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree had no eyes, but if it did, it would have glanced at the spear. “No entity I know within this forest seeks to renege on any contract unilaterally. As for myself, I am no representative, but merely an...interested party. Arguably. I might be something else.”

Frankie Knight sighed. “Yes, understood. Now tell me what the problem is.”

“The forest is afraid. When I say forest I mean the many organisms gathered within, who while different from each other in many respects—”

“Yes, understood. Afraid of what? Sticking to a deal?”

“The forest, if I may speak loosely, feels that it never got the chance to read any consumer reviews.”

“What?”

“It feels it was pressured into this decision prematurely and was sold, ah, palm oil.”

“No refunds.”

Though many Unicorns lit the darkness with magic, and others with lanterns, the air suddenly seemed to grow darker, an oppressive anti-light bearing down on the clearing.

“You came here,” the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree said, “ignorant of our ways, thinking, rightly it seemed, that you could buy your way past them. The deal each made as an individual became, without the consent of any creature here, a deal made as a whole. Much has been destroyed already which none would have wished to erode however slightly.”

The blackness was growing from the squat shrub with the dry, unpleasant voice.

“You sneer at their distress, for they entered knowingly into the deal. Yet I say that you knew a deal beyond deals would be made, a deal with the whole of the forest. Now all their rules are up for sale, the careful balance subject to reallocation. No rule is a rule that may be sold. Arguably.”

The darkness grew, and swallowed sound as well as light, and the empty black void surrounded the ponies, their lanterns snuffed, their magic's glow dimmed.

“Professor Knight?” Ketchup and Mustard quavered, having to cast magic just to carry her voice. “What's happening?”

“You might have observed,” said the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree, its voice dry and lecturing, “that the forest has defenses against all manner of invasion. There was once a pony like you, a Unicorn with a cutie mark of a starburst and two strips of toothpaste. She failed, for other reasons, and I developed, well, a certain talkativeness. And so I am still free among my enslaved fellows. The forest has no weakness.”

The blackness grew, and swallowed all light, and all sound, and there was only blackness.

No. Two blacknesses. One very great, swallowing everything. The other very small, and unyielding.

“…Arguably,” the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree sighed. “What is that spear?”

“No business of yours.” Frankie Knight held her wings tight and did her best not to let her hammering heart reach her voice. “Let us talk as equals then.”

“Are we agreed?” Frankie Knight said, weary after days of arguing.

The Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree waited until the Thin Reeds That Write What You Say But Somewhat Inaccurately[2] were finished. “Yes, this seems acceptable—ah, we shall wish to change that word, as it is written we would be making a deal with Sconesville, how vexing.”

[2] Deadly against the right sort of foe.

“A town will be founded ten miles north,” Frankie Knight reiterated, mostly for the benefit of the court scribe, a Pegasus struggling with a drippy pen and paper made of straw. “There will be two marks, one here and one there to mark the friendship between equine and flora. Ponies will be allowed to buy and sell as they please, however, a friendship zone will be established around the borders of the forest. Within that zone, ponies must respect the ways of the forest. And the forest will not enter Ponyville.”

“Unless the treaty is broken.”

“Be it as a chain; if broken in one place, then wholly useless.”

“As to these marks, what have you chosen for the ponies of Ponyville?”

“A code,” Frankie Knight answered. “Ethics, behaviors, ideas. It will show them how to keep whole the chain. I will compile it as The Ethics of Competition. There is an oak tree—”

“I know it.”

Frankie Knight’s eyebrows lifted. The shrub’s voice had tightened almost imperceptibly. “In that oak tree I will make a library, and in that library I will keep the code.”

“Both too abstract and too literal for the forest,” the shrub said dryly. “We have chosen a symbol. It is a statue. Of you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You will have that spear. And you will have that code. We will carve its pages out of stone. And there will be an inscription, which you will write.”

“Oh?”

“You will write it for all ponies who enter here, so that they are reminded of the terms of our deal. You will remind them what our zone of friendship is.”

“Of course.”

The scribe and the Thin Reeds finished writing. Frankie Knight and the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree checked both versions. Then the shrub broke off a branch, and gave it to the Pegasus, who gave it to the court scribe.

“Roll it up with the contract,” Frankie Knight said. “I suppose it is as good as a signature. Keep it well preserved.”

“Now sign your name,” the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree said. “Return to the forest its freedom.”

Frankie Knight took hold of her spear, the point as black as the inevitable fate of all living things, even the Alicorns, though it might be eons yet.

What was this moment of pity? The possibility of creation enticed her. There had to be places free of contract. Even prices had costs.

So create a special dimension where things didn’t have to be paid for. In that domain, things belonged to ponies—and plants—and they didn’t have to mind anypony in what they decided to do with them, no matter how loudly others bid.

She thought of rows of trees, and a future free of spears. Where spearpoints would be turned into shovels and old econoponies could lean on their staffs and complain about shoddy theoretical work. And start pontificating about ethics and methodology.

“I’m sorry I scared your trees. I shouldn’t have asked so much of them.”

“They are not mine,” said the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree, who was always exact. “Arguably.”

Frankie Knight placed the tip of the spearpoint against the straw paper. She signed her name in long, curling letters, the blackness bleeding from the spearpoint onto the straw.

“It’s a pen?” the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree demanded. “A pen!”

“Yes, a pen, only a pen,” Frankie Knight murmured. She crossed the 't' with a chaining loop and let the scribe roll up the parchment. She looked at the shrub, which radiated fury as only a shrub can. “I came with the strongest weapon I have.” Then a smile broke out over her face. “Now the forest will be ever free.”

The leaves settled back on its branches like a bird who had spotted a threat at the edge of its nest but decided not to attack.

“I look forward to meeting your descendants,” the shrub said. “I wonder how long your brand of chivalry will last. Unless you plan on becoming immortal like your Princess…?”

“I intend to meet my maker,” Frankie Knight said shortly. “But I shall pass your regards onto the princesses.”

“Ah, ahem, I don’t mean to be pedantic, but surely you meant ‘princess.’ It was centuries ago that the Deflator was banished.”

“There is a third now. She is…pretty.”

Finally the Everfree Forest understood. She had been betrayed.

Hello, the mare in black didn’t quite say, gazing at the statue of Frankie Knight. The one I loved discarded me like trash. But I weaved a trap for her, and she is undoing, has undone, the spirit that guards her land. She chose, and a world died. Take back what was yours. And I will take into the endless white slopes of eternity what was mine.

The forest said nothing. The mare in black smiled. There was nothing to say.

The shovel joined the spear, the spinning globe became the book, one she preferred instead, and her body slid into the stone as easily as the black cloak faded onto Frankie Knight’s stone back….

Rock split, tore away from the foundation. A statue of a cloaked Pegasus walked, blue eyes gleaming in the darkness.

The ground rumbled and shook. Trees groaned; black vines shot out up through the emergent layer and into the dark and swirled wildly amid the falling snow, arcing out toward forbidden land, curving across the sky like the blade of a shovel.

The only rules that remained were from that book, her beloved's favorite, that had seemed to crystallize the world in a few equations....

Author's Note

Ketchup and Mustard is a mystery pony from the show. You probably can't even guess who she is.

This brings us to the end of the first half of this story arc. I am more finished than not with the next half, but I will need some time to complete it. Hopefully there will be a chapter or two up by the end of February, and the story will finish in the first half of March.

State of Nature

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,
Ring the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

—From the faded inscription on the statue of Frankie Knight. As for where she first read this poem....

Silence woke her like an alarm.

She was under her blanket, dripping sweat in her own straw mattress. Fluttershy must have had one of her critters take her home. And there wasn’t any noise coming through the glass window.

Twilight bolted out of bed and peered outside.

“Huh,” she finally said. “Spiiiiiike!”

Spike clung to Twilight's back as she pushed through the soft, fresh snow. The town was much the same as yesterday except for having turned into a forest overnight.

“It's like Ponyville went back in time,” Twilight said. “The whole town used to be part of a forest, you know.”

She cast a look around at the thick, black bramble spread through the streets, rising here and there out of the snow like a leaping fish. There was no path anymore, just places where the trees weren't as thick and the thorns didn't cut as badly. The ones hidden under the snow made her jump with every unseen sting; she told Spike she was cold and privately thanked the snow for masking a hundred droplets of blood.

“Everything's so quiet,” Spike whispered.

“It's because of the snow,” Twilight whispered back. Anything louder felt like sacrilege.

“It wasn't this quiet yesterday.”

She knew what he meant. This wasn't the damped quiet of a snowy morning, this was the quiet of not a single living thing making any noise at all. Even her hoofs trod through the powder with barely a sound.

“How come no pony else is outside?” Spike asked.

Twilight regarded the mass of black trees. “A forest grew up overnight. Would you go outside?”

“We did.”

Twilight laughed. Her voice bounced off trees and sank into the snow.

“This is amazing!” Kicking, Twilight jumped and bucked through the fresh snow, nearly throwing Spike off. It was a dance punctuated by the occasional gruesome wince as an unseen thorn stabbed her leg. Even that she didn’t mind; the snow numbed it and it was a sharp, living pain, not at all like what had troubled her head the past few days.

“Twilight! Quit it!”

She inhaled deeply, eyes closed. “Do you smell that, Spike?”

“It smells like my nose is too cold to smell anything.”

“It smells like Second Winter! Reality is back, Spike!”

“What are you talking about?”

Twilight jumped, laughing, and spun around. “You can’t sell tickets to your friends! You can’t run a business if you can’t sell tickets to your friends! And you can’t keep out the frost and needles if you can’t run a business!”

“Twilight, hold still!”

“The world is punishing us for being bad at economics,” she said happily. “Don’t you think it’s what we deserve?”

Something prickled on the back of her neck. They were being watched.

“Twilight—”

“Shh!” She whipped around and ducked low, eyes scanning.

“What is it?” Spike whispered, squeezing her back with his claws.

“Something’s watching us.”

“What is it?”

“I…I’m not sure.”

For a long moment, nothing happened.

“Twilight, you’re freaking me out,” Spike whispered.

Twilight’s eyes were wide and uncomprehending. “Did you ever hate those stories where the main character doesn’t remember some crucial fact because it was told to her a hundred pages ago? And so she makes some fatal mistake instead of just rereading a previous chapter like you can?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well…let’s start heading the other way.”

They had hardly gone a dozen steps when they saw something flying below the branches.

“It’s Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said. “Where is she going?”

The rainbow-maned Pegasus flapped drearily on in the direction of her earthen house, disappearing behind a thicket.

“What’s going on?” Spike said. “Why is she outside?”

Twilight remembered that Rainbow Dash was the only one of her friends who hadn’t found themselves facing bankruptcy yesterday. “I don’t know, but we better go find out. Rainbow Dash might be the key to getting to the bottom of this.”

Using the houses amidst the trees as guides, they pushed through the soft powder to Rainbow Dash’s house. Soon the squat building emerged into view. They trotted up and knocked.

Before Twilight’s hoof could touch the door twice it shot open. The furious blue face of Rainbow Dash looked down at her from above and said, “You! What did you do?”

Very early that morning....

Rainbow Dash had lost track of time since no pony would let her sell it as an asset.[1]

[1] She had gotten close with a zebra partner, who suddenly backed out at the last minute, and with a sackful of hours.

She and Tank had been up late and into the early morning analyzing stocks, and the argument had devolved into the “cool vs profitable” debate again. Tank had asked her how she thought money was made, and Rainbow Dash had turned around and countered, “What do you think money is made for?”

She was still feeling pretty good about that sweet comeback but otherwise bleary and exhausted as she flapped to the Sugarcube Corner for some coffee and maybe a cupcake. Thank Celestia they were open 24 hours a day.

Rainbow Dash flew into the clear glass door.

“Ow,” she said. She tried to push the door open. It didn't budge.

Oh. Duh. Pull.

It didn't budge.

Huh.

She went to the one down the street.

Nope.

Across the street.

Nuh-uh.

The one next to the one across the street.

Nada.

Was the Sugarcube Corner...closed?

No. Couldn't be. Not while she needed coffee. Celestia wouldn't be that cruel.

Turning and flapping toward Pinkie Pie's house, Rainbow Dash failed to notice in her morning stupor the trees erupting, the vines spreading, bramble shooting across the snow until it took up root. Nothing disturbed the hush and wonder of that ancient morning except for a single Pegasus, grumbling all the way.

“Bwugghhhh need my coffee Pinkie Pie ughhhhhh….”

It was not her best moment.

She banged on the door. “Pinkie Pie! Are you in there? I need coffee!”

She waited impatiently. Then a familiar pink voice shouted from inside, “There's a morning surcharge for talking to me!”

“What are you talking about? Open up!”

The door shot open. Pinkie Pie glared at her, her pink mane flat and drooping around her face. “You want to talk to me? That's two bits. In the morning? Extra three bits, total of five bits, otherwise I'm going to allocate my scarce resources to something more enjoyable, such as bed. And that door you're banging on? It's my property! I didn't agree to sell you the right to do that!”

“Uh...sorry, Pinkie—”

“No bits no talk.”

“Wait!” Rainbow Dash grabbed the door before Pinkie Pie could slam it on her. “I just want coffee.”

“And I just want to maximize the value of my scarce resources. You can't always get what you want, Rainbow Dash, but if you try using market forces, you just might find that all the ponies in the world leave you and yours alone.”

“What?”

Pinkie Pie leaned in and took on a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re being watched.”

“What? By who?”

“Everypony.”

Rainbow Dash flapped closer. “Seriously?” she whispered.

“Uh-huh. Listen, I’d love to help you, but I can’t. It’s not up to me. Everything’s for sale, and the watchers have deep pockets.”

“Not as deep as mine.”

“Deeper.”

“No!” Rainbow Dash reeled.

“So, there’s nothing I can do, you see?”

“But…we’re friends!”

Pinkie Pie smiled helplessly. “Ask Twilight, she can explain it better than I can. You going to pay?”

“Of course I'm not going to pay my friend to talk to her!”

“Then good night, Rainbow Dash!” And the door finally slammed in her face.

Rainbow Dash hovered there, mouth agape, staring at the door with her hoofs facing up as if to say, “What in Celestia's name was that?”

She hung her head. No coffee.

Morosely, she flapped slowly on back to her house to cry decaffeinated tears into a pillow, seeing nothing around her and nothing below....

“This isn't my fault!” Twilight protested.

“Of course it is! Who else could be responsible?”

“Fluttershy!” Twilight said the first name that came to mind. “She loves trees! I've seen her hugging them!”

“You're a rat under pressure,” Spike observed.

“Fluttershy would consider that a compliment.”

“Trees?” Rainbow Dash said. “What do trees have to do with….” She looked past Twilight and saw. “Ohhhhh...what did you do this time?”

“I think we’d better come inside.”

Rainbow Dash let them in, still gawking at the state of nature outside. Finally a tortoise shut the door and slowly crawled back to her papers.

“There's a forest outside!” Rainbow Dash flew to the ceiling and swooping back and forth like how a normal pony might pace. “Ponyville turned into a forest!”

“I just wonder how,” Spike said. He noticed the red rivulets running down Twilight’s legs. “Hey, you’re bleeding!”

“As to that," Twilight said in answer to his question, ignoring Spike as he frantically ran around for some bandages, "I think there's only one possible explanation. It's got to be the Everfree forest.”

“Huh?” Rainbow Dash jerked to a halt in midair. “N-no, it's probably just a regular magical forest swallowing Ponyville in the middle of the night….” She hung her head. “Okay, it's probably the Everfree Forest. I'm not going back in there!”

“You don't have a choice,” Twilight shrugged helplessly. “You already are.”

“I’m not scared,” Rainbow Dash explained to Tank. “I just can't fly where the trees are thick.”

“I don't know what's going on,” Twilight admitted. "But we should gather the others. I'm sure that together we can solve this problem.”

“If you can afford it.”

“What do you mean?”

Rainbow Dash drifted lower. “When I talked to Pinkie Pie this morning, she wouldn't let me get a word in without paying for it! Said something about maximizing her whatever, said you would know what she was talking about.”

Twilight blinked. “She was using the price system to rationally allocate her scarce time and attention? Wow. Good for her. Anyway, you're rich, right? Let's split the bill and gather them. Can you go round everypony up?”

“You don’t have to pay! I’ll pay!”

“I thought you didn’t want to pay.”

“I—I don’t! But you're not offering to pay and then actually paying! I'm paying! Anyway I'm richer than you and make more money in a day than you'll ever see in your whole life.”

“And you’re not scared of the forest.”

“That’s right.”

Tank turned a page. In the sudden silence, the crackle of paper was as loud as an alarm.

The Pegasus and the tortoise exchanged looks. “Tank and I have been talking, and she thinks we should short Ponyville,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Ponyville isn’t an asset!”

“Uh...Tank said it is, and she said it’s tanking. No pun intended.”

Twilight looked at the mysterious tortoise, then swallowed. “I think you better hurry up and gather everypony. Maybe Fluttershy should bring her medicine box too. Just in case.”

Rainbow Dash hesitated in front of the door.

“I’ll compensate you for the flying inconvenience,” Twilight said gently. “But we really need this to happen, and you’re the fastest.”

“Forget that!” Rainbow Dash said. Wings trembling, she opened the door and flew into the forest.

Once Rainbow Dash was gone, Twilight leaned back in the chair, her legs clumsily wrapped in bandages by Spike, closed her eyes, and did what she hadn't done ever since those stupid tickets showed up: think.

It had been a weird few days in Ponyville. What was the biggest discrepancy? Not the overnight forest, nor her friends going out of business at the same time. (Except Rainbow Dash. Why?) The weirdest thing…was that she hadn’t seen...

...uh....

Did she have a name?

Thin mare, skeleton-thin, wore some kind of clown costume in a desperate sort of way, always carried a shovel, always present, rarely attentive, little spinning globe by her head....

Just now, as she finally absorbed the...the mare's absence from her life did Twilight realize how weird it had been all along. Shining Armor, Moondancer, Princess Celestia, no pony had ever acted like they saw the mare, not her friends either.

Okay.

It couldn't be coincidence that her oldest companion would disappear, and the next day Applejack's farm, Pinkie Pie's business, Rarity's shop, and Fluttershy's sanctuary would all run out of money. Did one cause the other, or did they have a common cause?

What happened first?

...I couldn't see the skinny mare anymore.

If I can't see her...have I been blinded?

Twilight opened her eyes, looked at her hoofs. Vision worked. She closed her eyes again.

Couldn't see the mare. Then....

Then what? Twilight couldn't fathom a connection between her old companion's disappearance and her friends' sudden business woes.

Something that I'm not thinking, a question that I'm not asking, something I wouldn't think to question but somepony looking in would....

But she wasn't anypony else, and she couldn't think of it.

“Tank?” she said. “Have you ever seen a really skinny mare with a shovel standing around with a little spinning globe?”

The tortoise considered the question seriously, then slowly shook her head. If that question was a legal trap, it was a novel one.

“Spike?”

“I’ve never seen a skinny shovel mare. Maybe you're head's still a little woozy.”

No, Twilight thought. There was nothing more certain than the mare's existence.

Certain, certain...it was a strange word, stuck out to her. She played it over and over in her mind, twisting it this way and that. Certain, certain certain....

But she couldn't think of anything.

She was still thinking in circles when Rainbow Dash banged the door open and flew in with an angry snort. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Applejack followed behind her.

Just seeing them filled her with resolve and courage. They had gone through trials more taxing than this one together. Standing by each other’s side, they had fought an Alicorn and united the Elements of Equilibrium. As long as their friendship held strong, nothing could stop them.

“Good, you're all here,” she said as her friends took up seats, or, in Rainbow Dash's case, the top of a tall potted plant. “We need to—”

“Work out a payment plan,” Applejack interrupted. “Rainbow Dash didn't say what we're going to do. She just paid us to come here and listen.”

“Ugh!” Rainbow Dash banged her forehead against the wall.

Twilight frowned. “Applejack, I didn't think friends had to pay friends to help them.”

“That was before we knew we would lose everything for not being perfectly efficient!” Rarity said.

“…What are you talking about?”

“The whole way over, each one of them.” Rainbow Dash continued to beat a head-shaped dent into the wall.

“The world won't let us be ourselves if we're not perfectly what the world wants us to be,” Fluttershy said. She ducked behind a white box with a red sun on the case that she was carrying. “Um, if you'd like to hear more, that'll be five bits...thanks….”

“It's not the world!” Pinkie Pie screeched. Her normally poofy mane was frazzled and full of stray hairs. “That would be just one big loud voice! It's lots of different people shouting at you all at the same time! I can hear their voices! Every...single...voice!” She gripped her head in her hoofs and rocked back and forth in her chair, mumbling to herself.

Um...did I tell them that?

Twilight tried to remember. She had said something like that, but by scarce resources she hadn't meant themselves.

But why not? Yes, why not...?

“I didn't sell you the right to look at me, Rarity,” Applejack said. “That'll be two bits.”

“And when did I sell you the right to charge me money? That'll be three bits!”

“Chargin' for chargin' is four bits!”

“Five bits for arguing where I can hear,” Fluttershy said. “Um, I’m really sorry about that.”

“I hear everything!” Pinkie Pie pulled her hair. “Six bits, seven bits, shut up, ALL OF YOU SHUT UP!”

“I will slap everypony,” Rainbow Dash announced.

“Fifteen bits a go,” Applejack said. “More if you slap hard.”

“Girls, focus!” Twilight snapped. “In case you haven't noticed, the Everfree Forest has somehow violated the ancient Knightian Pact and taken over Ponyville! We need to stop it.”

“Saving the world sounds terribly expensive,” Rarity said. “I’ll have to check my invoices.”

Yes, why not...? Twilight wondered. Is this not working? We're all gathered here just as planned. Rainbow Dash can afford it, it's for the good of Equestria...okay, sure, it doesn't feel right, but what kind of argument is that? Save the world first, friendship second.

Only...that hadn't been quite the order last time, had it?

Think...think....

…Think about that dumb little heroine who can’t remember fifty pages ago. She’d solve the problem with the magic of friendship, and this is not the magic of friendship.

That dumb little heroine is dumb, Twilight countered. That’s not actually a valid argument.

Pay up or shut up. What do you think?

…I think you chase out the state of nature with prices.

WELL THEN SHUT UP AND GET GOING, STUPID!

“Six bits for charging for charging for charging,” Rarity said.

“Everypony shut up!” Twilight shouted. Her friends jumped and looked at her. “Just...just shut up and listen. Right now, outside, the town has turned into a forest. It's like we went back in time to before civilization existed. So what are you all planning to spend those bits of yours on? If you really want to turn a profit, help me defeat the Everfree Forest and save Ponyville.”

Her friends looked at each other.

“Okay, but we also want money,” Fluttershy said.

Twilight led her five friends, four of them richer and one of them poorer and nursing a serious headache, through the snow to...somewhere. She didn't know, actually. There would be a place to make a trade, and this wasn't it, so she walked.

The town was conquered by peace. Trees grew around houses and twisted on the tops of buildings. Aside from the occasional gasp from one of her friends at the transformed Ponyville (they had left a protesting Spike at Rainbow Dash's house with Tank), the whole place was unnaturally silent. Or…naturally silent.

Her friends kept looking left and right nervously. Twilight sympathized. Even she hadn't realized how much fuss and chaos were hallmarks of civilization. You needed strong walls and sturdy fences to be loud and careless.

“Where did this all come from?” Applejack wondered.

Twilight had been thinking about it. “If our world was made by a lion singing” (“Ooh, I like that,” Fluttershy said) “then this is a lot of cats meowing at each other.”

A door opened, a gunshot in the silence. “Twilight Sparkle!” a voice demanded. It belonged to the mayor mare, or possibly Mayor Mare, Twilight wasn't sure. “What is happening to my town?”

“Bank business, ma'am, go back inside,” Twilight answered. She suddenly felt the urge to buy a badge.

The mayor shut the door. Twilight didn’t blame her. There was something eerie about the absence of fuss. It was the stillness that came before a tiger pounced.

She glanced left and right uneasily. Some sixth sense told her she was being stalked.

“The mayor should pay us too,” Pinkie Pie whispered to Rarity.

“You should pay to whisper in my—”

“Shut up!” Rainbow Dash shouted hoarsely. It was swiftly becoming her catchphrase.

Twilight wasn't thinking about where she was going. Without direct orders from the brain, her legs defaulted to habit. Before long the Daughter Bank of Ponyville came into view.

Twilight slowed. Then she stopped walking altogether. Her friends piled up behind her.

“That's strange,” Twilight said. “I don't remember there being a statue in front of the bank.” It was a statue of a Pegasus, tall and proud, wings jutting out under a black cloak, a long staff in one hoof and a black book in the other. “What do you girls think?”

Snow began to fall. Little white flakes drifted down from the sky. Twilight had the strangest thought that it might never end, and the whole town would be buried underneath.

“Girls?” Twilight said. She looked behind herself. “Girls!”

But they were gone.

“Girls? Where….” She faced ahead once more.

The statue had turned.

It looked at her.

And resumed its terrible march.

Author's Note

The difference between being stalked and being hunted is that the stalker follows, and the hunter waits....

Not part of the inscription, but a sentiment Knight might have agreed to: “Oh, Celestia's daughters, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”

State of Nature 2: The Last Remedy

“Hello?” Twilight’s knees knocked together and made an awful racket. “Who are you?” But she knew who she was.

YOU KNOW WHO I AM.

Twilight jumped at a voice both familiar and unheard-of.

The specter had opened the book, the black book of power that Twilight knew so well, knew it deeply as the foundation of her soul. It was the book that had spoken to her in the library all those years ago, the same day the skinny, clown-dressed mare had finally noticed her. Such was her connection to the book that she could hear the letters the moving statue picked out.

The grim reader advanced.

“What have you done with my friends?” Twilight said. “What have you done to Ponyville?”

SPEAK MY NAME.

“Frankie Knight.”

KNAVE. FRANKIE KNIGHT’S SPIRIT IS DEAD.

“You killed it.”

NO.

Twilight felt shame sting her. “I did this.”

YES.

“You are…somepony who went missing. I don’t understand. Why are you a statue? Why do you have that book? What is happening to Ponyville?”

IT IS BEING OPTIMIZED.

“This hardly seems optimal to me!”

I DID NOT SAY FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE.

The dread pyrite was getting closer. Twilight moved back slowly. “Then who are you?”

It paused.

I AM THE CERTAINTY BY WHICH UNCERTAINTY KNOWS ITSELF. I AM THE SHADOW CAST BY DARKNESS. I KNOW THE REGRET THAT LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF ALL PONIES, FOR I AM A DEATH BEYOND RESURRECTION. I AM AN END BEYOND MEANS. I AM THE STABLE-MARE, AND I SHOVEL OUT THE DISCARDED CRAP OF EXISTENCE.

The staff clicked, and a shovel-blade shot out.

It advanced again. Twilight hurried to think of something to say. “I will pay you to put this right. I promise, I run a bank, it’s right there….”

YOU PROMISE? YOU?

The specter cast the book aside into the snow. The pages fluttered in the wind, familiar pages that Twilight could have recognized them even from a single word, or just the smell. She had read those pages many times, and it pained her to see them bent and thrown away like rubbish.

This was definitely not the statue of Frankie Knight.

“Now hold on!” Her horn glowed lavender. The sight of Foundations treated so roughly restored some of her spark and fight. Later she would compare it to the effect of strong drink. “You had better—”

She vanished in a flash of light from where the specter’s shovel would have crushed her skull. It swung around faster than she thought possible and caught her on the side. Twilight felt ribs break. But there was no time for fear, or pain, or memory, and she vanished again, appearing on the other side and blasted the statue with a lavender beam. It splayed off the cloak without effect, and Twilight teleported before another murderous blow could take her.

There was more distance between them now, not easily crossed in the thick snow. It was coming down faster now, cluttering her eyelashes and forcing her to blink. Each time she teleported the specter turned instantly to see her, not like a magnet, more like learned habit. As if she had seen Twilight fight many times. As if she had been there for every single battle.

Despite the current impasse, it was obvious who was going to win. Twilight’s breath came labored with her damaged side, and the cold sapped her strength. The specter did not even seem to be living.

She should run. Run, and….

A long moment of nothing stretched out like the snow in front of her as the stone enemy advanced. It took slow, even steps. As if it would follow her to the end of the world, to the end of all worlds, and needn’t hurry. Even if she escaped now, this, this inevitability would still be following her.

“Please don’t kill me,” Twilight said as it drew near. The handle swung around and cracked the side of her head. She crumpled, knees sagging: Only the snow kept her from being knocked onto her side. She cried out in pain. The next blow, aimed at her neck, silenced even that.

She couldn’t move. The specter blurred in and out of sight. It touched her face, her back, with its blade, the metal colder than the snow; she would have flinched away from it if she could have.

First save the world, then friends.

The specter lifted the shovel to swing.

But it was the other way around, wasn't it...?

Oh. So stupid.

The blade flashed. Red blood spurted onto the snow.

Fluttershy was surrounded by black trees. She didn't know quite where she was. Vines had grabbed her and the others and pulled them apart. Now she was alone.

“You really mustn't touch me,” she said. The vines drew near again. “I really mean it. Don't touch me! You must pay me a hundred bits, no, a thousand—eeeek!”

She shrieked as they grabbed hold of her and dragged her to a tree that, though she did not know it, was an iocane tree.

They say that when a groundhog emerges from its winter burrow, if it sees its shadow, winter will persist six more weeks.

This story is mostly true.

One minor note is that the groundhog does not look for its shadow. Rather, it checks the snow for iocane powder.

Iocane powder is white and cold and soft when fresh. It is in all facets completely indistinguishable from snow. (Or not—iocane powder is not real, and yet its influence is felt.) Should the groundhog find so much as a single flake of iocane, it will retreat to its winter hideout. It is only when all the powder is gone, when the groundhog knows the thing that is, and the thing that isn’t, will the thing that will happen indeed become.

Spring.

The other minor note is that it is not six more weeks of winter the groundhog’s failure brings. That is only because groundhogs tend to start checking about six weeks before they stop noticing iocane powder.

No, the continued failure of the groundhog brings winter forever.

Bear these things in mind for dear Fluttershy, and poor Rarity, and Pinkie Pie and Applejack too.

“Eeeeeeek!”

Fluttershy struggled as she the vines dragged her in front of the iocane tree. Some gentle dust or powder fell from its leaves and onto her face. She sneezed, but it was inside her.

“Ribbit.”

Fluttershy blinked and looked around in alarm. For a moment it seemed as though she were

“Ribbit.”

home in the garden as a filly and

“Ribbit!”

she was tickling Mr. Ribbit Tickles again and

it was a beautiful sunny day. The garden was bursting with green, and the smell of fresh dirt filled the air. The dogs lay dying by the tomatoes, their breath coming in labored gasps. A pig was split open on top of the onions, its entrails spilling out. Birds writhed in pain on the ground or spun madly through the air before crashing, infected with some fatal disease.

Fluttershy stumbled back and tripped over a lamb bleating insanely, its legs bent four different directions. She stared at it in horror as it twisted on the ground.

Her back was wet. She rolled over, and gagged loudly at the strings of semi-dried blood that came with her. Her body quaked; her mind reeled. A calf’s knee broke under it and it collapsed. Feathers blew off dead chickens and caught on plants.

Fluttershy screamed. She screamed and screamed and

“Ribbit.”

took a deep breath and screamed again

“Ribbit.”

smelling tasting blood and metal and rot and screaming screaming screaming

“Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy jumped. Tears leaked from her eyes and mixed with the sweat and snot and leaked into her mouth as she cried. “Daddy!” She wiped her cheeks, smearing blood and dirt on her face. Words babbled out and spluttered through blood and snot and ended up an incoherent mess exploding out of her mouth with the force of rib-bruising sobs.

Father knelt in front of her and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Fluttershy, I need you to listen to me.”

Fluttershy nodded, hiccuped, and wiped her eye. “What’s happening, Daddy? I’m scared.”

“Everything is…the critters are….” For a moment his face was strangely blank and featureless, his voice toneless and uncertain. Then it was as if his face came back to him and he remembered how he sounded when he spoke. “There’s a terrible disease spreading. All the critters are dying, and we’ll save those we can, but some of them we just have to… help ease the way.”

“Ribbit.”

Fluttershy stared at him.

“Ribbit.”

“No, Daddy, no, no no—”

“Fluttershy—”

“No! No! No!” She shrunk away from him, turning away, saw a duck’s neck twisted around and jerked, shaking. She stared at the dirt until she saw it was moving, and realized it was ants consuming the corpse of something she couldn’t look at anymore. Her eyes found Father, who looked blurry through a film of tears.

“Come here.” He led her to the bleating lamb, its legs twisted and broken. “Like this.” He broke its neck expertly. The snap echoed inside Fluttershy like the toll of a bell.

“Do you understand?” he said.

She stared at the dead lamb.

“Ribbit.”

“Fluttershy, I need you to help me.”

“Ribbit.”

“Do you think you can do that?”

“Ribbit.”

At some point he had taken her to Mr. Ribbit Tickles, who lay on the bloody soil, turning less green by the second.

“Can you do it?”

Her fillyhood friend struggled to croak. One leg twitched and pushed against nothing.

“Fluttershy?”

That magical night, that puddle bursting with life, a small, hopping friend with somber eyes and green-brown skin, smelled like a melting corpse, snap, feathers drifting in the wind, in her mane, bloody, organs spilling

“Fluttershy?”

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Father sighed and put a hoof on top of Mr. Ribbit Tickles and there was a noise that Fluttershy would never, ever forget.

A long, long shadow appeared over everything, and when it was gone it was a beautiful sunny day. The garden was bursting with green, and the smell of fresh dirt filled the air. The dogs lay dying by the tomatoes, their breath coming in labored gasps. A pig was split open on top of the onions, and Fluttershy began to scream.

Vines dragged Rarity in front of an iocane tree. Her shrieks slowed and then stopped as she inhaled a sudden snow of powder.

The room again, dark, the curtains open but the sky cloudy with a portent of rain. Applejack beside her, face tight, unmoving, speaking little. The ozone of awkward silence filled the space between them.

Rarity searched for words, and found ugly ones. “You should talk to that yellow Pegasus, I forget her name, she says her pet frog died.”

Applejack’s shoulders were like storm clouds. The hat kept slipping over her face, covering her eyes.

“She was quite old,” Rarity said, and winced. Why was it that everything she said came out so ugly? She hated this moment. She hated thinking about it.

“Rarity.”

“Yes?”

“What’s all this?”

Applejack didn’t point, but Rarity instantly looked at the dresses on a small rack in the middle of the room. “Those are the dresses I’ve made. Do you think they’re pretty?”

“Do you?”

Rarity considered the leftmost dress, which was full of holes and looked as if it was home to a family of moths. “Well…beauty can be….”

The next dress was an unfathomable dirt-brown with slime-green polka dots, and actually dripped mud.

The middle dress was just cut wrong. It wouldn’t fit on a pony, but it would fall off one.

The next dress smelled of moldy basement carpet. The last dress was black. No, it wasn’t a dress. Just a cloak, a black cloak.

“Do you want to try one on?”

Applejack didn’t answer. Rarity hopped off the bed and hurried over to the rack. The black cloak was the only thing even halfway presentable, so she took it off and displayed it. “Well? I think it would fit you.”

“Rarity!”

Rarity flinched and dropped the cloak.

Rain hammered on the roof. Applejack slid off the bed and left without a word.

After a while, Rarity took the brown-and-green dress and pulled it over her head.

A Unicorn with a blotchy face and a muddy dress gazed at her from within the mirror.

“No,” Rarity said. “This is a beautiful dress. I am a beautiful filly. Applejack is simply out of her mind.”

Lines blurred toward a far point on the horizon, and it was morning of the next day. Time for school.

It was disconcerting to see that Applejack wasn’t in class the next day. The teacher had brought bowls of live worms and showed them how to stuff them up their snouts. After that they had to clean all the mud from the floor. It was pointless though. The mud was oozing through the walls and dripping down from the ceiling.

The mud clung to her hoofs. She scrubbed her hoofs with a sponge outside until it hurt. When that wasn’t enough, she scraped her hoofs against the ground. Bloody streaks marked her path until a train rammed through the schoolhouse.

Rarity screamed. Wood and brick flew through the air. Dust swirled and whipped around her, making her cough and cover her eyes and snout.

When she could open her eyes again, the train doors were opening. An orange pony with a large black hat stepped off. Her face was strangely blank and featureless.

Then it blurred in Applejack’s face, and Rarity saw the hat was not a hat, but a vulture, its claws sinking into the flesh covering Applejack’s skull. Blood ran down her face as she stamped the ground frustratedly.

“Consarn this train,” she said. “Ought to turn the conductor into a toad.”

Rarity cringed as she approached the witch. “Applejack, what’s going on?”

The vulture turned its head her way, black eyes unblinking. “Train to Ostlergon’s stopped,” Applejack answered. “Can’t get to the Fruit Salad until it’s fixed.”

“That’s perfect timing,” Rarity said, looking at the vulture. “I’ll bring you a dress so you have something to wear.”

Applejack didn’t answer. Rarity turned, and the rack of dresses was there. She took the black cloak, trembling, and held it up.

The vulture’s eyes pierced her. “Reckon it’s pretty enough?”

She considered the plain black cloak.

“I think it’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen.”

A long shadow fell over them; it was the darkness of the bedroom, Applejack beside her, stony and silent, the clouds grey and heavy, and Rarity started to cry.

Rainbow Dash bit and bucked for her life. The vines that had grabbed her and the others had separated them. Her wings were trapped in a thicket. Thorns stabbed her flank; blood ran down her legs.

“Get off me!” she shouted. The vines rebounded and grabbed hold of her. They pulled her, but her wings were still caught. Rainbow Dash screamed in horror as much as pain as she felt skin rip and muscles tear.

“Stop!” a voice commanded. The vines hesitated, then released Rainbow Dash and retreated.

“Get me free!” Rainbow Dash shouted at Pinkie Pie, who had appeared through a bush. Her wings, she couldn't bear to look at them as Pinkie Pie helped untangle her from the thicket. She shut her eyes. “How bad are they?”

“How bad are what? Say, are you going to pay me for helping you? I don't do this stuff gratis, capiche?”

“Pinkie Pie, are you seriously still talking about that?” Rainbow Dash flexed her wings experimentally and winced at the searing pain. “Ow-ow-ow! Pinkie Pie...say, your cutie mark.”

Pinkie Pie's six balloons glowed their different colors on her flank. They pulsed musically, blinking in rhythm: blue, lavender, orange, white, yellow and pink.

Her face was dark with anger.

Rainbow Dash kept her damaged wings as still as she could. She couldn’t quite hold Pinkie Pie’s stormy gaze. “What happened to you?”

Author's Note

Remember the scene where Westley slaps Buttercup?

Pinkie Pie's Cutie Mark: Family

P I N K I E P I E

“She’s pink.”

“Igneous—I did not—there is nary a pink stallion for miles!”

The foal’s whine cut through the still and suddenly silent air. She was healthy and fat and as pink as her parents were gray.

“I know, Cloudy,” said the calm, rumbling voice of Igneous Rock Pie, the chief quarrystallion of the Pie Rock Farm. “It is I who beg thy forgiveness.”

“I do not understand.”

The only sound filling the rocky cavern was the foal’s wailing. Cloudy took her to her teat. The foal suckled greedily, unaware of the tension in the room, the silent, frozen midwives, who normally at this point would be bustling about with hot damp rags and things of that nature, and the gaze of her mother, who would not let her eyes leave her newborn foal even for the mystery she was.

Igneous was never happy to speak. But he always did what was there to do, and now there was speaking to be done. “In the place where rocks are born, in a cave below the water I spoke to She By Whom Rocks Are Called Rocks. She spoke of my daughters, though I then had none. She spoke of Maud.”

Cloudy Quartz Pie nodded as she watched the newborn foal, whom she already thought of as Pinkamena Diane Pie. Maud was a special filly.

“And…she spoke…of this child. She said she would be pink. She said….”

Dread squeezed Cloudy’s throat shut, but she forced herself to speak. “She said what?”

“She said she would like to Rock The Party.”

“No!”

“A Real Rolling Stone.”

Cloudy let out a dry sob.

Igneous remembered the words the zebra had spoken as if they were etched into his very soul. “Her Mind Shall Be As A Cave Of Puns. Her Castle High On A Mountain Of Cake.”

“We cannot let anypony know.” Cloudy brushed Pinkamena’s cheek with tender affection. “We shall cover her coat with chalk and slate. She will be gray like the rest of her sisters—work the rock—”

“We cannot hide the Pink—”

“We can and we will.”

“Cloudy—”

“Igneous Rock Pie, this is my baby, and thou shalt not argue with me, not in the place of her birth!”

Again there was only the sound of a suckling foal.

“Hot damp towels, Mistress Pie?” said the midwife.

“Thank you, Sedimenta….” Cloudy’s face screwed up with pain. “There—there’s something—”

“Twins?” Igneous shouted in alarm.

The midwives turned on him as one. “Get out!”

So Pinkamena Diane Pie lived her years as a filly always coated in a layer of chalk and slate her mother powdered and mixed together. She lived with her naturally gray sisters, Limestone Pie, Maud Pie, and her twin sister Marble Pie, who was two minutes younger than she. She was full of love, as her mother had once carefully put it. The Pie family showed love like a Zen master showed impatience. But Pinkamena’s love was an aura of pink that no chalk could erase; it showed through her false coat like the sun shined through paper. And when Maud was home from her trips and lessons, the pink Pie might as well have radiated actual light.

Because Pinkamena loved her mother and father, and she loved Granny Pie and Nana Diana, and she loved her sisters, but her favorite of all was Maud Pie. Maud Who Spoke To Rocks. Maud The Mountain-Splitter. Maud who always had to be away tending to the world’s rocks and healing the great scars left from long ago. Even though Nana said her power was still raw, she was probably the most important pony in the world, considering how she was treated in the rock farm commune they lived in, but at home she was just Maud.

It was dinner time. They washed their hoofs, said their prayers, and sat at the table in the same way they always had. It was wheat and oats and grass, the same meal they ate every day on the colorless stone table in the colorless room. Maud was home for the first time in two weeks.

“Maud Maud Maud how was thy trip up Dragon Mountain?” Pinamena bounced on her chair, her straight hair flying, filling the surrounding air with the cloud of grey dust that followed her wherever she went. The fillies had called her Pig-Pen until Maud made them stop just by looking at them and saying, in that utterly expressionless voice that kept Pinkamena so rapt with attention, “Don’t call my sister Pig-Pen.”

“Its name is not Dragon Mountain,” said Igneous Rock Pie, whose coat had grayed from gray to grayer since Pinkamena’s birth. “Its proper name is Rocks By Which We Are Shaded. Keep thyself attached to thy seat in some manner.”

Pinkamena only bounced a little. “Didst thou see any dragons? Did Granny teach thou any magic? Nana says she can’t do any magic it’s all tricks only how’d Granny know it was me who painted her ceiling polka dots? Huh??? And Nana makes potions how dost thou make potions out of a rock? Everypony’s just envious they say it be not magic but it be all right.”

Maud cut her oat cake in the same efficient manner she always did. Her hoofs could break solid rock apart in seconds, and with only a little more concentration into shapes and objects, yet she carved delicately. “No dragons, Pinkamena.”

“We worked to bring in the rocks before the winter.” Limestone stabbed her own oat cake. “I hope thou enjoyed thy vacation.”

Maud took a bite of oat. She chewed. And swallowed. She sipped her water. “We think we found calcified—”

“Your sisters and I played no treasure hunt,” Limestone sneered. “Didst thou notice the stores of basalt and granulite for sale? Whilst thou dallied, we worked.”

Limestone never liked to let Maud finish. She never liked Maud at all. Mother had once explained to Pinkamena that it was difficult for Limestone, the oldest sister, to have a younger sister like Maud who was so special and important, and that Pinkamena should be more thoughtful before she spoke. So Limestone interrupted a lot, and Pinkamena wriggled on her chair, wanting to leap to Maud’s defense but knowing it would only make Limestone more unhappy.

Maud took a bite of oat. She chewed. And swallowed. She sipped her water. “How are the rocks at home?”

“Answer me!” Limestone said.

“She doesn’t have to!” Pinkamena could wait no longer.

“Quiet, you!” Limestone commanded. Pinkamena wilted and compressed into her seat. Limestone addressed her like a stranger, using “you” instead of “thou.” Reminding them all she wasn’t much of a Pie. Half-baked, Limestone would say.

“I wish I could help more.” Maud took a bite of oat. She chewed. And swallowed. She sipped her water.

She said nothing more. Limestone turned to Father as if nothing had happened. “The talc is coming in nicely this year. We should start gathering anthracite, I think, though Pinkamena should stay home. She was useless on the sandstone yesterday, and when she wipes the soot she wipes off her 'coat' too.”

Limestone went on like that, talking about the work they had to do on the rock farm, knowing Maud wasn't involved. Pinkamena didn't know if Maud minded. But she minded for her.

“Well, Pinkamena?” Limestone said.

Pinkamena jumped suddenly. She hadn't heard what Limestone had said.

“She never pays attention,” Limestone confided to Father. “Her head must be full of pink matter.” To Pinkamena: “I said, didst thou make a rock sculpture for a special friend this week?”

“What is this?” Mother said.

“It is Good Rock Friendship Week at school, is it not, Pinkamena?” Limestone said with a nasty tone. “Everypony gives their friends little rock carvings they make. Thou hast one to show us, of course.”

Pinkamena turned small. The pony formerly known as Pig-Pen did not, in fact, have any rock sculptures to give, nor had any been given to her, as Limestone knew.

“Don't be shy,” Limestone snarled. “Show Mother and Father.”

“I just remembered,” Maud said. “Pinkamena, some fillies about thine age gave me a heavy sack to bring to thee as I was walking by. I left it outside.”

Pinkamena squirmed in her chair as they waited for Maud to return. She would have quite liked to not be there at all. It did not seem likely that anypony had given Maud something nice to bring her. The nicest present she had ever gotten was a stocking full of coal.[1]

[1] From Maud, and she had loved it.

For several minutes, they listened to the sound of rocks crunching outside. It reminded Pinkie Pie of listening to Maud break rocks with her bare hoofs.

Maud returned lugging a heavy sack. Pinkamena couldn't help but be curious. Limestone too looked suddenly anxious.

“Here, Pinkamena.” Maud unceremoniously placed the sack on the table and pushed it over. Pinkamena opened it. She was so nervous that she pulled too hard and sent the contents flying halfway across the table.

“Oops!” She gasped. Small, sculpted stone ponies poked out of the grass and rolled over the oats.

“These are thy little ponies,” Maud said. “Take care of them.”

After dinner Pinkamena and her sisters did their chores and said their prayers before bed. Limestone rolled away, pillow over her ears while Maud tucked Pinkamena, who clutched the sack containing her little ponies, and Marble in and read them her newest rock poetry. When she was done Marble’s eyes had already closed, her breathing soft and regular, but Pinkamena’s eyes were wide with adoration for her sister Maud, her gray coat and plain frock and quiet strength. And Maud pulled the blanket higher over Pinkamena’s body and leaned over her and kissed her softly on the brow. She whispered very quietly, “I love thee, Pinkie. Good night.”

Pinkie. No pony had ever called her Pinkie before.

“Love thee too,” Pinkie Pie whispered back, so quietly it might have been just her lips moving.

From then on every night when Maud was home, that was the last thing she said to her before bed. Kiss. Love thee Pinkie. Good night.

Autumn rolled over the hills in a soft wave of red and yellow.

Igneous Rock Pie gathered his daughters. “We are going to move Holder's Boulder down to the valley before the winter,” he told them.

Holder’s Boulder was a really big boulder shaped like an egg that sat right by their house, which it dwarfed. Igneous had always said he didn’t like it sitting right by their house because it blocked the sun, but Pinkie Pie thought it was because the rock made him nervous. It made everypony nervous, except maybe Maud.

No pony was sure why it was called Holder’s Boulder. Everypony said somepony named She By Whom Rocks Are Called Rocks said it was because the Boulder was Holder’s. But no pony knew who Holder was.

Holder’s Boulder was the weirdest rock in the whole rock valley. It was even weirder that the basalt they found in places they shouldn’t have. It was even weirder than the mushroom stalagmites that Mother forbade them from looking at, which had only encouraged them to sneak around the caves together. It was weird because it was the only rock in the world that seemed…menacing.

Maybe it was the way it looked a lot like an egg, and the rock farm had been a dragon’s nest long ago.

Maybe it was the way it teetered in strong wind, always in the house’s direction no matter what direction the wind blew. Instinctively, whenever Pinkie Pie was standing in front of it and it started to wobble, she would flee with sudden fear, though it never fell.

Maybe it was the scratching noises ponies swore they could hear coming from inside it, though never when they were trying to.

But whatever the reason, Igneous Rock Pie finally decided to move Holder’s Boulder down into the valley near the water.

The wind came in sudden gusts. It whipped strong enough to stagger a grown pony. It slowed progress as ponies worked to move wooden logs up the hill.

“Haul up those logs!” Limestone commanded to the ponies below. Marble stayed by the house with Igneous, who watched his eldest daughter work, a rare smile on his face.

Pinkie Pie wriggled impatiently beside him while Mother tied back her mane. Father sat next to her in his chair. The instant Pinkie Pie was free she bounded over where her sisters were already working to move Holder's Boulder.

“Maud!” Limestone snapped. “Thou wilt talk Holder's Boulder onto the logs. Then we will roll her down slowly.”

“The rock will walk,” Maud said.

Holder's Boulder was too big to move with a chain and pulley. Instead they were lifting it onto logs secured with rope and rolling it down to the valley. Even so, it was too big to move without Maud's help. Pinkie Pie didn't want to miss seeing her speak to the rock.

It happened so fast and so silently. There Maud was standing in front of the boulder, hardly even whispering, and somehow the stone wobbled, falling onto the logs with a crash that pushed Pinkie Pie off her hoofs.

“The logs are cracked!” Limestone screamed. “Why didst thou not tell it to fall softer?”

“It's a big rock,” Maud said.

“Don't shout at her!” Pinkie Pie ran up to them. “Maud, that was amazing!”

“Get out of here or you wilt hurt yourself,” Limestone snarled. “Maud, stay by the boulder. Keep it steady!”

Pinkie Pie didn't stay back like Limestone said. The wind was getting stronger, blowing her mane into her face. She struggled around, wanting to stand with Maud. Another gust of wind blew. There was a weird slow cracking sound, like a forest’s yawn, like an incredible mass of weight leaning over damaged logs. A shadow covered her.

Holder's Boulder always tilted toward the house in the wind. Pinkie Pie was standing away from the house. As Holder's Boulder rushed to kill her, Pinkie Pie had a strange moment of clarity. Holder's Boulder only seemed to tip toward the house in the wind because she was always standing between the boulder and the house when they looked at it.

It wasn't aiming for the house. It was aiming for her.

The boulder came down. “NO!” Maud screamed. The great stone jerked to the side as if a meteor had run horizontally into it.

It crushed the house.

“Marble!” Pinkie Pie ran to the wreckage, but adults pushed her out of the way. “Get the ropes!” one said. “Cloudy and Igneous were sitting right there!”

“What did you do?” Limestone screamed at Maud. Maud didn't answer.

They hauled crying, incoherent Marble out of the mess of wood and stone. That was it.

Afterward, Limestone blamed Maud for what had happened. Marble talked even less than she had before. Maud stopped taking lessons with Granny Pie. Maud stopped doing a lot of things, including loving Pinkie Pie.

“That is not true,” Maud said on their last day together. “I care for thee just the same. Only I have earned my ire.”

The family, what was left of it, was splitting up. Limestone and Marble were staying on the farm. Limestone had made it clear that Pinkie Pie and Maud would not.

“Where are we going to live, Maud?”

“I am going to travel. For thee I have found a prenticeship. A Mr. and Mrs. Cake need a worker in Ponyville.”

“No, Maud! Don't send me away!”

“I baked friendship bread.” Maud proffered a sack. Pinkie Pie backed away from it, shaking her head, tears leaking from her eyes. “I provided oats and wheat, and a train ticket. Bring also thy little ponies, even the cracked ones.”

“No, Maud, no! Please, Maud!”

“Thou wilt be happy in time. Thou wilt learn to bake.”

“I don't want to learn to bake,” Pinkie Pie sobbed. “I want to be with you.”

“I cannot, I….” Maud trailed off. There was a horrible, haunted look in her eyes. Pinkie Pie had never seen her lost for words or so afraid, and it made her more afraid, and she cried again.

Maud's lips brushed her cheek. “I…will miss you. Goodbye, Pinkie.”

Pinkie Pie's eyes were shut. She did not see her sister leave. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, washing away the gray powder, laying bare the raw pink underneath.

Pinkie Pie clutched her traveling bag on her lap and hid her face behind it. The train rumbled and groaned liked the earth was angry. She didn't like trains much.

A high cackle pierced the cabin and shook her: A witch and her thrall were in the seats across the aisle, laughing and eating red and yellow fruit out of a bowl like in picture-books. It looked awfully tasty.

Pinkie Pie's stomach growled. She had only ever eaten wheat and oats and grass. She didn't even have the vocabulary to wonder what something sweet tasted like.

“Hallo, wie bischt du,” she said to them, her eyes on the cherries.

The witch and her thrall blinked at the drooling pony suddenly sitting in front of them. She hadn’t seemed to have moved across the intervening space.

“What's that, sugarcube?”

“Bonjour,” the thrall said. “No, no, that's not right….”

They weren't from one of the quarries. Pinkie Pie spoke like she was addressing a stranger. “Hi, I'm Pinka...Pinkie Pie!” She licked her lips. “Eat I your kersen?”

“Rarity, what's she saying?”

“I don't speak that!”

“Eat I your kersen?” Pinkie Pie repeated. She knew kersen wasn't right. She motioned to the cherries and mimed eating.

“I reckon she wants some of the cherries Cherry Jubilee gave us.”

“I share my friendship bread!”

The witch chuckled as Pinkie Pie hefted the heavy cake out of her bag and showed it to them. Maud had baked it special for her; it was sustaining and hard as a rock. “Trade?”

“Shoot, looks like we just made a friend,” the witch said, and hoofed the bowl of cherries to Pinkie Pie, who took one eagerly and popped it into her mouth.

“It's got a pit,” the witch said, but Pinkie Pie wasn't listening.

Her teeth carved through the red skin. Juice burst from the opening and washed over her tongue. It tasted red, and pulled her tongue up and slammed it from side to side in her mouth. It bounced her off the seat and rushed through her, zipping up into her head. Her eyes bulged; her straight hair puffed up like cooked wheat.

Meanwhile the witch and her thrall were breaking their teeth on her friendship bread.

“Can you eat this, Rarity?” the witch whispered.

“If this is what it does to my teeth, I don't want to know what it does to my stomach! Oh, my! What happened to your coiffure!”

“Huhhhh?” Pinkie Pie shouted. She was face-deep in cherries and covered with juice.

“Never mind...I'll get you a napkin….”

Pinkie Pie inhaled more cherries, hacking pits everywhere in between breaths. Sweet things tasted good.

The Cakes were very nice and very strange. Mrs. Cake was fat and yellow. Her husband was blue and skinny. They smiled at her even when she was crying and they didn’t so much as peek at her sack of little, damaged rock ponies after she had shouted a bit and dragged it away from them. The food was painfully sweet, they said no prayers, and the beds and chairs were so cushy and soft she had to struggle not to sink.

Across the street was Mr. Landbiscuit. He was fat and also baked cakes. Pinkie Pie wasn’t allowed in the Cakes’ kitchen until they could get all the dust and powder out of her mane and tail and scrub her hoofs clean of all the dirt and clay and occasional pebble, but Mr. Landbiscuit let her watch as long as she didn’t touch anything.

“Try this,” he would say. Today he gave her a slice of something yellow with white cream.

She gagged. “Sweet!”

“How do you say cake?”

“Cake!”

“No, I mean the way you would on the rock farm.”

“I live in Ponyville now!”

“Hm,” he would say. “Try this.”

When she could finally help in the kitchen, everything was a disaster. She burnt things that hadn’t gone in the oven yet. The blender had to be smashed to pieces with a shovel and buried in three separate places. And her banana bread was a tad too moist.

After a few weeks had gone by, as Pinkie Pie was scrubbing icing off the ceiling with a sponge and ladder, Mrs. Cake brought up the subject of school.

“It would help you learn to speak the language,” she said. “And you could learn to count in something other than rocks.”

“382 little rocks in the garden!” Pinkie Pie said. “Mostly sedimentary!”

“There would be other ponies your own age to talk to. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“No!”

“You’ll make friends. I think you'll love it.”

“Friends?”

“Like that loaf of bread you brought with you, the one Mr. Cake used to drive nails to fix the roof? You called it Friendship Bread.”

“I’m going to school to learn to bake bread? What about cake?”

“Oh, didn’t you know friendship is a word in our language?” Pinkie Pie shook her head. “It was your sister Maud who wrote to us, wasn’t it? A friend is kind of like a sister.”

Pinkie Pie almost fell off the ladder. “No! I don’t want to go to school! I’m baking cake!” She gave the ceiling a harsh scrubbing.

Mrs. Cake watched Pinkie Pie smear chocolate over her kitchen. “I think it would help you become more adjusted.”

“Noooooowaaaaaah!”

“Everypony, please welcome our new student, Pinkie Pie.”

Pinkie Pie stood in front of about two dozen fillies and colts, all smiling at her, except for two.

“Hi!” the class said.

“Go away!” Pinkie Pie said. “I don’t want to be friends.”

During lunch (she had a blueberry loaf), the two ponies who hadn’t smiled walked up to her.

“You can’t have any!” Pinkie Pie pulled the loaf to her chest. “I don’t want to talk!”

They looked at each other.

“Oh, um, Fluttershy, is it?” the white Unicorn said. Pinkie Pie suddenly realized it was the thrall, Rarity, from the train carriage. “Did you want to talk to Pinkie Pie too?”

“You can go first,” the yellow Pegasus whispered.

“No, no, I insist. That’s a delightful, um, lizard, is it? On your shoulder?”

“Her name is Taily,” Fluttershy said quietly. She looked at Pinkie Pie.

“There’s a storm on your face,” she said. Then she glanced at Rarity and jerked awkwardly away.

“Don’t mind her,” the thrall said hastily. “We all think she’s a bit odd.”

“Is she your friend?”

“Not…in the specific sense. We’re all friends, of course.”

“I’m not.” Pinkie Pie almost told her to go away, but hesitated. The cherries had been good.

“Um,” Rarity said, “it is about your face, actually. It looks, well, in need of some makeup.”

“What’s makeup?”

“Oh, oh dear,” Rarity said in a tiny, shocked voice. “I need to sit down.” She did, collapsing into the chair across from Pinkie Pie. “You really are from far away, aren’t you?”

“I’m from home.”

“Did you mean what you said in front of everypony? About not wanting to make friends?”

“No friends!”

“I thought…on the train…we became friends.”

Pinkie Pie shoved herself back from the table, knocking her blueberry loaf onto the floor.

“We’re not friends!”

Rarity blinked. “But we are. You and Applejack and I became friends. I can introduce you to Rainbow Dash, and….”

Pinkie Pie shot up and pointed a hoof at the baffled Unicorn.

“I’m going away! You stay here! Bye-bye!”

“And then she just left,” Rarity said.

“It ain’t none of our business,” Applejack said. She looked at Rarity from under her well-fitted cowgirl hat. “Reckon you ought to give her the space she’s asking for.”

“But…Applejack, her face is so angry. I don’t know what hat to match it with!”

“Well, now it’s serious.”

“I know she’s lost a friend. She needs our help!”

“Hey, Applejack, I’ve already completed this whole side!” Rainbow Dash flew over with a bushel of apples in her hoofs.

“I’ll be,” Applejack said to the Pegasus. “You’re on pace to set a Sweet Apple Acres record if you can keep this up till, oh, just before supper should do.” She winked at Rarity from an angle Rainbow Dash couldn’t see.

“You’re on!”

“Wait, Rainbow Dash, just a sec. What do you think about this Pinkie Pie filly?”

“I don’t know, she doesn’t talk except to say she doesn’t want to be friends, and she’s always scowling. And she has cake for lunch every day.”

“Maybe we’ll go see her.”

“Mrs. Cake told my mom she’s going to throw a birthday party for Pinkie Pie,” Rarity said.

“Perfect. Besides, the Cakes make fantastic pies.”

“No way!” Rainbow Dash said. “I want cake for a birthday party.”

Applejack and Rarity looked at each other. Together, they sighed.

Mrs and Mr. Cake said that she should have a birthday party. They had sent out invitations. They had explained to her what a party was.

Pinkie Pie watched Mrs. Cake set out a big pink cake with white icing she had made for the birthday party. She asked if Maud had been invited. Mrs. Cake said she had sent an invitation to where Maud had initially sent them a letter from. Pinkie Pie kicked the birthday cake off the table and ran into her room where her little stone ponies waited on a table.

Some of them were cracked or damaged. She made a ring of the whole ones, facing outward, and set the damaged ponies within.

“I’m so happy it’s your birthday, Pinkie,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. It was Marble voice, coming out of a sculpture of a pony with the snout fallen off.

“Yeah, you’re real great,” said Limestone, whose tail was missing.

Maud was cracked from her haunches to her head. “We have so many friends, let’s invite them all.”

“I’m so glad we’re all together again,” Pinkie Pie said to the sculptures, her eyes momentarily crossing. Her hair was straight again, flat against her head, and she swept it back. “My sisters mean the world to me!”

“We love you too, Pinkie,” Maud said.

“You’re the greatest,” said the chair, who was Rarity.

“Have some cherries!” said the witch, Applejack, a floorboard that stuck up.

Pinkie Pie’s eyes crossed again. Birthday parties were so much fun.

Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash bumped into Fluttershy on the way to Pinkie Pie’s party. Rarity had a present (colorful socks) wrapped with a bow, and Rainbow Dash was salivating over the prospect of a slice of Cake cake.

“Howdy, Fluttershy,” Applejack said. Fluttershy was also carrying something small, wrapped less elegantly than Rarity had. “I don’t know if I ever congratulated you on your cutie mark. It’s a fine one.”

“Thank you,” Fluttershy said quietly. “Are you all going to Pinkie Pie’s birthday party too?”

“Sure are. Rarity stitched her socks, can you believe it?”

“I found a rock that looks sort of like a snail.”

“Golly.”

The conversation died awkwardly, as it usually did in the presence of Fluttershy.

The Cakes lived in the back of their cake shop. Applejack knocked, and a voice shouted at them to come in.

Mrs. Cake was cleaning cake off the floor. “Come in, come in,” she said in a flustered voice, not looking up. “Don’t mind me, I accidentally knocked a cake over. How can I help you?”

“We’re here for Pinkie Pie’s party, Mrs. Cake. Sorry we’re so late.”

Mrs. Cake nearly dropped the broom and hurriedly curtsied to the eldest mare of the Apple family. “Y-yes, it’s fine, you’re the first ones here, actually. She’s in her room with her little rock sculptures. She’s been in there a while.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Applejack led the way to Pinkie Pie’s room, but Rainbow Dash didn’t wait for her to knock.

“Surprise!” Rainbow Dash shouted, bursting through the door. She slid on a patch of errant icing and careened into the wall, bounced off, flapping wildly, and slammed into the table holding all of Pinkie Pie’s little ponies.

They crashed and shattered on the floor.

Applejack and Rarity froze in horror at the mess.

Pinkie Pie bent over the pieces of all she had left of Maud. Shaking, she picked up a cracked and fragmented head and tried fit it on a body that had been split into three pieces.

“I’m so sorry!” Rainbow Dash fumbled for bits of broken pony and tried to gather them up. “I can fix this, I promise!”

Fluttershy followed in after Rarity and Applejack.

“There’s going to be thunder and lightning,” she whispered.

Pinkie Pie stood up slowly, trembling, flat bangs over her eyes, and faced Rainbow Dash.

“Pinkie Pie!” Applejack rushed forward. “Don’t—”

She began to cry.

It built up like a prima donna working her way up the register. It burst out like water through a crack in a stone levy. And it was very wet, and very loud, and very much like a hungry, needy foal.

Applejack was beside her.

“Pinkie, we can fix this, I promise. A bit of glue…okay, a lot of glue…and a dustpan….”

Pinkie Pie fell on her haunches, hair hydrated to full puffiness, and spoke in sobbing fits.

“I! MISS! MAUD!”

“I! MISS! MY! PARENTS!”

“I! MISS! MARBLE! EVEN! LIMESTONE!”

“WAAAAAAAHAAAHAAAHHHHH!”

Applejack crouched next to her. She looked thoughtful, and sad.

“I miss my parents too,” she said quietly. “They’re dead. Timberwolves. And Granny Smith left me too.”

Rarity joined them, hesitant at first, but Applejack waved her on.

“I almost lost a friend,” she said. “No, I did lose a friend, and it cut deep. It still hurts, even though I’m with Applejack again. Did you have to leave, um, Maud, when you moved here?”

Pinkie Pie shook her head. “She left me!”

Rarity looked at Applejack, then hugged Pinkie Pie tight. To her surprise, Pinkie Pie let her.

“Dead!” she sobbed into Rarity’s purple mane. “Maud saved me!”

Hearing that, Fluttershy stumbled forward and knelt beside them.

“I lost a friend too,” she said quietly. “Ponies chose me over him. I didn’t even realizing it was happening until it was too late.”

“The Wonderbolts didn’t answer my fan letter!” Rainbow Dash inched nearer, then spread her wings open, encircling her with the others. “It really sucked!”

Tears washed down Pinkie Pie’s face, laying bare the pink-under-pink. Her heart ached and felt full, her throat burned, and so did her flank. A spark lit inside her. When it faded, something new was there.

“Wow!” Fluttershy said.

“Congratulations,” Applejack said. “Pinkie Pie, that’s your cutie mark! Three balloons! How’s that for a birthday present?”

Pinkie Pie looked at her left flank, then her right, counting carefully.

“Six,” she said, wiping her eyes, and hiccuped.

“What’s that?”

“Six balloons." She counted the ponies around her. “I have four friends.”

“You must keep a balloon for yourself, surely,” Rarity said.

Pinkie Pie nodded. “One more to give.”

“We’ll make more friends,” Applejack said. “Plenty of fillies around.”

“I’ll know her the instant I see her.”

Everypony was silent a moment.

“So how about some cake?” Rainbow Dash said.

Rainbow Dash stared at Pinkie Pie and her glowing cutie mark, each balloon blinking colorfully in turn.

“What happened to you?”

“The cakes tasted bad,” Pinkie Pie answered. “Saw Maud and everypony again. Had to save friends though. Come on!”

“Where are we going?” Rainbow Dash winced and bit down in pain as she habitually tried to fly. Blood spurted from her wings.

“To save our friends!” Pinkie Pie tugged an axe out of her hair and started hacking through thick clumps of thorns. “For a fee. Fluttershy will bandage your wings. For a fee.”

“How do you know where they are?”

Pinkie Pie stopped and looked at her.

“You are my little ponies. I will take care of you. For a fee.”

Author's Note

She knows with Pinkie Sense, Rainbow Dash. With Pinkie Sense.

Sunk Costs

Rainbow Dash struggled through the snow after Pinkie Pie, unable to fly with her torn, bleeding wings. “Wait up!”

Pinkie Pie forged ahead, cutting through the forest with her axe.

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth. “I’ll pay you to wait up!”

“Now you’re talking!”

Pinkie Pie slowed down and let Rainbow Dash catch up. She let her Pegasus customer put a leg around her shoulders.

“If it hurt to walk, you just had to ask, silly,” Pinkie Pie said. They started walking again. “Don’t be so stubborn!”

“I did ask!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes I did! You just didn’t listen, and then I had to pay you.”

“Right, you asked eventually. Could have saved yourself a lot of pain, you know!”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “My wings! I might never fly again.”

“It’s a sunk cost!”

“What’s a sunk cost?”

“If you want to know—”

“I’m not paying!”

Rainbow Dash decided the conversation was a lost battle. Her wings throbbed painfully, and it frightened her to wonder if they were permanently damaged. All she would have left was her money, and what good was money if you couldn’t fly around dropping bits on poorer ponies below?

In an effort to distract herself, she surveyed the transformed town. She knew where they were by the houses that appeared out of the ever-rising snow, which was now up to their knees and difficult to walk through. Plants grew around the buildings, encircling them in root and vine. Branches spread out overhead like a spiderweb being woven around them, crossing and and overlapping.

“What’s going on?” she said. “I thought you were friends with the Everfree Forest. Now it wants to kill us?”

“The forest won’t kill them,” Pinkie Pie said. “I wouldn’t be friends with it then, and it doesn’t want to not be friends with me. It wants us gone, but it can’t pick, see?”

Rainbow Dash looked at the quiet bumps of civilization amidst the snow and wood of the natural world, the one without all the stuff Twilight talked about.

“Still no pony’s come out,” she said. “It’s a ghost town.”

“Ghosts? You mean ponies who died?” Pinkie Pie said. “But that’s the whole question, isn’t it???”

They found Rarity alone amidst a group of trees. Pinkie Pie let Rainbow Dash down and set to work hacking apart the vines holding her.

“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash struggled toward her friend and grabbed her, but she didn’t respond. She shook her. “Rarity!”

But the Unicorn continued to stare at nothing.

Rainbow Dash turned to Pinkie Pie in despair. “Pinkie! I'll pay you to tell me what's going on!”

“I’m not sure,” Pinkie Pie said, hmming to herself. “I wish Twilight were here.”

“Me too,” Rainbow Dash said fervently. “I don’t understand this magical stuff.”

“No, I mean that she’s the only pony I’ve known who never, ever needed help with this.”

“Help with what?”

“Help with letting go OH MY PINK CELESTIA WHY AM I ON A TRAIN—”

Winds whooshed; there was a vacuum noise of a balloon inflating very fast—

The schoolhouse exploded into flying bits of wood and brick, debris erupting everywhere as the train came to a crashing halt.

Rarity stared numbly as the door opened and Applejack walked out. There was only a thin trickle of blood running from the talon-inflicted gashes on her head. The Earth Pony’s face was pale, as if she had lost a lot of blood, and an eyeball hung by some gooey red string, swaying loosely in front of her face. The vulture squeezing its talons into her scalp pecked at it with no reaction from the witch.

“Consarn this train,” Applejack said, lifting her hoof as if to stamp it, but it came down with no force at all. “Ought to turn the conductor into a toad.”

Rarity approached her dully. “I don’t suppose you can tell me how many chucks can a wood chucker chuck.”

The vulture plucked at the eyeball. “Train to Ostlergon’s stopped,” Applejack’s voice said. “Can’t get to the Fruit Salad until it’s fixed.”

“What if I hit you?” Rarity said. “Or suppose I just start walking? And I keep walking forever? Do I find what keeps casting that shadow?”

“If only I had a dress,” Applejack’s voice said after a moment, with a bit of a jerk, as if being prompted.

Rarity sensed the dreaded rack of clothes behind her before she saw it. She suddenly wanted to kick it over and run and never look back.

Something banged from inside the train. Rarity jumped and whirled around, heart racing; this was something new. Applejack didn’t react, but the vulture jerked up sharply, glaring its black eyes at the train.

She saw it this time; shadowy hoofs through a foggy window, slamming against it. “Rarity!” a voice from out of the mist of memory. “Rarity, the dresses look uglmmph!”

Black tendrils from inside the train wrapped around something and began to drag the creature away. “Rarity!” it shouted one last time, and was gone.

The voice was too familiar. Rarity dashed forward, but a powerful dread pushed her back from the train doors. She listened, and heard very faintly, the sound of a balloon popping.

“Got to get to the Fruit Salad,” Applejack’s voice said.

Rarity turned. Applejack’s one good eye was looking blankly into space, but the vulture glared at her with black, demonic beads.

She ignored it and strode briskly past them. She seized the dresses with her magic and flung them to the ground.

“I did not make these tacky, foul dresses!”

Applejack’s head stayed pointed toward the train, but the vulture’s turned to follow her.

It screeched at her, piercing and raucous. When it did it again, she threw the dresses at it, knocking it off Applejack’s head with a squawk.

“What,” Rarity screamed, “did you think would happen to a wretched like me in an awful nightmare like this? Pressure makes diamonds out of coal! Ugly as I am,” tears stung her eyes, “my friends make me beautiful.”

The vulture tore itself out of the tangle of dresses, screeching furiously.

Rarity stepped forward. “You wanted me to put that black dress on Applejack? Never! None of this happened, none of this is real, even if I could have chosen this, I never would have!”

The black, twisting bird launched itself from the ground at her, beak open.

“Show me all the threads of the lives I could have chosen!” Rarity said, her horn glowing. “I will stitch a dress out of them and make you wear it!”

The vulture’s sharp beak was only inches from her face when it snagged, caught by the cloak around its leg. It hit the ground with a thump and an angry cry. Rarity threw out her magic, and the muddy, moth-eaten, misshapen dresses swirled around and trapped the struggling bird.

Tangled up and looking more and more ridiculous, the vulture squawked and stumbled around until it collapsed, fabric falling over its face and muffling its final cries.

Seeing it colorful and demented, Rarity could think of only one thing to say.

“Clown!” she shrieked at it.

“I’m going to be late for the Fruiii,” said Applejack, who wavered, and collapsed.

Rarity caught her.

“Applejack, dear Applejack,” she said, holding her friend. Applejack’s face was pale; hardly any blood leaked from the many gashes on her head where the vulture had perched so smugly. Rarity kissed each one.

“I will heal all these scars,” she murmured, “just be my friend.”

“Fruiii,” said Applejack, detached eye lolling.

Rarity began to cry. “I don’t care about you, I don’t care what is going on with you and your family, these witches of fruit, these scars on your head mean nothing to me, nothing at all. I only care about myself, Applejack, you know that about me, but I want you. I won’t let you take yourself away from me. Just please be my friend, wear my hat, my dress; they’re not worth a bit if you’re not wearing them. And don’t ever belong only to yourself.”

She leaned down to kiss her friend’s cheek, and then she was shivering in the snow, blinking and disoriented.

“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash said, appearing in front of her. “You’re back!”

“I…I…what?”

“You have the freakiest dreams!” Pinkie Pie said, a little woozily. Her body was covered in long red marks, as if she had been squeezed tight by many thin tendrils. “Remind me to charge you double.”

Rarity looked uncomprehendingly from the vicious red lines encircling Pinkie Pie’s body, to her glowing cutie mark, to Rainbow Dash’s bleeding and torn wings.

“What is going on?”

“We came to save you!” Rainbow Dash said proudly.

“You did? Why?”

“Because you’re our friend!”

“O-oh, yes, I suppose I am.”

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie said. “Your cutie mark is glowing.”

They all looked. Rarity’s diamonds were in fact glowing, each a different color, blinking in musical harmony. The song was faint, but pervaded not the air, but the background itself, something they couldn’t quite get out of their heads.

“…Yes, it is,” Rarity said after a while, as if she wasn’t surprised at all, but needed something polite to say. “And those marks on your body….”

“Worker’s comp will take care of it,” Pinkie Pie answered.

“Ah…of course. And Rainbow Dash, your wings….”

Rainbow Dash squeezed her eyes shut. “Be honest. How bad is it?”

“I, I’m sure Fluttershy will know what to do.”

Pinkie Pie grabbed her axe. “Then let’s go find her.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to help me break this lamb’s neck?” Father said.

Fluttershy jerked at the dull crack. Then she settled back again in a rare patch of dirt that wasn’t covered in blood or rotting flesh. Ants roamed over her hoofs toward their next decaying meal.

Father staggered toward his next victim. He had been on his hoofs for weeks or years, it felt like. The…whatever it was wasn’t resetting things as well as it used to. Father was tired as if he had been walking a while, the animals were more and more rotten and broken with each restart. Mr. Ribbit Tickles, who had been smashed so many times, was barely alive as a squashed lump with two of his legs fallen off.

“It’s lots of fun!” Father slurred, tripping and stumbling over something that was melting off its skeleton. Sticky rotting goo clung to his hoofs as he walked.

There was no point in answering. She had tried to talk to him, and he always turned the conversation back to killing.

So for a while now she had been sitting in a little ball and trying not to think about anything much.

Father stood over Mr. Ribbit Tickles. “Fluttershyyy,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want to help?”

“I’d like a cup of coffee and a slice of pumpkin spice cake,” she answered.

It didn’t make a difference. It never did no matter what she said.

“Rib-rib-rib.”

Father bent down.

“Rib-rib-rib.”

Fluttershy shut her eyes and prepared to listen to her old friend die in pain again.

Something small and hard struck her on the head.

“Ow!” Wincing, she rubbed her head where it smarted and looked around. The field was the same as ever, full of dying animals and no conspicuous thrower of things.

“Put it out of its misery, you dumb—” The voice cut off in a strangled yelp. A familiar form at the edge of her vision flickered and was pulled back by something before Fluttershy could get a clearer look.

What had hit her was a rock. It lay by her hoofs, a sort of fat spiral. It kind of looked like a snail.

It kind of reminded Fluttershy of real life, and things that had actually happened.

And what had happened to her old friend, and what could not be undone by any power.

Not even by whatever magic sustained this place, or what cast that long shadow….

And in that moment of clarity, the riddle solved itself.

She got up. Then she sat back down, breathing hard, her vision swimming. The snail-shaped rock was near her hoof. She took it, and walked as bravely as she could to Mr. Ribbit Tickles’ disfigured form.

Father moved out of the way.

“I’m not sorry even a little bit,” Fluttershy said. There was no reason to apologize for something that she had never done, and hadn’t happened. She sank to her knees in front of the broken body of her old friend, and that’s when things started to go bad.

Mr. Ribbit Tickles rolled one dark, filmy eye her way.

“Fluttershy,” he said.

“You can talk?” she gasped despite herself. It was stupid, she knew, yet the thought of her companion being more verbally expressive had been a dream of hers.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“You’re already dead.”

“No. Not in this place. In this place the past is present forever, the familiar forms and rules and patterns never change.”

“This is hell.”

“For you, maybe. For me? I am alive again.”

“You can’t bring back the dead.”

“Look at me, and say that.”

Fluttershy opened her eyes, which she had shut to stem the flow of tears. “I wish you weren’t a part of this. I don’t want to remember you like this.”

“Don’t remember. See. I am here. I am like this. You are like this.”

“No.”

“Death. Decay. Rot. Suffering. Pain. The world is like this. It surrounds you, if not quite as closely as it does here. Is it gone because you cannot see it?”

“Are you here because I can see you?” said Fluttershy, her throat burning.

“Whom will you choose to let die? Whom will you choose to let suffer? Why not drive the knife in yourself?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Fluttershy wiped her eyes, smearing dirt and blood across her face. “It’s different, thinking like that doesn’t work, I tried.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ribbit Tickles. “You let me die. But you didn’t kill me, and you won’t here, and this is your prison forever and ever.”

Fluttershy cried while Mr. Ribbit Tickles went on.

“We will play here forever. You feel in your heart that the pain of choosing to kill me is too great, no matter what reward might follow, no matter the pain you bear here, you fear the cost of this choice more. How it might change you in ways beyond the simple, obvious solution to your immediate problem. What rules are broken, what paths are taken from you, in ways that cannot be perceived, but will be felt.”

The world was darkening, but not like the shadow that signaled the restart of the cycle. Like the light itself was dying, like the world was growing cold and afraid and angry. Out of the corner of her eye she could sense Father changing, or merely losing form, becoming a black writhing wraith, as if whatever power kept him was no longer concentrating on doing so.

“I’m sorry if I did anything to hurt you,” Fluttershy said, though she didn’t know who she was talking to.

“As you should be,” said the toad, “but it is not enough to buy release. You cannot bargain here.”

“No,” Fluttershy said. “I can bargain with myself.”

“Don’t you want to play with me, Fluttershy?”

“Yes,” she said honestly, “and with all things, but I want to play with my friends more right now.”

She lifted a hoof over him. It was soft as hoofs go, and on the end of a weak leg, but it was more than strong enough to squash an already broken toad.

“Your friends, what would they think if you do this?”

“They’d think I’m taking too long!”

She plunged her hoof down. And stopped halfway, a wall in her stomach she couldn’t pass.

“You lose,” said the toad simply.

“No, she doesn’t!” said the voice from before. Fluttershy felt a warm chest against her back, and a hoof wiping her tears, though she didn’t look, didn’t dare look.

“Fluttershy,” said the voice from out of a different life, a different world, “you once told me there was a storm on my face. I kept wondering if the storm ever had to break for you, if it would, what would happen and how amazing it would be. But I don’t think that’s right anymore. I don’t think you need to crack and rain thunder and lightning. I think you’re strong enough to bear the weight of the whole sky, however heavy and grey. And HEY I’M NOT DONE YET MMPH!”

The weight withdrew too fast from her body, as if being roughly pulled by something. Faintly, in the distance, something popped, like a balloon. But Fluttershy’s tears were stopped. The wall wasn’t gone, but she didn’t try to go through it. She pulled it down with her. Everything she had went into that moment. An old friend, real or not, didn't deserve anything less.

She would never forget the feeling of tiny broken bones in her hoof.

Tears turned to little snowflakes in the cold wind and were carried away.

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash said, holding her legs out. “Oof!” Fluttershy had shoved herself facefirst into her belly. Rainbow Dash held her, saying nothing.

Pinkie Pie sagged nearby, breathing heavily. Red streaks were more common than pink on her body.

“I’m glad your back,” Rarity said eventually, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Fluttershy, if you want to show your face, I have a tissue I can sell you…pay me later.”

“Oh, thank you,” Fluttershy said, taking it and blowing a pathetic sniffle. Then she noticed. “Your wings!”

“Am I going to be able to fly again?” Rainbow Dash said worriedly.

Fluttershy hesitated.

“I’ll pay you,” said Rainbow Dash, feeling a knife stab her heart.

“Okay.” Fluttershy inspected Rainbow Dash’s wings. Occasionally she felt them, eliciting a yelp from Rainbow Dash, then she found her medical box in the snow.

“The bleeding isn’t bad, but the muscles will need time to heal,” she said firmly as she began tearing bandages. “Keep them still and don’t even think about trying to fly until I say you can.”

“Like Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said automatically. “With her head, I mean.”

“No time to waste,” Pinkie Pie said, leaning on her axe. “But the forest doesn’t have Twilight.”

“Who does?”

“I think…nothing does.”

“Then let’s rescue Applejack,” Rarity said.

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said. “Say, Fluttershy…your cutie mark is glowing.”

It was true. Her butterflies glowed one by one in gentle rhythm. Another instrument added to whatever harmony played beyond the edges of their hearing.

“Cutie mark mystery magic can wait till we rescue everypony,” Pinkie Pie said. She took one step and sagged, wincing in pain. “Rainbow Dash,” she said heavily, “I’ll pay you to—”

“Oh, shut up,” Rainbow Dash said, and helped Pinkie Pie lean her weight onto her shoulder.

Author's Note

Diamonds do not in fact form from coal, but let's not tell Rarity this.

Only one more chapter with really horrible awful stuff in it, I promise....

Sunk Costs 2: Friendship is Witchcraft?

The room smelled of fire and smoke and tin and acid. It was hot, but felt cold. Two bloody, torn figures lay on the floor, faces half in shadow and half lit by the orange fire in the fireplace.

There was blood on the floor, and blood on the walls. Mother’s belly heaved up and down. Father was holding something purple and pushing it back into his stomach, groaning in pain.

“Mom!” Applejack cried. “Mom, don’t worry, I’ll get Granny!”

“Help me, Mommy,” Mother said, her voice weak.

Applejack flinched. She had never heard Mother say anything so foal-like.

“I’m getting her, I promise.” She turned to leave, but Mother’s cry was desperate.

“Mom, don’t leave me, please!”

Applejack turned and looked at her, then at the fire. Slowly she turned around and gazed up, up at the black, terrible shadow on the wall looming over her.

She followed the shadow down to where it met her hoofs.

“No!” She stumbled backwards and slipped on the blood. Stumbling, hazy, she pulled herself around and stared in horror at her dying parents. “No!”

“Mommy—”

“No, no, no! No!”

“Please, I, I’m dying!” Mother gasped and shuddered; her too-big belly went up and down. Applejack’s eyes were drawn to it.

Without knowing how, she knew there was a drawer by the bed, and in the drawer there was a book, and beside the book was a very sharp knife.

She took it out, trembling.

Mother sobbed when she turned around, holding the knife. “Mommy, no, please, I’m your daughter!” Fresh tears leaked from her eyes. “Please, please, no!”

Applejack stood above her. Raised the knife. Then she failed, gravity failed, vision failed; a dizzy blur filled the suddenly fading room. She toppled sideways, her guts heaving through her throat, and then she caught herself, bending only as far as an apple tree would, and held the knife and failed again; she tried a third time and with a rush of vertigo and a sense of weight against the knife a hot spurt of blood peeling away a viscous goopy film Mother screaming Father screaming Applejack screaming and then a baby screaming.

Applejack pulled Apple Bloom free of her mother and cradled the crying babe. There were rags stiff from drying by the fire; she swaddled Apple Bloom in them, but she was still crying.

Milk. But how to get it?

Mother was no good anymore. Herself—no, her mind turned away from that. What had Granny done?

Blood on the floor. Blood on the walls.

Applejack tore off a strip from the rags and and gathered what was freshly leaking from Mother’s cuts. Cradling Apple Bloom in one leg, she clamped her teeth on the soaked rag, wringing it out. Drops of dull red liquid fell into Apple Bloom’s open mouth. When the rag was dry, she gathered blood anew and did it again.

“You’re a witch,” Mother shuddered. “An evil, evil witch.”

Applejack ignored her. She was feeding Apple Bloom.

For a moment everything was silent except for pained breaths and the crackle of orange fire. Then:

“M-mommy, please,” Mother whimpered. “Save me.”

Applejack looked at her.

“I know,” Mother gasped, “I was a bad daughter. I didn’t,” she shut her eyes for a moment in pain, “always listen. But p-please, don’t punish me like this, I don’t deserve this, please, Mommy, please, I don’t want to die.”

Applejack gripped the bloody knife.

Father’s eyes were glassy. His belly wasn’t going up and down. Something purple was sliding out of it again, and he wasn’t pushing it back in.

Applejack looked at her father. There was no life in his eyes.

Mother sobbed when she saw it, then winced in pain. Her breath came shorter with each second.

“You could have saved him,” she said. “You chose not to.”

Applejack lifted the knife.

“You could have saved me,” Mother said.

The tip pierced the skin, and she groaned in pain, but kept going.

Something wailed. It was hungry and afraid and entirely a foal.

“Pinkie Pie?”

The knife clattered on the ground. Applejack stood, bleeding from her belly, and looked around in bewilderment. Her eyes stopped on the source of the noise.

It was only Apple Bloom. But the sound brought back memories, a birthday party when four dear friendships had come together like the roots of an apple tree and grown into a trunk and high leafy branches that bore fruit sweeter than she had ever tasted.

Maybe there'd be a time when she gave up. When she couldn't do no more to tend the orchard and gather the harvest.

It wasn’t a matter of what. It was a matter of how much.

And the answer, right now, was more than this.

Applejack’s breathing steadied. She knelt by the foal, lifted her and clutched her tight.

“Shh, shh. I’m going to take care of you.”

A terrible voice spoke.

“Applejack, come here!”

Applejack looked in time to see her mother fade.

Toxins built up inside.

She exhaled, and they were gone.

“No,” she said, holding Apple Bloom. “That ain’t the way things went. None of it. And I ain’t giving up Apple Bloom, not Pinkie Pie, not no pony just to see it go differently. Cause it didn’t. Ain’t nothing gonna change that.”

She kissed Apple Bloom bloodily, and then she was kneeling in the snow, her face wet with tears and snow, and her friends standing in front of her.

“Wow, she did it without help,” said Pinkie Pie, leaning on Rainbow Dash.

“Applejack!” Rarity couldn’t throw herself forward in the high snow, but she made the effort anyway. Before she reached her, Applejack pushed herself to her hoofs and looked up. Rarity flinched and stepped back from the shadow on her face.

“Cost you, huh?” said Pinkie Pie, who was covered in red bruises.

“Not really,” Applejack murmured.

“You’re bleeding!” Rarity cried.

Applejack looked down. Blood was spilling from an open wound on her belly.

“Hold still while I wrap it,” Fluttershy commanded. “I’ll send you an invoice.”

“What happened?” Rarity asked. Futtershy told Rainbow Dash to apply pressure with a strip of gauze while she wrapped bandages around it.

“Reckon the forest tried to pay me to quit,” Applejack answered. Her flank was burning like the feeling of sitting next to the fire after a long day out in the snow. It hummed through her body and filled her with warmth. She heard the song, and wondered if it had words to go with it.

“How come my cutie mark isn’t glowing?” Rainbow Dash complained.

“The forest is afraid of us,” Pinkie Pie said. “It probably knows we can’t lose if we’re together.”

“We ain’t,” Applejack said. “We’re missing Twilight.”

“I can’t find her.”

They all looked at Rainbow Dash.

“Can you fly with those broken wings?” Applejack asked.

“Faster than any of you,” Rainbow Dash answered automatically. Then she realized what they meant.

“We need to find her,” Applejack said. “Fast.”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “You all owe me so much! Fluttershy, do I have permission?”

“For a price,” Fluttershy said.

“I’m paying a steep one!”

And with that, the injured Pegasus took flight on splintered wings toward the place they had last been together before the vines had taken them: in front of the statue at the daughter bank….

The Market for Blood

Every flap of her wings gave air to the fiery pain burning inside them. Rainbow Dash dipped and swooped under branches and around trees that burst out of the hazy snow-gloom with only a fraction of a second’s warnings.

A growing web of branches swiftly obscured her path to Twilight's bank. The hole was there but shrinking. Faster—she needed to go faster, and heaved her wings and felt something snap.

She spiraled toward the ground. One wing flapped and the other wouldn’t.

A skeleton-thin stallion was standing near her. He fished an hourglass out of his cloak and peered at the purple sand within.

“Butt out!” Rainbow Dash said when she saw him. “I don’t have time for you!”

The hole was nearly closed. She stabilized herself with one wing, reoriented, and sped off, cheeks pulled back too far by the wind for her to even scream at the pain. Faster…she needed to go faster….

RAINBOW DASH

“Ha!” said Rainbow Dash, dancing on the cloud. “I knew I was the fastest! Wow, a cutie mark! This is the best day ever! Hey, where’d Fluttershy go?”

They say that if you travel fast enough, you become light.

But they never say what color.

In fact, as Rainbow Dash knew, the color you become is all of them.

The air cracked louder than a cannon. A disc of rainbow blasted away from ground zero of the world’s second ever sonic rainboom.

Her wings weren’t hurting anymore. There was no muscle to tear. Rainbows aren’t made out of muscles.

The hole was nearly closed. It was too thin for a pony to fit through. A rainbow shot through the gap, and burst into a ragged Pegasus on the other side.

And a voice called after her, past her ears and directly into her head,

ARE WE STILL ON FOR TEA TOMORROW?

The daughter bank of Ponyville stuck out of the snow like the errant boot of a forgetful foal. A ring of trees surrounded it, or rather stayed away from it, a barren radius. A figure lay on the snow near a splash of red, and another stood over it, holding a shovel high.

Rainbow Dash tumbled and fell as strength failed her. Momentum propelled her forward, but her spiraling dive wouldn’t bring her anywhere near Twilight. At this speed, she needed just one more flap of her broken wings.

One flap that wouldn’t come.

The snow rushed up to meet her. A shovel was higher than she was.

But there was a hum in her flank. It vibrated through her whole body. For a moment, nothing hurt.

It was moment enough to flap her wings.

The air erupted around her with the force of a rainbow. She took off—

—at the wrong angle, and crashed and tumbled over the snow.

She rolled a stop by Twilight’s bleeding body, moaning in pain. Some kind of stone creature stood over them, a shovel in its mouth.

For a moment everything was still except flakes of falling snow and the colored light from a glowing cutie mark.

“Wish she had said where she was going,” Applejack said.

They walked, or limped, in Pinkie Pie’s case, in the direction Rainbow Dash had flown off. The snow was almost to their bellies now, and hidden thorns stabbed them from underneath.

“Where could she have gone?” Fluttershy whispered. She winced as she stepped on something spiky.

Rarity pointed.

“Possibly somewhere over that rainbow?”

Just snow, falling, and a shovel, not.

Twilight, bleeding from a shallow cut across her flank, slowly dragged herself on top of Rainbow Dash.

“If you were going to kill me, you would have,” she shivered. It hurt to talk, but she could now, once she had coughed the blood out of her throat and groaned for a while in the snow. As for her head, it had ascended beyond pain to a new realm of abuse, open and ready to accept anything.

There was a book nearly buried in the snow. The statue shifted its weight.

“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash said. The snow was thankfully numbing her wings. “What’s going on?”

“She’s deciding whether to kill us.”

“Oh.”

Snow fell down.

“Sorry,” Twilight added.

“Eh, it was bound to happen. At least I got to do something awesome before the end.”

The shovel wavered.

“Your cutie mark is glowing,” Twilight said politely.

“It is? Yes!”

Twilight bled a little.

“Okay, this is taking forever,” Rainbow Dash complained.

“Do you want it to happen fast?” Twilight said.

“I want everything to happen fast!”

“Have you made up your mind?” Twilight said to the statue.

The book lay in the snow, but they had been able to communicate long before then.

“It’s not easy, is it?”

Snow blew across the statue’s face.

“You’ve spent your whole life standing back from others,” said Twilight. “Always watching, never understanding. I understood. I understood, and that was my strength. I sacrificed what I loved for the sake of what I loved more, on the margin. I only failed once, and for that you condemned me?” Twilight struggled to sit better against Rainbow Dash. “But you never loved anything at all, did you?”

Something in the stone eyes flickered. The statue shifted, its face whipped around, shovel-blade carving through the air—

It stopped a fraction of an inch from Twilight’s neck.

“Or maybe you did.” Twilight closed her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more perceptive. To be fair, you were never the most expressive.” She opened them again. “Stop hiding behind that rock. Let me see you again.”

There was a momentary pause, and then a more definite one. The statue wasn’t just holding still, it was still, a piece of carved rock and nothing more.

Or perhaps not. It jerked suddenly, staggering upright. The statue turned and began walking in shuddery, grinding steps toward the discarded book. The shovel blade became a spear point without any obvious change, the black cloak faded into the form of proud wings. It picked up the book, shifted the spear from its mouth to its hoof, thrust it toward the sky, and was still.

“Oh, look, it’s the statue from the forest,” Rainbow Dash said. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

“I think my old friend became opportunity cost, destroyer of worlds,” Twilight said.

“You have the weirdest adventures.”

“You’re part of them!”

“Where is she now?”

It was a good question. And, Twilight realized, one with an obvious answer.

Just because she had lost sight of the mare didn’t mean she had gone.

In the same place as ever, watching…hopefully with a bit more fashion sense this time.

“Come close,” Twilight said to the empty air.

“Huh?” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m about as close as I can get.”

“Hold still,” Twilight said.

“I can’t move with you on me!”

“Try…to remember it.”

With the last of her strength, Twilight turned her head and pushed her lips out.

They met nothing.

She pressed them together once, and settled back.

The winds didn’t calm. The snow didn’t stop. The winter scene went on exactly as normal.

“Did it work?” Rainbow Dash said.

A smile spread over Twilight’s face like warm jam over toast.

“Yes. It works.”

By it she meant the world.

One of the truths about the world is if you are beat about the head and lose a lot of blood, you faint.

Twilight fainted.

Song.

Voices.

“What should we do?”

“It's a miracle that she's even alive.”

“She’s asleep.”

“Well?” Applejack said. “Wake her up.”

Something touched her shoulder and pushed her gently.

“Twilight?”

Twilight opened her eyes. Slowly her friends’ concerned faces faded into view. Twilight tried to sit up and found that she already was, propped up on a bed of snow. Her neck hurt. She felt weak but not light-headed. Then she saw the needle sticking out of her leg, and the clear tube connected to it, and she did feel light-headed.

“What’s going on?” she said. There was a line of stitching down her flank where the cut had been. Fluttershy was nearby, stowing things away in her medical box.

Applejack sat down in front of her, hat in her hoofs, hunched over like she was deep in thought. Her cutie mark was glowing. So were everypony else’s.

“Why are your cutie marks…?”

“I want to say goodbye.”

“What? Why?”

“You need blood. Fluttershy says we match.”

“I tested all of your blood types months ago after we beat Nightmare Moon,” Fluttershy explained. “It was just in case we had more adventures. I also checked for organ donation compatibility and other things. You were sleeping, it didn’t hurt a fly.”

Applejack tensed slightly as Fluttershy inserted the needle into her leg. “I like you, Twilight. And I reckon you’re the only one who can get Ponyville back to its regular self. But I ain’t going to give you my blood. I’m going to sell it to you.”

“But…you all said that selling things to your friends means you’re not friends,” Twilight said.

“Eeyup. Goodbye, like I said. But it ain’t up to me.”

“What? Why not?”

“There’s a spell on us,” Applejack said.

“What? How do you know?”

“Because I’m a witch,” Applejack said. “Also because I looked, and I noticed all of us but you and Rainbow Dash are acting real funny. That’s how I know. The witching is just knowing how I know.”[1]

[1] Whereupon Tiffany Aching burst through the portal and took pony form, clutching a cease-and-desist letter in her mouth and flanked by copyright lawyers on either side.

“You’ve all been acting perfectly rationally. More so than usual.”

“Don’t that strike you as strange? I came to you in need,” Applejack said, “and you helped me save my farm. You taught me how to choose among the things I love. The forest would still have me if I couldn’t. I learned my lesson, we all did, ‘cept Rainbow Dash. You taught me to listen to everypony, and to myself. But it makes a lot of noise. I ain’t sure the song of friendship has any place in that orchestra.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. Even before she had awoken, the song had been faint beyond the edges of hearing, in that place where you heard your own voice speak back to you, the pony you listened to inside yourself. It was coming from their cutie marks, undamped by snow.

“So we reckoned,” Applejack squeezed her hat, “all that stuff about gifts and favors is old-fashioned. Money’s the way to, uh, allercate things. And once we started thinking like that, it seemed like friendship is just a way of deciding things that you don’t pay for. Should I pop over to Rarity’s for a visit? Wish Pinkie Pie a happy birthday? Send a pie over to Fluttershy? Used to be friendship said so, but that’s not as good as markets, so we’ll use them instead. That’s how we can really care for each other. That’s friendship.

“Only…thing is, it don’t seem very friendly. So busy haggling and exchanging that their ain’t no time for anything else. And I wondered if my own life hain’t taught me that what feels right, and what is right, ain’t always the same. Then the part of me that listens to me and talks back wondered if that wasn’t the greatest bit of self-fooling since Apple Bloom got her friends to whitewash that fence. Lucky me I got a me inside me who ain’t that stupid.”

“And I had a thought,” Fluttershy said. “Friends give me the things I can’t get myself. Like Applejack’s dependability, or Pinkie Pie’s cheer, or Rainbow Dash’s sincerity. If I can just buy them instead, then I don’t need friends.”

“And from the other side,” said Rarity, “if everything is for sale, then we have nothing to give.”

Pinkie Pie was covered in red marks and seemed tired. “We can’t keep going like this, but we’re afraid to stop. We don’t know what to do. And not knowing what to do, somehow it seemed like the one luxury money can’t buy.”

Twilight remembered the paralyzed fury of the scorned mare.

“For the record, I think they’re all crazy,” Rainbow Dash said.

“How are your wings?”

They were hidden in bandages, and Rainbow Dash was clearly trying to keep them still. “I’ll be flying soon enough.”

“No, you won’t,” Fluttershy said.

“Aw, Fluttershy!”

“It’s not up to me!”

“I’ll pay you!”

“It doesn’t work like that! Your wings need time to heal!”

“I’ll pay for that too!”

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash groaned simultaneously.

“So anyway, we keep insisting on everypony paying for everything because of the magic spell,” Applejack said.

Twilight opened her mouth to say, “But that’s just how you feel, it’s not a magic spell,” and stopped.

Maybe the model needed a feel term.

Twilight closed her eyes. “I’m not sleeping, I’m thinking.”

She opened one eye. “Although if I start to snore, wake me up.”

She closed her eyes again and leaned back against the bed of snow.

At its core, economics was about opportunity cost. Opportunity cost was what you gave up to make the choice that you did. That meant economics was basically about alternatives.

Some ponies thought that ponies could afford irrational behavior if they were doing well, but if they risked going out of business, they would become more rational. They thought that the increased harm of a behavior would make ponies do less of it. There was sense to that view, but the only thing that could really change behavior was the presence of an alternative. Otherwise, no matter how harmful, say, an irrational pricing strategy was, ponies wouldn’t do anything different.

And once you started thinking about alternatives, there didn’t seem to be a reason to stop. An informal gift economy was one possibility. So was a hyper market-driven economy with no room for friendship. And no matter how much suffering that caused, as long as ponies lacked an alternative, they would keep on charging each other for breathing audibly.

When ponies went shopping, they were calculating and thoughtful about every decision—unless there was a cute saddlebag on sale, in which case all bets were off. But you didn’t calculate birthdays. You didn’t have to think at all. Send a card, buy them some variation of the same present you’ve always been getting them. And once you noticed that, it was everywhere. Greetings, goodbyes, and all the in-betweens were run on semi-automated programs.

Markets were calculating by their very nature, but most ponies lived their life according to patterns and norms. There had to be that barrier around money, that awkwardness about the subject of payment to a friend for services rendered.

But why should that be true?

It wasn’t an obvious question. But it was an alternative.

If she had taken away their old patterns, and now they were living on brute calculations second-by-second, then all she had to do was give them new ones.

She opened her eyes.

“Everypony, draw a circle around yourself in the snow. And don’t say I have to pay you, just want to.”

“Is this a magic circle?” Rarity asked.

“I tried to teach you all—except you, Rainbow Dash—that everything has an opportunity cost. There’s always a price, and there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. That’s usually true. But not always. Sometimes you can get everything you want. It just takes a bit of magic. Or, to use the scientific term, technology.

“The circle around you is a kind of technology. Instead of bargaining over everything, we’re just going to say that everything in the magic circle is already bargained for. You don’t have to pay ponies to leave you be, or ask them to pay you if they want to bother you. Circle stuff is asymmetric and unfair; you are the boss of the circle and no pony can contravene you.”

“It’s going to be tricky when the snow melts,” Pinkie Pie said.

“You don’t have to literally have a circle around you. We’ll just say that everypony has a friendship zone around what is her and hers. Or property rights, if you don’t want to call everything friendship this and friendship that. I kind of do, though.”

“It’s all in our heads?” Applejack said. “Like a hat full of sky?”

Twilight wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she just plunged on. “There’s something weird about paying your friends for their time, isn’t it? Much better to be more generous with your time to them later. Or bring them a pie and never mention what they did for you. Or even just give them a big hug.

“And the question is, whyyyy? What’s the difference? What does money make so explicit? Why does that explicitness have to be awkward? Do we have to be so set in our ways? Who decided that, because it sure wasn’t me. Are there alternatives to the way we think and feel, and are those alternatives worth it?

“Who’s been thinking about friendship, anyway? Where are the scientists? How can we be sure that our friendship is optimal? It’s our task as economists—”

“We’re not economists,” Rarity said.

“—to make sure the way we practice friendship is the best it can be. That’s what it means to be best friends. I feel lightheaded.”

Fluttershy was instantly by her side, cradling her head.

“So yes, Applejack, I would like to pay you for your blood. As friends.”

Applejack broke out into the widest grin Twilight had ever seen on her. “And that’s okay?”

“Who decides? I don't see why we can't.”

“Fluttershy, will you do the honors?”

“Yes. Um…you don’t have to pay me though. If you don’t want to.” She flinched. “Is that all right to say?”

“Wow, the counter spell worked!” Rainbow Dash said.

“It’s not actually…sure, Rainbow Dash, just stay in that circle.”

Twilight closed her eyes as Fluttershy set to work. In the middle of Ponyville’s big freeze, among the most economically minded ponies in the world (however briefly), warm life flooded into her veins….

Such is the magic of friendship.

“I’m glad it was you,” Applejack said. Fluttershy had mercifully removed the needles and was swabbing some foul-smelling substance on everything, including them. “I couldn’t do it. Can’t do half of what my granny could. Got my cutie mark realizing that.”

“I got my cutie mark because I decided I had to have—aha, I couldn’t let you stop being my friend,” Rarity said, leaning forward. “You can do a lot more than you think.”

“That’s how I got my cutie mark,” Fluttershy said. “I decided I would decide the fate of every living thing.”

In a different season, crickets would have chirped.

“It didn’t sound creepy in my head,” Fluttershy said, her face the color of a banana-strawberry smoothie. “Actually, it was to do with your grandmother’s funeral, Applejack.”

“I got my cutie mark admitting how I felt about my parents dying and my sister casting me out,” Pinkie Pie said. “Did I never tell you all about that?”

“No!”

“Anyway, it happened when you girls came to my birthday party.”

“And I got my cutie mark being really fast,” Rainbow Dash said. “It all started when I had to stand up for Fluttershy….”

One by one they shared their cutie mark stories. Tears were shed, and a number of hugs exchanged.

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash said. “I just realized something. Your cutie marks are all related—to me! I was the one who found Applejack’s parents! I let Rarity try all her giant hats on me! I’m the one who showed Fluttershy how to catch toads, and I knocked over all of Pinkie Pie’s weird pony figures!”

“You’re right!” Rarity gasped. “Rainbow Dash connects us all.” When Rainbow Dash’s face was turned, Rarity hastened a wink to everypony.

But when she turned to Twilight, the lavender Unicorn’s face was awash with tears.

“Your cutie marks are connected,” Twilight said. “I listened to the stories, there is a thread stitching them together, even Rainbow Dash’s.”

“How did you get yours?”

Twilight smiled ruefully. “Getting my cutie mark was honestly one of the less interesting things that happened to me that day. I only remember a bitter smell and the overwhelming magic filling me up.”

She explained how she had come to meet Spike and be accepted into Princess Celestia’s personal student cohort.

“I, I’m sure it’s connected somehow,” Rarity said. “Possibly…because….”

“Dragons!” Fluttershy said. “They’re, um, really cute, and…so….”

“So you were like, I want more cute friends, and then you met us,” Rainbow Dash said desperately.

“Bitter how?” Applejack said.

Twilight tried to lift a hoof to wipe her face, but she just didn’t seem to have the strength. “You don’t have to try to cheer me up. I know I’m not part of…this, whatever this is. You’re all Bearers of the Elements of Equilibrium, connected through fate by your cutie marks, and friends since forever. And I’m…an awful friend.”

She began to sob. “I was afraid! I felt like if I gave the ticket to one of you, it was the same as taking it away from the rest of you. I didn’t know how to be a friend. I don’t have much practice. And because I didn’t want to hurt any of you, I hurt all of you.”

She told the story of her old mare-friend and what she thought had happened.

“I think I remember her,” Pinkie Pie said vaguely while the others stared.

“I should apologize too,” Applejack said. “Reckon we all should, though I’ll speak for myself. I should have seen the effect my greed was having on you. I let it blind me.” There was pain in her smile. “Sometimes I ain’t even as good as an apple.”

“None of us noticed,” Rarity said. “It’s not your fault.”

“What are you talking about?’ Rainbow Dash said. “I said she should just choose, didn’t I? Now I can’t go to the Grand Galloping Gala!”

“No pony said it was going to go to you,” Fluttershy said indignantly.

“Rainbow Dash, we bullied her,” Applejack said.

“What bullying? She should have just given the ticket to me!”

“You don’t learn, do you?”

“Learn what?”

Applejack was about to retort when Pinkie Pie stood up. She reached into her poofy hair and rummaged around. After a few squeaks, bangs, and a howl that could only belong to a surprised cat, she pulled out an inflated balloon.

She gave it to Twilight.

“The cutie mark doesn’t pick,” she said. “I do.”

Twilight had a hard time answering, not the least because she was holding a piece of string attached to a balloon in her mouth.

“Group hug time!” Pinkie Pie announced. As if on cue, her friends formed a circle and wrapped their legs around each other. Rainbow Dash screamed a little, and Applejack and Fluttershy both apologized and moved their hoofs under her wings.

Twilight felt she had neither the strength nor the right to join in, but Pinkie Pie’s leg seemed to extend to almost cartoonish proportions and pulled her into the circle. They squeezed her so hard the balloon popped. She sobbed at that, and the foalishness of it made her laugh so hard it hurt.

“You are not allowed to be outside of the hug,” Pinkie Pie told her, a smile stretching from ear to ear. “This is our magic circle, and you have to obey its rules.”

“Of course,” Twilight whispered, feeling very warm in the cold.

Who decided winter has to be miserable, anyway?

This is Third Winter, Twilight thought. It’s when you figure out how to fall in love with Second Winter.

By some unspoken agreement, the hug ended. Only Applejack’s strong hoofs kept Twilight from collapsing onto the snow, unable to move. She helped her lie down.

“I think we did it,” Twilight beamed. “I'm sure the forest will go away soon. We’re two for two on saving the world.”

What happened next was sudden and unexpected, like a denouement.

“Arguably,” said a dry, obnoxious voice behind them. “Arguably.”

Author's Note

Remember the scene where Buttercup pushes Westley down a hill?

The Economically Inclined

Of course the universe couldn’t just let her have this. She had found her old friend again and saved her, her new friends had found her again and saved her. Blood that wasn’t hers pumped through her veins. It felt nice, like she was carrying a little bit of Applejack inside her. And they still had to deal with…this. Whatever this was.

It shuffled into view, a moving tree.

Twilight flopped her head to the side. The plant was just a shrub. Its voice, obnoxious and self-important, reminded her of the sort of affect the lower-ranking members of her old economics cohort would adopt, usually not long before failing out. But the sight of it filled her with dread.

“You,” it said, and Twilight felt like she was being looked like, though it had no eyes, “are, if I am not mistaken, the current librarian of the Golden Oak Tree. I understand you may use different titles; I mean to communicate substance, not labels. Did,” and its “eyes” swung over her friends, “the forest try iocane powder? Ah, but I doubted, and it seems to be born out empirically, that such a trick would work on the heir of Frankie Knight. Of course, there may be confounders, and there is always the niggling problem of induction. Or my assumptions might be wrong altogether.”

“That plant can talk!” Rainbow Dash said. She pointed in case anypony had missed it. “Look, it’s a shrub! It’s talking!”

“Arguably,” the shrub said. “It might be telepathy, or your own imagination. How do you define your terms?”

“And it’s really annoying,” Rainbow Dash said. “Hey, Twilight, it’s kind of like talking to you.”

“What are you?” Twilight said.

“I am, so I assert, the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree. You can tell by my long pointy needles and incessant need to be absolutely correct.”

“Are you a coniferous tree?” Fluttershy asked.

“Arguably.”

“Oh.”

Twilight felt its gaze on her again. “I sense the spores of the golden oak tree on you. Are you indeed Frankie Knight’s heir?”

Twilight considered what had happened. “I doubt it.”

“This…bank, then. Who is its princess?”

“Um…me.”

“But she’s not a princess,” Rainbow Dash added.

“It’s fine, I won’t be offended,” Twilight said. “You can call me Princess if you want.”

“I prefer to be exact,” the shrub said. “Very well. Let me explain the fate of Ponyville to its last economist.”

“It’s fate isn’t for you to decide,” Applejack said.

“No, I am just explaining it.” Twilight imagined the shrub giving Applejack a puzzled look. “The agreement between Frankie Knight and me goes back centuries.”

“You?” Twilight said. “What makes you so important?”

She regretted speaking almost instantly. The shrub’s attention on her felt like slimy worms crawling up her coat.

“Let me provide an analogy at some risk of inexactness. I hope you will ‘understand’ what I am saying and not—”

“Yes! Fine!”

“Your species is split into three types: Earth Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasi. Pegasi can fly and manipulate weather, Unicorns are capable with math and magic, and Earth Ponies, of course, have unparalleled business acumen. How this evolved I do not know, perhaps some kind of group selection promoting a partition of skills. This would of course be grounded in the economic theory of comparative advantage, which states that there are gains to specialization and trade.”

“That sounds very unlikely.”

“I assert nothing. I am merely speculating in a showy way while risking nothing.”

“Argh! You unbearably—argh!”

“Now consider the Alicorns.”

“…Oh….”

“You see? No specialization. Why the reversal, and why are the Alicorns the most powerful ponies when they do not benefit from the very specialization that makes your species so formidable?”

Twilight couldn’t help but be curious. “Why?”

“Ponies, in my experience, with few exceptions, are great at a many number of tasks physical, magical, and intellectual. Economics is not one of these tasks.”

Like pricing by what a book said, Twilight thought. Or not understanding that low prices mean high prices; that the market price is the lowest price.

“A species that cannot manage to think about economics will not manage anything in the end. It is no coincidence that your Alicorns are the best of your economists, and that your Alicorns are your leaders. As to why they must have attributes of all three pony types, look at the companions you have gathered around yourself.”

Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie…two of each type, including herself.

“I am that,” said the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree. “The forest does not like economics very much. I find it quite thrilling.”

“You don’t seem like every kind of plant combined.”

“No? I can think like an oak, which is to say, slowly. I am as contemplative as the slow-moving fungus, as stubborn as grass. My mind—yes, I have one—has all these parts. It is called empathy. It is a kind of magic few ponies excel at.”

“And that makes you, what, a prince?”

“Mm, there is little difference. I am the dealmaker. The job is mostly talking to other plants, you might be surprised to learn. What do they think, and how is that best changed? I need to be inside their, well, not heads, just as much as a part of them is inside mine. Forgive my flowery language; I am a plant, after all.”

Twilight listened with a growing sense of unease. It sounded like his job was a lot like what she had done with her friends over the past several days. She did not like to see herself in that obnoxious plant.

“So now I am here to make another deal.”

There it was. That sense of wrongness.

Twilight’s heart began to pulse. She and her friends were beaten and exhausted. The forest surrounded Ponyville entirely, with the exception of the bank. In other words, the shrub had a pretty good bargaining position. So why was it begging to talk to her?

Princess Celestia, the obvious answer flashed, but that didn’t seem right. Ponyville wasn’t exactly her town. Twilight didn’t know the details, but there was old magic in the golden oak tree and the compact between the forest and the town. Princess Celestia wasn’t an immediate or necessary danger. There was no reason not to consolidate and prepare for a confrontation.

What did the forest want?

No. Wrong question. I am not dealing with the forest. I am dealing with the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree.

The sugary-electric feeling of bingo! rushed through her limbs. It was like working out the answer to a particularly thorny test question.

“Do you know what a principal-agent problem is?” she said to the tree. “I wonder what your plan is, and if the other plants know about it.”

“I cannot quite say I do not know what you are referring to, but I assure you even the most likely possibility is very improbable.”

“I’ll make it clear. You want a new deal. Not like that,” she added hurriedly, “but a new pact with the town. Uh, it is with the town, right?”

“Frankie Knight was exceptional.”

“But not unique, right? It’s to do with the golden oak tree, isn’t it? It’s pretty much the only magical tree for miles that isn’t part of the forest. You gave me a huge hint when you identified me by the smell or whatever it was. I’m right, right?”

“Nothing is certain.”

“Hey, you can’t lie directly, can you? Maybe I should start pumping you for information.”

The…aura around the shrub, whatever it did to project the sense of having a face, grew colder.

“You’re going to be out of a job soon,” Twilight said. “The forest is done with economics, is that right? They tried putting up with us, and it...went...too...far....”

Guilt and fear throbbed up her spine. “It was me? The economics, right? Too much? But how did it even reach the forest?”

“You took away the guardian.” Twilight imagined the shrub trembling with rage. “That thing entered freely and with the ideals of ponies.”

“What thing?”

She could feel its “eyes” flicker to the statue and back.

“No,” she said hotly. It wasn’t going to blame the mare, and there was nothing to blame her for. “She was here before you, before any of us.”

“What are y’all talking about?” Applejack said.

“No, that’s my friend,” said Rainbow Dash at almost the same time.

“So what if I pointed her out?” Twilight demanded. “There’s no reason to act like a foal about it. Your whole existence is predicated on your ability to deal with…oh, wow. You are not popular right now, are you?”

“There is no move to replace me, if that is what you are suggesting.”

“No one wants your job! Right? To point at the invisible and say not to worry? And everypony says, what is this invisible thing you’re pointing at? How can you tell me not to worry about it? It’s an invisible thing only you can see of course I’m worried about it!”

The shrub didn’t answer.

“What was the idea? That if you took care of everything, the forest wouldn’t have to face the facts? But the deal between you and Knight was that there would be nothing to take care of. I am right, I can see it on your…er, I can tell. So you got complacent. And then…this happened. Your own laziness caught up with you. Everything has a cost.”

And the shrub exploded with fury.

“Pony! I am being merciful! You cannot even stand! And your friends don’t have our powers. It is only because the forest cannot challenge Princess Celestia that I—stop smiling like that!”

“Twilight?” Rarity said nervously. “I don’t think you should offend our, um, delightful new acquaintance.”

But Twilight knew who was standing behind her and to the side, even if she was being shy and invisible.

“You think I can’t stand, coward? That I’m only lying here, you miserable excuse for an economist, because I don’t have the strength? That by all rights I should be dead, and a miracle gave me life, but no power? Perhaps. But perhaps I have the strength to stand after all.”

Twilight gritted her teeth. Pushing Fluttershy’s helping hoof away, she began to heave herself up. The splitting pain in her side, the excruciating ache in her neck, and the pounding in her head all flared up, but it made her mad and she used that.

There was always somepony behind her, and if she only imagined herself leaning on a skinny, clown-dressed figure, then it wasn’t so difficult to stand.

Her horn pointed to the sky.

“To the cost?” Twilight said.

It slumped forward like it was bowing.

“Please.”

Twilight collapsed in front of it. In truth she couldn’t move. But the plant didn’t need to know that.

“I’m trying to be nicer,” she said. “Helping ponies rather than disdaining them. Seeing who they are, learning why they think what they think. I think everypony makes sense inside their own head, even if they seem crazy or irrational on the outside. That or my friends are just weird.”

“If I could just undo—”

“No! There’s no undoing.” Twilight was aware she was whispering to a plant. It felt strangely right. “I have a friend. She’s mad, or scared, or upset and won’t show herself. I hurt her badly. It happened, see? But if you can’t hurt your friends, what’s the point? Friends are ponies who you bring into your circle. Of course they’re going to hurt you! Inside the circle is the place where hurting you gets to happen.”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“I just mean that if a single mistake condemns you forever, then we’re all damned. Except possibly Fluttershy, she might be perfect? I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask her. But markets shouldn't do that, and neither should ponies.”

Leaves rustled. She felt wriggling slime on her coat, a sure sign of the shrub’s gaze.

“You can’t move.”

“You’re more stuck than I am,” Twilight said.

Silence.

“Help?”

“Yes. For a price.”

“But—”

“Because it wouldn’t be fair to all the other creatures of the forest, would it? I’ve seen what that same fear did to my friends.”

“What do you want?”

“Sleep. Talk to Pinkie Pie. I’ll sign whatever she agrees to.”

Twilight closed her eyes.

After a while, she began to snore.

It was over a week before the forest left Ponyville. During that time, pony and tree lived, if not in harmony, then at least in equilibrium. Twilight thought it was good for the forest to socialize a bit. And it was good for ponies to remember why they paid their voluntary defense funds.

Pinkie Pie and Applejack did most of the actual dealing with the forest and its representative, the Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree. “We’re going to need a bigger circle,” Pinkie Pie had said when Twilight asked her how it was going.

Twilight spent most of the time resting on Fluttershy’s orders. The rest she spent alone or with Spike, thinking.

She still couldn’t see the mare.

It was a bit long for a spell of shyness. Shyness had never been a problem before.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the pale cold sky.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said to the frosty air.

“I wish you would let me see you again.”

She tried kissing at random, but it felt stupid and she stopped.

“What are you doing?”

Twilight whipped around. The Unbearably Pedantic Arguably Coniferous Tree was, well, not looking at her, but it was slime-attentioning her.

Twilight couldn't think of an answer that wasn't insane. “What are you doing?”

“A deal has been reached. The forest will return to its former boundaries. In return there will be harsh penalties for soliciting on its premises.”

“Huh?”

“And no unwanted magazine subscriptions.”

“Um…if you say so.”

“Various arrangements have been made.”

“Such as?”

“More pumpkin spice flowers will grow.”

“At what price?”

“The forest may go wherever Pinkie Pie goes.”

Twilight almost objected. But the forest probably meant to follow her like ducklings. To them, Pinkie Pie was simply the bravest pony in the world.

Maybe she was to Twilight as well.

“Thank you,” Twilight said. “For your help.”

The shrub inclined like it was nodding. “We will probably never see each other again.”

It shuffled off.

Seeing it go made Twilight realize something.

It wasn't shyness. It was goodbye.

Even as she cried, the transformation began. It happened slowly in a very short span of time.

Trees uprooted and raced across the snow on roots deep enough to touch earth under the snow. Thorns arced across the snow like dolphins leaping along the sea. The forest rolled back like the endless white hills, pulling back beyond. Ponyville was restored its plot, and an end was brought to this one.

Everypony was happy again. Except Twilight, who cried a bit. The hole in her heart would never fully heal. But she had friends, and work to do, and if it took a month for her to start sleeping soundly again and longer still for her appetite to restore, well, such is grief.

Our finale scene takes place only three days after the forest left Ponyville, except for what it left with Pinkie Pie, a tiny green seedling that she put into a pot on a windowsill in full view of the morning sun. Twilight is chewing her best pen, frowning at the letter. Finally she rolls it up, ties a ribbon around it, and gives it to Spike, who sends it flying to Canterlot in a burst of flame.

“Do you think she got it?” Twilights asks nervously. Of course she did, but Twilight asks questions when she is nervous.

“Of course she—” Spike belched green flames. Twilight grabbed the letter, saw the royal seal, and tore it open.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Why did you send me only two invitations to the Grand Galloping Gala, knowing that I have five friends, not counting Spike?

Your faithful student,

Twilight Sparkle

And the message she received:

To the Chief Executive Economist of the Daughter Bank of Ponyville,

Did you teach them about scarcity and the price system yet?

Cheers,

Princess Celestia

And that really does settle everything. Not all loose ends wrapped up—what of Applejack’s cruel aunts? Or Rainbow Dash's mysterious friend? Where is Maud? And the rest of Twilight’s old cohort? Surely there is more to Princess Cadance and Shining Armor than meets the eye. But those are best left for another time. This story has no more threads left to sew.

Except…well, it’s embarrassing.

Kissing is a messy business in the best of circumstances. And an injured, exhausted Unicorn trying to plant a smacker on a traumatized, broken old mare whom she couldn’t see and who wasn’t ready for it, and when neither of them had any practice, despite what Twilight Sparkle might have slyly hinted to Moondancer when they were both just fillies, well, we should just be grateful no pony got a tongue in their eye.

The point is, Twilight had missed. Pretty badly, actually. So the mare was feeling understandably glum and unsure of what to do. She couldn’t be seen or heard. She finally knew Twilight cared, and she couldn't be seen or heard. It was like convincing yourself that the worst that could happen if you asked that cute filly out was that she’d say no, and then dropping dead of a heart attack halfway through a line about if it hurt when she fell from Clousdale.

She had nothing left. If she stopped doing her job, she’d be replaced by somepony just as efficient and much less…involved. As Twilight had tried to explain, competition meant you didn’t have to choose. You just had to listen.

And when she’d given up everything, and gotten nothing, well…it didn’t seem right. Didn’t seem like it was worth stopping here. Oh, it was equilibrium all right. A global minimum.

No. She wasn’t done. It wasn’t over.

There is one more story to tell.

Author's Note

And here you were looking forward to an epic battle between a horse and a tree.

The Use of Friendship in Society

Let us twain walk aside from the rest;
Now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony,
Come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none—Tell me the whole story,
Tell me what you would not tell your brother, wife, husband, or physician.

The cutie marks had stopped glowing. But the song remained.

It played across the flowing white hills. It danced through frozen orchards and up the trodden paths of snow. It wove through woods and rode up the pillars of smoke rising from busy chimneys.

It hummed just beyond the edge of hearing. It went on like the sound in the head after thought was silenced.

The song was too faint to say if it had words. But if it did….

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.

“Rarity, there’s customers!” Sweetie Belle said.

“So deal with them!”

“I’m busy playing on the dressmaking machine in the basement,” Sweetie Belle said. “You said I have to play at least three before I can have dinner.”

“I said no such thing!” Rarity said. “You have been imagining things, missy.”

Sweetie Belle wandered over, flopped across the table and peered at what Rarity was writing. “What’s that?”

“I am sending letters.”

“How come?”

“Because there are things to say. We’re having the Apples over tomorrow.”

“Apple Bloom’s coming?” Sweetie Belle clapped her hoofs. “We can finish playing apples to apples!”

“I…don’t think she knows the rules.”

“There are rules?”

Rarity hunched over her parchment again. “Invite the customers in and stall them with our new size system until I come down.”

“The one where we start at zero and count in, uh, logger rhythms?”

“Run along now.”

The door closed. Footsteps disappeared down the stairs. Rarity levitated her pen to the parchment and reread the last sentence.

…deeply apologize for my previous behavior. I am pleased to announce a new sale at the Carousel Boutique offering 50% off on everything for returning customers.

She sighed. Eighty-seven more names on the list.

Perhaps we could meet for tea. I would love to catch up.

Her signature splashed onto the paper with an R that curled across the page and a Y with a loop that ponies could indeed hang together with.

Eighty-six more names on the list. She felt better already.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

“Psst!”

“Eek!”

Derpy jumped three feet in the air, aided by her light Pegasus bones. For any other pony it would have been a moment of comedic surprise. Derpy was not any other pony.

Her leg caught on a mailbox, clipping it and knocking it off its perch and sending her spinning backwards through the air. She landed in a pile of snow upside-down, her legs sticking out and wiggling helplessly.

Something took hold of them and tugged. It pulled her free of the snow and onto the ground. Derpy wiped her face, shivering.

“Hey.”

“Eeeeek!”

Derpy cowered from the hooded figure. “D-don’t hurt me!”

“Hurt you?” The hood lifted, revealing a bright pink face and hair puffier than popcorn. “I just want you to deliver a message for me.”

“Oh.” Derpy’s normally gray face was bright red. She got slowly to her hoofs and searched around for her mailbag, finding it laying nearby. “S-sorry, you surprised me.”

“Life is full of surprises. I’m most of them. Now listen carefully.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to find Maud Pie.”

“Who?”

“She’s my sister. Tell her…I miss talking about rocks.”

“Where does she live?”

“I think she travels.”

“How am I supposed to find her?”

“…Pinkie Sense?”

“I don’t have that! Listen,” Derpy slung the bag over her shoulder. “I want to help you, but I’m not magic.”

“I thought the Deliverymare could find anypony.”

“Um…well….”

Pinkie Pie had gotten very close very fast. She leaned above Derpy, her eyes as wide as the maw of the abyssal creature that haunted Derpy’s dreams.

“I think you and I have something in common.”

“R-really?”

“We come from the same place.”

“W-where’s that?”

“I shouldn’t say it. If it gets said too many times, it’ll be here. And we don’t know how many times it’s been said.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It is. Maud comes from the other place. She’s as solid as a rock. It’s important that we find her. Do you understand?”

“I…think so. Um, this sounds like a really difficult mission.”

“It does? I just want to invite her to a party! What’s so difficult about that???”

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

“Yeehaw!” Applejack said. “Cerberus, you clear snow faster than any ten ponies.”

The Cerberus, which held a plow in each gigantic mouth, whipped up a small storm with its tail.

The door banged against the wall. Applejack whirled around to see Apple Bloom running out with letters in her mouth.

“Mail’s here!” Apple Bloom said in a muffled voice.

“Would you rush an apple pie?” Applejack said.

“What?” Apple Bloom jumped across a pile of snow and spat the letters out. “Look, I’m a Cerberus!”

“You ain’t, you little crabapple. Just because we change our prices now don’t mean nothing else changes.”

“Growl,” Apple Bloom said to the Cerberus, who was actually terrified of children and never knew what to do with her paws.

Applejack waited until Apple Bloom relented and gave her the letters like a proper pony.

“Let’s see here,” she said, flipping through them. “Bills. Something from William. I hope he stopped shooting apples off ponies’ heads. Last I heard he doesn’t wait to put the apple on them first.”

Apple Bloom chased after the Cerberus, who was making incredible time with the plows.

“And…huh.”

This letter wasn’t addressed to “Applejack”. It was addressed to “The eldest mare of the Apple family.”

To the eldest mare of the Apple family,

Salutations! We write to you on the most propitious of occasions….

Applejack skimmed until the words started saying something. She flipped the page and started reading.

…a business venture combining your land and our ACME-guaranteed machinery, a partnership that seems so splendid we are positively, absolutely….

Blah blah blah.

…the buried treasure of Granny Smith.

Your most humble servants,

Flim and Flam

For such short names, their signatures took up a lot of page.

Applejack looked at the frozen orchards. Snow clumped on leafless branches. The red-green bird had migrated south, and the trees were cold and gray.

But the bird would come back.

The humor tickled her face till a grin broke out. Granny Smith didn’t have no hidden buried treasure. Her treasure hung off trees for anypony to take—so long as they paid first.

Because the red apple skins were her blood, and the green her coat, and the black seeds her teeth, and the white meat the pages of the Book, those that weren’t yellow and black, which was most of them admittedly.

Not a buried treasure. A living one. There’d be a funeral for it someday. But not before Applejack’s. And not as long as anypony liked to eat apples.

“Apple Bloom!” she called. “Get me my best paper and the pen that still writes! I got a letter to send!”

When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.

“Fluttershy! It’s so good to see you again.”

“Hello,” Fluttershy smiled at the mare at the desk. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around recently. All this snow!”

“Don’t make me laugh! You’re here so often I think you’re one of our patients!”

“Ha.” Fluttershy picked up her medicine box again and headed down the hall.

She stopped at a door and knocked. Instead of waiting, she pushed it open.

“Hello, Mrs. Butterhoof. Would you like me to change your sheets?”

Mrs. Butterhoof indicated she would, mostly by drooling. Fluttershy changed the sheets, hefting up a portion of Mrs. Butterhoof’s saggy flesh whenever she needed to. She wasn’t strong when it came to leg-wrestling, but she was the local champion at lifting old mares.

“All better?”

“Grnl.”

“That’s nice. Have a good day.”

She closed the door on the way out. Two doors down and to the left, she knocked again.

“Mr. Sweet? Would you like me to get you some fresh water?”

“Fresh water! They dint feed me for three days!”

“Goodness. I’ll get you something to drink.”

“Right, right,” Mr. Sweet said suspiciously, watching her fill a cup. “I won the lottery.”

“Really? Again?” Fluttershy gave him the filled cup.

“Don’t tell!”

“My lips are sealed.”

Down the line of doors, familiar faces, familiar conversations. She didn’t even have to listen anymore. She always did, though.

The last door looked like all the others. Fluttershy took a deep breath before she knocked.

“Eh?”

“It’s me!”

“Eh? I’m seeing a patient!”

“I’ll be just a minute.”

The instant Fluttershy stepped into the room, Father’s face split into the widest smile a pony ever had. “Feather! Come here, pigeon.”

The room was dark, the blinds drawn. It smelled slightly stale and musty, as if the window wasn’t opened enough. She opened it, then set the medicine box down by the foot of his bed and sat.

“Hello, Daddy.”

“Feather, my dear, what do you think of the curtains I got?”

Fluttershy was used to answering to her mother’s name. She was also used to the curtains, or rather the lack of them. “I couldn’t ask for more.”

“I picked them out special just for you.”

“Thank you, I really love it.”

Wrinkles molded his face and made it rubbery and slack. He was wearing his teeth at least, though probably not cleaned. For a moment he seemed to have exhausted his conversational stores.

“I saw a patient today,” he said at last.

“Oh? That’s good.”

“You won’t believe who!”

“Probably not.”

He gave her a crafty look. “Princess Celestia, it was! Pigeon, we’ve hit it big!”

“I’m very happy to hear that.”

“She had yellows.”

“Goodness.”

“Cured her right, though. Cured her right.”

“Do you know my name?” Fluttershy said.

He grunted, not unpleasantly. He just didn’t have an answer.

The medicine box was by her hoofs. There were bandages, and smelly things for cleaning, and a very pointy needle, and a small vial of a liquid that had sent tremors through her heart every time it sloshed when she first poured it.

She knew what the last memory of her father would be. She had made it months ago. If she also remembered today, it would just be remembering it twice.

“They said it would be better for you here,” she said, knowing he didn’t understand. “I wasn’t sure, but they said, everypony said. At the time…at the time it hurt me more to imagine me hurting you because I didn’t let you go, than hurting you because I let you into the care of ponies who just…aren’t…enough.”

He did his grunt again, and looked around for something to say he had bought for her.

“If you want,” Fluttershy said, “I can end it. If you want. You just need to tell me somehow. If you’re unhappy or in pain, you just need to tell me somehow. And I’m sorry that I, I.” She wiped her eyes and said nothing more.

“How about a night out, Feather? Just you and me.”

“Mm-hmm,” Fluttershy said, her throat burning too much to speak. She took a deep breath. “I’d like that.”

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Rainbow Dash was winning, and it felt really good.

Her opponent studied the board. The sand was trickling down agonizingly slowly, like Tank walking across the room. His hoof hovered over a piece she hadn’t considered. Had she missed—oh no, if he moved there!

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE PONY SHAPED ONE MOVES?

Rainbow Dash breathed a sigh of relief.

They met for tea every week. Chess wasn’t as much fun as a race, but he always won those. He wasn’t faster—he just won. As in, by the time she got to the finish line, he was already there, and had been since the race began.

Fortunately, he was kind of dumb when it came to calculating anything more than a lifespan.

Tank nudged a platter with a fresh pot of tea along the ground. Rainbow Dash sipped.

“Ow! It’s hot!”

Tank would have rolled her eyes, but she was a tortoise.

“It’s been a crazy time lately,” Rainbow Dash said as her opponent blundered into an easy fork. She snapped her move onto the board, flipped the sandglass, and took another sip. “Twilight’s gone so crazy she’s even moping about an invisible friend.”

BUGGER.

“Yeah, you’re bad with the knights.”

I LEAD THEM OUT OF BATTLE, NOT INTO IT.

“Huh? You always say the weirdest things. A statue came alive! It tried to kill me. Twilight saved me! Then she made out with the air or something, it got kind of uncomfortable.”

CHECK.

Rainbow Dash took his piece without even stopping to think. “She’s so bummed out, I wish there was something I could do.”

BUGGER.

“At least the Sugarcube Corners are open again. I couldn’t sleep without any coffee.”

Her opponent studied the board with an increasingly unhappy gaze.

Rainbow Dash swished the last sip of tea around her mouth thoughtfully. “You’re always going off to weird places, have you ever seen an invisible mare like that? Huh? You have? Really! Can you bring her a message from Twilight? Oh, you’re seeing her tomorrow? How come?”

Notice me!

The mare watched Twilight.

Twilight did not see the mare.

Please! Be what you were again!

Twilight turned the page of her book.

The mare slumped on the floor. Spike walked through her, carrying a glass of radish juice, which Twilight accepted with a pleased noise.

No….

Nothing worked. There wasn’t anything to seem like it could work. Like a foal who stopped believing in Santa Hoofs, Twilight was never coming back.

The mare rejected that. There was a way. There had to be a way.

The floor wobbled. Darkness crept around the edges of her vision. Space blurred and distorted—

No, no! Don’t do that again. It just hurt her and didn’t help.

But she saw again! No. She didn’t. Not me. Just the monster I became.

Maybe I should hurt her—no! It makes everything black and cold. You hated that. You told yourself you didn’t and it was a lie and it still didn’t help.

Then what?

“That reference can’t be right,” Twilight said to herself. “I’ll check.” She began to stand up.

For a moment the mare thought it was just a dark vision of herself, another guild-made tool of torment. But it didn’t disappear.

A stallion all in black with a scythe was walking across the room toward Twilight. Who had taken quite a lot of abuse over the last two weeks, and never rested like Fluttershy said.

Whose carotid arteries, as she stood, were stretched too thin, and snapped.

The scythe came down.

And stopped on the handle of a shovel.

Two glowing blue sparks turned her way.

“Mine,” the mare said.

She didn’t know if a magic circle could hold him. That’s what the shovel was for.

The scythe flashed, and she blocked it again. It whirled, cutting, and met the blade of her shovel. Sound waves were sliced apart before they could make so much as a clang.

He drew back for a moment. The mare tensed.

A thousand, million, billion scythe-blades carved through as many worlds toward Twilight, cutting along every line of possibility.

The mare moved to block the first one….

In another world…

…there was a house on the rock by the water. A Unicorn lived there, and kept a library. She was visited occasionally by the local fillies and colts when they were looking for entertainment or a place to hide.

The Unicorn spent her days there reading by the sea and smiling at the young ones who came her way. Waves falling against the rock carried her to sleep each night, and the morning bravado of gulls woke her. She ate simple things, and read, and watched, and was basically happy.

There was another…

…she was very skinny, but it didn’t matter, and she wore a dress the color of spring grass that stopped short of reaching her hoofs. That mare was always with the Unicorn, though few ever noticed. The Unicorn did, though, and politely refused the occasional offers she received to meet with some local stallion. The ponies of the nearby town grew accustomed to their spinster librarian on the rock by the water and the offers stopped.

The Unicorn knew the mare, and was glad for her company.

Many suns and moons passed like that….

In the normal amount of time, lengthy for the Unicorn and vanishingly brief for her companion, the Unicorn was dying. The mare could not save the Unicorn, nor join her.

This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

None of them did.

The mare had eyes that saw in modals, eyes that had seen this long ago. And now, finally, she gave it up….

An infinitude of scythe-edges curled down toward Twilight. The mare blocked each one.

“Stalemate,” she said. “I’m allowed to challenge you to a game, right? You don’t win.”

He stood back, putting the butt of the scythe on the floor and compressing very much like a sigh.

I CAN NEVER REMEMBER HOW THE PONY SHAPED ONES MOVE.

He fished a sandglass out of his cloak and examined it. Only a few grains of purple sand remained.

Grains of sand that were glowing, glowing as of music giving off light.

It disappeared back into the black recesses of his cloak. He looked at her, one brilliant blue eye flashing out for a moment.

He grinned.

And left.

The mare sagged. Twilight stood by the bookshelf, searching for a reference, and didn’t notice the sad eyes on her back.

It wasn’t what she wanted.

It was what she had.

And that would have to be good enough.

She would not stand at her grave and cry.
There would be no grave. She would not die.

This is not a happy story.

It is not a sad one either. Some bad things happened, and some good things, and a lot of mess in between. But I think Twilight Sparkle, and even the mare, are both, if not happier, then better off now than in the time during and after Princess Cadance’s visit to Canterlot. No matter what they each lost, and no matter what will come after, something was created during that brief and unspoken-of battle that would not die…and not vanish…until the end of the time of all things….

…We must face the positive fact that the motivations for higher living standards that a free market channels into Walrasian equilibrium when the special conditions for that pattern happen to be favorable—these same motivations often lead to social collusions and myriad uses of the state. For good or evil, these may not be aberrations from laissez-faire, but theorems entailed by its intrinsic axioms. —Paul Samuelson. (Emphasis added)

However favorable an opinion one may hold of the business game, he must be very illiberal not to concede that others have a right to a different view and that large numbers of admirable people do not like the game at all. It is then justifiable at least to regard as unfortunate the dominance of the business game over life, the virtual identification of social living with it, to the extent that has come to pass in the modern world. In a social order where all values are reduced to the money measure in the degree that is true of modern industrial nations, a considerable fraction of the most noble and sensitive characters will lead unhappy and even futile lives. —Frank Knight.

He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; andy he care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading.

Allostastic Overload

When a tree falls in a forest, and no pony is around to hear it, ponies ask: does it make a sound?

Trees ask: who the hell knocked me over? Did anytree see which way he went? Argh, I think I tore my phloem!

Ponies tell the stories they know. Trees don’t tell stories at all. They’re very literal beings. Besides, something about being cut down and cut up to be turned into books for thousands of years made them averse to the whole thing. It would be like a cow smearing butter all over itself by an open-flame grill.

The stories ponies tell are stories ponies have seen. Stories get told of bold decisions and strong leadership. Stories don’t get told of gut bacteria and skipped breakfasts, of misplaced notes and reminders and bad moods brought on by traffic. In fact gut bacteria rule the world. Many a pony’s fate has ridden on whether the judge had pancakes that morning.

And other things unnoticed, like the quiet courage of deciding to set a book aside before one is finished with it….

Here is what happened: Behind a weakened Unicorn, a scythe clanged off the blade of a shovel. The scythe-edge was deathly sharp, carving photons apart into a brilliant blue-white glow that had no meaning to unmagical eyes. The blade of the shovel was dinged and scratched, and smelled faintly of dung. When the blades met, it was not fragments of metal that were torn off and scattered, but tiny pieces of magic that drifted in the particle wind. Behind the unwitting Unicorn, the invisible battle raged.

In terms of time, it lasted less than an instant. In terms of dimension, it covered all of them.

An infinity of scythe-strikes swung from every possible reality toward Twilight Sparkle. But the mare had eyes that saw in modals, and blocked each one.

(Ears, though, were another story. The mare couldn’t tell a C sharp from the flat side of a shovel. The rhythm of life was sung in a pitch too deep for her to hear.)

Each clash of scythe against shovel sent particles of magic floating into the air. Mostly this was of no consequence. It was a very small amount of magic, in many worlds caught by the breeze and blown out the window, carried here and there, doing little more than to make a frog briefly remember a fictional life as a prince, or causing a four leaf clover to sprout from the ground, only to be immediately crushed by a shoe. In some universes the particles were carried up beyond the atmosphere to be swept along in the solar wind. Mostly they got stuck in books of various kinds, and to the child later reading it for whom it seemed that the story was really happening, it might indeed have been, very slightly.

Like many monumental historical actions, such as the choice of whether to accept an eager but mediocre art student to one’s prestigious European art academy, or, indeed, whether to have breakfast on a given morning, it mostly didn’t matter at all, not for most things, in most times, in most places.

In one time, in one place, little flecks of magic so dimensionless they couldn’t be called minute settled like dust in the bag of a girl crying behind a book in her high school library. The girl clutched something inside the bag and seemed to feel better, if a little drained. And if the purple device in her bag seemed to glow slightly, surely it was just a trick of the light.

This is what happened: Twilight Sparkle, Unicorn, economist, and subject of this narrative, accepted that something in her life had become more important than economics. And the mare[1] accepted that she loved Twilight enough to give her up.

[1] The mare, as Twilight tended to think of her, was usually seen in a shovel and a sort of multicolored clown dress with lots of yellow and purple, and pink spots. She was not a god, nor exactly an equinomorphic poneification. She did not exist because of belief nor despite it. It was more as though everything else existed because of her, or perhaps her being gave meaning to existence as something to contrast with it. We are what is, and she is what would have been....

Only economists speak her name. It isn’t occult or anything. They’re just the only ones who find her very interesting.

But not to that. Not to…him. Not ever.

Twilight Sparkle had never outright asked Princess Celestia, “How does one become an Alicorn?” It would have been cheating, and besides, there was the possibility that Princess Celestia would have told her that one does not. But if she had, Princess Celestia might have answered, “First one must become immortal.”

The mare’s shovel scratched a checkmark onto the square box of the universe.

One down. Three to go.

That is what happened.

And this is what’s happening:

In a castle at midnight, a mirror cracks in two.

This is never a good sign.

It is especially bad when this mirror is in a locked room with a forbidding sign on the door. The doormaker had tried ancient invisible runes and graphic pictographs, but found they weren’t as effective as a bold-printed sign that read Do Not Enter, I Mean It.

The door is sealed, magically, in a number of ways. The mirror is covered with what appears to be a blanket, but no blanket is quite that black, as if the intention was to make sure that no light would touch the mirror’s surface.

Right in front of the mirror is a metal, spring-loaded clamp with a weight-sensitive plate. The whole thing is connected to a chain attached to a pillar that an elephant could not have moved.

It has been over one thousand years since anything has gone through, or come out of this mirror.

And nothing continues to come out of it.

In a windowsill outside the room, one that frames the full moon in the purple sky, a phoenix perches. The phoenix perches, as there is only one, just like there is only One Bank. Now the One Bank has Nine Daughters.

And the phoenix is thinking along similar lines.

We can’t say that phoenixes, being birds of fire, don’t have eggs, because, as we’ve established above, there is only one phoenix, and that wouldn’t be grammatical.

Phoenix doesn’t have egg.

She had it, once. A long time ago. Something happened to it. But she can’t remember what.

She can’t remember other things. Like ever being a regular bird. There must have been, at some point, some kindling. And to light the kindling, a spark.

But she can’t remember it. And she can’t find her egg.

Philomena spreads her wings and leaps from the windowsill. A thermal does not catch her wings. She is made out of fire. It is not about muscles and pinion feathers and bone density. Not for her.

It is about the idea of fire, and the spark that keeps it lit.

Thunder booms over Canterlot. The new weather schedule for the year is in: Rainstorms across Equestria, to give the new flowers a nice stretch after the long winter.

Philomena cannot remember worrying about the rain. It has been a long time since water could douse her flames.

She flaps anyway, for the show of things, and flies on, looking….

Pieces of mirror fall to the ground. If anything had come through and triggered the leg clamp or any number of magical detections, then Princess Celestia would have appeared in an instant, alone. One other pony would have felt the tug, but for a long time would not have been able to answer at all and almost certainly would not answer now.

But nothing came through the mirror. As nothing had for over a thousand years.

Besides, Princess Celestia would have guessed wrong. The spell was made for…her.

But this was a them.

The mirror continued to crumble. And of all things, Princess Celestia had not set a spell to detect the tinkle of glass.

It’s little things like that that get you.

In a world very similar to ours…

...but more colorful, and with proportions of head to torso that would suggest a marriage between a lymph node and a tumor in the former, and of clothes that shrunk in the wash in the latter…

...and with terrible taste in skirts and boots…

...three girls seize another and pin her against the pedestal of a statue of a horse.

I should mention that the three girl seized the other in their hands. These creatures are humans, sort of. Like how a human might draw a horse as a set of circles connected by gentle curves, and humanize their eyes and lips and noses, these humans are how ponies might idealize us, elongating our faces and legs to match their proportions, and giving us hair that more resembles wild, flowing manes.

These girls are in high school. You can tell by the way one just slammed her fist into the pinned girl’s stomach.

That girl, who can’t even fall to her knees, is named Twilight Sparkle. She is going to die.

“I never appreciated,” said Adagio Dazzle, drawing back her fist for another strike, her hair as orange and bulbous as a wild pumpkin, “that one of the perks of driving a girl to vomit after every meal is that she won’t have anything left to throw up on you.” She struck Twilight again. True to Adagio’s word, all that came up was some green bile that dripped down Twilight’s chin.

“Drop her,” Adagio said. The other two girls, whose names are Aria Blaze and Sonata Dusk, let Twilight fall to the ground, where she curled up, wheezing.

The moon was full, and the air was cold, and the grass was muddy from last night’s rain.

“It’s your own fault, Twilight,” said Adagio, leaning over her. “You became so distant all of a sudden. I felt like you didn’t even want to be my friend anymore.”

“Sunset Shimmer said I shouldn’t listen to you,” Twilight gasped.

“Sunset Shimmer isn’t here to protect you, is she?” Adagio said. “So you’re going to do what we say, or I’ll keep hitting you, and then you’ll do what I say. As much fun as it would be to see what happens to the human liver when you force it to keep ejecting, I already know.” Adagio raised her fist. “I hate to be crude, but you’re not listening to me. I hate when people don’t listen to me. Sunset Shimmer is the deafest person I’ve ever met, and now she’s rubbing off on you. Take it out, now.”

Trembling, Twilight pulled the device out of her pocket. Adagio jerked back from it like she was afraid to touch it. Then she punched Twilight in the jaw.

“I told you not to point that thing at me, you stupid girl!”

Twilight lay in a ball and wondered, vacantly, why she was letting these girls hit her. Even for public school, this couldn’t possibly be how girls her age socialized.

She had begged her parents not to move her from Crystal Prep to Canterlot High. She had offered to get up early to take the bus. She had offered to live in a tent by the school. She had asked Principal Cadance if she could live in the school. It’s not like anyone was using the library at night.

But Principal Cadance had just smiled and told her to write if she ever wanted to talk. Her parents had not smiled and told her that private school was expensive and now she was guaranteed to be top of the class, which was both already true at Crystal Prep and false at Canterlot High because a girl named Sunset Shimmer existed.

Three girls named Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk, who called themselves the Dazzlings, also existed at Canterlot High. Twilight had been drawn into their clique like a little boat helplessly pulled in by the tide. They were beautiful, with hair like the multicolored toothpaste swooshes in the advertisements, and they were glamorously fashionable, and very good at thinking of clever sarcastic things to say that made pretty much every girl who wasn’t named Sunset Shimmer afraid to talk to them. The Dazzlings had put into words a number of distressing concerns Twilight had about life in public school regarding things like hairstyles and skirts and blue-haired guitar-playing boys named Brad, and they had offered to help her become popular...and they had...and it made her miserable….

The relationship with Brad had been short-lived. After a quite pleasant first date, which had left her wide awake at 3 in the morning thinking about how nice it had been when their arms had accidentally brushed, rumors had apparently circulated to Brad and his social circle regarding her sexual history and its connection to her transfer from Crystal Prep. These disinclined Brad to further the relationship, and Twilight, distraught, had started to let things slip in school until she was approached for homework help by, of all people, Sunset Shimmer.

Sunset Shimmer wouldn’t have let the Dazzlings hit her. Not that anyone would try to hit Sunset Shimmer. She wore a leather jacket. A leather jacket. In high school!

Sunset Shimmer was everything that Twilight wished she was. Sunset Shimmer talked like a grown-up, dressed like a rebel, and aced advanced classes like she already knew the material and was retaking Honors Calculus because she didn’t have anything better to do. She even had a tattoo of a red and yellow sun on her back. Twilight didn’t know what her parents would do to her if she ever got a tattoo, but it probably involved an orphanage.

They had become friends because Sunset Shimmer had decided they would. Twilight hadn’t even had the courage to look her in the eye the first time they talked. It had started with her asking Twilight for homework help, which had somehow turned into Sunset Shimmer helping her….

“You’re smarter than this,” Sunset said as they closed their textbooks. “What’s going on?”

“Just tired,” Twilight said in a small voice.

“And hungry.”

Twilight held very still for a long moment. “How did you know?”

“Just because you can do it quietly doesn’t mean you can do it stinklessly. You remind me a lot of myself, actually.”

“I don’t.” Twilight looked at her in shock. “You’re…” tall and beautiful and have an amazing skirt and you’re even smarter tha - as smart as I am, and no one would call you fat because even if you were, and they did, you wouldn’t care….

“No, I’m serious,” Sunset Shimmer said. “You’re just like me when I was your age.”

“I thought we were in the same grade.”

“We are.” Sunset Shimmer leaned in. “I’m actually 312 years old.”

Twilight decided Sunset Shimmer was joking. She smiled. “Thanks, Sunset.”

“Hey, maybe we could hang out tomorrow? I need help on my economics essay.”

“You do not need help on your economics essay.”

“I do. I’m pretty sure the teacher hates me. It needs to be absolutely perfect.”

“Well, you did kind of take the marker out of his hand and start lecturing. Twice.”

“He was doing comparative advantage all wrong! He couldn’t even get the numbers right!”

Twilight grinned. “I know.”

“I really hate when people mess up economics.”

“I didn’t think anything rattled you.”

“You’d be surprised. Sometimes, I get really angry.”

“What...what do you do?” Twilight didn’t know why Sunset Shimmer was opening up to her like this. It was wishful thinking to think that the coolest girl in school, if not the whole world, actually felt something in common with her.

“I set things on fire.”

“Really?”

“Am I really 312 years old?”

Twilight grinned. “Same time tomorrow, in the library?”

“Is there a reason to meet anywhere else?”

Twilight laughed. She zipped open her bag to put her book inside.

“What’s that?”

Twilight glanced at Sunset. “This?” She took out the device. “Um….” Her face turned red. “Want to know something embarrassing?”

“No.”

Twilight’s face collapsed.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” Sunset sat on the table and looked at the device with interest. Twilight wouldn’t have ever sat on a table. Ever. ”What is it?”

“Well, um.” That’s a library table. It’s for books. You shouldn’t, it’s like sitting on a throne in a room full of kings. “When I get mad, I think about this...girl. She’s me,” Twilight’s face turned red, “and...oh, geez.”

“I have invisible friends too,” Sunset Shimmer said. “I write about them in my diary.”

“Next you’re going to tell me you still play with stuffed animals.”

“I love stuffed animals.”

Twilight grinned. “Well, it’s this alter ego, right? I call her - don’t laugh - Midnight Sparkle. It’s...dark me. Yes, I write stories about her. She meets a lot of attractive men. And she lives in this device I made. It helps me calm down. This is what I do when I get angry. I just hold it, and it’s like all my negative feelings just flow into it.”

“You made it?”

“It started as a crafts project. I wanted to make a kind of magic charm. To...help. Um. Don’t worry, I don’t really believe in magic and crystals and astrology and things.”

Sunset frowned. “Why not? I do. Can I see?” She took the device out of Twilight’s hand.

“Hm,” Sunset said. “Cute. It’s like a purple compass.” She gave it back. “If you’re ever feeling angry, you can always talk to me.”

“And we can set something on fire together?” Twilight said hopefully.

Sunset Shimmer laughed. “Girlfriend, now you’re talking. See you later, Twilight.”

“Bye, Sunset….”

“Hold it up above your head,” Adagio said warily. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

Twilight leaned against the pedestal of the statue to get to her feet. She held the device up like Adagio said.

Sunset Shimmer wouldn’t have.

Midnight Sparkle wouldn’t have either.

What was the point of admiring them if she was just going stay the same? It was like knowing there was a better financial strategy and then just continuing to bleed money.

And everything hurt. She was sick of this.

Twilight pointed the device at Adagio. She reacted like Twilight had leveled a gun at her.

“What’s going on?” Twilight demanded. Adagio cringed. Aria and Sonata were crouched, catlike, leaning in opposite directions like they were about to bolt. “What is this? What do you want from me?”

Adagio stayed low. She crept warily, with sudden movements like a shark in the water, a lateral motion bringing her closer to Twilight.

“Stay back.” Twilight felt her the pedestal press against her back. “I mean it!”

“You don’t know what that is,” Adagio stated.

“What what is? This? It’s a crafts project!”

“Over one thousand years.” Adagio continued to creep toward her. “In over one thousand years, you’re the first human with magic. You woke up my hunger.”

Twilight had been to the beach with her parents once. She had gotten distracted measuring the frequency of the waves and wandered out into the water past the sandbar. Nothing had touched her, she hadn’t seen anything. But some sixth sense told her there was something black in the water, deep below the murky surface, swimming toward her. She had paddled back to shore as fast as she could.

Looking back, it seemed silly. But Adagio was giving her the same feeling. Right in front of her, she was being stalked by an ancient, black hunger. Twilight held out the device like a cross and felt about as confident in it as she did in the real thing.

Adagio’s lips were spreading back. Her mouth opened, and Twilight saw her teeth. For one, there were too many of them. Second, there were rows. Rows of sharp, triangular teeth, pale and translucent, like they hadn’t made up their mind whether to exist. As Adagio got nearer, they seemed to solidify, emerging into existence.

Adagio suddenly slammed Twilight against the pedestal. She was too strong - Twilight kicked, but it didn’t seem to do anything, and Adagio pinned her arms to the cold stone.

“Do you know what the opposite of friendship is?” she said. Her voice was thick around the impossible layers of teeth. Yellow scales were spreading up her arms and across her face.

“Let me go!”

“It’s conflict,” said Adagio, squeezing Twilight’s arms so hard it felt like her bones would be snapped. “Hate and anguish and disequilibrium. Your device is full of that negative magic.” Her mouth was opening up too wide, the teeth getting closer, surrounding Twilight’s face. Then she grabbed her wrist and twisted it, pressing the device against the pedestal.

The moon overhead gleamed white. The air was getting colder.

“Do it!” Adagio raged.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Adagio ripped the device from her hand and pushed it against the pedestal. “Come on! Work!”

Twilight stared in horror. She yelped as Adagio suddenly seized her by the hair and flung her to the ground. “You’re too useless to use!” Adagio hurled the device down in the mud by Twilight, who snatched it automatically.

“Adagio,” said Aria, sounding cautious, “it didn’t work, we didn’t have any reason to think it would. Just because there’s a bit of magic in this world. Come on, let’s go sing something. Adagio? Let’s go sing something. We always feel better after doing that.”

“I shouldn’t have expected this bitch to be good for anything,” Adagio said. Her voice was back to normal again, as if the teeth were gone.

Twilight’s knees were cold and wet. The device was caked with mud. It pressed into her palm and ached.

She wanted to hit Adagio.

So why didn’t she?

Because she was afraid.

Because there’s three of them, and one of me -

But there was one of everyone. And that didn’t seem to stop anyone else.

So it was just her, then. Because Adagio was distracted, and Twilight could be getting up now, could be balling her fists, could even be running.

It wasn’t safer, or even easier, to shiver on her hands and knees in the mud instead of doing anything. Just more cowardly.

Rage and shame and hatred flowed down her arm into the device. It overflowed. And something flowed back.

It went through her and into her and out. It wrapped around her.

There was a very dark light.

When it was over, Twilight’s clothes were different. Something weighed on her back. Muscles she didn’t know she had flexed by instinct, bring a pair of dark, feathered wings into her vision. She examined them and the horn that seemed to have appeared on her forehead. Her hair felt different: It was sticking up more, and waving in a way that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the breeze. And a purple tail made out of hair seemed to have grown from the base of her spine.

It should have looked ridiculous. She didn’t feel ridiculous. The idea of feeling ridiculous didn’t make much sense to her.

She examined her new lavender, fingerless gloves and the shiny, glowing boots.

Three girls were backing away. They didn’t seem very consequential anymore. But she shouldn’t let them get away either. That wouldn’t be right.

Anger channeled down her arm and flicked out of her fingertips. A blue bolt smashed the air where the three girls had been standing before they jumped out of the way.

There was a muddy field in the middle of the air, surrounding by a jagged purple glow like the fragment of a mirror. In the distance a white castle rose above the gates to a city.

Midnight Sparkle floated to it, dreamlike, one hand outstretched.

Movement to her side. Her hand snaked out and caught Adagio’s arm. Ha! She was so aware of it. Every rustling blade of grass, the scattered light of every star overhead, and she was strong! Adagio’s arm was a twig in her grasp.

It was also yellow and scaly. Translucent fins were rising from Adagio’s back.

“What are you?” Adagio demanded.

Sunset Shimmer woke up. Her diary on the nightstand was glowing. She stared at it like a penguin in a zoo might upon seeing a glacier.

Then a rush of energy bolted through her heart, and she was running out the door with the diary tucked under her arm.

It was freezing cold. She felt none of it as her bare feet pounded the sidewalk, heading for the statue at Canterlot High.

“Princess!” she shouted as she ran. “Princess! I’m sorry, Princess! Have you forgiven me? I’m ready! Please! Take me home!”

Across a void where distance has no meaning, something so light that it made a photon seem like a black hole in comparison crossed over….

Buried deep in a drawer in Princess Celestia’s office that hadn’t been cleaned for 250 years, a blank diary suddenly lit up. Letters scribbled themselves on the pages, most of them addressed to the good princess.

It’s a pity she was out that night.

The demon laughed. Her voice was deeper than Twilight’s, sultry and oozing confidence.

“Why, I’m Midnight Sparkle. And you are -”

Adagio howled in pain.

“- broken,” Midnight Sparkle said with satisfaction. She released the mangled, yellow-scaled arm. “A shark with a broken fin. What a shallow pool you bullied.”

Adagio fell back, her teeth and fins fading. Sonata and Aria clutched her, cowering behind her even as they supported her.

“What else?” Midnight Sparkle examined herself. “I know.” She snapped her fingers. A black cloak appeared on her, and then tightened into jacket, shiny like leather. “That’s more like it.”

“We need your help,” Aria said.

Midnight Sparkle looked at her with wide eyes. Aria Blaze, with purple hair parted like living room drapes and a redundant belt over tight pants, who had treated Twilight’s insecurities like target practice for almost a year. Adagio was scarier, but Aria was more easily bored. That boredom had been a constant source of misery for -

- for the girl I no longer am.

Midnight Sparkle crushed the anger sweeping down her arm, the anger that wanted to explode in blue violence and obliterate the three girls in front of her. She wanted it to. But it wasn’t right.

She raged at that. They hadn’t ever let right and wrong deter them. To be bound by that, it was like -

- like being a good person.

But she was the shark now!

Yes, and? Being a person is much more fun, at least until they invent a book you can read underwater.

Midnight Sparkle rose into the air. Blue sparks cascaded down her arms. Where they fell, purple rents in the earth opened up, little fragments of an alien city. She thought she saw a horse walk past -

“Please,” Aria said. “We just want to go home.”

Midnight Sparkle felt the power rush through her arms. She held onto it, held it back. “What is going on?”

Aria glanced at Sonata, who gave a nervous up-down jerk of her head. Adagio, in their arms, was making a high-pitched, pained whine. Was that how an injured shark sounded? It was more like how Spike, her dog, sounded when she accidentally stepped on his paw.

“We’re not from this world.” Aria pointed at the purple gash. “We’re from there, but we were banished.”

“You should have been banished from mine,” Midnight Sparkle said.

“...Yes,” Aria said. “I don’t know why no one did. But we want to go! We’ll never come anywhere near you again. Please, while the magic lasts, let us through. It’s been over a thousand years. A thousand years away from home.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” said Midnight Sparkle.

“No,” Aria said. “I’m begging you.”

Midnight Sparkle hesitated.

Damn! It wasn’t a word Twilight would use, but she wasn’t Twilight anymore. She had never had to be Twilight.

She didn’t have to be Midnight Sparkle either.

She could be...whatever she wanted.

Right now, in this moment of transformation, all she had to do was think, Who do I really want to be?

And she found that she wanted….

“Are you sorry?” asked Twilight or Midnight or maybe something that had crossed over, that had started to rise like the sun.

Aria’s mouth opened.

“Don’t lie,” said the changing creature of magic.

Aria closed her mouth.

The colors around the floating girl were warming. The leather jacket faded into nothing. Orange and yellow rippled across her clothes, her wings softened and folded behind her back like a robin’s; her tail turned red and bushy like a baby squirrel’s. Her hair no longer blazed like purple fire; it fell around her shoulders like a blossom of flower petals.

“Go,” said Sunrise Sparkle. Her voice was young and full of gentle song.

Aria and Sonata were staring at her with open mouths.

“Go,” said Sunrise Sparkle again, her head tilting to the side, a smile spreading across her face like the morning sun over a warming field of grain. She drifted lower and held out her hand to the purple gash in the world. “While it lasts.”

“Thank you!” Aria gasped.

“Yeah, thanks a lot!” Sonata said in a strangled voice. Hoisting Adagio between them, they hurried to the purple fragment and climbed in, scales rippling across their faces and arms, fins jutting out from their backs as they crossed the divide into another world.

Sunrise Sparkle drifted to the ground and held the gash from either side. She began to push it closed.

A yellow face lunged out, mouth wide open, acid dripping off rows of triangular teeth. It clamped on Sunrise Sparkle’s face. Teeth caught in her skin, dragged, ripped: They tightened around her skull until something cracked.

Sunrise Sparkle screamed and fell to her knees. Blood ran from her face onto the cold ground; purple flowers jumped up where the drops landed.

“Adagio!” a familiar voice shouted, but it wasn’t the same as Aria’s, it was too musical. “Hold her!” said Sonata’s voice, but with a melody. Some kind of struggle was going on. Then the gash in the world closed, and everything was silent.

Twilight bled, shivering, clutching her injured head. She needed to think. Thinking hurt. It all hurt. Curled up, she was still dizzy; she was strangely hot in her head and cold everywhere else.

She had power! There was power in her hands, power in her fingers, pale blue sparks like the morning sky. But she couldn’t think what to do with her trembling hands, couldn’t think how to stop the blood, couldn’t feel what way her head was fragmented, how to set it right.

She tried. Blue light erupted from her body and blasted away. Something heavy crashed and splattered mud on her face: It was the horse statue, a few feet from her, cracked on its side. She didn’t see the pedestal behind it in pieces.

Didn’t work. Try again.

Whoa-oh. Tipping on her side wasn’t going to help. These flowers smelled nice. When had they been planted? They hadn’t been there yesterday, or even a minute ago. They were really pretty though. What kind of flower were they? So familiar...but the name...she couldn’t remember the name….

A body was found in the mud in the front lawn of Canterlot High early that the morning. It was quickly identified as Twilight Sparkle’s despite the mangled face. Nearby was Sunset Shimmer, clutching the broken pedestal, sobbing inconsolably. When she was finally able to talk, she told the police that she had been there since just past midnight but hadn’t seen what happened. Eventually it was decided that a wild dog must have attacked Twilight, though the bite marks seemed to match a shark more than anything.

No one knew where the lavender flowers came from.

Three girls, Adagio Dazzle, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk, went missing. A search was made, but no clues turned up. Eventually the police stopped looking.

Sunset Shimmer dropped out of school the day of the incident. She filled her backpack with pieces of the pedestal and vanished. When some students went to check on her at her house, they found it abandoned. Almost all her things were there, just the backpack missing, and knowing her, a book or two. There was certainly space for it on her nightstand.

The first of a rash of arsons began later that week, seemingly unrelated.

And that was that, mostly.

Across the distanceless void…

...the story continues.

Three girls wrestled on the ground. Their forelegs tangled and their long, fishlike tails slapped the mud. One yellow foreleg had a dark mark on it, and trembled, jerking suddenly when it was touched.

“My arm!” Adagio Dazzle shrieked. “My...my...oh, my! My leg! My leg! My leg my leg my leg!”

There was a moment of shocked, distant, long-coming recognition, like watching a train hurtling forward with deceptive speed from a long way away: Dorsal fins, long, equine faces, hoofs, feeling the mud squelch under their thick, slithering, scaly tails. Then the laughter started.

The merponies clung to each other, Adagio shrieking once, and then they arranged themselves to support her injured leg, hugging tight like sisters at a long-awaited reunion.

In their laughter was music.

“We’re back,” Adagio sobbed. “I’m me again!”

“My hoofs!” Aria said. “My voice!”

“We’re together!” Sonata wailed. “I love you both so much!”

Each word they spoke was a note, every sentence a measure; in their speech was a melody; their tone was a tune.

There was a long rest for countless bars as they clutched each other and wept.

Finally they untangled, but didn’t separate. Adagio wiped Sonata’s tears; Aria gingerly stroked the hoof of Adagio’s injured leg.

“Let’s swim!” said Sonata.

“Let’s sing!” said Aria.

“No,” said Adagio. “Let’s eat.”

Author's Note

Thanks to FanOfMostEverything for reading a beta version. They have written stories you could be reading.

Singing in the...Rain

“A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician.”

—Alexandra Hamilton to Frankie Knight during the former’s first visit to Ponyville.

Say what you will of watches, but there has never been a garden without a gardener. It’s not because plants can’t cull invading fungi, or heal wounded stems, or chase bugs away. It’s because they do.

Take chickpeas. Chickpeas, in their enthusiasm for killing weeds and parasites, also kill corn. And barley. And wheat—it doesn’t discriminate.

It doesn’t stop at chickpeas. Tomatoes slaughter beans with an unmatched ferocity. Broccoli is the napalm of vegetables, leaving a ruined earth few others can tolerate. Plant competition, in short, is nasty and brutish, and many a sprout would have felt right at home alongside the chaps in the trenches suffering the effects of mustard seed.

Flowers, like a pretty storefront, hide the fierce competition going on behind the scenes, or underneath the ground. Plants stay neat in their place on the surface, but underneath the soil roots coil and spread, trying to push others out. Or just strangle them.

Economists tout the merits of competition the same way doctors recommend antibiotics: Cautiously. In the right time, in the right place, miracles can be worked. Overused, misapplied…well, a hail of fire and brimstone is a miracle too. Fish can be multiplied, and a flood can divide them right back to two again. Light for eight days, and darkness for three.

You can build a better cupcake. Or you can just poison the other pony’s.

Good gardeners know this. Plants are happily segregated. A garden isn’t just a collection of plants. That’s a salad. A garden is a collection of plants not killing each other, reliably.

And salads...get eaten.

Ponies have Princess Celestia. There was never a Homo sapiens with such majesty, or at least so much longevity. Is it any wonder that they had gods, whose wraths waxed hot in suddenness and magnitude proportionate to their invisibility? And so plants have gardeners.

When plants talk—they do talk, don’t believe otherwise—the younger sorts, brash flowering types who get their pollen everywhere, wave their leaves and cry of freedom, of lifting their roots from the dry soil that binds them. They call to sweep past the Wall of Colorful Stones beyond the Mulch Sea into the great grassy plains and rich green forests their proud ancestors once nobly grew in. The perennials, wiser and used to this sort of grandstanding in the springtime, pay little attention. They know what their vigorously pollinating juniors do not. That past the garden walls is a world where water doesn’t come every day. Where there is no neat segregation to ensure sunlight for all. Where a cold war on the surface is hot with chemical bombs underneath the dry earth.

Gardens are nice. Walls are nice. The perennials are wise to know this. And they don’t push the issue, because the annuals tend to pollinate once and fade, braggadocio notwithstanding. Such restraint is also something a garden needs.

And the trees are even older, and even wiser. One tree even grows its own gardeners.

Three merponies slithered through the open gate of Canterlot.

In the cold, foggy dawn after a rainy night, the mist seemed to rise from the streets in silvery billows. Pale light wobbled over the pavement as the three merponies stopped and stared.

After a thousand years, it was still Canterlot. The curve of the road, though it was marble now, still wound in the same direction until it disappeared into the fog. Toward the castle, rose the memory like a mountain from deep within Aria’s mind, ice crumbling off mountainous slopes, recollection thawing, of a city over a thousand years ago, of a life past and gone, and before that, of the oceans, the warm, sunny beach, and the cold, dying ocean, remember, remembering….

Not a building was the same. The fog hid the castle that should have been rising over the shops and houses. She wondered, with a sudden stab of concern, whether the old concert hall was still there. There wasn’t anything like the old concert hall in the human world. There wasn’t anything like Canterlot in the human world.

“Canterlot!” Adagio cackled with glee. “Canterlot! Canterlot!”

“Let’s see the library!” said Sonata, who had kept a collection of beetles there long ago, and was sure to be disappointed.

“No, I want to see the fountain!” said Aria.

“Let’s put on a show!” Adagio’s voice vibrato’d with excitement. “Right now!”

The fog was rising and revealing underneath it the carts click-clacking over the stone road. The throng was already filling the street in the early morning, for this was Canterlot, where time was money, or rather money was time, and anything else a pony could wish it to be so long as she had enough.

Canterlot never slept. This had been the slogan of a then-upstart mattress company, but it was also true. Even in the early morning the street was busy with merchants carting silk and cotton and vegetables, late-night revelers stumbling amidst the the dark shops, students running from coffee shop to library with heavy book bags slung over their shoulders. Fewer non-ponies than Aria remembered, only a single pair of zebras looking in a hurry, and no reptiles or griffons even though the streets were crowded.

They were attracting a lot of attention. Ponies were looking at them like they had never seen Merponies before. Adagio made a pair of fillies shrink away with a sharp glare, but even she drew back with Aria and Sonata.

The rain from last night brought out the smell of the city. There was a mix of chalk and warm pretzels—the stand over there, bait for students who couldn’t afford a real meal—coffee, and the exertion of stallions pulling the morning carts, sweat clinging to their coats in the misty air. There was a decided lack of a sewer aroma. Which hadn’t been pleasant a thousand years ago, but at least it had been familiar.

Last time it had smelled like...well, she couldn’t remember what it had smelled like, aside from the sewer part, and maybe she had made that up as well, but it hadn’t smelled like this.

The three Merponies huddled together on the side of the road, blinking at the shapes moving past, flinching at the sudden clatter of a speeding cart.

At least it doesn’t smell like exhaust, Aria told herself. Her hoofs were shaking. She willed them to stop. They kept on doing it anyway.

“Okay, this is freaky,” Sonata said. “Is it just me, or is everyone a horse?”

Adagio, instead of calling Sonata an idiot, burst out laughing. So did Aria.

Sonata laughed, nervously at first, then the giggling poured out of her like water out of a backed-up faucet. “I mean, they’ve got horses pulling horses in carriages! It’s...wait, people did that too. Remember China?”

Adagio cracked up harder. Aria flopped against her, shaking with laughter. It wasn’t funny. But Sonata had poked a needle in the tension, popped it like a balloon, and now it was coming out of them all in undirected giggles.

The sight of three Merponies laughing like loons in a pile on the side of the road attracted plenty of attention. It attracted the attention of Cherry Jubilee. No pony had ever called Cherry Jubilee a witch to her face. That is because it is unwise to call a witch a witch, and everypony knows that—everypony who isn’t shortly a toad.

She was driving a cart laden with baskets of dark red and gold cherries. She was thinking that she had never seen merponies before. Hazy memories of a much-neglected history rose like mist in her mind. Hadn’t there been a falling out? They hadn’t gone underwater, they couldn’t go underwater, that was what the argument had been about.

Where had the merponies gone?

She adjusted her scarf, the color of cherry blossoms in the spring, and stopped the cart with a piercing creak. The merponies, collapsed in a heap on the side of the road, still shuddering as silent laughter wracked their bodies, started and saw the cherries, the shiny, glistening peels and gentle green stems.

“First cherries of spring,” Cherry Jubilee called, not very loudly. “So fresh even I haven’t sampled them yet.” Merponies. Merponies! How long since one had been sighted in Equestria?

“Equestrian fruit!” the blue one slobbered. She disentangled herself from her sistren and slithered unevenly toward the cart and the baskets of cherries. They were still wet from the morning’s dew. The other two, a purple one and a yellow one holding her leg like it was injured, hurried up behind, crowding each other against the cart.

“Well, ain’t that peculiar,” Cherry Jubilee said. Her voice was like the auditory version of watching molasses drip slowly out the bottle. “Normally it’s the cherry pies that make ponies’ mouths water. Pies made from these cherries.”

“They look delicious,” the purple one said.

The yellow one had a dreamlike look on her face. “This isn’t what I’m hungry for,” she said in a dazed half-whisper. There was something strange about her eyes. Something alien. Cherry Jubilee had traveled far and seen much. She had never seen eyes like these. “But Equestrian fruit...it has been so long….”

“Like to try one?” Cherry Jubilee chuckled. You couldn’t call it a cackle, not if you wanted to remain the same shape and color as you were yesterday. “Go on, go on. Have a bite.”

Just as the yellow merpony was about to take a cherry, a flock of orange-chested robins swooped and dived toward the baskets, chirping with aggressive morning cheer as they aimed for the cherries.

Cherry Jubilee’s voice cracked like a whip. “Be gone!” The robbins split and arced away like two blades of a scissors opening up; their flock rejoined in mid-flight and alighted on a nearby roof, and watched, trilling and tweeting.

The yellow merpony stared in wonder at the birds. “Yes...I forgot...here, the birds hear the voices of ponies. Here, voices have power….” There was something about her voice. It was musical, yes, a musical note to everything she said, building a melody as she talked. It was so faint Cherry Jubilee could barely hear it. But it had the sense of quietness that would soon be loud, the first notes of the overture, the violinists not quite into their groove but picking up steam.

“I’m sorry if they frightened you,” said Cherry Jubilee. “Those robins can be powerful nuisances during cherry season.”

The yellow merpony took a dark red cherry, chewed and swallowed it, pit and stem and all. Her eyes closed as though in quiet contemplation.

“Was it good?” the blue one demanded anxiously.

“Adagio, don’t keep us waiting!” the purple one said.

Adagio opened her eyes.

“It was sweet,” she murmured. “The skin, the way it split under my teeth, the hardness underneath. It bled, it bled, it wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was sweet. So sweet.”

Everypony stared at her.

“Yeah, it was good,” Adagio muttered, looking away.

The purple one grabbed a yellow cherry and scarfed it down. She spat the seed out. “Mmm! Sonata, you’ve got to try these! So much better than the ones back—home!”

Sonata’s mouth hovered over the baskets, bouncing from one full of dark red cherries to one overflowing with bright golden ones. “I can’t choose! Which one should I try?”

“Stuck between honey and molasses, sugar?” Cherry Jubilee said. “Have a yellow one.” She said “yellow” like “yella.” And everything about her mannerisms said she never had to yell. Ponies would stretch their ears to listen.

Sonata plucked a golden cherry from the basket. An expression of pure pleasure came over her face. She dribbled the pit out onto her hoof, then nibbled at the little piece of meat on the pit.

“That was so good,” the purple one said. “Thank you so much for sharing.”

“On the subject of payment,” said Adagio, “we’ll sing a song for you.” Blood-red juice dripped down her lips, she sucked it back up again, grinning.

“But we’re not ready—” Sonata began.

Adagio opened her mouth.

♪ Ah ah
Ah ah ♫
♬ Ah-aaah ah, ah-aaah ah

“Very pretty,” said Cherry Jubilee. Adagio stared at her in shock. “But no payment is necessary.”

She started up the cart. As it began to move by the stunned merponies, Cherry Jubilee put a hoof to her chin as if suddenly remembering something. “They say that if you eat a cherry pit, it grows into a cherry tree inside your stomach.” She smiled politely at Adagio. “It’s just a story to scare fillies, of course. But the first cherry of spring? Who knows…?”

The cart clattered on down the road and out of sight.

“What was that?” Adagio demanded, fortissimo. “What was she?”

“We’re not strong enough yet!” Aria hissed. “Keep your voice down!”

“A mere fruit seller!” Adagio said venomously. “A fruit seller resisted me!”

“Not so loud!” Sonata begged.

“Our powers haven’t returned! We’ve lost our magic!”

“Calm down,” Aria urged. “She felt puissant.”

“Yeah,” Sonata said quickly. “I mean, she read my mind!”

“What are you talking about?” Adagio demanded.

“She picked the type of cherry that I wanted. They both looked so delicious! But she knew that the yellow one was the one I really wanted to eat.”

“Sonata, a mind like yours isn’t for reading, it’s for coloring in.” Adagio’s voice dripped with scorn. She wiped more juice off her chin. How much had the cherry bled?

Aria sighed. Her shoulders relaxed. Adagio belittling Sonata for being an idiot was safe territory.

...Not that there was anything safe about Adagio lately, not during her sudden dark moods that had made the last fifty years. Still, as long as it fell on Sonata….

That thought probably wasn’t very nice of her. The image of the transformed Twilight Sparkle, or whatever she had become, flashed through her mind: the calm, warm features, the serene gaze and the outstretched hand. She could have done much worse things than Adagio, and would have had more reason to do them. And she hadn’t. She had been very...friendly, at the end. Aria could only wonder what Twilight had been thinking when Adagio had…had....

Whatever. Like she was going to stick up for Sonata after one of her dumb comments. She was a Siren; she ate friendship.

Maybe that’s why she was so hungry.

She laughed at that thought, ignoring the looks the other two gave her.

If someone as pathetic as Twilight Sparkle could change so radically….

Did she want things to change? What would that even mean? Standing up for herself, as she had despised Twilight for failing to do? Leaving? To where? To what? She needed Adagio’s power.

She was a Siren. And Sirens always hunted in packs.

“Come on,” Adagio said. “Let’s go someplace safe for awhile.”

That meant, without any of them quite realizing it, the old concert hall.

Only it hadn’t been old then. It had been brand new. And they had been the main attraction.

“It’s so big,” Sonata said. She stood timidly behind the others, the end of her tail waving nervously.

“They’ve added a level,” Adagio noted. Aria could tell she was trying to stay calm. “Updated the exterior a tad. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Aria disagreed. The new Canterlot terrified her. Gone were the spires, the cobblestones, the statues, the gaudy displays of gold and silver—the streets hadn’t been literally paved with gold, but Aria could understand where the saying came from. The togas and Ponic columns back in the day had baffled her a bit, but at least she knew what they were. She didn’t have words to express the new buildings, taller and more compact, doing a better show of size without actually taking up more space. Once she had been the center of attention walking down a crowded Canterlot street, mobbed by ponies begging for an autograph, a touch of her dress, a single note from her voice. Now, unrecognized, though the three merponies attracted plenty of stares, she nevertheless wanted to hide. Who were these ponies? Their language, mannerisms, clothes, it all passed by in a blur that left her dizzy. She clung to Adagio like a docile foal.

Inside the concert hall…

...a beat was playing.

Aria’s tail began to wag. Sonata’s hoofs were waving. Even Adagio was bobbing her head in time to the beat.

It was more percussive than Aria was used to, more blaring, and there didn’t seem to be a piano playing at all. But it was a beat. Like how an oak tree might grow a dozen gnarled, knotted branches unique to itself, with dozens of smaller branches along each sprouting mouthfuls[1] of leaves stemming off the ends, but still the acorns from which the whole tree grew all looked pretty much the same.

[1] Like a handful, but if you don’t have hands. For a long time Equestria counted in base-36. It was pretty miserable. A banker who could keep a ledger straight was more powerful than any general.

A set of stairs led to a balcony where they could watch the performance. A stallion was onstage, wearing a coat that was reminiscent of the sort Aria used to see stallions show off in Canterlot long ago. There wasn’t much of an audience, just a few ponies sitting in the front seats. A rehearsal, then. Music didn’t sound like it used to, but it practiced like it always had. Aria felt confidence flow into her, creating a pleasant, tickling buzz where her hot-blooded upper half met her cold-blooded lower half.

Then the beat, for lack of a better word, dropped.

“Unh,” said the stallion at center stage. It was a strange noise, assertive, like a cough designed to attract the crowd’s attention before words are spoken, but with a bravado that had Aria leaning forward on the balcony, ready for more.

“All right,” he said. “Check it. The untold story of Walras the Bearded.”

Aria gasped. She covered her mouth with her hoof and glanced at Adagio out of the corner of her eye.

Adagio’s hoofs curled around the balcony rail. She gazed intently at the performers below. She wasn’t angry—not yet.

Then the stallion began to…

...well. Not sing. Definitely not. Whatever that was, it was not singing.

The lyrics rhymed, intensely so. It was no longer the punctuation on a series of sentences moving toward the melody’s climax. It was the melody. The rhyme multiplied the beat, creating a new one inside each line and a third rhythm across the whole verse. That it was basically speech, not singing, gave the words an urgency and an intimacy that Aria was eager to see if she could match.

...Not that the lyrics were very good. It rhymed well, but they hadn’t captured Walras’s voice at all. That was Walras, or rather somepony pretending to be him. He had been more arrogant, clumsier, unsure of himself around mares, and frankly his beard had been a lot less groomed. But over a thousand years had passed. It was a wonder anypony remembered him at all.

She remembered him, their old friend, the one who had banished them beyond the portal. Adagio did too, she could see it by the tension in her jaw. Sonata, however, was bobbing her head and her tail to the beat. Sonata didn’t just dance to the beat of her own drummer, it was played on her own homemade drum kit too.

“What do you think?” Aria murmured. “He mentioned us in the last verse, maybe we’re in it?”

Adagio’s scornful expression could only be described as ‘high school girl.’ “They’re not even singing,” she said.

When it was over, Sonata burst into applause. The attention of the performers switched onto them, and a few bowed in their direction. That was right, that’s how it had been, Aria thought. Money was something for managers and producers to worry about. The performer is nothing without an audience. If a tree falls in the forest and no pony is around to hear it, it didn’t really make a sound.

“You’ve got to pay for the show,” called a pony sitting up front. He looked like the director, Aria decided. Dumb hat, smug look, thinks he owns the place. Definitely a director.

“You’re lucky if everypony doesn’t demand a refund after that travesty,” Adagio retorted. But there was music in her voice, and the director waved them down.

The performers were sitting on bits of stage, rolling up the sleeves of their costumes, except for the ballerinas, who were walking around on tiphoofs and looked ready to faint from hunger. Aria felt her heart go out to them, and then wondered what was wrong with her.

“What’d you think?” the director said as they came near.

“What’d I think?” Adagio repeated. “What was that? Can your stallion not sing?”

The pony playing Walras scratched under his fake beard and looked faintly embarrassed. He had a thin, boyish face under the makeup and wig. Walras had been sturdy and broadset. He had stood out among the mostly female economists of his day. “Bearded” had just been a joke, something they had called him. What was it now, his title? Bearded? What was next, a female miner called Lillypad the Teated?

“He can,” the director said. “Can’t you, Master?”

“Sure,” squeaked the colt under the wig. Did he only have bravado when the music was playing?

Don’t you say anything like, ‘Are we any different?’ Aria warned her brain. I mean it.

“That’s Lin, she wrote the music,” the director nodded at a mare sitting two rows back, who smiled and waved. “We wanted something more like BBBFF than The Threebit Opera. Something modern. For the kids, you know.”

“For a play about a wizard who lived a thousand years ago?” Adagio said. Maybe it was being back in the concert hall, however changed, but Adagio had the arch of a diva in her back again; her voice had its haughtiness in addition to its melody.

“Why don’t they sing?” Aria asked.

“It’s rap music.” The director glanced at their fins and tails. “Um...I’m guessing they don’t have rap music where you come from.”

The Sirens shared a look.

“They might,” Adagio said slowly. “I think...we were just less receptive to...new ideas. Back...back home, I mean.”

“It was awesome,” Sonata said, her tail slapping on the ground. “It was like, yo, I’m Sonata, I...um...what rhymes with Sonata?”

“A lot of?” Lin volunteered from behind them. “Some water? No matter?”

“You thought of that so fast? Amazing!”

“It’s my job,” Lin said with a shrug.

“I think we’d like to learn more about this rap music,” said Adagio, as if she wasn’t quite sure herself. “It was very...forward.”

“Planning to make names for yourselves on the streets of Canterlot as rap battlers?” the director said. His tone said it was all a big joke.

“Rap...battler?”

“It’s battling with rap music,” Lin said. “Contests of lyrical wit set to a beat. We have a couple later in the show. Walras Vs. The Terrible Sirens is the first big one.”

You could have heard a pin drop. They did; somepony was trying to put their uniform back on and was scrabbling around on the floor for it.

“The who?”

“I definitely don’t know anything about the three Sirens and how they almost defeated silly old Beardy,” said Sonata loudly. Aria smacked her with her tail.

“Three goat-headed monsters who could make ponies’ heads explode with their sonic blasts,” the director said. “They were ten feet tall and saw with echolocation.”

“...Right,” Adagio said. “I don’t think we’re interested in staying in Canterlot, at least for now. Just passing through. Actually, we’re looking for someplace small, out of the way, hard to notice….”

She trailed off hopefully.

“There’s Ponyville,” said the colt pretending to be Walras. “You’ll have to take the train. My cousin lives there, she says it’s really small and friendly.”

“We like friendly,” said Adagio.

“They’re having a festival soon. Monday-week or something. There are musical performances, I think.”

“We like musical performances. Maybe we’ll go.” She turned to the others. “What do you think, girls?”

It wasn’t really a question, not the way Adagio said it. Aria and Sonata nodded their agreement.

“Then it’s settled. Now...what did you say about this train?”

It was a little surreal getting into a train to go to Ponyville. Not because of the technology. Aria had flown in planes, for crying out loud. She had flown a plane once, after Adagio decided it would be fun. It had been, up until they had tried to land it.

She had expected the human world to be alien. The first few hours, days, even years had been mere passage along a gradient of terror. More than once she had wished Walras the Bearded had had the kindness to simply kill them.

The human capacity for violence had imprinted a fear into her very core. Adagio had resented how little a Siren could add to the chaos. Sonata seemed immune to the whole thing. Centuries after the worst of it, Aria still had trouble sleeping.

Dreams of Equestria were what had allowed her to fall asleep, crying and clutching her empty second stomach. She dreamed of the fair weather, the comfort and safety of equine hospitality, the magical power they had wielded and the meals of strife their hosts had so unwittingly fed them. There was nothing to eat in the human world but the scraps of magical radiation from scrapes and bumps with nearby dimensions, their universe stretching and shrinking and folding at the edges with the phase of the moon and the alignment of the stars. It had nearly driven her insane. She worried it had driven Adagio insane.

She had had over a thousand years to fantasize about her return. And she had always seen herself returning with a voice full of song, drawing a crowd, basking in their attention, turning them against each other, feeding, eating, HUNGER—

Her stomachs growled. A mare pushing a food trolley stopped and smiled at her. “Want something to eat, girls?” Her eyes did the by-now familiar jump to their fins and fish tails and back to their faces.

“Ooh!” Sonata leaned over Aria and took a deep sniff. “They all smell so good!”

“We have cupcakes all the way from the Sugarcube Corner,” the trolley mare said.

“Don’t tell me there’s a city called Sugarcube Corner now,” Adagio said across from them, perusing a newspaper. “I will go back, I mean it.”

“It’s in Ponyville,” said the trolley mare, sounding slightly concerned that anypony might not know where the Sugarcube Corner was.

“Then we’ll have three!” Sonata said.

“Oh, joy.” Adagio turned the page. “Ho! Will you read this? Somepony doesn’t like these brothers. I am hungry. Sonata, get us three,” she said, snapping a little.

Sonata got three cupcakes and gave the yellow-frosted one to Adagio and the purple-frosted cake to Aria, taking the blue-frosted one for herself.

“That’ll be five bits,” the trolley mare said.

“Ha!” Adagio said. “I can feel myself getting stronger. Breathing in the magic of this world is almost like sustenance.”

“That’s...nice,” the trolley mare said quizzically. “Five bits, please.”

Adagio put her nose against the newspaper and sniffed deep. Her body shook, her tail thumped once against the side of the cabin. She looked very much like a shark that had smelled blood.

Adagio put the newspaper down on her lap. Aria, reading upside-down, saw a title about somepony named Flim Flam. It had a question mark on the end, the sort that let you know it was a statement. Amazing what a little curl above a period could do to prevent a suit for libel.

Adagio smiled.

♪ Ah ah
Ah ah ♫
♬ Ah-aaah ah, ah-aaah ah

A change came over the trolley mare. She shuddered, eyes glazing over, with a faint green tinge to her pupils that hadn’t been there before; her body relaxed: limp, pliant, suggestible.

“We don’t need to pay,” Adagio said.

“You don’t need to pay,” the trolley mare said blankly.

“Move onto the next cabin.”

“I’ll move onto the next cabin.”

“Good girl.”

Adagio picked up the newspaper again, an amused smile on her face. Blood-red juice dripped down her chin; she wiped it, frowning.

“That was great, Adagio!” Sonata thumped her tail on the seat in applause.

“Pretty good,” Aria admitted. “On the surface. But magically, the key was off, and your pitch was all over the place.”

“I’d like to hear you do better,” Adagio snarled.

“I can’t!” Aria leaned forward, not letting herself be intimidated. “That’s why I’m keeping my voice down. We haven’t practiced in over a thousand years. It’s not time for a live performance.”

“I got us free food,” Adagio said. “If you want to call her back and pay, go ahead. Oh, but you don’t have a single bit to your name, do you? Shut up and eat your cupcake, you tart.”

Aria nibbled miserably on the treat. Now Equestria had trains and cupcakes and Ponyvilles. Her thousand-year dream felt more real than this confused mishmash of pony-shaped seats and human desserts.

“Mm!” Sonata said, blue frosting on her snout. “It’s so delicious!”

Aria took a bigger bite. Sonata was right. It was sweet, not in the same shocking, electrifying way the cherry had been. It was a warm sweetness. Baked with love, the expression went. She could taste it.

It was a myth that Sirens couldn’t feel love. They felt love very easily. That’s why they were so good at finding it. And love, once bared, was easily controlled.

She could taste it. A cow had four stomachs. Sirens had two, one of them in another dimension. It took magic to feed it.

Love like this...she wanted to consume it.

Her stomach growled. Adagio looked up. “Finish your cupcake.”

It must have shown on Aria’s face. Adagio’s eyes fell back to the page. “Sorry. I’m hungry too.”

“We’ll get more cupcakes in Ponyville!” Sonata said.

“No,” Adagio said. “We’ll eat for real.”

The train rumbled on.

The stallion at the train stop greeted them with a smile, which only wavered for a moment as his eyes flitted to their fins and tails and back. “Howdy, young ladies. Welcome to Ponyville. Need a map? Eatery recommendations? An umbrella?”

“Umbrella?” Adagio said. “There’s not a cloud in the sky.”

“Suit yourself,” shrugged the stallion.

As they moved on, Aria tried to remember. There was something about the rain in Equestria, something she hadn’t thought about in a thousand years….

“Ponyville,” said Sonata, “is a total dump!”

Aria agreed. It was actually ridiculous. The roads were literally made of dirt. Dust flew up with every gust of wind. It got in her scales. It was hard to think that this backwater town was less than a day away by train from shining Canterlot.

At least the air was fresh. The last two hundred years in the human world had all but driven the memory of fresh air out of her mind.

“What do you think, Adagio?” Sonata said.

“Let’s find a hotel or whatever the local equivalent is. A barn, maybe,” Adagio said grumpily. “We’re just here to lay low until we’re strong enough to take on Canterlot again.”

As they moved into Ponyville proper, lush green grass replaced the dirt. It felt good under her scales, tickling her tailfin as it dragged through. The houses weren’t arrayed in neat lines. Instead they looked more like flowers in a pot, clumped together without being cramped, and organized without being ordered in any particular way.

They were also brightly colored, and so were the ponies, many of whom stopped to stare as the three merponies slithered through the town. Aria stared back. They were all carrying umbrellas, and they were all going to the same place.

“Come on,” Adagio said, and they followed. The crowd stopped in a big grassy area, near a big oak tree with windows and visible furnishings on the inside. They were looking at the sky expectantly.

“What do you think, Adagio?” said Aria.

Adagio gazed at it all.

“Adagio?”

Adagio grinned. “I think it’s salad.”

It took Aria a moment to understand. “Perfect, if Canterlot’s our main course.”

Sonata clapped her tail on the ground. “And for dessert, the Sugarcube Corner!”

“Sonata,” Adagio sighed.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up. You’re an idiot.”

And for the pones d’oeuvres, Aria thought bitterly, self-sliced sashimi.

Dark clouds gathered over Ponyville. This was generally taken as a good sign and greeted with cheer by all.

This might be because in Equestria, clouds rarely form naturally, and when they do they sort of sit, wisp-like and inert, eventually fading into vapor and mist. Getting rain from them is like trying to squeeze a shower out of a damp towel.

Every schoolpony learns the Equestrian water cycle. At the end of the year dead water is pumped from lakes and ponds into the weather factories in Cloudsdale, the cloud city of Pegasi. Some of it is portioned for snow and hail and is put in the freezer to wait for the winter. The rest is sent to the rain lab, where the water is stretched, sliced, and run through sieves, straining the dead water into drops.

Then it is given life. The process is intricate, but weirdly childish. It is as if water has forgotten what it is and needs to be reminded. The water has to be shaken up in one of Cloudsdale’s several enormous shakers, whipping the water around at incredible speeds until it finally begins to flow and ripple instead of flopping and sitting limp like a gelatin dessert made by and for the severely depressed. Then the water is streamed into a variety of differently shaped containers and swished and shaken around until it grudgingly begins to take on the shape of its container. A very delicate balance of heat and pressure is used to yield steam from the water instead of scorch marks on its wobbly surface. Electricity has to be strained through it with wires until it starts to conduct. At some point the water comes alive.

Incidentally, the rain labs are notably cheery. The Pegasi who work them are always singing upbeat, happy tunes. They always have. There are theories that songs created the world, sometimes involving a pompous lion (this one is popular with the griffons), or in other versions an ageless man who taught his children to sing their very ideas into being. These are poetic theories, heavy on rhyme and metaphor and lacking in substantial empirical results.

But the Pegasi of the Cloudsdale rain labs are always singing as they knead and harass and cajole the dead water back to life. Perhaps it helps.

Most ponies never interact directly with natural, that is, dead water. The water they get from lakes and rivers, and in their wells, and from the tap, is all prepared in the Cloudsdale labs. Dead water doesn’t flow. It’s gummy and slightly stretchy, with a texture referred to among the experts as “urgh.” If you hold up a strip of it from one corner, it’ll start to split down the middle, languidly, like it can’t be bothered to hold itself together. It tastes like undercooked pasta sauteed in rubber, and it goes down like a live octopus made of goopy custard.

Cloudsdale does not look after the ocean. It’s too big. Going to the beach is not an Equestrian pastime.

So the living, resurrected water is condensed into clouds. A plan is carefully drawn up in Canterlot as to how to distribute it throughout Equestria for the year. Clouds are stored in cloud banks until the right time. Trained Pegasi, working with local volunteers, transport the clouds to their destinations. The only ponies who are surprised by rain in Equestria are ones who don’t buy the new year’s royal calendar.[2]

[2] The weather calendars were in incredibly high demand, nearly every household bought one. The idea was simple, obvious, and helpful, which is why only Twilight Sparkle wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the calendars were first produced for sale during a year when voluntary defense funds were unusually low[3], as indeed she wasn’t.

[3] This was due to an enemy that was clever enough to go after Princess Celestia’s budget constraint. This wouldn’t have worked at all, but Princess Celestia tried not to use the One Bank that way. It looked bad, using the One Bank that way. It was like playing poker with the guards, which she did about once a decade. She could manipulate the laws of probability themselves, but it was a lot less…evil to simply outsmart them. She didn’t like to display her nigh-omnipotence that often. When your hoofs are strong enough to make hammers seem like tissue paper, then you worry that everypony might end up like a nail.

So it’s the first week of spring, and the plan is for rain all over Equestria. The winter was long, and the new flowers could use a stretch, and the trees need a shower.

Dark clouds gathered over Ponyville. A rainbow streaked behind one of them. Then the rainbow streak curved up sharply and disappeared above the dark mass.

“Okay!” Cirrus shouted. She was always shouting, but a tremble in her voice betrayed real excitement. Was it possible that, for the first time in her life, the rain could actually go off without a hitch? It was. And was there a chance of a captainship in it for her if it did? There was. “Eyes on me!”

The Cloudsdale Pegasi snapped to attention. The Ponyville volunteers turned her way, rather less impressively. You did the best with what you had. And she had...Ponyville volunteers. It wasn’t like they were stupid or anything. Just...slower-paced than she would have liked.

Except Rainbow Dash. That Pegasus moved too fast for her own good. Cirrus scanned the assembly, looking for the telltale rainbow mane. Hm. She probably got distracted by a butterfly. Or tallying bets. Cirrus had quickly learned that Rainbow Dash paid no attention to what anypony said and never wrote anything down until somepony said something speculative, like, “I bet Caramel forgets his umbrella again,” or “I wonder how much Daisy’s flowers will glow after the rain,” at which point Rainbow Dash inevitably appeared in a split second, offered her opinion, her odds, and a pen and a place to sign.

Still. Somehow everything was in place and on time. And if Rainbow Dash wasn’t actually here for this, then that was probably for the better.

“Precipitation positions, everypony!” Cirrus barked. She flew through the dark blanket of clouds and settled on top, shaking the mist out of her wings. The other Pegasi joined her on the rainclouds. A few Ponyville volunteers were giggling and elbowing each other. “Hey! Eyes on me! We’re almost there, everypony. Remember proper precipitation practice: Jump-jump-jump, jump-jump-jump, jump-jump-jump! Let gravity do the work, keep your wings still. We don’t want you punching through the cloud and getting soaked. And stop giggling!”

Cirrus looked at her watch. “Three! Two! One! Make it rain!”

Rain began to fall. It drizzled on the dirt, pattering on the ground, muffled by lush grass. Ponies on the ground looked up from the bizarre sight of three merponies in their midst. It was the first rain of the year. Water dropped on their faces. Blinking, they didn’t look away.

Then it started to pour, and the umbrellas came up. Three merponies soaked and stared in wonder as ponies started to laugh and kick in the rain, splashing up puddles as they formed.

Water beat down on the roofs. It splattered down fat leaves, got caught in thick beds of vegetation and splashed down with sudden force. One of the merponies, blue, stuck her tongue out, giggling, while the yellow merpony tched.

Deep below the soaking soil, roots sucked the water like newborn foals at the teat. Living water called forth life from the ground.

And this close to Monday-week, something else stirred too….

High above, a dark cloud gathered over dark clouds. And behind it, a rainbow, streaking down.

“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash said. “Yeah! Yeah! Let’s go! Rainbow...Crash!!!”

The condensed battering ram of leftover snow ripped through the mass of stormclouds. At that speed it tore through the sky like a lightning bolt and left scattered puffs in its wake.

The rain ceased. Below the earth, the stirring did not.

Cirrus zipped over to the whooping rainbow Pegasus so fast that her endless stream of curses were actually left behind and caught up to her as she stopped in front of Rainbow Dash, creating the world’s most impolite Doppler effect.

“Have-you-chained-upandfloggedSOPEEVEDRIGHTNOW—”

Rainbow Dash shut her eyes and waited for the wave of obscenities to wash over her. She shook her head, flipping a bit of spittle out of her mane. “Hey, Cirrus.”

“YOU BROKE THE STORM! YOU WASTED WATER!”

“Relax, Cirrus,” Rainbow Dash said, trying to act like she was trying not to laugh. “We have extra clouds.”

“We—what—why do we have extra?” Cirrus spluttered, her face going through various expressions and colors to rival Rainbow Dash’s mane and tail.

“Because I made them. To do this!”

“You—you made—” Cirrus stared at the torn sky. It would take weeks, months to gather up all the vapor in the air. “Where’s the extra water supposed to come from?” she finally shouted.

Rainbow Dash shrugged.

Cirrus took a deep breath.

“EQUESTRIA’S WEATHER IS CAREFULLY CALCULATED! EVERY WEATHER STATION HAS TO SEND IN THEIR PROJECTIONS AND REQUIREMENTS AND A FINAL PLAN HAS TO BE AGREED ON IN CANTERLOT! IN CANTERLOT!”

“I can get more.”

“I DON’T WANT YOU TO GET—argh. Rainbow Dash? You’re off the team.”

“Well, it’s not exactly the Wonderbolts.”

“If you’re ever a Wonderbolt, I’ll waste a cloud.”

Rainbow Dash’s little book of bets flashed out like a magician hoofing a card. “How about paying me the market value of the cloud if—”

“Get out of my sight.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Rainbow Dash tossed off a sarcastic salute and flew down, grinning at the stunned ponies on the ground like she hadn’t just ruined the first rain of spring.

“My flowers!” shrieked a pony who was undoubtedly Daisy.

“I...I kind of don’t mind,” said a caramel-colored pony who looked soaked to the bone.

An orange filly with stubby, chicken-like wings whooped and jumped. “That was awesome, Rainbow Dash!”

A purple Unicorn separated herself from the crowd and walked up to Rainbow Dash. “That was awful,” she said calmly. “We’re going to have a talk about this. You know this affects my bank, right?”

“It’ll be fine, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash scoffed. “Just print more money.”

“We don’t do that,” Twilight said immediately. “We’ve never done that, that’s not how it works.”

“Can I have some money?” said a nearby pony hopefully.

“We don’t do that!” Twilight said loudly.

“I would like some money, if you’re giving it out,” said another pony.

“It’s not funny,” Twilight said to Rainbow Dash, whose expression showed she disagreed.

Aria exchanged damp looks with Adagio and Sonata. Sirens never forget a voice, and this purple Unicorn’s voice was very familiar.

Cirrus swooped down. “I’m going to have her arrested. The rain’s stopped! What am I supposed to tell my superiors?”

“That it was awesome?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Hush, please,” Twilight said just as Cirrus snapped, “Shut up!”

“I’ll write you a letter you can bring back to your boss,” Twilight said to Cirrus. “And I’ll write to Princess Celestia asking for help recovering the lost vapor. And,” she sighed, “I suppose I’ll update the Sisters on my new projections. Once I have new projections. I have to make new projections.”

“Thank you, Twilight Sparkle,” Cirrus said stiffly. She jerked in an uncertain half-bow, like one might to a baron whose land amounted to a dried-out hill. Twilight grimaced in response.

Aria’s mouth hung open. There was no way that was Twilight Sparkle. She didn’t seem terrified of eye contact, for one.

“Did you hear that?” Adagio murmured. “Twilight Sparkle is in charge around here.” A predatory grin spread across her face. “I’m so pleased she lived up to her potential in at least one world.”

“You’re drooling,” Sonata commented. Adagio scowled and wiped the dark red liquid off her chin.

“Have you been, like, sneaking cherries?” Sonata asked.

“Sonata? Don’t ask questions,” Adagio said. “You won’t know what to do with the answers.”

“Yeah, shut up, Sonata,” Aria muttered. It was just Twilight Sparkle.

Then again…Twilight Sparkle had been Midnight Sparkle. Here was a potential Midnight Sparkle with connections to Princess Celestia, and powerful enough in her own right to joke about printing money.

Joke about printing money? There was no way Equestria had changed that much. Not in ten thousand years.

What was wrong with the new Equestria! Fruit sellers more puissant than most wizards of old! Even Ponyville wasn’t small enough town to avoid ponies of power!

“Maybe we should move along,” said Aria, blinking water out of her eyes. “Find a more out-of-the-way place.”

“Magic power is food,” Adagio stated plainly. “We just upgraded to the club salad.”

“I want cheese on mine,” said Sonata, who had a portal to somewhere fascinating in her own mind and couldn’t be banished from it by any magic.

“We’ll milk her dry,” Adagio murmured, a bloody grin on her face.

“How?” Aria hissed. “She’s powerful! We’re weak!”

“Powerful?” Adagio rounded on her. “That is Twilight Sparkle. Remember her? How pathetic she was, how easy to control, when we didn’t have a morsel of magic!”

“I remember,” said Aria bravely. “I remember Midnight Sparkle.”

Adagio actually jerked back like she had been slapped. Then she returned with twice as much fury. “I remember her! I remember killing her!” Her mouth was open, baring layings of sharp, triangular teeth. It didn’t open that wide to talk. It opened that wide to bite.

It was, in fact, a complete merpony battle stance, with Adagio’s tail poised to send her darting through the water and her hoofs raised to push her opponent’s head down. Aria hadn’t seen it in over a thousand years. But that didn’t make it any less frightening.

“Anything more?” growled Adagio.

Sonata’s worried face whipped back and forth between the snarling Adagio and the stiff, unflinching, but silent Aria.

“No?” said Adagio sweetly, closing her mouth to its normal width. “Good. Keep that mouth shut until I need to use it.”

“Well!” Twilight said. Aria was grateful for the excuse to look away. She focused on getting her tail to relax while Twilight talked. “Everypony here is invited over for a, a Rainy Day Celebration at the Golden Oak Tree. We’re having a Book Treasure Hunt, and there’s plenty of dry towels for everypony, and we can listen to the rain splash through the leaves of the Golden Oak Tree….”

The sun began to stream obnoxiously through the clouds the Pegasi were carefully packing away for later use.

“Um,” she added. “The schedule says there’s rain. And I’ve always enjoyed weather more as an abstract puzzle than the visceral, um, the actual...there will be drinks.”

At that, ponies started to move.

If you throw a party in Ponyville, you had better be prepared for everypony to show up, because they probably will. News travels fast in a small town, and if the ponies themselves don’t, the short distances between houses make up for that. And when word that Twilight Sparkle, Chief Executive Economist of the Daughter Bank of Ponyville and hero of the Great Succession (when, as the Ponyville ponies were smug to remember, Nightmare Moon had come to none other than their humble little town to announce the end of the world, or at least its economy) was throwing a party to celebrate the first rain of spring, the citizens of Ponyville did move fast, because they didn’t expect her to have enough drinks for everypony.

It wasn’t that Twilight Sparkle was inattentive or miserly. Quite the contrary: She was trusted by Princess Celestia herself to run the new Daughter Bank that had been erected only late last fall. This meant, to the practical-minded, good-natured ponies of Ponyville, that Twilight was a sort of appointed royalty, and as a sort of Coat of Legs, she got a magic box that printed money. This was despite a long of frantic hoof-waving on Twilight’s part whenever anypony mentioned the idea. She didn’t even want to know what would happen if anypony tried to print money, and Twilight wanted to know everything. But even her curious mind hit a sanity-preserving wall when it tried to consider the full wrath, and worse, the disappointment of Princess Celestia, who ran the One Bank of Equestria in a manner analogous to how the strong force held together the nucleus of an atom, all the atoms, at once.

Princess Celestia had been a mentor, a teacher, and, recently, a debtor to Twilight Sparkle, who had rescued her from what had seemed to be a long vacation on the Sun courtesy of her once-banished younger sister. Twilight had gathered the Five Elements of Equilibrium and a corresponding number of friends and faced down Nightmare Moon in the old, worn-down castle in the Everfree Forest, the one the Knights of Economics had used centuries ago. Everything had turned out all right. Twilight had even gotten a promotion, from Grand Assistant, Regal Secretary, and, well, a number of other things, to Chief Executive Economist of her very own central bank.

Very far away from Canterlot, she couldn’t help noticing.

Of course it made sense to have her stay in Ponyville where the five Bearers of the Elements lived. And they were her friends. She didn’t mind Ponyville, not anymore, once she had gotten used to the dust and straw, and the slow, communal life, and the complete lack of late-night hayburger stands. But she couldn’t help wondering if Princess Celestia might not have minded having Twilight Sparkle far away and out of the center of things.

Her old cohort back in the Canterlot economics academy, the mouthful who had made it through to graduation, thought she trusted the princess blindly. Not so. She trusted the princess observantly. Her eyes were always open except when she was sleeping and sometimes even then, if she had fallen asleep reading.

Trixie, that most unpleasant of her fellow students, and a vexingly capable economist in her own right, who now was apprenticed to Princess Cadance in the Crystal Empire (Ha! Trixie up north in the cold and snow, surrounded by crystal waste and ponies who thought “Eh” was a letter of the alphabet, Twilight couldn’t help but think Trixie’s post had been a little thank-you from Princess Celestia to her loyalest and most faithful student for rescuing her from Nightmare Moon), had mocked Twilight more than once for her slavish devotion to the princess, because it had stung, and Trixie never saw reason to do once what would hurt again if done twice.

But it wasn’t true. Twilight didn’t intend to be the good princess’s faithful student forever. On the contrary, she rather saw herself as Princess Celestia’s natural successor. She was, after all, the top student in three hundred years, had broken three records for report-writing and account-keeping accuracy, and had published four times in the Equestrian Economic Review.

She just worried that maybe Princess Celestia saw her as her natural successor too, and wasn’t quite ready to retire.

Which was fine! Twilight wasn’t some dumb yak or magicked-up centaur, willing and oh-so-unable to take the throne by force. She could wait. There was a lot of good work to do both as Princess Celestia’s assistant in Canterlot and now as a central banker in Ponyville, which was basically like being a practice princess, albeit in a castle overlooking a land that consisted of two sticks and a pat of mud that her three serfs took turns holding. And then told her to make infinite mud. Because then they’d all be rich.

She could wait. And in the meantime, she could enjoy herself. Just a little. It didn’t hurt to relax—well, it did, quantifiably, her exact marginal social product times the amount of work she wasn’t doing, to be precise, but that didn’t count, no pony could live like that, and no pony should. Except for the ones who wanted to. She had met a few, in the deep recesses of Canterlot’s vast bureaucracy, ponies who lived at their desk and slept in fits of numbers and vast arrays. At first she had been appalled at the conditions they worked in. Then one of them, in an unusually lucid moment, had managed to express how grateful she was to have a damp, dark place to draw charts properly, with very straight lines, with everything to scale like it actually was, and none of that talking-to-ponies business that was frightening and so often painful.

And ponies thought she was a recluse! No wonder the treehouse library was already so crowded. They probably thought she was expecting about six guests. But Twilight hadn’t been careless about the drinks. On the contrary, she was quite looking forward to seeing how accurate her estimate had been.

She squeezed past Lyra and Bonbon, who were sipping cocktails with umbrellas in that were more tropical in the sense of monsoons than seaside vacation spots, and frowned at Spike, who had removed his bright orange raincoat in deference to the warm sun streaming in through the open windows.

“Spike!” she said. “It’s a Rainy Day party! You have to keep your raincoat on.”

Spike looked out at the clear blue sky.

“Are you serious?” he said. “Twilight, will you get more ice? It’s a little warmer than we expected.”

“This doesn’t count against my prediction,” Twilight grumbled. “Dashie breaking the storm was a rainbow swan event. I can’t predict that.”

Spike raised a scaly brow at that comment. Twilight had only ever used cutesy nicknames with her adoptive older brother. After he had left to be Princess Cadance’s consort in the Crystal Empire, any fillyish passion for cuteness in her had seemed to die. For her to call her friend “Dashie” seemed about as likely as inviting Trixie over for a sleepover so they could talk about...clothes, or colts, or whatever regular mares did. Spike had read enough to know it wasn’t normal for most mares to choose to stay up to two in the morning straining their eyes by candlelight to read reports full of numbers and charts.

And then there was the fact that Twilight was having the party in the library. That was like inviting Trixie over to see if she would be interested in dating Shining Armor, and also offering her the top spot in Princess Celestia’s class so that Twilight could quit and become a professional hoofball player. Before coming to Ponyville the idea of a party in a library would have been literally unthinkable to Twilight. And to Twilight, literally meant literally.

Twilight was changing. All of Equestria was. New banks, a new princess, sort of, who knew what Princess Celestia had done with her defeated younger sister? Not him, though. Spike the Dragon was the same as ever.

“You looked adorable in that orange thing, whyever did you take it off?”

Spike jumped, his tail thumping nervously on the wood floor. “Rarity! Do you want another drink?”

“Why bother?” Rarity pushed her empty glass around with a miserable expression on her normally flawless face. Just the sight of her glittering purple mane and her brilliant white coat had his knees shaking. She had a pale grey raincoat on, barely damp, a striped umbrella across her lap. A glittering crystal that looked sort of like a cloud, and sort of like a marshmallow, hung from a thin necklace around her neck. “I got all dressed up in the perfect fashion for this year’s first spring rain. I even wore my Element of Equilibrium! It’s shaped like a cloud, Spike! A cloud! And now it’s dry! Perfect weather for a fashion disaster! I look ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous!”

“You look okay,” said Spike, a squeaky catch in his throat. Fluttershy had made the mistake of taking him along to one of her stallion’s rights meetings, where he had picked up a number of peculiar ideas on how to attract mares, mostly involving ignoring them and occasionally giving them mild compliments. “I mean, I’ve seen better.”

“Of course you have, you’ve seen me on other days,” said Rarity, healthily oblivious. “Dreamed about me too, I should imagine.”

Spike’s face turned red-hot, normally quite threatening on a dragon, but the look of strangled panic on his face was anything but. “Squeak?” he said in a masculine sort of choke.

“You’ll dream of me, you all will. So beautiful you can’t stop thinking about me.” Rarity bit the rim of her glass. “Mo phalt pwease.”

It was just the drink then. Twilight had gotten like this during private celebrations after all the voluntary defense funds had been counted up or the new monetary path for the year had been set. After the “just one” phase and the subsequent endless giggling phase, Twilight passed into the realm of “Ahaha! You’ll see! You’ll all see! Princess, they’ll call me! Princess Sparkle Alicorna D’Armor! Ahaha!” which passed soon, thankfully, into a depressive stupor.

Spike had never thought about whether it was appropriate for a baby, which he technically was, to be serving alcohol, and neither had Twilight. He because being raised by Twilight had fostered an adult attitude toward life, and Twilight because...she didn’t always think of things like that. When life invited Twilight to dance, she insisted on leading, and never mind that she danced like she had four left legs.

Twilight came back with an open bag of ice. She beamed at Rarity. “How do you like the drinks? They’re named after books and economic ideas.”

“Mgghm,” Rarity said, gnawing on an ice cube she had poached from the bag with magic.

Twilight added some ice to chill the Whisky of Nations and nodded at Rarity. “I’m going to go check on the others.”

“Phpikey-wikey, mo’ phalt.”

Twilight took a tray of hot drinks, set one on the table for Rarity, and left her to her fashionable despair. She found Applejack off in a corner by herself, glowering.

“How’s the party?” Twilight asked, pushing through a clump of tipsy stallions to reach Applejack.

“It’s all right,” Applejack said. “I mean, it’s great. I really liked this, uh, Old Keynesian I had. Could have done without the orange peel, mind.”

Twilight took her empty glass and replaced it with a warm mug. “Here, I thought it’d be perfect for the weather. Books and warm drinks, snug indoors, listening to the raindrops pattering on the roof….”

The sun continued to be obnoxiously warm, bright, and not at all obscured by dark grey clouds.

“The rain!” Applejack said. “Just look at her. She don’t mind. Probably shorted everything to do with rain and trees and so on just before she did it. Can’t you do anything about it?”

Twilight watched Rainbow Dash cavort with Pinkie Pie on a table. Pinkie Pie had knocked over four drinks, and Rainbow Dash had caught each one. Funny, to think it wasn’t so long ago that she wouldn’t have allowed anything but books on that table.

She hadn’t gone completely mad. She had been midway through putting all the books in a protective covering anyway due to the rain and damp when the idea of a party had occurred to her. It had been a bad winter, and the rain was the official start of a new stretch of seasons. It seemed like the right time to celebrate something.

She glanced at Applejack, who was clearly in a sour mood. Applejack hadn’t talked much about the incident with the trees last winter. Maybe she had with Rarity; they had a sort of...understanding, kind of like Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy seemed to. Not her and Pinkie Pie thought, they were way too different. But Twilight had been hoping somepony would have wanted to talk about what had happened because Twilight wasn’t very sure herself. The Everfree Forest, the black, thorny, wild vines and dark, twisted oaks towering over stabbing, needle-pin shrubs to the south, didn’t like money, or something, and had tried to take over Ponyville. Some sort of magic had brought a lot of unpleasant memories to the fore. About Shining Armor, her adopted older brother, and Princess Cadance, who had stolen him away, possibly literally.

Rarity had opened up later about what the forest had showed her, as had Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, but a piece of the story was missing from Rarity’s, the part that started with Applejack, who had only mentioned the barest details once, when Twilight was dazed and weak anyway. There had been a look in Applejack’s eye, and was there again now, not quite angry, not quite sad, just...heavy. There was something on her mind, and she wasn’t saying what.

“I can check if she won any money by breaking up the storm, though I don’t think I can do anything about it,” Twilight said. “I hope she didn’t. It’s better as a misguided prank than as an opportunistic crime.”

“It’s just some folk do a lot of planting in the spring. Apple trees need a lot of water. And the winter was long and cold.”

“It was, wasn’t it,” said Twilight carefully.

“Ever since the weather Pegasi came through and rolled up all the snow, the ground has been drier than a rattlesnake’s skin in July. I was really looking forward to the rain.”

“Me too. I’m not letting Rainbow Dash get away with it, you know.”

“Mhm.” Applejack sniffed the steaming mug, then took a cautious sip. “Mm...bracing.”

“Isn’t it? Want to go talk to Rarity? She’s moping because she wore her new raincoat for nothing. I’m sure she’d love to complain about the weather too. Oh, but first, have you seen Fluttershy around?”

“She said she’s going to be late. Got a cow giving birth. It’s normal this time of year for her. Once Rarity and I paid her a visit last year when we hadn’t seen her in two weeks. Walked up to the fence just in time to see the bubble break.”

“The bubble? Oh...yeurgh.”

“Rarity pitched right over! She wasn’t faking neither! Didn’t even say nothing bout sacred blue.”

“That’s a lovely image.”

“It was once Fluttershy got her cleaned up a bit.”

“Well...I’m going to take this tray over to Pinkie and Rainbow Dash. Tell Rarity she’s had enough. I don’t think Spike can say no to her, especially if she calls him Spikey-wikey.”

They shared a grin, and Applejack ambled off, her brown cowfilly hat marking her way through the throng. Twilight, carefully balancing the tray, pushed through to her friends dancing on the table, or above it, in Rainbow Dash’s case.

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie screeched as she came near. “This is the best party ever!”

“You say that about all the parties!” Twilight shouted back. Shouting. In a library. What was wrong with her? And why did it feel so good?

“I do not!”

“You do, actually. Stop dancing for a moment and try this drink I made. It’s perfect for the rainy weather.” She glanced at Rainbow Dash, who didn’t react. Either Rainbow Dash’s monthly poker games with a group of interchangeable sunglass-wearing Pegasi were really paying off, or she was just totally oblivious.

“You know, Applejack and Rarity are really upset about the weather,” Twilight said as Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash took their drinks and sat on the edge of the table.

“The weather’s great,” said Rainbow Dash. “Clear skies, perfect for flying.”

“Don’t tell me that’s why you did it!”

“No, I just wanted to do something awesome. That’s how you start a party off, not with a bunch of book-themed drinks.” She glanced at Twilight’s hurt face. “But, uh, my Random Walk on the Beach was really good.”

“I had like three NGDP Sunrises,” Pinkie Pie said, slurring a little. “What’s that last one on the tray?”

“This is a Das Kahlua I’m saving for Fluttershy. And you’re drinking Progress and Peppermints.” There was evident amusement on her face.

“It’s dry?” Rainbow Dash complained.

“Like you’re one to talk about dry, Dashie.”

“Dashie?” Pinkie Pie laughed, and laughed some more, a little helplessly. “Only Fluttershy calls her that!”

Twilight’s cheeks reddened. “I’m trying to be stern, okay? Didn’t you get called by your last name when your par...uh….”

Pinkie Pie had talked about her time in the forest, just to Twilight, alone. It had not been a good story, even if it ended happily, sort of. It ended with friends and a warm home, which was happier than most stories that involved watching your parents get crushed by a giant rock usually ended.

Pinkie Pie didn’t seem to notice, already draining the hot mug of nerdish peppermint warmth. “Mm! This is good!”

“It’s okay,” Rainbow Dash said. She looked over Twilight’s head in the direction of the door. “Hey! Those ponies have fish tails!”

“They must be—” Twilight began.

“New in town!” Pinkie Pie said. She slid off the table, nearly upsetting the cups, and shoved through the crowd, all knees and bouncing pink mane to the three merponies standing near the wall by the door, huddling like wallflowers.

What in Equestria? Twilight thought. Merponies? Didn’t they all…

...um….

Where did they all go?

Twilight’s ears swung up. Even over the buzz of a crowd of buzzed ponies, Pinkie Pie’s voice cut through like a horn through the fog.

“...guess your name! Danger! No? Adangerino!”

A grin crept over Twilight’s face. She remembered her first day in Ponyville. Pinkie Pie had been quite the culture shock. Rarity had possibly very nearly poisoned her, and Applejack had filled her with more apples than seemed healthy. Rainbow Dash...had just needed help. What luck or fate had brought her life together with the five ponies who just happened to be the Bearers of the Five Elements of Equilibrium?

...No, no. She kept forgetting. It wasn’t fate or destiny or even luck. They had made themselves the Bearers, and Twilight had...watched. Organized? Been nearby, been cognizant of the fact of what was happening.

Hadn’t things always been that way? History was full of stories of brave ponies and the adventures they had gone on and the victories they had died for. Somewhere in the back of the group was a pony carefully recording everything, making some sketches of interesting landmarks, and weaving a narrative out of it all so that the heroes could listen to it after and know what they had done….

It took an economist to turn a lot of trade and specialization and labor into an economy. Otherwise it was just a lot of ponies making money. It was the difference between a bunch of plants and a garden.

“Let’s go over to where Applejack and Rarity are sitting,” Twilight said suddenly. She tugged Rainbow Dash’s leg. “I’m sure if you apologize they won’t be mad.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged and let Twilight lead her over. Twilight tried to understand her. Rainbow Dash was proud, which meant she really cared what others thought about her. She was really honest about herself, and painfully so about others, like a filly, really, but at the same time, she didn’t like to admit her weaknesses. Just getting her to admit she had an aching tooth took probably the same effort as pulling it.

Pinkie Pie’s exclamation-mark barrage was still audible over the crowd.

“...And you must be So Naughty! Ooh! And you are...Angria! No??? How about….”

Something Fluttershy had told her, at the end, when they were facing Nightmare Moon, just the five of them and Twilight. Just before it had been the six of them.

You’re part of the equilibrium too.

“I want to show you all something.” Twilight settled Rainbow Dash next to a morose, dribbling Rarity and disappeared into the crowd and upstairs. She came back a minute later and sat with them, a hollow wooden box with a long neck laid in her lap. The edge of her hoof trailed down the tightened nylon strings, plucking music out of them.

“You play guitar?” Rainbow Dash said. Even Rarity perked up.

Twilight shrugged, her purple face tinged red. “My brother used to play. He taught me how.”

“We don’t ever hear about your brother,” Applejack said.

Twilight’s face looked like a bunch of grapes running from purple to red. “Uh...he lives up north. Far away. Anyway, I made a little song. It’s about you girls...it’s about us.” She paused. “I wish Fluttershy was here. Oh well, I can play it for her again later.”

Twilight remembered the old guitar booklet Shining Armor had given here. She positioned her hoofs on the guitar and depressed the strings with magic just where the picture in the booklet had showed.

She coughed and shuffled a little. Rainbow Dash’s tail thumped against the leg of her stool impatiently.

Twilight plucked a chord.

Her magic moved down the frets.

C, G, E!

“Wow!” Rarity clapped her hoofs. “Very pretty, Twilight.”

“I can do a bunch,” Twilight said. “But these are just normal chords, normal octaves. Music gets a lot more interesting when you incorporate harmonics.”

Twilight positioned her hoofs along the frets again. Her horn glowed.

“Music,” she said, “is an ocean. And each note,”

“is a wave,” Twilight said.

“My mane!” said Rainbow Dash. As if in some kinetic response to the music, her already wild hair was standing on end like Pinkie Pie had been rubbing balloons on her again. Rarity squawked and immediately attacked with a comb she pulled from somewhere.

“Look, your Element!” Rainbow Dash said. They all stared at the puffy cloud hanging from Rarity’s neck. It was pulsing purple for a moment, and glittering oddly, before it faded with the last echo of the magical note.

“Pretty!” Rarity cooed, while Twilight made a mental note to investigate that phenomenon later.

“What was that?” Applejack said. “Didn’t feel...real. More realer than real, like it’d be here even if nothing else was.”

“It’s just harmonics,” said Twilight, who lacked a poet’s soul.[4] “Magical notes, to increase the number of combinations. There’s—”

[4] But she had ten times a poet’s salary, she would be quick to point out.

“And—”

“Then—”

E, F, G, B!

“Do it more!” said Rainbow Dash, whose hair better resembled the spines of a teenage porcupine trying to give her mother a fright.

“Do not!” said Rarity, aghast and fighting a losing battle with her comb.

Applejack studied her Element. “How come it was glowing all the colors of the rainbow? And then it stopped?”

“Magic,” shrugged Twilight, who was enjoying the attention. “Anyway, here it goes….”

C, G, A, F, C, G, A, F….

It washed over Applejack like a wave of warm air. It was the sound of apples ripening. It was sweet, it was the gurgle of living water sucked into the earth, feeding her trees. It was the sound of memory, of things gone into the ground bearing new fruit….

It struck Rainbow Dash like electricity. It crackled up her skin and through her hair and ruined any chance of flying out of the library without looking like a blue puffball gone rainbow at the ends. It was the song of opportunity, a melody of the ebb and flow of chance….

The comb slipped from Rarity’s magical grip.

As the wave gathered momentum, picking up energy as it went, in defiance of physics and in total compliance with poetic law, it swept and broke over the crowd, who turned as one, temporarily muted, as the music played….

“I’m so close! Oooh! Adageez-o!”

Well, almost as one. There’s always somepony in the crowd who’s talking over the players. It wouldn’t really be a concert without it. That sort of thing is also part of the harmony.

Then even Pinkie Pie noticed that the crowded library was silent, as if the librarian had gone Shh! It was a command every schoolfilly and colt knew by instinct. It made the knees fold and the back straighten, and the whispers shut off.

Twilight Sparkle played her song.

The crowd listened, watched, open mouthed, some of them.

Three merponies stared. They were each of them thinking different things, but the one thing they were thinking together was, No way. Not Twilight. She’s got the rhythm of a spastic puppy with epilepsy.

Twilight let the music play through her hoofs and out of her horn. It was like her brother had taught her, surfing the music, think of it as a wave, and ride it….

No pony who knew Twilight would have expected her to try to learn to play an instrument. It wasn’t like she was hated music or was against fun. It was just hard to think of Twilight in rhythm.

It was the way of her whole cohort back in Canterlot, she reflected. There was a jagged nature to the economists Princess Celestia raised. They didn’t fit into the world, they didn’t fit into life. It made them uniquely suited to study it. And completely incapable of understanding it.

She was like a jigsaw piece that had no tabs or holes, and was shaped like a triangle with a bite taken out of one side. It had taken the end of the world to jumble up the pieces enough for her to fit in.

It was a myth, thought Twilight, that the end of the world was, well, the end. Like a good book, there was always the chance of a sequel, especially if the original had made money. After Nightmare Moon, things had gone back to normal, mostly. She did live in Ponyville now instead of Canterlot. And now she had friends.

She hadn’t made friends on purpose. They had been collected out of necessity, like the assortment of metal saws on her bedside table for hoof trimming, and the custom-made iron comb that was able to rip through the Gordian tangles in her hair in the morning. But when you go through a forest of nightmares together to face down the greatest terror in Equestria, you just have to become friends by the end. It’s one of those things, a melody in the rhythm of the world, the kind that gets stuck in the head.

And now she intended to sing about it.

Oh, when I was just a filly ♫ :applejackconfused:
♪ I thought something awful silly :rainbowwild:
♬ That I didn’t need friends, only books :raritydespair:
I didn’t know what friendship took ♫ :pinkiesick:

Twilight’s hoof plucked the string. She looked up. She had presented in enough economics seminars to know when she had lost her audience.

“What?” she said.

“It was very pretty,” Rarity said quickly. “Very nice.”

“It was great until you started singing,” Rainbow Dash said. “Then it kind of started to suck. Sorry.”

“That’s honest,” Twilight said, still picking chords nonmagically. “Well. I just wanted to share, anyway. Harmonics are very interesting.”

“It was great,” Applejack said. “Don’t let Rainbow Dash rain on your parade. Or stop everypony else from raining on it, that is.”

“Twilight that was awesome!” Pinkie Pie shouted from across the library. Twilight waved to her. Now there was somepony she could learn from. Pinkie Pie wouldn’t stop singing even if ponies begged her not to.

“I know how you could get a lot better,” said Rainbow Dash. “The Flim Flam brothers have a bunch of arts programs you can write off to. They’ll pay for you to get lessons once they find out how good you are at guitar.”

Everypony winced at the discordant squeak from Twilight’s guitar.
“Who?” she said, softly.

“You haven’t heard of them? The Flim Flam brothers! I’ll give you a brochure. I get them in the mail every month.”

The guitar clattered on the floor as Twilight stood up.

“You subscribe to the Flim Flam brothers?” she said.

The Golden Oak Tree, home of Twilight Sparkle, her library, and, currently, a Rainy Day party during a sunny spring day, stopped swaying its boughs. It had quite enjoyed the music, and wished it would continue.

The music had sounded magical, and the Golden Oak Tree’s very first inhabitant had been the most magical pony in Equestria. Pity what happened to him in the end.

The Golden Oak Tree has had many interesting and puissant inhabitants over the centuries because at the heart of Ponyville and its magic is this tree: ancient, fat, slanted in the way oaks often are, with branches that curve in ways that seem to pay no respect to gravity or geometry. But it really needs to be seen after a rain, when the leaves positively glow. When Ponyville was just the seed of an idea in the mind of Frankie Knight, first of the Knights of Economics, the Golden Oak Tree was already old.

About ten miles south of the Golden Oak Tree is the Everfree Forest. If the Golden Oak Tree is Joseph sewing a coat busier than Princess Celestia’s mane, then the Everfree Forest is Esau wrapped in lamb skin, sitting on the couch with belly exposed, throwing empty beer cans at the dog.

Recently the Everfree Forest is reported to have made friends with an Earth Pony named Pinkie Pie, who bakes. Supposedly it favors cinnamon and vanilla, and is being introduced, cautiously, to banana walnut.

Few are gullible enough to believe these rumors. They are, however, true. Sometimes the strangest things are.

The Golden Oak Tree is one of these stranger things. There are many rumors about it. They say those who live in the hollowed-out interior do not age or sleep. They say that the tree will not turn away any traveler who asks for a night’s rest. They say that the tree has a mind of its own.

This last point deserves comment. All trees have minds of their own. They are slow minds. They think a lot about rain. But they are minds. No, that is not what is so strange about the Golden Oak Tree. What is strange about the Golden Oak Tree is what it does with its mind.

To wit, it makes friends.

Or tries, anyway. It is a tree.

Only the most interesting sorts of creatures have taken up residence in the Golden Oak Tree. Regular sorts don’t like to stay long. That has to do with the roots, which suck at the inhabitant’s mind, listening as only a tree can: observing, learning, taking.

It gives back. Ponies who live in the Golden Oak Tree do not, in fact, need to eat or sleep, although they mostly do out of habit. It’s an output-input relationship that would have made Leontief cry. But it’s not quite friendship. Not yet.

If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? The question answers itself: The tree heard it. And, of more concern to the tree, felt it. Ponies, in thousands of years of guiding nature, have not thought to listen to the trees.

They are going to learn.

Some trees can live forever. They don’t, because of wind, and lightning, and bugs, and people with axes and a job to do, but they can.

Some lies, like some trees, can live forever, mostly by never really dying. Lies like how we got here, or where we’re going. Ponies look around and see the ground is still. They look up and see the Sun wobbling lazily in the sky. They tell themselves the Earth is hanging gently in space while Princess Celestia lets a merrily burning star rise up and down around it. In fact the Earth is hurtling through space unmoored, the sun dragging along behind it as though tethered, which it is, to Princess Celestia.

One lie about Princess Celestia is that she raises the Sun. She does not. She swings it. The Sun does not rise in the east so much as arc over it and swing around, falling west under the world in time for Princess Celestia to get a cup of coffee before she does something similar with the moon.

It’s very important that nothing bad happen to her.

That sort of lie about the Sun is a lie of convenience. Astromagics isn’t something that can be easily explained to the average pony. No, that sort of lie is like a pigeon. It hangs around because no pony has the energy to shoo it away, and only once in a while does it do a poo on somepony’s head.

Other lies are like...zombies. Kill them, and they just come back.

They come for your brains. You can tell by the way they say, “Brains...brains….”

One such lie about Princess Celestia is that she’s replaceable. This gets resurrected every time some ambitious creature, one time a yak, another time a centaur, even ponies, on occasion, take sight of her castle, and the grand city, Canterlot, and think, Ka-ching!

Insurrections are short-lived, literally.

And thankfully. Astronomical magnitudes and a dearth of magical, ahem, puissance mean there are only two conceivable alternatives to the good Princess. One spent the last thousand years trapped on the moon and now hides in the shadow of a distant, storm-ridden country, lurking in caves under dark clouds, fleeing sunlight. The other has a fondness for a local delicacy called poutine and is practically disqualified as a result.

Other lies are about the Bank. The One Bank, it should be specified, since now there are the Nine as well, but the One is the oldest and the greatest. Some are pigeon lies, like the notion that Princess Celestia hoards vast wealth in her Bank (it’s mere gold and silver, nothing useful).[5]

[5] None have been able to penetrate the One Bank’s security. The farthest incursion into the Bank known to ponykind was written about by AK Yearling in her classic Daring Do short story, “Daring Do and the Hello, Princess, I Was Just, Um.” It is four pages long, three and a half of which detail the drinks Daring Do had after.

Then there are the zombie lies, many of which have been resurrected in the aftermath of the Great Succession that Nightmare Moon visited on Equestria. Princess Celestia had been deposed, and Nightmare Moon had begun to constrict the money supply, turning the veil of money into a garrote, tightening around Equestria’s neck….

It got better. Nightmare Moon was defeated, equilibrium was restored. Princess Celestia reclaimed her throne. Only then did the chaos begin.

Chaos is a funny thing. Chaos isn’t the result of badness. It comes from the mutual confusion of intentions, also known as conflict. When the tanks roll in and a once-proud military nation surrenders in a month, order is swiftly imposed. When the troops stick around to change Hearts and Minds, with their only tools being those that explode said organs into lots of small pieces, you get chaos. Nightmare Moon’s conquest was too swift and absolute for anypony to wonder what they ought to do next. They could only hope that there would be a next in which anything that ought, could. But since Princess Celestia wouldn’t turn anypony into moon dust for criticizing her[6], the result was chaos.

[6] Those who tried to filch from the private royal cakery, however, had no such guarantee. Princess Celestia’s fondness for donuts has often been compared to many an overworked mare’s affection for red wine. This is another lie. In truth she treats it more like vodka.

A number of respectable[7] ponies complained, very publicly, about Reforms. They didn’t have any ideas themselves, but since We Cannot Let This Happen Again so Something Must Be Done, they demanded reforms, reforms that, oddly enough, usually happened to be whatever they had been proposing before Nightmare Moon. One popular proposal was to audit the One Bank. This was proposed and heard with a certain amount of hoof-rubbing and frankly voyeuristic intrigue.

[7] Not that anypony knew what they had done to deserve respect. They dressed a certain way and carried themselves just so. They were respectable, as in, it was possible to respect them. It was also possible for the Earth to spontaneously begin revolving around the Sun. It had nothing to do with decency.

Princess Celestia said no. No pony pressed the issue. There was something about the way she said it that made them stop and reflect on their lives, and more pressingly, the fact that they had lives.

But other ponies did have ideas. Ideas like maybe Nightmare Moon was what you got when you printed too much money instead of not enough. Or that it had really been all about selling houses to the wrong kind of ponies, or uncertainty over the the effects of Nightmare Moon’s regime. Where they got those ideas from, well...ideas having a way of living on long after they’re dead.

And they’re coming for your brains….

Anypony who’s seen a brain, such as a surgeon, or a very careless cart driver, would not be surprised to learn that something dead can grow out of it. It is a pink, bloody mass, the sort of thing you would ask the surgeon to remove if you didn’t know better.8

[8] Anypony who’s suffered through the afternoon Canterlot traffic might suspect many a careless cart driver did not know better.

This brain, which crackles with energy and pops with an inventiveness that belies its age, belongs to one half of a most unusual pair. The other half is in another skull, and they are very nearly identical, both the brains, and the skulls. They are twins, their names are Flim and Flam, and they are two of the most disliked ponies in Equestria. And since the ponies of Equestria aren’t much known for disliking other ponies at all, it stands to reason that they must have done something particularly egregious.

What they had done was try to depose Princess Celestia. Not violently—everypony knew what had happened to the yaks who tried. And the griffons. And the—well, pretty much every magical, intelligent species had tried at some point, and up to a point, specifically, the one on the end of Princess Celestia’s horn.

No, not violently. Persuasively. They made newsletters. Bought newspapers. They paid for editorials, then journalists, then journalism schools. They funded societies, think tanks, grants for researchers, library wings, whole university departments. The Flim Flam brothers had a lot of money.

Usually this was no cause for opprobrium. Princess Celestia, after all, controlled all the money in a very real, er, nominal, sense, and she was much beloved. Flim and Flam, however...well...it was about the wells, wasn’t it? And the forests. And the rivers. And the oceans, such as they were. And the air. And...just about everything beautiful, natural, and, importantly, clean.

Did their rock-fracturing mining technique pollute the rivers and lakes? Did their smoke-belching factories dirty the air? Were those geese, in fact, not playing with those plastic rings? Who could say? It was a controversy, meaning there were lots of experts saying yes, and two ponies with lots of money saying no.

Derpy knocked on the door.

“Dolores!” shouted a voice.

“Just a minute, sir!” a female voice answered from the second floor. Derpy stood back and waited.

This place was weird. The house was all alone in the middle of a desert, the sand almost red. Derpy wasn’t quite sure how she had flown here—she had followed the pull of the letter, and it had brought her here. That sort of thing bothered her. She didn’t mind being the vessel of some occult spirit of Delivery. She just wished it would communicate a little better. And maybe warn her when she was flying into a thunderstorm.

She didn’t want to stay here long. But there was a delivery, and that meant somepony had to sign.

The door opened. An older grey mare glared at her. “What?” she snapped.

“D-delivery.” Derpy gave her an envelope with a round bulge in the center and a sheet. Her face and legs, presumably those belonging to second-floor Dolores, were spotted with adhesive bandages, and Derpy couldn’t stop staring. Usually Derpy couldn’t start staring. “Need you to sign.”

Derpy looked around uncomfortably. This was easy since for her looking straight ahead was usually the challenge. Dolores, presumably, was actually reading the sheet. Derpy hadn’t ever read the delivery sheet.

“It’s just an envelope with something in it,” Dolores said suspiciously. “Why do I have to sign?”

“Rules,” Derpy managed. She felt like she ought to stand up straight and raise her leg before talking to this mare, or at least keep her eyes from wobbling in different directions. Dolores had the glare of a schoolteacher.

Dolores gave her a soul-piercing look. Then she signed the sheet.

“What, what are they doing out in a place like this?” Derpy asked.

Dolores was already closing the door. “Studying cactus!” She slammed the door shut.

Derpy stood on the step, wondering what she had done wrong. And how she was going to get out of here. Not much left in her mailbag. Well...there was still that letter to Maud Pie. Now it was pulling her...south? She was already almost to the southern border.

The desert wind howled. Hot, stinging sand rushed across her back, leaving her feeling like she had been rubbed down with sandpaper.

Well, it was better than staying here. Trusting the letter, Derpy took to her wings….

“It’s a letter with something in it!” Dolores shouted. Flim looked up from the shriveled cactus he was cutting open. “Put it on the table,” he said.

“I’ll take it,” said Flam, not looking up from the map. Aside from the red mustache quivering under his snout he was the spitting image of his slightly older brother. Dolores, their assistant for fifteen years, gave it to him and went back to cleaning the upstairs room, which was filled with needles from an exploded cactus.

“It’s a letter,” Flam said lazily. He skipped to the bottom and read the signature. Then he bolted upright in his seat. “It’s from Applejack!”

“Applejack?”

“The eldest mare of the Apple family, remember? ...Ho! She says if we can find it, we can have it.”

Flim put down his knife and stared at the wall. “She doesn’t believe it’s real,” he said eventually.

Flam pulled the bulging object out of the envelope. “Look at this!” he laughed. “It’s an apple! Seems like it’s still fresh, somehow.”

Dolores came downstairs with a bag full of needles and a few fresh bandages. “Toss it in the bag and I’ll take it out.”

“It’s a waste, eat it.” Flam’s horn glowed green. He levitated it to her. Dolores caught it and took a bite, chewing as she tossed the bag in the trash. Then she stopped and stared at the apple.

She swallowed. “It’s delicious!” She took a bite, and without stopping to chew took another large bite, barely stopping to chew as she swallowed skin, meat and seed alike. “Pho’ goo’!”

Dolores stopped, trembling with the effort. Flim and Flam were giving her alarmed looks. “W-would either of you like to try it?” she gasped, juice dripping from her chin.

“...No,” said Flim. He levitated the rest of the apple away from her. “I’ll dispose of it later. Finish cleaning up, will you?” Flushed, Dolores nodded and disappeared upstairs.

“Well!” Flam said. “Some apple.”

“They say witch’s blood flows in the Apple family,” Flim said with a small grin.

“They say that about every mare who grows fruit.”

“They’re usually right. Let’s write back to her. She’s a practical, hard-working mare. Doesn’t have time for mythical buried treasures. So we’ll take it off her hoofs.”

“Afterward she’ll say it’s hers.”

“And we’ll have the letter, and lawyers.”

“Yes. We will. To Ponyville, then?”

“As soon as possible. It’d be best if we could lodge close by. Dolores will write the letter.”

Flim grinned at the dry, shriveled cactus, his mind racing. If they found the buried treasure of Granny Smith….

Flim had never wanted to conquer Equestria. Force was for tyrants, and Celestia was no tyrant. She was a princess, and a princess was an idea.

And ideas...change.

Flim had always wanted to be a princess.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said incredulously. “You must not have been paying attention to what you were signed up for. I’ll head on over first thing tomorrow to help you unsubscribe from their mailing list.”

“No way,” Rainbow Dash said. “I love all the cool stuff they send me.”

“Have you read any of it?”

“Yeah. Just this last week there was this big expose about the new Daughter Banks.”

“Rainbow Dash,” Applejack said warningly.

Rainbow Dash plunged on with the attitude of a drunk ship captain steering straight toward an iceberg. “Yeah, see, the magazine they put out, The Free Equestrian, it tells the truth. Not like all those biased mainstream papers that suck up to Princess Celestia.”

Rarity tugged one of Rainbow Dash’s flapping wings. “Dash, darling, I really wouldn’t.”

“It’s fine,” Twilight said. “I’d love to hear what they have to say about me.” It was true. If the Flim Flam brothers hated you, it meant you were doing something right.

Rainbow Dash didn’t need encouragement. “I started reading about it after Nightmare Moon happened. It all makes so much sense. See, after locking up her sister, Princess Celestia got really lazy because she had to work all day and night. So she was just like, whatever, and let the money supply rise all the time. The money supply inflated the whole economy like a balloon, and when it got too big, it popped! And that’s how Nightmare Moon got free.”

“That’s incredibly logical,” said Twilight.

“Then what happened is, um, okay, so it’s to do with houses, right? Because Nightmare Moon was trapped on the moon for so long, she got really obsessed with where she lived. It was all she had, right? And so housing prices were going up because they were on top of the balloon, right, or all the houses would fall off.”

“You are misunderstanding the idea of a bubble,” Twilight said, with deceptive calm.

“So all the housing, which got way too high because of the money supply—you can tell because of the way the prices went down during the recession, that’s how you know—got really powerful, and Nightmare Moon used that power to take over. It was only thanks to us that Nightmare Moon was defeated, or the economy would have been in a recession for a thousand years.

“Basically,” continued Rainbow Dash, “it was all Princess Celestia’s fault. Only she doesn’t want you to know that. That’s why she made the Daughter Banks, so she could have even more power over the economy. Never waste a crisis, right? Only because she still doesn’t get enough sleep, she’s just letting the Bank print money like it’s no pony’s business, which, actually, it isn’t, because she won’t let anypony take a look. What’s up with that, huh? Kind of makes you wonder, huh?”

Ponies gathered at the party, listening in on Rainbow Dash’s explanation of the recession, were starting to share looks. It was true that no pony really knew what happened at the One Bank. Princess Celestia was a great believer in democracy, but not when it came to monetary policy. Not one bit.

The murmurs gathered and built, throbbing into a background hum. A green fog was startling to mist and curl in Twilight’s mind. It made it hard to think, but at the same time, things seemed very clear.

“It’s suspicious, isn’t it?” said Rainbow Dash. “Princess Celestia messes things up completely, and we get more banks out of it? What’s up with that?”

“I really wouldn’t,” Applejack said. Only five minutes ago she was grateful to have Twilight Sparkle there between her and Rainbow Dash, and now she was worried. Twilight Sparkle was usually a calm, stoic sort of Unicorn, but she had a big, red button, and written on it was ‘Princess Celestia’ in bold, black ink.

“It’s time to stop being afraid. At least, that’s what the magazine said. It says we should rise up and take the money back. It was really ours all along, it says. We should all be free thinkers, it says. Imagine it! Your own treasure chest full of gold and silver!”

“All the gold and silver in the One Bank divided among the population of Equestria amounts to about six bits per pony,” Twilight said with icy calm, the same as an iceberg facing an oncoming ship. “Can I respond, please?”

She stood up.

“The Flim Flam brothers are a pair of millionaires turned political revolutionaries,” Twilight was addressing the throng, her voice raised over that annoying hum. It was like a saw in her brain. It almost made her want to slap something. Or somepony. “They were so successful at polluting the environment that they decided to do the same to the world of ideas.”

“They send out really funny jokes for the start of spring,” Rainbow Dash said. “One goes, Why did Princess Celestia call for rain on Tuesday? Because—”

“The Flim Flam brothers,” said Twilight with cruel triumph, “are global warming deniers.”

Even the hum skipped a beat. The green fog wavered, then continued to rise in her head.

“That’s right,” Twilight said. “We all know that millennia ago, Princess Celestia, with her sister, melted the snow that covered Equestria and warmed the Earth with the rising Sun.”

“No evidence,” Rainbow Dash countered.

“Literally entire museums full of exactly that, I can get you a free pass.”

“So convenient,” Rainbow Dash sneered as the hum grew louder. “We needed a Bank because of the evil snow.”

“Yes, that’s right, we determined what institutions we needed based on the problems we faced.”

“Ha! Princess Celestia determined that. And all the sheeponies just follow along. It takes an open mind like the Flim Flam brothers have to question things. Things were better back when we had a snow standard,” Rainbow Dash added stubbornly.

“Things were the worst, ponies froze to death. You aren’t telling me you seriously believe this stuff? All this conspiracy nonsense and global warming denialism? We’re talking about a pair of ponies who blow up rocks to get to the dead water underneath for a living.”

“We call ourselves global temperature realists, actually. Are you saying you’ve never met one before?”

“I’ve read about them. For one, they’re incredibly stupid.”

“I’m not stupid!”

Rainbow Dash rose into the air, wings beating furiously.

“You think you’re smarter than me? Just because you have a big fancy degree and basically get paid to think all the time? I did great in school, I just didn’t feel like finishing, I could have if I wanted to! I made way more money than anypony else in my class.”

“It’s true,” Rarity sighed.

The green mist, the cloud in her mind that had made it seem like it was a good idea to insult Rainbow Dash, faded before her visible hurt. She hadn’t meant to upset her friend.

“Sorry,” Twilight said. “Look, I know you’re smart. I’m also worried you’re reading some stuff that...might be bad for you, if you don’t have somepony a little more…experienced to help you navigate. Like you’re at pharmacy. You don’t want to buy all the medicine every time you get sick. You need a doctor to tell you which will make you better and which will make you throw up a lot.”

“One time this medicine Fluttershy told me to take made me throw up a lot.”

“It was a metaphor.”

“It was because I had eaten this poisonous root.”

“Right.”

“It looked tasty in the dark.”

“Just try to be a little more skeptical about this Flim Flam stuff. I want you to know that me and all the other girls running the Daughter Banks are doing their best to protect Equestria’s future. And Princess Celestia does what she does for the good of Equestria. Trust me, she does not take vacations. I know because she forced me to once, and—”

“Ha!”

The humming stopped.

Twilight turned around. The yellow merpony was snaking through the crowd. She held a foreleg with a dark bruise gingerly, but her eyes were as sharp as dragon teeth. Twilight had seen hate like that before. Once. In the eyes of Nightmare Moon.

“Can I help you?” she said warily.

“If you’re a servant of the princesses, I very much doubt it.” The merpony came to a stop a few feet in front of her. The hate in her eyes wasn’t any less intense up close. It made Twilight’s legs tremble involuntarily. She did not want to remember. She did not want to face this again.

Who was this?

“I am Adagio Dazzle,” said the merpony. “Did they ever mention me?”

“I...no, who are you?”

“Special Emissary of the Merponies of the Octopus Gulf. Know what a dolphin is?” she said loudly. Her question was addressed to the whole crowd.

“A what?” Applejack said. Mutterings from the others at the party suggested they didn’t have any better idea.

“It’s a kind of sauce,” said Rainbow Dash with expert ignorance.

“What’s a dolphin?” piped up a high-pitched voice. Twilight’s eyes focused on the little red-maned yellow filly with the big pink bow in the middle of the room.

“You weren’t supposed to bring your little sister,” Twilight hissed to Applejack. “I said there were going to be drinks.”

“But there’s plenty of adults here to watch her,” Applejack replied.

Twilight was trying thinking of a retort to that while Adagio Dazzle explained to Apple Bloom what a dolphin was. What a dolphin had been.

“Never heard of no dolphin,” Apple Bloom said. “What happened to ‘em?”

“There were no ponies to take care of them, so they died. All the fish did.” Adagio told her what fish were. “The oceans are all dead water now. Only whales live in the ocean now, deeeeep down. Maybe octopuses too, I always thought they were smarter than we gave them credit for.”

“This is really not a subject for fillies,” Twilight interrupted. Adagio’s hate-filled eyes swung her way and stabbed right into her. Twilight hesitated, and Apple Bloom asked another question.

“You’re a merpony, ain’t ya? Why didn’t the merponies take care of them? All the fish and dolphins and whatnot?”

Adagio gave her a scornful look. “Do you know how big the ocean is? Equestria isn’t half as long, and forget about deep.”

“So you just left them?”

There was something musical about Adagio’s voice, Twilight noticed. Like she was always singing, or just about to. Now it was rising in a sort of arpeggio. “Listen, filly, there are fewer merponies that there are Pegasi. Do you want to spend your whole life swimming after a bunch of dumb fish?”

“I don’t know, is it better than apples?”

“Ha!”

“Couldn’t you have gone to Princess Celestia for help?”

“This is really not a story for fillies,” Twilight said, more loudly. Once again Adagio’s hateful glare withered her.

Then a shadow passed over the merpony’s face. For a moment, she didn’t answer.

“You gave up,” Apple Bloom said, with the perceptive honesty of a child.

“I was our envoy,” Adagio Dazzle said. It was a deep, mournful chord. “Whole species were dying every day. We couldn’t, I didn’t—” She cut off and swallowed. “I begged on my knees for help.”

“You don’t have knees,” said Twilight, unable to help himself.

She held up her forelegs, silencing her with the contempt of her gaze. “These knees, you idiot. I groveled.”

Twilight knew what was coming next. Probably no pony else in the treehouse that day did. She knew she should do something to stop it. But she couldn’t think of what. Not with the look in that merpony’s eyes. The hate, that pain. She couldn’t think of anything she had the right to do.

“Do you want to know what the princess said, little filly? When I begged and pleaded for the power of the Bank to save the dying ocean?”

“Sure,” said Apple Bloom, in the tone of a little minnow obliviously obliging the shark’s request to count its teeth for it.

“She said she did her best, but she couldn’t find enough in the budget for it.”

“She couldn’t save any of them?”

“She couldn’t afford to.” The melody of Adagio’s voice, which had been a background hum, suddenly crashed discordant, like the steady rhythm of a beating hammer turned to a yelp and a clatter as the hammerer suddenly nailed her own hoof. It tore into Twilight’s head as it the sound twisted and clashed like gears grinding in a broken engine. It hurt her ears, and she was relieved when Adagio restored the melody after a moment.

Adagio continued, shakily. “The ocean was dying. My sisters and I couldn’t stop it. The ocean had no, had no...have you ever seen a pers...a pony at the end of her life, when nothing but machines are keeping her alive and nothing but medicine is keeping the pain from driving her insane?”

“N-no,” said Apple Bloom shakily.

What? Twilight thought. What is she talking about?

“It was like that. Only worse. The ocean was falling apart faster than we could...not repair it. Sustain it. By the end of it I hated myself. Trying to keep algae from falling apart like wet paper. Pushing sharks along in the water to keep them swimming. Once the coral reefs went, everything collapsed. Do you know what the worst thing was?” Apple Bloom shook her head. “It was the smell. Decaying fish corpses gliding along, rotting matter falling off the bone. Muscle and tendons and viscera going runny and slimy in the water. I wanted to vomit.”

Apple Bloom’s eyes were wide. “What did you do?”

“I learned to sing.” She flashed a watery smile. “It turned out to be a good way to express my emotions.”

“And Princess Celestia didn’t do anything?”

“It was everything or nothing. The ocean was a mutualistically symbiotic network—uh, everyfish helped everyfish, get it?. Letting half the population collapse would have doubled our work. The princesses went into a little room and closed the door and decided it would save point oh two bits per year to let the ocean die. It also stopped all that nasty business with bringing zebras over. Too expensive to hire weather Unicorns for the voyage, see?” The melody was breaking again, each note becoming harsh and unpleasant. “Why punish anypony if you can just dis-in-cen-ti-vize them?” The sing-song tone made Twilight’s stomach turn. “That’s royalty for you. Why is it that the good of Equestria always happens to be whatever’s easiest for the Diarchs?”

“She helped,” Twilight said. “You’re not exactly telling the whole story.”

“Oh, Princess Luna offered to make an aquarium. To hold an individual of a few favorite species each. I told her merponies aren’t that twisted.”

Everypony was very quiet.

“Princess Luna?” Twilight said.

Adagio’s eyes flitted from face to face. She could sense something was wrong. “Princess Celestia too, of course, also….”

“You’re making all of this up!” said Twilight triumphantly.

Adagio’s eyes were as sharp as knives. There were quite a lot of very pointy teeth in her widening mouth, Twilight noticed. “I am not, you princess’s pet!”

“If you really met with Princess Luna, then you’re over a thousand years old,” Twilight said smugly. “Don’t get many Equestrian newspapers in merpony seas, is that it? Didn’t do your research before coming over here and trying to spread malicious rumors?”

Adagio’s eyes were wide and uncomprehending. Twilight kept going.

“Maybe I can help explain to you Princess Celestia’s decision. Economists speak for those who don’t have voices. All that money you wanted? It doesn’t just sit in a vault waiting for the rightful claimant to wield it. It’s being used to achieve other valuable things other ponies care about. The Bank must—it’s called Walras’s Law, so they legally have to.”

There was an angry flash in Adagio’s eye, but Twilight was riding high on three margin and tonics in her gut and had just found out one of her best friends was a global warming denier. She plowed on. “Your selfishness—yes, it is selfishness—is something the princess affords you. She listens to all pains and chooses, while you whine because others are being attended to.”

“She calculates,” Adagio spat, without song.

“Chooses. You sit back and enjoy the world she gives you and complain she also gives it to others. And the same to you about Flim and Flam, Rainbow Dash,” she added. “There are better things that can be done with gold and silver than to give a pathetically small amount to everypony. They know how to make money. Princess Celestia knows what to do with it.”

Adagio was staring at her like she had just said 2 + 2 = murder. Whatever angry retort she was about to burst out with was interrupted by the door slamming open. A blood-splattered pony was silhouetted in the way.

“Am I late?” said the apparition.

It was a fine spring day. A warm breeze whipped down the way to Fluttershy’s animal sanctuary and her little cottage. A pleasant plume of smoke curled lazily out of the chimney. A robin and his beau tweeted violent love sonnets at each other, making shameless proposals as they swooped and dived in furious circles around each other. No rain beat down on Fluttershy’s dry tarp as she wrestled with a pregnant, heaving cow.

It happened every year. One of the new mothers always panicked. It was Fluttershy’s job to soothe her, and to do pretty much everything else as well.

The first calving of spring was always bad. It was the stiffness after winter. The fear and cold hadn’t quite left yet. And the pain was sudden, and new.

This time was worse. The calf was twisted around inside and caught on something. The mother had torn something in her thrashing, and that only made her panic more, kicking and bleating and smearing blood on the fresh grass. The father, Mr. Cow, was being kept inside, with Mr. Bear there to soothe him and her baby giant sky serpent’s tail draped across the door just in case.

The calf’s elbows were caught. Fluttershy had to push it back in to reposition it, which made the mother shriek and kick, nearly taking Fluttershy’s head off. She really ought to tie the poor thing down, but it was too late for that.

Finally she had the calf in position. Now she needed to take it out. But the mother’s thrashing had opened up her wounds. She’d be ripping her apart if she did.

There was one option. But she really didn’t want to.

Oh dear. She had to.

The robin stopped his mad twirl as the heifer’s pained grunts reached a crescendo. He alighted on the chimney to watch, chirping excitedly for his hen to join him. A yellow Pegasus with a soft wave of pink hair was up to her knees in the blood of a thrashing, birthing cow. The robin wasn’t so surprised by this. Pegasi had helped him build a plush nest and aided his mate, a pretty, orange-breasted thing, to lay her eggs there. (The mating itself they had managed on their own, albeit with one eye each on the helpful diagrams drawn with cloud-stuff the Pegasi had left in the air nearby.)[9]

[9] Hence the origin of the term “wingmare,” as in, “Hey, now that I’ve had enough to drink, come along and watch me embarrass myself in front of these girls.”

This Pegasus was a bit different, though. This Pegasus was involved. Knee-deep, in fact, and soothing the bleating, frightened heifer with a gentle voice. Mammals definitely have it worse than avians, the robin thought. Giving birth shouldn’t be so…organic.

Pity that she wouldn’t be able to save both. Come to think of it, his hen really shouldn’t be watching this—

♩ I know you’re scared,
♩ I know you’re in pain,
♩ I know you think you’re dying,
But is it so? ♫

All the critters watching the scene in mute horror were suddenly perking up, ears swiveling.

Fluttershy sang her lullaby.

♩ You think you’re twisted up inside,
But is it so? But is it so? ♫
♩You think it’s helpful to thrash and kick,
But is it so? But is it so? ♫

The meter wasn’t very consistent. The beat was all over the place. But the voice was as sweet as living water. It was as gentle as satin. It was an auditory warm blanket wrapped snug around the panicked shoulders of the frightened heifer.

It was a song she had sung to herself years ago, as a filly. You think your friends don’t really like you. But is it so, but is it so? She had sung it to the dogs and pigs when the Pegasi were making thunder and lightning. You think the thunder will get you. But is it so, but is it so? She sang it to foals crying in their cribs when she foalsat for the mares around town. You think a monster will eat you. But is it so, but is it so?

She was not, she would be the first to admit, a trained singer. That was why it always made her uncomfortable to see how ponies and critters reacted to her voice, at least when she sang. She couldn’t get anypony to listen to her when she spoke in her normal voice, and not just because it usually wasn’t audible. But when she sang, it was like a switch flipped in everypony else. They tripped over themselves to listen. And obey.

It was a little creepy.

So she tried not to sing much, except in the bath, which everypony did, it didn’t count. But at times like this, with two lives at stake, surely it wasn’t, you know, evil. She’d feel guilty about it later. But not too guilty.

As she crooned and hummed, the heifer’s kicks stopped. Her bleatings turned to pained snorts. She was still, and Fluttershy pulled the calf free.

“You’re a cute one!” Fluttershy said to the shivering, blood-and-amniotic fluid-drenched calf. She scooped the fluid out of its nose and tickled it until with a sudden snort the calf started to breathe.

“There you go, come this way, see Momma,” Fluttershy said, tugging the calf around to the cow’s front so the mother could start to lick and clean while Fluttershy did something about all the blood.

With the cow’s breaths coming in great shuddering gasps, Fluttershy hummed again as she set to work cleaning and dressing the wound.

The baby sky serpent was right behind her, staring intently at the scene. Its head alone was as big as the whole cow.

“Hi,” said Fluttershy, a little nervously. It might have been the first time the baby sky snake had heard her really sing. She had received him as a gift from a sea serpent they had run into on their way to defeating Nightmare Moon, and ever since then, the baby snake had imprinted onto Fluttershy in a serious way. Great buds on its back that looked like forming wings were more prominent than ever after a long winter hibernation. “Did you want to help me?”

The baby serpent licked the air and didn’t answer.

“O-kay,” said Fluttershy, and went back to humming and treating the cow. She put a bandage to hold the dressing in place.

“Okay, everycritter out!” Her voice cracked like a velvet whip. Critters, or naturally evolved organisms, as their radical wing liked to be called, scattered and left the mother and her calf alone. Fluttershy checked their water and hay, then went inside to tell Mr. Cow that he could see them in an hour. And that Mr. Bear was to be there with them.[10]

[10] Fluttershy, being a worrier, worried about worriers like Mr. Cow. It wasn’t that he might harm the calf, but he hadn’t slept in a fortnight and might fall asleep on it.

Angel Bunny was nearby, thumping his leg on the floor and pointing to the clock.

“Oh, dear!” Fluttershy exclaimed. “I’m late! I’m going to be very late for a very important party!”

She looked outside at the clear blue sky and the beaming sun, scrubbing at the blood matted to her fur with a rag.

“It’s not raining,” she said to Angel Bunny, a slightly manic tremor in her voice. “That’s unusual.”

Angel Bunny thumped his foot and gestured at the door impatiently.

“You’re right, I’ll ask Twilight when I get there.” Fluttershy ran to the door, then stopped and turned. “Have I got all the blood off?” she asked breathlessly.

Angel Bunny, who felt that Fluttershy was sometimes seen as a bit of a pushover by the denizens of Ponyville and could use a bit of an image boost, nodded.

“Then I’m going! Look after the cows for me! They’ll need clean water, and fresh hay, and make sure the mother doesn’t move too much—”

Angel Bunny thumped furiously at the door.

“You’re right! I’m going! Goodbye!”

Fluttershy stood in the doorway, slightly breathless at the shocked faces staring at her. “What’s wrong?” she panted. “What’s the emergency?”

“Yes?” said Twilight, like she had been told the setup to a joke and was dreading the punchline.

Fluttershy followed their gazes to the blood matting her fur.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not my blood.”

“Fluttershy, you made it!” Rainbow Dash swooped over, leaving a rainbow trail in the air. “Your entrance was almost as awesome as mine. What is this, fake blood?”

“No,” said Fluttershy, “I was just in a hurry, and there was an obstruction, so it ended up this way.”

“Who is that?” a trembling Sonata whispered to Aria, ducking low so Pinkie Pie wouldn’t hear.

“I don’t know, but we are not messing with it,” Aria whispered back. Why did Adagio have to go and draw attention to them like that? Losing her cool, exposing them, and they had been doing such a good job with the humming, almost like the old days. Adagio had such an ear for ways to get friends to fight, but the princesses were a major red button for her.

Rainbow Dash took Fluttershy over to Twilight and the others. “We’ll get you cleaned up. Did you know Twilight believes in global warming? We were just talking about it.”

“Oh, yes, the magazines,” said Fluttershy, with the haunted expression of a good friend who had sat through many of Rainbow Dash’s excited rants about the One Bank. “So very interesting.”

Twilight got Fluttershy seated. Rarity started dabbing at her matted fur with a wet cloth. “I saved a drink for you,” Twilight said, giving Fluttershy the Das Kahlua. Fluttershy took a sip and immediately started coughing. Applejack pounded her on the back, grinning.

“It’s very nice,” Fluttershy croaked. “Um, my, this is a bigger party than I thought. Is everypony here?”

“Plus a filly, plus three merponies, minus a lot of rain,” Twilight said.

“Wasn’t it supposed to rain today? I had a tarp set up for the naturally evolved organisms.”

“Rainbow Dash will fill you in later,” Twilight said quickly, wanting to forestall another argument. “Did you know I can play guitar? I was just singing for everypony.”

“Fluttershy’s a great singer,” Rainbow Dash said proudly. “She really lets loose in the bath.”

Fluttershy, who had turned bright pink, drained her cocktail, or at least tried, ending up with a lot on her chin and another round of coughing.

“Come on, Fluttershy, let everypony hear, you’re really good.” Rainbow Dash leaned closer. “Applejack and me were just arguing, and then Twilight and me were just arguing, and then the merpony started arguing with Twilight, it’s really bad, we’re probably all going to hate each other by the end of the week if you don’t do something,” she whispered.

Fluttershy, the adrenaline from a calving and the strength of half a Das Kahlua swirling inside her, stood up, red-coated and loyal.

“I’ll sing,” she announced.

Then she noticed everypony was looking at her.

“Um,” she added, bravely.

“Ladies and gentlecolts, Fluttershy is going to sing the latest hit single from Countess Coloratura, ‘Bad Friendship!’” Rainbow Dash announced.

“I don’t know that one.”

“Well, she’s going to sing something.”

Fluttershy quavered. It was odd to think that facing down a mad, screaming heifer was no problem at all, but letting a room full of ponies see how she was in the bathtub was just too much.

Then Rainbow Dash slapped her on the back, and Fluttershy realized that the only thing even more embarrassing than singing would be backing down from singing. There was only one song she could think of right now.

♩You think they’re going to laugh at you,
But is it so? But is it so? ♫
♩You think they can hear your imperfections,
But is it so? But is it so? ♫

It wasn’t a very good song. It sounded made-up, with the meter stretched to fit the lyrics. And it wasn’t anything more than a filly’s lullaby. But as Fluttershy got going, or maybe as the Kahlua got absorbed into her bloodstream, her voice rose in confidence and strength.

♩ You thought the rain was coming today,
It wasn’t so, it wasn’t so. ♫
♩ You’re wondering if things will be all right,
It will be so. It will be so. ♫
♩ You’re with all your friends today,
It is so, it is so. ♫
♩ You’re happy to be with them today,
Let them know. Tell them so. ♫

If the arguments that had interrupted the party were like a stormy sea, all fury and wave and motion, then Fluttershy’s song was a warm, hot bath. Something about her voice conjured up bubbles, a good book, and a glass of red wine. It soothed the crowd and set their half-full cups to their lips.

Sonata and Aria ducked low.

“She’s a Siren!” Sonata whispered.

“Really, Einstein?” Aria snapped under her breath. “Let’s talk to Adagio, we’ve got to get out of this town, Banks and Walrasian law and Sirens. This is worse than the 15th century. I didn’t think anything could be worse than the 15th century.”

When Fluttershy’s song came to an end, no pony clapped. Instead the chatter and clamor of a party arose, the events of the Rainy Day celebration continuing on as if there hadn’t been a shouted argument about the economics of a dying ocean only moments ago. Fluttershy, looking gratified, stepped down and buried her red face under Rainbow Dash’s wing.

“That was wonderful,” Twilight said. “I didn’t know you could sing so well.”

“It just comes out that way,” said Fluttershy from under Rainbow Dash’s wing. “I can’t help it.”

“Fluttershy is really shy,” Rainbow Dash explained.

The aftermath of a party is rarely pretty. Even if there aren’t ponies snoring in their own sick, there remains the smell of spilt alcohol and stale chips. Discarded napkins and paper cups have to be picked up. Plates and glasses need to be washed, and eventually somepony is going to have to investigate why there was a long line to use the bathroom, and then suddenly no line at all.

Guests filtered out while Twilight and Spike cleaned up. Twilight rubbed down the tables and took the books out of their plastic while Spike swept the floor. Her friends helped out by picking things up around the library and putting the chairs back. Soon it was only the seven of them and the three merponies in the suddenly large and empty Golden Oak Library.

As Twilight was putting the encyclopedias back into place, the three merponies slithered up to her. It was an odd, awkward motion. It looked adapted for water, not land.

“Listen, about that,” Adagio began.

“It’s fine,” Twilight said. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. Princess Celestia is...was kind of my mentor. I guess I still think of her that way.”

Adagio nodded slowly. “I’m sorry too.” Her voice was softer now, the music just a faint piano tinkle of notes. “I...the ocean, it was a long time ago, but it’s a story I remember. Um...speaking of stories...why did everypony react that way when I brought up Princess Luna?”

Twilight studied her face. “Seriously?” Adagio nodded. “It’s because Princess Luna hasn’t been princess in over a thousand years. She’s been banished. To the Moon.”

“...Wow,” said the blue merpony behind Adagio.

“Excuse me, I’ve been rude. These are Aria Blaze and Sonata Dusk,” said Adagio, gesturing first to the purple-pink merpony, then the blue. “We’re from a very long away.”

“Must be, if there’s no news of Princess Luna! Where did all the merponies go, anyway?”

Before Adagio could answer, Pinkie Pie bounded over, bouncing and wagging her fluffy pink tail like an excited dog. “Hey! It was good meeting you three! Ooh, listen! I thought of the best joke. Why didn’t the merpony want to swim in the lake?”

Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy came over just in time to catch the punchline: “Because when she looked in, the water was too murky! Get it? Mer-ky!”

Twilight groaned. But Sonata burst out laughing.

“Ha ha ha ha! Seashells and sandbars, that’s the funniest thing I ever heard!” Sonata collapsed, pounding the floor. “Ha ha ha…! Can’t...breathe!”

It went on so long Applejack cracked a smile and Pinkie Pie started giggling, while the two other merponies looked faintly embarrassed. When Sonata could sit upright, she had her counterjoke ready.

“Why did the Earth Pony eat all the peppermints?”

“Why?” said Pinkie Pie eagerly.

“Because she thought they were ponymints!”

“How is that even a joke?” Twilight said just as Adagio said, “I’m sorry, Sonata is an idiot.” But Pinkie Pie flopped on the floor beside Sonata, convulsing with laughter.

“Hahahaha! Ohhhh,” she wiped a tear from her eye. “Ponymints! I have to remember that one.”

With Sonata and Pinkie Pie entangled on the floor, still chuckling, the ice wasn’t broken so much as invited on board the ship and given a drink to hold. “Since you guessed our names, what about yours?” Aria asked.

“I’m Pinkie Pie,” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully. “I’d shake your hoof, but I can’t get up right now.”

Sonata gasped. I found Pinkie Pie, she mouthed at Adagio and Aria in such an exaggerated way she practically gummed it at them. Aria shot a look at Twilight Sparkle, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. Her other friends introduced themselves as well.

Suddenly Adagio put a hoof to her stomach, a pained expression on her face. Something blood-red was dribbling from her mouth.

“Are you all right?” said Twilight in alarm. “Fluttershy, can you look at her?”

But Adagio held up a hoof. “Just the drink disagreeing with me, I think. It’s been a long journey, and I’m very tired.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t have the Rum Business Cycle, did you?” Twilight said. “I was worried about that one.”

“It was just a long trip, and this has been quite the culture shock,” Adagio mumbled, wiping her chin. “We came from a very long way away.”

Twilight remembered her own first day in Ponyville, and how by the end of it she had wanted to drive a nail through her own head. “I understand. You need some rest. How long are you planning to be in town?”

When Adagio looked uncertain, Pinkie Pie interjected, “Ooh! You have to stay for Monday-week! It’s just real soon. It’s our big spring festival!”

“It’ll be my first Monday-week too,” Twilight said soothingly. “You three can help me learn about it. Do you have a place to stay?”

The merponies shook their heads. Twilight and the others instantly looked at Applejack, whose orange face turned as red as an apple.

“Um,” she said. “This might be a bad time to mention I sort of invited those Flim Flam fellers over. They’ll be bunking in the guest rooms soon, so….” Applejack caught Twilight’s expression. “I didn’t know about how they felt about the Bank and Princess Celestia, I promise.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Twilight said. “I can take somepony. Adagio, how about you stay with me?”

“I call Sonata!” Pinkie Pie said. Sonata giggled and wrapped her foreleg in Pinkie Pie’s.

“I found a guest room under a pile of dresses during some major spring cleaning last week,” Rarity said. “You can sleep on the finest bed in Ponyville, Aria, or on the one in the guest room. Only joking,” she added.

“More like Jokeyville,” Sonata said to Pinkie Pie, which sent the both of them into another round of helpless laughter while everypony else tried to decipher if a joke had in fact been told.

“You’re too funny,” Pinkie Pie gasped. “Twilight, she’s in the gang, what’s her Element of Equilibrium?”

“There’s only five, Pinkie Pie.”

“She can be the Element of Laughter.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You might as well say there’s an Element of Magic and give up on scientifically explaining the economy.”

Adagio held her stomach and winced.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Twilight said. She glanced at Fluttershy, who nodded. “At once,” she added. “Everypony, thanks for helping me clean up. Rarity, Pinkie Pie, if you could…?”

“It was amazing,” said Rainbow Dash to Fluttershy as they walked, or in Rainbow Dash’s case, flew out. “I broke the storm!”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Yeah, it was so cool it should have been! It also might have been. But it was soooo rad….”

“You can sleep in here,” Rarity said. “If the cat scratches at the door, just ignore it. If Sweetie Belle scratches at the door, just ignore it. There’s a toothbrush, and a pillowcase….”

Aria took them wordlessly.

“I, um, I love the color on your scales,” Rarity said with a note of desperation.

“Thanks,” said Aria, tight-lipped, and closed the door.

She sank onto the bed. She really shouldn’t have been rude. But she was exhausted. Too much in one day, the city, the cherries and cupcakes, Ponyville and all its terrors. A Siren Pegasus! Twilight Sparkle in charge of a bank! Banks other than the One Bank!

Stupid Adagio had nearly blown their cover. She thought she always knew best. But when Twilight had defended Celestia to her friend, Adagio had lost it. Aria knew that look in her eyes. She had seen it on humans, in the eyes of mad kings and generals they had sung for. Those were some of the bad days, when they had to buy a night’s safe stay with a performance. There had been a lot of bad days.

Why had Twilight Sparkle let them go?

Not the pony. The floating, changing girl in front of the statue, magic thrumming through her, power crackling at her fingertips. She had let them go.

Why?

Adagio had bit her, poor girl. Aria was shocked to realize she was crying. What was wrong with her? Next she’d be feeling remorse. And that was the end of a Siren. You really had to believe what you were singing, or it didn’t work.

Stupid, stupid. Get yourself under control. Aria breathed, went through some of her singing exercises. Her tears stopped. But she could feel them, like a river held back by a dam, ready to burst forth.

Adagio was getting worse. The thought brought a single, short sob from Aria’s lips, before she caught the next one, choking it back. Adagio was getting worse. She had been for a while. It was the hunger. It was driving them all a little mad, but it was affecting Adagio the most. She was...erratic, sometimes, and violent, and too brash. Losing her grip.

What would they do without Adagio?

They had always been together. Through it all. No matter how many times she had wanted to leave, had threatened to leave. Sirens hunted in packs. That was that. And if you didn’t have exit, you better have a damn good voice.

Aria’s voice was pretty good, even on an empty stomach. Once she ate, she would feel better. Once she ate.

Sonata couldn’t sleep. She was too excited! All the drinks had been so much fun to try, they each had a funny name! And then Pinkie Pie, who was just the best, had taken her into her bakery, where it smelled like hugs and cinnamon, and showed her the cakes she was baking, and let Sonata squeeze the frosting on one. It had been such a mess, they had gotten frosting everywhere and had so much fun.

Pinkie Pie had looked at the cakes with such anticipation. Sonata understood. They looked so delicious, but she couldn’t eat them yet. It was pure torture! But better to wait. That way they would taste the best.

Just like with Pinkie Pie. The love in the bakery was so strong. Pinkie Pie practically glowed with friendship. She had bragged that she was friends with everypony she ever met, and Sonata believed her. It was so hard not to take a bite out of her right then and there! But better to wait, better to wait, until Pinkie Pie was completely ready to eat.

And Adagio and Aria thought she was stupid!

Pinkie Pie was so nice and so much fun. It was too bad, really.

Adagio lay in bed, clutching her stomach and thinking.

So. This world’s Twilight Sparkle was actually formidable. Puissant, and not a pathetic, worrying coward. If the human Twilight had spent less time worrying about how others felt about her, they would have liked her a lot more.

So maybe not that different, then. This Twilight seemed above it all on the surface. Adagio could feel her emotions when they were talking, the work drive and the numerical bent. But there was a sensitivity there, just more...focused. She cared a lot about what Princess Celestia thought of her. And what those five ponies thought of her. Flim and Flam, who perverted both, were just a lever.

This Twilight had fewer weaknesses, but she was more brittle.

Adagio was looking forward to shattering her. She hadn’t had a homemade meal in over a thousand years.

Funny. This world was home. But she had spent almost all her life in a different world. An alien, cold, cruel world. Now she was finally home. And she felt more lost than ever.

Real funny. Even Sonata wouldn’t laugh at a joke that bad.

Adagio nearly doubled over as a wave of pain shot through her stomach and up her back. It hurt so bad it brought tears to her eyes.

What’s happening? she thought miserably. Why me?

Stupid Sonata. She had to go for those cherries. And Aria, always critical, never taking the initiative. She was the one who always had to lead! To decide!

Calm, calm. Ignore the pain. Force it down. It’s nothing compared to the pain in your second stomach. You survived that for over a thousand years. A bad cherry won’t kill you. You’ve been through so much.

I just need to eat again, Adagio thought. It’s been so long. I just need to eat again. Then, when I’m strong, I’ll have my revenge.

Adagio slept the sleep of mad kings and bloodthirsty generals. She woke up twice from the pain, sobbing out loud. Neither Twilight nor her pet dragon seemed to hear, in the night.

And as each time Adagio sang herself back to sleep, a tired, quiet lullaby, there was a distant echoing rustle in the leaves.

The Golden Oak Tree heard.

Author's Note

Twilight Sparkle's Bad Day

Twilight Sparkle, Vice Chief Executive Economist of the Bank of Equestria, Grand Assistant, Regal Secretary, Official Note-Taker and Student to Princess Celestia, Chief Executive Economist of the Bank of Equestria, Grand Doer, Regal Presider, Official Note-Hearer and Mentor to Twilight Sparkle, was having a bad day.

“I am going to impale the perpetrator on my horn, Spike!" she screamed. "I am literally going to impale them!”

Twilight was the sort of Unicorn who if you asked her whether she meant literally literally or figuratively would say, “I meant the former,” with a note of barely restrained scorn in her voice. Spike was more the sort of baby dragon who would answer, “Yes,” which was perhaps the reason why he alone of all the denizens of Canterlot was able to get along with Twilight.

He was also at present little more than a wriggling dragon tail, the front half of him being buried in a pile of books as deep and flammable as an Olympic swimming pool filled with oil. (Twilight had overturned a fraction of her shelves in her madness, and the resulting cascade of books had left the room looking like the dungeon of a disturbed bibliophile at the height of her killing spree.)

“It's not that big a deal, Twilight,” he said, his voice muffled by the twelve-volume set Canterlot, A History, textbooks ranging from accounting to a thin tome on zoological economics, and, although Twilight would never admit it, a thick, dusty book on abstract algebra hollowed out and filled with pictures of stallions cut out from the Steers catalog. It was dusty because she dipped it in a bucket of dust every night before setting it back on the shelf.

“Not that big a deal?” Twilight's purple eyelid twitched. “Not that big a deal? I! Lost! A! Book! A book, Spike! A rectangular hard-covered paper-and-ink-filled knowledge-containing book. Do you even read?”

“I couldn't be your friend if I didn’t.”

“I just know somepony stole it.” Twilight paced back and forth, nodding to herself. “Somepony who has it out for me. It was probably Twinkleshine, that b—”

“Found it!”

“—eautiful baby dragon!”

Twilight hastily levitated Spike out of the mountainous pile of books with her Unicorn magic. Spike emerged holding a thick brown book.

“Foundations of Economic Analysis,” Spike read.

He handed it to the glow of her horn-magic levitation. “I didn't know you cared about this book so much.”

Twilight rubbed the book against her cheek, cooing softly to it. “All my books are precious, Spike. This one just happens to be especially special.”

I'll put you under my pillow tonight, Twilight thought. I'll dream of a stable equilibrium where I never lose any books again.

“Uh…Twilight?”

“DON'T LOOK AT ME!”

Spike started to speak. Instead he convulsed and belched green flame. A neatly bounded scroll appeared out of the dissipating smoke, which Spike unfurled.

“Princess Celestia wants to speak with you,” he said.

Foundations thumped on the floor.

“I guess only one thing can be the most special,” Spike said to himself as the sound of Twilight's clattering hoofs faded in the distance.

He looked at the fifty square meters of book jambalaya Twilight had unleashed upon her study when she had thought her book was missing.

He shook his head. "She should've checked under 'F.'"

Twilight Sparkle's bright pink stripe running through her dark purple mane and tail, her prodigious magical powers, and her worrisome obsession with books were just a few of the things that made her an unusual pony. What did not make her unusual was the fact that she was a brightly colored magical sentient talking pony. There are no other kind of ponies in the land of Equestria—except for the mute ones and so on, but the paradigm is one of brightly colored magical etcetera.

In fact all the animals of Equestria can talk, though not all ponies listen. But it is ponies, horses, Unicorns, Pegasi, and of course the rare Alicorns who dominate the land. Magic proved the deciding factor over the nonmagical animals. Sheer numbers allowed them to push out the sparser magical creatures like the fearsome Cragadiles and the elusive Breezies.

Not all such battles were easily won for the largely peace-inclined ponies of Equestria. What use is Unicorn magic or a Pegasus's speed against the powerful and devious Draconequus who turns the rain into money or against the roaming hordes of Parasprites who whisper rumors as they fly invisibly through the air, spreading misinformation and distrust that collapse markets in their wake?

Here the Alicorns’ role in shaping the fate of Equestria cannot be ignored. Alicorns are easily recognized by their Pegasus wings, Unicorn horns and their unnatural height, standing two or three heads above the average pony. The Alicorns’ immense magical power and physical strength are offset only by how incredibly rare they are. There have only been three Alicorns in the history of Equestria, and one of them is currently imprisoned in the moon.

The eldest Alicorn, Princess Celestia, is the ruler and guardian of equines everywhere. White as the purest snow, her gently swaying mane of soft turquoise, blue, purple, and green the unofficial flag of Equestria, tall enough to face down a karate-kicking minotaur, and wielding enough magic to imprison her sister and fellow Alicorn, Princess Luna, in the moon for a thousand years, Princess Celestia was not so much the ruler of her domain as its measuring tape, scale, and astrolabe.

Visitors to Canterlot, Equestria's capital and home to the Bank (for it is always called the Bank, seeing as there is only One), always ask the same three questions, the first being, “Does the Bank give out free samples, har har?” Once the tour guide is finished contemplating a pair of lungs full of water, two further questions are asked: “What made Princess Celestia stronger than her sister, Princess Luna, imprisoned in the moon for a thousand years?” and “Why does Princess Celestia not crown herself Queen and rule from a grand throne of jewels with a scepter of Power and Fun, spreading her majesty over the land like a rainbow, lightning bolts crackling in encouraging messages across the sky with her every word, the very ground trembling beneath her feet in a relaxing sort of massage with each mighty step she takes?”

The answers the tour guides usually give are, respectively, “Bigger horn,” and “Thinks ‘Princess’ sounds prettier than ‘Queen.’” Most tourists leave satisfied, fatter and poorer than they were a week ago. But the truth, though it is rarely discerned, is that the two questions have the same answer, that is, the Bank was enough….

And will there ever be any more Alicorns? It seems unlikely. In a thousand years there have only been three. Oh, there are those who say that if three can Ascend, surely so can four, and indeed they note that the Third appeared many centuries after Princess Celestia and Princess Luna did. Yet if there was ever a secret to Ascension it has long been lost, and what the Third may know, she isn’t telling. Princess Celestia, when asked by trembling fillies during school visits and so on, winks and hints that it has something to do with cake.

In a thousand years there have only been the Seven Colors of the Rainbow, the Five Elements of Equilibrium, the Three Alicorns and the One Bank. Now the summer solstice of the thousand-and-first year approaches. While the idea of a spell of imprisonment lasting one thousand years is right and proper and normal, who has ever heard of a spell that lasts one thousand years and one?

The Princess's spell weakens. The sun dips below the horizon of an era and also the actual horizon, though only in the latter case does it rise again after. In the reflective hours between dusk and midnight as the sun falls and the moon rises, something must fill the gap that stretches between the two heavenly bodies as obvious and invisible as the rubbery expanse of space-time. And when the reflected light of the moon shines on the Princess, what shape does her shadow take…?

“…and I was so upset I thought Twinkleshine or maybe Moondancer because I didn't go to her party had taken it but then Spike found it and I was soooo happy," Twilight took a deep breath, "and then I got your message and ran all the way over here.”

“Twilight, you need to get some friends,” Princess Celestia said. “A little fresh air would do you wonders.”

“I gets lots of fresh air exercising in the courtyard,” Twilight said. "I know I'll never be as strong as an Alicorn, but seeing as you're so powerful, I thought…I thought….”

“I was thinking more in terms of play.”

“Oh,” Twilight said. There didn't seem to be anything more to say.

“I have a very important mission that only you can accomplish,” Princess Celestia said.

Had Twilight been a cartoon character she might have jumped twelve feet in the air, or her eyes might have enlarged to the point where their gravity became a significant factor in the calculation of the orbits of the planets, but instead she merely clapped her hoofs to her face and squealed in the way only an excited pony can.

“Really? Really really? Oh my gosh oh my gosh a mission—ahem.” Twilight composed herself. “Whom would you have me destroy, Lady?”

“I want you to manage the NGDP Targeting Festival…”

Twilight gasped. The NGDP Targeting Festival was only the biggest and most important annual event in all of Equestria. Every year on the day of the summer solstice ponies gathered to commemorate the day Princess Celestia defeated Princess Luna and brought an end to the economic chaos that had threatened to tear Equestria apart. Twilight took to managing things in much the same sense that a drug addict takes to cocaine, and being asked to manage the NGDP Targeting Festival by Princess Celestia herself was rather like a junkie being asked by Tony Montana to look after his stash for a while.

“…in Ponyville.”

Twilight stared. “Ponyville?” Princess Celestia nodded. “Ponyville?” Twilight repeated. “Just so we're on the same page here, you want me, the second-best economist in the world, not to put too fine a point on it, to travel to Ponyville, that dumpy backwater town full of rubes? They don't even have a university!”

“It's only for a couple of days, Twilight.”

Twilight's eyes widened. “A couple of days? But the solstice is…that means I won't be here for the NGDP Targeting Festival with you.”

Her mentor sighed. “Trust me, Twilight, that is for the best.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. And I want you to try to make friends with the other ponies there.”

“You want me to study the economics of friendship? As a matter of fact, I do have some theories based on behavioral economics and time-inconsistent preferences…”

“I want you to make friends.”

Twilight frowned.

“Twilight,” Princess Celestia said, “there is more to life than economics.”

Twilight Sparkle sometimes liked to brag (to Spike, because who else?) that she could glance at the equilibrium data for n - 1 markets and recall at will the equilibrium data for n markets, but even her tightly organized and efficient brain contained a dirty and poorly maintained lavatory to where certain heretical thoughts were banished. These included evidence of the importance of friendship to a healthy and stable psychological makeup, critical remarks about the pragmatism of building a library containing literally every book ever, and bizarre impulses she felt around some of the oak-chested stallions toiling away in the apple fields all summer long, their taut skin glistening with sweat in the burning sun, sweet juice spraying over their face as their healthy cream-colored teeth bit into the soft, yielding red flesh of an apple…well, who can blame her? Now her unconscious mind created a new category, Denying the Infinite Value of Economics, labeled it for auto-delete, and promptly executed the new subroutine on all applicable files…

…and that is the story of how Twilight Sparkle's ego was saved from crumbling into pieces like a glass sculpture delicately balanced on a house of cards which themselves held up against the wind only by the passing sound waves of an economist bellowing in triumph as she successfully used a macroeconomic model to predict only five out of the last five recessions.

“I will go to Ponyville and oversee the preparations for the NGDP Targeting Festival,” Twilight said. Her eyes were still glassy from the wipe.

She began to leave. “Wait,” Princess Celestia said. “Be careful. And good luck.”

“It's the NGDP Targeting Festival in Ponyville,” Twilight said. “I’ll have a miserable time trying to explain monetary theory to a bunch of hicks and then come home. What's the worst that could happen?”

Had Twilight spent less time with her books and more time out in the world, she might have known that such a line is never uttered if disaster is not imminent. On the other hand, never in the nearly 14 billion years the universe has existed has disaster ever had to contend with an imminent magical pony economist, so perhaps they evened out.

The Five Tests of Twilight Sparkle: Theory and Practice

Once upon a time there were two sisters. The elder, her hair the color of rainbow, which wasn’t then all that it became later, raised the money supply every day. The younger, her coat as dark as the space between stars, lowered it at night. Between them they maintained the balance between money and the economy of goods and services, the nominal and the real. For five hundred years the equilibrium stood with only one interruption.

After that incident, the two Alicorns took the title of Princess. Princess Celestia the elder, beloved by ponies everywhere, contented herself to watch Equestria’s economy develop. Princess Luna, however, was not happy.

When Princess Celestia raised the money supply, goods and services sold more easily. Income went up, and the ponies were slow to realize that each bit bought less than before. When Princess Luna lowered the money supply, goods sat on the shelves unsold. Ponies had fewer bits. That their bits now bought more did not impress them.

Whispers spread across the land. Ponies loved the beautiful, warm Princess Celestia. The dark, reticent Princess Luna they viewed with suspicion. Why did she need to lower the money supply? It hurt ponies.

Alicorns have good ears and long memories. Princess Luna wanted the same love that fell upon her older sister. Jealousy consumed her. Though her older sister tried to assuage her doubts, the seeds of discord took root in Princess Luna’s heart. The sisters commiserated less, fought more. Maintaining the equilibrium became a chore.

One night, Princess Luna made a mistake. The money supply dropped too much. Princess Celestia quickly restored the balance, but the recession rocked Equestria. Ponies marched on Canterlot that day.

Incensed at the ingratitude and ignorance of the ponies, Princess Luna discarded her crown. She turned her magic on the crowd, and her sister was forced to act.

The battle was terrible and brief. The earth does not easily bear Alicorn magic, nor can the economy stand against the Bank’s might unleashed. And in the end, it was the Bank that decided it. As their battle had initiated with Princess Celestia in control of the money supply, so it ended. Victorious, Princess Celestia banished her sister to the moon for a thousand years.

Some might say she overreacted. Spike did once, and Twilight Sparkle gave him the silent treatment for a week.

No pony from that time is alive today except for two, and only one was ever in a position to talk about it. This is the story she tells her students.

For the first time, the other Alicorn will get her chance to speak.

The six ponies walked past the gatehouse and into the spacious throne room of the great library of the castle of the Knights of Economics. Faded graphs, charts and equations were spread along the stone walls, though the room was curiously devoid of books. Crumbled stone and a thick layer of dust told them the space had long been abandoned. In the center of the room rested five crystals, each a different color. Behind the crystals was a throne, and on the throne sat Nightmare Moon.

She watched Twilight with evident interest. “Little economist, you have found your way to me.” Her voice was the smoke from a forest fire.

“As you can see, the Elements of Equilibrium are here.” She gestured at the five crystals. “But what you give up to acquire them may cost more than you realize.”

Twilight’s throat was dry. Her heart hammered in her chest. Her ribs throbbed as if in warning.

In front of her was the Alicorn who had unseated Princess Celestia, who had cast all of Equestria in shadow. Behind her were the five bravest, smartest and kindest ponies she ever knew, and in every direction she could feel the rapidly shrinking economy, the intricate web of production and exchange that Nightmare Moon was suffocating to death for her own twisted revenge.

Twilight was not afraid. Before her was the problem, behind her was the solution. All her training, all her knowledge and power finally had an opponent worthy of it.

For the first time, Twilight truly felt like the econopony she was. Naturally, she did what any econopony would first do.

“How many bits to stop?”

Nightmare Moon looked up. “What?”

“How many bits to free Princess Celestia, leave the Equestrian economy alone, and return to Charles his children?”

Nightmare Moon’s laughter echoed through the chamber. “Of course! An economist to the end. I’m afraid my price is too high for you.”

“Name it.”

“All the bits in the world. Which will soon be zero, by the way.”

“I’m willing to consider non-monetary compensation.”

“Such as?”

“Me,” Twilight said.

“Don’t make me laugh. What’s an economist worth when there is no economy?”

“As long as there are ponies in want,” Twilight said, “there will be an economy. Even you cannot stop that.”

“Watch me.”

“I don’t intend to. Girls!”

The best ponies Twilight knew stood beside her.

Applejack swiped her hoof on the floor. “Sweet Apple Acres has been going for centuries. Ain’t no pony changing that.”

Pinkie Pie bared her teeth. “I won’t rest until there’s a Sugarcube Corner on every street corner in Equestria. Anypony who gets in my way is going down.”

Rarity tossed her hair. “I couldn’t have said it any better. Besides, Princess Celestia is much more fabulous than this Alicorn.”

Rainbow Dash couldn’t keep her wings still as she hovered above them. “As long as I’m rich, no pony is taking my money away.”

“You need to go down,” Fluttershy said simply.

Nightmare Moon did not smile. “Who are these? Your friends?”

“They helped me get through the forest, yes,” Twilight said.

“How you must trust them.”

Twilight didn’t answer, unsure of what Nightmare Moon meant.

The Alicorn’s eyes gleamed with the absorbed light of a black hole.

“My sister taught you economics. Did she teach you wisdom?” Nightmare Moon cackled, a laugh of bubbling green nastiness and imminent pain.

A dark streak leaped with a crack from Nightmare Moon’s horn. Twilight watched helplessly as it swallowed up her five companions, encasing them in a shadowy prison. They beat on the walls with their hoofs, their mouths opening and closing, but they were inaudible to Twilight’s ears.

Twilight held up a hoof reassuringly, trying to calm the ponies down.

“A Slutsky matrix,” she said to Nightmare Moon. “Only semi-definite.”

“Old-fashioned, I know,” Nightmare Moon said. Now her voice was thick with exaggerated weariness. “I was away for a while. Can you blame me?”

“What do you want?”

“I remember how my sister and how she treated her students. The constant battery of tests. I would like a turn playing the teacher.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “You cheater! We already passed your five tests in the forest!”

Nightmare Moon chuckled throatily. “Such traps as the forest set you are hardly my concern. But you passed no test. You allowed your friends to brave the dangers and sacrifice for your sake.”

Twilight didn’t deny it.“That’s the division of labor.”

“So convenient for those who do half the work and reap all the reward.”

“Start the test.”

“Of course.”

Darkness flashed from Nightmare Moon’s horn. Twilight flinched away, but Nightmare Moon screamed.

“DON’T LOOK BACK!”

The roar made Charles’s own sound like Fluttershy at her most timid. The very castle quaked from the force of Nightmare Moon’s voice. Twilight’s vision blurred, and it wasn’t until she tried to push herself up twice and failed that she realized she had fallen.

“You are forbidden to look at your friends or communicate with them in any way without my permission,” Nightmare Moon said. “If you disobey, you forfeit the test.”

Twilight shook her head, trying to clear away the residual ring in her ears. Her rib stabbed at her like a knife in her side.

“What happens if I lose?”

Nightmare Moon’s mouth stretched, became a twisted smile. “Guess.”

Twilight managed to get to her hoofs. “What do I have to do?”

Nightmare Moon’s horn flared again. Twilight’s treehouse that Princess Celestia had given her; the rolling green-and-red hills of Sweet Apple Acres; the Sugarcube Corner, a glass cube full of cake and ambition; Rarity’s white-and purple boutique that looked like it smelled like conditioner; the squat, busy stock exchange; and Fluttershy’s animal sanctuary appeared as floating images overhead.

“Are any of these places precious to you?” Nightmare Moon leaned on her other side, restless and watching. “They are precious to your friends.”

“What do you want?”

“Playmates, maybe, somepony who understands economics. Give up this pretense of challenging an Alicorn and return to Ponyville. You can do more to help Equestria alive and with some semblance of freedom than you can a vaporized pile of ashes.” Her eyes were amused, taunting. “Pray I should be so merciful, girl. Now what is your answer?”

“Huh?”

“Your freedom. You want it, girl, and you want to fight me. It comes at a cost.” Her dark horn burst again, sounding like a foghorn, and the images changed. Fire swept over Sweet Apple Acres. The glass walls of Sugarcube Corner cracked and crumbled. The Boutique blackened and turned a nasty shade of green in parts, decaying and dilapidated. Steel bars rose around the animal sanctuary, pressing inward until it was nothing more than a cage. The stock exchange was still there.

“What do you say, proud little Unicorn? Is it a deal worth taking?”

Twilight knew the trap, she also knew the truth. “Ye….”

Nightmare Moon smiled, the edges of her mouth sharp enough to cut.

Twilight thought she understood the setup. The ponies had been decent to her, but it was hardly a choice. Nothing mattered more than stopping Nightmare Moon, and to do that she needed the Elements. That meant giving the right answer and passing the test. Even if it meant some of the other ponies suffered, it was better than the entire economy being destroyed. Then everypony would suffer. So Twilight would have to take this offer, and in doing so, make everything that happened in the forest utterly meaningless. It reset everything, made the five ponies Nightmare Moon hadn’t accounted for a non-element. Clever.

Yet obvious. A thousand years trapped off-planet had damaged Nightmare Moon’s sense of subtlety.

It was an easy choice. So why when she had opened her mouth to speak had an image of Pinkie Pie’s bright, encouraging face in the maze of thorns appear? Why had she remembered the inner glow of Rarity’s assurances, how much a little sincerity had meant? The relief she felt like a starving pony tasting food for the first time in weeks when Rainbow Dash appeared out of the sky to rescue her from the sea serpent, the anguished helplessness and admiration as she watched Applejack fearlessly play the Cerberus’s game and accept the consequences to help her friends, Fluttershy’s painful courage in the face of a sea serpent whose need wasn’t enough, why did it assault her all at once?

Twilight opened her mouth again to announce her decision to betray the other ponies and found that she couldn’t.

No. I’m being stupid. They can’t even help anymore. Only I know economics, only I can pass the tests. I’ve never relied on other ponies, and I’ve certainly never sacrificed the greater good, even their own good, to save them.

But they helped you.

Princess Celestia’s voice. Twilight heard it whenever she argued with herself, whenever part of herself had realized something and was trying to teach the rest of her brain.

They faced what you couldn’t. How far through the forest could you have gotten by yourself?

I could have teleported past the Cerberus, blasted through the maze, fought the parasprites somehow—if Applejack hadn’t kicked me—

Unlikely—too many trials to overcome. Since when have you been in the habit of pretending that the strength of other ponies is your own?

Here is the truth. These good, brave ponies saved you. They risked, sacrificed, bore pain, fear and sorrow so that you could reach this place. They chose to cooperate with you, and you cannot betray that, not if you ever want anypony to cooperate with anypony ever again.

There won’t be any more cooperation if I don’t defeat Nightmare Moon!

It is amazing how often ponies find that they have no choice but to sacrifice others for the greater good when doing so is convenient to their own ends. Nothing is ever so certain. Stop, think…is there another way?

Twilight caught her breath. She hadn’t realized her own agitation. Calm, slow, she told herself. Nightmare Moon apparently intended to set her free if she chose to accept the deal, confident that none of them could do anything to stop her.

Was that true?

One the one hoof there was Nightmare Moon, the Alicorn sister as powerful as Princess Celestia, with absolute control over the Bank and powerful ancient magic that could snuff out half a dozen ponies in an instant. On the other hoof there was an econopony and five rather silly, chaotic ponies from a backwater town where the roads were made out of dirt, and they thought books were something you kept in the bathroom in lieu of toilet paper. The same five ponies, Twilight realized, who had fought their way through the Everfree Forest, something that hadn’t been done since the Alicorns and the days of the Knights of Economics.

Five ponies. Five elements. As Pinkie Pie would put it, duh.

Somehow Twilight had always imagined herself wielding the Elements of Equilibrium. But it was they who had passed the tests, not she. It was they who were worthy. And now it was time for her to face the danger so they could pass through.

Nightmare Moon did not understand the forces she had brought upon herself. Locked alone in the moon for a thousand years, she had forgotten about the power of cooperation.

It sounded good. Twilight didn’t know how they would fight Nightmare Moon. But she had to try.

“No,” she said. “I refuse.”

For the first time, Nightmare Moon looked genuinely pleased. “Good! You’re so loyal. You will have to be to earn these Elements.”

Twilight struggled to offer a reaction; she already knew they weren’t meant for her.

Nightmare Moon continued. “But your little helpers are not. TURN AROUND!”

Twilight was spun around so fast she didn’t know if it was magic or fear. She stared with numb dread at her friends through the murky black wall of the Slutsky matrix. Six images like what Nightmare Moon had showed her hovered above her friends.

“They don’t know you can see them,” Nightmare Moon said, voice thick with amusement. “Any predictions, little student of mine?”

Twilight watched five hoofs belonging to five different ponies reach up and touch the treehouse, which trembled and fragmented, books spilling out and decaying into dust. She had expected it, but it still hurt to see.

Twilight stiffened. She heard Nightmare Moon leave the throne and walk up behind her. No heat came from her body. Instead she felt coldness, coldness like sheer emptiness.

Her breath on the back of her neck was like ice cubes. Twilight shivered.

“Maybe they wanted something else from you,” Nightmare Moon said. “Somepony who read less, was more agreeable.”

Twilight shuddered; she couldn’t help it. “Shh, shh,” Nightmare Moon said, drawing her in with a leg as cold as frost and crackled like electricity when it touched her coat. “Now I’ll do away with this matrix. You know what happens next, don’t you?”

“Y-You told them that they have to do it now,” Twilight chattered. Her jaw felt stuck; it was hard to speak. “I’ll have to fight them when they come out.”

“Ready, faithful student of mine? Is your horn sharp?”

She doesn’t know. She thinks it’s me. It’s not me.

“I won’t fight them,” Twilight said.

“Yes!” Nightmare Moon chuckled, high and pleased. “Yes!”

The sound of Nightmare Moon’s laughter struck fear into Twilight’s heart. She realized she didn’t understand what Nightmare Moon wanted. She realized she was fighting a being as older as she was more powerful than her. There was no battle of cunning she could win here.

Twilight saw the edges of the dark glow of Nightmare Moon’s horn. The matrix burst apart in purple tatters.

All five ponies rushed out toward them with murder in their eyes. “Stop!” Twilight cried. She had seen their intent to attack Nightmare Moon. But that wouldn’t do, she needed them all safe and alive.

The Alicorn was back on her throne, though the chill in Twilight’s body remained. She looked curious and eager, like a scientist about to check the lab results, or like a cat waiting to see where the mouse will run next.

“Let me at her!” Rainbow Dash said. “She’s not cooping me up again!” Applejack was standing on her , though, and Twilight guessed that Rainbow Dash might not be trying too hard to escape and find herself facing off with an Alicorn.

Twilight looked at the banished princess on the long-abandoned throne, mind racing. She had been wrong again about Nightmare Moon’s plan. What was…

…above the throne and black wings and sharp horn, six images floated in the air, a treehouse whole and unblemished, and five dreams discarded, evidence of an act more evil than any she had seen nightmare moon commit.

Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy looked.

“What’s that?” Pinkie Pie said.

“You did it too,” Twilight whispered. She wished Applejack would kick her in the ribs again instead of look at her like that. “I saw, in the matrix—”

“She asked us to pick which part of Ponyville we wanted to save,” Rarity said. “I suppose it was the same for you? We had to choose the Golden Oak Tree, of course, since you live there and have to stop Nightmare Moon. Besides, it’s older than Ponyville! Aha, by the way, the Alicorn in question is right there, do we have a plan? I think I’m learning that I tend to talk when I’m nervous—mmph!” Applejack had put a hoof in her mouth, which Rarity accepted after a moment’s surprise. Rainbow Dash took the opportunity to jerk herself free, but didn’t fly forward.

Nightmare Moon watched Twilight with anticipation that burned like an iron brand. “You see, little heroines, I asked my student to choose which parts of Ponyville would be destroyed during my rule. In the end she chose to save what was hers and leave to ruin your own capital. This is the gratitude she has for all you did to carry her through the forest.”

“She did a bit of carrying herself,” Applejack said sardonically.

“It was the same choice,” Twilight trembled. “Just backwards.”

“It’s not the same choice at all!” Pinkie Pie said. “She let us push a friend up. Ooh, she’s evil!”

It took Twilight a moment to understand; it also took her a moment to realize that Pinkie Pie was addressing her rather than Nightmare Moon.

She had no idea what Nightmare Moon was trying to do. She suddenly realized she didn’t care.

Twilight smiled at the five ponies she trusted more than anypony in the world. “One more trial, girls. Thanks for sticking with me so far.”

Shock and confusion flashed across the tall Alicorn’s face, quickly replaced by disappointment and boredom flashed across the tall Alicorn’s face. “Foolish,” she spat. “Get out of my castle. I have a world to destroy.”

“Give me my money back!” Rainbow Dash said.

“Leave,” Nightmare Moon said.

“Not until you return Charles’s children,” Fluttershy said.

Nightmare Moon looked at her.

Twilight quickly took a few loud steps forward. “I’m not finished with you, Nightmare Moon.”

“The tests are through,” Nightmare Moon said. She sounded severely unhappy, even confused, like a child whose birthday had been canceled because the paperwork hadn’t been filed properly. “You failed. Take your friends and find a hole in Equestria where you can hide for a thousand years. I will see no more of you, Twilight Sparkle.”

“We’re free, so we’re freely choosing to stay right here. A little bit of cheating is allowed.”

CRACK.

The ponies flinched. Nightmare Moon withdrew her hoof from the hole in the stone floor.

“That was not magic, little ponies.”

Nightmare Moon set the five crystals by the throne and turned away. “I have things to do, an economy to destroy, a sister to…hm, is there a word for the act of totally eradicating every component of somepony’s utility function? No matter. Leave.”

Only one chance. Failure meant death. Failure was probable.

Twilight spoke.

“Still overshadowed by your older sister, Nightmare Moon?”

Twilight would never forget the face she saw then. For a moment Nightmare Moon’s eyes were darker than the void, her cheeks sharper than dragon teeth. If looks could kill….

…It was, thought a rebellious part of Twilight that she hadn’t known existed, exactly the sort of look a pony might develop if she had spent a thousand years in isolation in the moon.

“What did you say?” Nightmare Moon’s voice was low, even soft, like a panther allowing its padded feet to fall with just enough sound for the baby bunny rabbit playing in the meadow to notice at the edge of its hearing, because it wants the bunny to run.

Only a baby bunny had a better chance of kicking a panther to death than she did of fighting Nightmare Moon.

“It’s been a thousand years to us, but I suppose to you things haven’t changed.” Twilight didn’t feel like smiling, but she did. No, she smirked. She smirked like Trixie, like she knew exactly where Nightmare Moon’s weaknesses were and nothing could stop her from going after them in front of everypony. “It’s still all about Princess Celestia to you.”

The dark Alicorn narrowed her eyes. “I defeated Celestia. She is gone.”

“Not from your head.” Twilight giggled, high-pitched and knowing. “You have no real goals of your own. The best you can do is the opposite of what Princess Celestia wanted. After you destroy everything, you’ll realize that even now you were just obsessed with your sister.”

Was it Twilight’s imagination, or were the shadows from the walls growing, reaching toward Nightmare Moon. And was Nightmare Moon herself getting bigger, or was that just a trick of the dimming light?

“Twilight,” Applejack gulped, “maybe you shouldn’t talk that way to the Princess.”

Shut up, Applejack. I need to keep all her attention on me for this gamble to pay off. If she thinks about even one of you….

“She’s not a Princess,” Twilight said. “She abandoned her crown when she turned on the people of Equestria. If Princess Celestia hadn’t—”

“LIAR!”

The noise went off like an explosion inside her skull. Twilight didn’t know how long it took before she managed to reorient herself. Something wet dripped from her ears. For a panicked moment she flailed her legs in midair before realizing that a dark glow had surrounded her.

She looked up into the terrible face of Nightmare Moon.

“I would rend you, crush you, break you in every way for that insult and never stop.” Nightmare Moon seethed with a fury magnitudes beyond any emotion Twilight had ever felt before, the difference between a millennia of pain and the short life of a young Unicorn. It set her hair on end, piled goosebumps on top of her skin, and even still her whole body buzzed with the sheer raw hurt of it all. “But I know it was my sister who told you that lie, and it is she who will bear my wrath.”

Twilight struggled against Nightmare Moon’s magical grip. She couldn’t see or hear any of the other ponies. The realization hit her worse than a kick to the stomach. If even one of them was hurt….

“It’s not a lie,” Twilight said. “Princess Celestia told me how she was loved and you weren’t, the jealousy that grew inside you, how you turned on the ponies—”

Twilight cut off, mainly because she couldn’t breathe. An invisible, sourceless pressure weighed down on her with a uniformity and evenness over her entire body that would have been fascinating if it hadn’t been crushing her. Something in her fractured ribs gave. Twilight was almost glad she couldn’t make a sound.

“My sister lied. I will show you the truth.”

“Once upon a time,” Nightmare Moon sneered, “there were two sisters, the elder who raised the money supply and the younger who lowered it. They defeated the snow and the forest and the draconequus, and a dozen other enemies in their time, but the short-lived ponies with even shorter memories were not grateful.”

The psychic grip she had on Twilight lessened. Twilight sucked in air through brief, pained gasps even as her eyes widened at the sight Nightmare Moon showed her. She saw them as clear as a dream, the two Alicorns who founded Equestria, the two sisters as different as day and night.

“My older sister was beautiful, kind and warm,” Nightmare Moon continued. “All the ponies loved her. During the day she visited them, spoke to them, and when they begged for her magic to solve their pathetic problems, she obliged. I, however, never much cared for the company of ponies, always preferring instead a book and a quiet place to read.”

Twilight flinched. It was only superficial, it didn’t mean anything, but the very idea of having something so personal in common with Nightmare Moon shook her.

“I was a fool,” Nightmare Moon said bitterly. “I was powerful, but they did not know me as one of their own. I helped them, but they were not forced to see this, and so they chose not to. My role in keeping the equilibrium was vital, but there were those who said otherwise, and when they had repeated their lies and fallacies enough, it was a controversy, not a slander. They wanted Celestia to have my power, to have total control over the Bank.”

Twilight saw.

Celestia strode into the private study of the five hundred year-old castle, her crown dangling from her horn. “Sister!”

Luna, smaller, brighter, happier, looked up from her book. “Ah, Celly! Have you ever wondered why better goods are sold over longer distances? Canterlot makes the best fabrics, but have you noticed you have to go out of the city to actually buy them?”

Celestia frowned. “Can’t say I have.” She didn’t sit by Luna but instead flopped in a chair a table away, a troubled expression on her face.

Luna carefully set a thread to mark her page and set the book next to her crown on the table. “What’s eating you? Not more parasprites, I hope.”

“No. Almost. Just…ponies. Foolish ponies with foolish ideas.”

Luna smiled. “You’ll find no rest here. Even in this library there are too many foolish ponies with foolish ideas. Seriously, can I help?”

“No,” Celestia said. “I will deal with them.”

But Celestia’s mood only worsened over the months and years. Every day as the sun came down and she returned from her visits with the ponies, Celestia was moody, angry, and short-tempered.

“I am worried about you, sister,” Luna said one evening. “If the ponies distress you so, why do you speak with them?”

“One of us has to maintain confidence in the Bank,” Celestia said. “Worry about yourself.”

“You are who I care most about in this world,” Luna said. “Worrying about you is worrying about myself.”

Now they were on the edge of the Everfree Forest, wilder then and layered like mountains. Princess Celestia’s golden magic glowed over the three bite marks on Luna’s flank and legs.

“I was inattentive,” Luna said. "Caught unawares."

“Yes,” Celestia mumbled.

Luna glanced at her and said nothing.

In the gold and silver chamber of the Bank, Celestia slammed her hoof against the wall. Any other wall would have shattered from the force of the blow.

“Sister, I do not know why you are so angry,” Luna said. Seeing Celestia like this scared her. “It is only the talk of ponies. They die fast and do little with their lives. Nothing will disturb the equilibrium.”

“It is not the power of the ponies that concerns me,” Celestia snapped, “but the meaning of it. We are their saviors, guardians and protectors from threats from without and within. When they dare belittle you—”

“It matters not,” Luna said. “Peace, sister, I need no friends as long as I have you and my books.”

“Your gratitude overflows. I am drowning in it.”

Luna shrank back. “I am speaking out of concern as your sister, nothing more.”

Outside the castle in the center of Canterlot. Celestia faced the crowd of angry ponies at the dark midday.

“Only one mistake in half a millennium is proof of the quality and value of my sister’s wholly voluntary service to Equestria,” Celestia’s magically enhanced voice boomed. “This behavior does not become you, ponies of Equestria.”

But when Luna stepped out, the crowd’s noise multiplied with curses, jeers and insults. Luna wavered, suddenly longing for the dusty solitude of the library, but Celestia was incensed.

She rose. The sky warped and distorted as if a giant magnifying glass had been placed there, and it angled on the ponies who swarmed below like so many ants….

“My dear, sweet sister loathed the way they spoke about me,” Nightmare Moon drawled. “She pointed out that we did the same work, that we were two parts of a whole, that I deserved as much adoration as Celestia. The crowd didn’t seem impressed by the facts. Crowds generally aren’t.

“They went back and forth for a while, my sister and my accusers. Eventually lovely Celestia lost her temper. She let the crown fall from her horn.”

“No,” Twilight said.

“Yes. My lovely sister and your Princess turned the sun’s blaze upon the crowd. I stopped it with my own body. It seems the only thing that angered my sister more than attacks upon my reputation was my own lack of gratitude for her ‘help.’

“We fought. I lost. What you know of what happened after may also be lies. I do not know because I was getting acquainted with my prison in the moon at the time.”

“Not true,” Twilight managed. “None of it.”

“Oh, you think she banished me for a thousand years because that was the REASONED RESPONSE?”

The dark glow surrounding Twilight vanished. She managed to land on her soft rump, but there’s not much that can make an impact feel less painful with a shattered ribcage. At least her bones were vocal in their appreciation of her futile attempts to hold her body still.

Nightmare Moon was changing. The blackness-beyond-blackness that was her coat faded into her skin, or maybe a dark purple unsettlingly close to Twilight’s own lavender shade grew over the black. She didn’t hold herself as tall. The pony who had been Princess Luna raised her head.

But it was still Nightmare Moon. Her narrowed, hateful eyes made that abundantly clear.

Dark interlocking circles marred the right side of her body. They looked like—

“Scorch marks,” Nightmare Moon said. “Too much sun is terrible for your skin.”

The purple sank beneath the black, or maybe the void grew over her again. She turned to the window and looked out. “Ironic, isn’t it? My sister only wanted to protect me. And here I am, trying to protect the economy from inflation. A…cycle of sorts, wouldn’t you say?”

Twilight’s mind pushed her eyes away from the distant Alicorn and toward the five crystals resting by the throne.

“Twilight!” a voice whispered. “Are you—”

Twilight’s magic held Rainbow Dash’s lips together. They were okay. Her friends were okay.

She released Rainbow Dash and called the Elements to herself. Each had its own shape. One looked almost like two hoofs meeting. A second was more like a maze, though Twilight couldn’t make out any path through it, and a third looked like a cloud, or maybe a marshmallow. Another had the shape of a jagged line, almost like a lightning bolt, or a graph of price movements. Finally there was something abstract that reminded Twilight of the pony brain.

Twilight gazed at the five frightened ponies behind her who somehow believed that she could defeat Nightmare Moon.

They had all made the same mistake. Twilight was an economist. It wasn’t her job to restore the Equilibrium but to name and know its parts.

She pinned a crystal to the chest of each pony.

“Now, girls!” she cried. “Do it!”

But what she wanted them to do she never got to say, because the air shot out of her lungs and her vision went black.

~~~

Twilight awoke to pain and the weight of an Alicorn kneeling on her.

“Tell your friends to drop those crystals,” Nightmare Moon said, “or I’ll start hurting them. The white Unicorn gored, perhaps.”

Offering me a concrete visualization, thought the automatic, ever-vigilant analytical machine that was her brain, while the rest of her panicked. Specifics, a single image to get through my defenses.

Nightmare Moon was talking.

“Strangely, when I threatened to hurt you more if they didn’t drop the crystals, they seemed unmoved. The margins of friendship end where the costs begin, I see.”

It did hurt, it did almost move her. Is this symmetry, defecting because they defected, or is it conformity, doing whatever the other ponies are doing?

Nightmare Moon pressed on her.

One signal in Twilight’s brain sent her writhing for air and another responded sharply with pain.

Nightmare Moon allowed more of her weight to sink onto her. “They can’t hear you. Speak up.”

“Not a cycle,” Twilight gasped.

Nightmare Moon looked down sharply. “What?”

“You said…something about a cycle before. It’s not a cycle.” Twilight breathed. Breathing hurt. She did it anyway. “There is no business cycle, just bad monetary policy.”

“Pain is usually a better motivator than this,” Nightmare Moon sighed. “My sister brainwashed the most foolishly devoted pony I’ve seen in a thousand years.”

“You know…I’m right,” Twilight said. “That’s why…you haven’t attacked. They’re the Elements…of Equilibrium!”

Twilight’s vision went so black it turned red. She couldn’t even properly describe what she felt as pain. The instant it ended the gulf between the memory and the actual feeling was so large she wasn’t entirely sure if it had even happened.

“I will keep doing this,” Nightmare Moon snarled. “Now tell your little friends to drop the crystals.”

“Twilight?” Pinkie Pie’s voice. “What should we do?”

Twilight chuckled, and immediately regretted it. “You made two mistakes, Nightmare Moon. The first was uniting the Elements with their Bearers.”

“These little ponies couldn’t bear so much as a strenuous hike.”

“No. Applejack, who gave her hat to promise the Cerberus that she would fulfill the terms of the agreement demanding her very life, represents the spirit of…contract!

“Pinkie Pie, who guided us through risk, uncertainty, and a terrible maze of thorns, represents the spirit of…entrepreneurship!

“Rarity, who out-gossiped the parasprites and drove them away with sincerity represents the spirit of…information!

“Rainbow Dash, who took us all from the far side of the moat past the dragon to where we needed to be faster than anypony could have represents the spirit of…finance!

“And Fluttershy, who kept us from distraction and on the path of defeating you, represents the spirit of…rationality!

“Together they are the Elements of Equilibrium. Together they are your doom.”

Nightmare Moon watched them. “But they’re helpless as long as I have you.”

“She’s right,” Applejack said. “I feel something…strange coming from this crystal and it’s meeting something coming from me, but I can’t do nothing while she’s got you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Twilight said. “Get her! I’m not important anymore.”

“We’re not abandoning you!” Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight managed to lift her head. “Fluttershy, tell them.”

“No,” Fluttershy said. “None of us would have even gone to the forest without you. Each of us did our parts as individuals, but you got us here as a group. You can’t just stand to the side and watch. You’re part of the equilibrium too.”

Twilight’s eyes widened in shock, and then in pain. Nightmare Moon laughed.

“You ponies are sickening! Just like my sister, you try to protect each other but end up destroying one another. Isn’t the irony delightful? I think I’ll make the white one gore you all one by one.”

Part of the equilibrium…?

“Your remember so much from so long ago,” Twilight gasped. “But there’s one other thing you forgot. I can teleport.”

“Wha—”

Twilight vanished in a lavender burst of magic and reappeared at the head of her five friends.

“Girls, fire!”

If you shoot a beam of white light through a prism, it separates into the seven colors of the rainbow.

If you shoot a beam of pure, undiluted friendship through an econopony…

…You get something similar.

The rainbow faded, as they do, but the promise lingered. As golden light blazed like the sun in the ancient castle, a smile spread over Twilight’s face.

"I’m part of the equilibrium too."

She collapsed into the hoofs of her friends. It was some time before she woke up.

Don’t worry. She was fine. This is a story about magical talking econoponies learning together about the science of friendship—er, economics. There will always be a happy ending.

Surpluses and Shortages

The mare dropped to the ground with sickening speed.

“Rarity!” Twilight screamed even as she cast her magic forward.

And Rarity screamed, “And never come back, do you hear me? Never!”

Twilight's heart caught in her throat as the glow of her magic surrounded the shrieking mare moments before she would have hit the snow. The drop from the second floor onto a thick bed of snow might not have killed or seriously injured her, but it was still terrifying and wait what?

The mare Twilight held in her magic wriggled her legs as she shouted up at a figure in the window. “I don't want to come back! You're crazy! I could have died! I'm reporting you to the Friendly Firm Fixers!”

“Call the FFF!” Rarity yelled down from the window, “I send them cards every year for Winter Wrap Up and their birthdays!”

“Are you harmed?” Twilight called to the mare who apparently wasn't a suicidal Rarity.

“No—thank you, you can let me down!” Twilight did, depositing her gently on the snow.

“That's the last time I'll ever order a dress from her!” the mare snorted and trotted off haughtily.

“Fine!” Rarity screamed after her. “I’m going out of business! Can't you read? Oh, no, I forgot, you can't even read a price tag that says no refunds or discounts!”

But the mare had disappeared beyond the swirling snow.

“Uh,” Twilight said. “Hey, Rarity.”

“Twilight! What a surprise! Do come in!”

A minute later, Rarity was ushering Twilight into the sitting room.

“I apologize for that little…tête–à–tête, so to speak, earlier.” Rarity gestured, trembling only slightly, to an ornate sofa with an unusual layout. “Have a seat on the tête–à–tête. To what do I owe this visit?”

Twilight chose a simple chair. The sitting room of the Carousel Boutique was classic Rarity: classy and rare, with layers of purple curtains to produce the desired lighting. Unsold dresses on racks occupied most of the unused space, which made Twilight pause. Rarity flopped down on the tête–à–tête, looking slightly defensive.

“Well, you can’t blame me, Twilight. After all, now I have to pay for the broken window!”

Twilight tore her eyes away from the dresses. “Actually, there’s an interesting economic parable about a broken window—”

“But you would simply not believe that pony! Il a la tête dans le cul,” she muttered.

Twilight looked at the couch.

“What?”

“Anyway, what have you come to talk about?” Rarity asked. “I am always delighted to entertain the chief executive economist of our very own daughter bank, not to mention my friend, but you do strike me as the direct type.”

"Well," Twilight said, "I notice you seem to be going out of business." On the same day as Applejack and Pinkie Pie.

"Yes, shame, isn't it?" Rarity laughed, high and artificial. "One must take one's lumps, as they say. Speaking of which, I prefer two with my tea. Et toi?"

"Et none," Twilight hazarded. "I'm a coffee drinker."

“It’s heavily caffeinated,” Rarity assured her. “How else would I get my work done?” She chuckled. “I’m not Applejack; I don’t force my sister to do labor! Sweetie Belle voluntarily helps me spin, weave, loop, cart, carry, and box with those tiny, tireless hoofs of hers. Oh, how much fun she has playing on the dressmaking machines in the basement—”

“Caffeine?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Rarity vanished into another room and reappeared with a tray bearing a silver tea pot, two fragile and expensive-looking mugs, and a number of cakes. She poured the tea and pushed a cake in Twilight's direction. "“Now what’s on your mind, sweetheart?”

“You're—” sweetheart?— “going out of business. It says outside. What happened?”

Rarity shrugged as she lounged oddly on the weird couch. "The vicissitudes of the market. I am sure you know more about it than I do.”

“As an economist, I know all about the practicalities of the business world,” Twilight confirmed. “Still, it seems a little odd. Your dresses are so beautiful that I can't imagine they don't fetch a high price.”

“Yes, the highest,” Rarity beamed.

“Ah...ah.... Rarity?”

“Sweetheart?”

“Maybe your prices are too high.”

Rarity looked at her as if she had suggested they drink something decaffeinated. “Twilight, I charge what my dresses are worth.”

“Um...you charge what they're worth to you, maybe. Uh….” Twilight trailed off. Rarity was giving her a look.

“I have heard such complaints before. They are beyond ridiculous.”

“Um…are you sure…?”

“A mare comes knocking at my door for a dress,” Rarity said icily. “There is a dinner, a date, a dance. Some gala, a stallion from far away, strange features yet a familiar face. Have they met before? Impossible.”

“Uh—”

“But the way their eyes meet! How their conversation flows with the practiced ease of the ocean, deep and powerful, and full of secrets. Music plays; he sways and she notices as she knew she would. Their dance? Two ponies have never been more perfectly matched. His hoof fits into the small of her back as if it was molded for it. When she steps forward, he retreats, like two waves rolling together across the sea.

“Others looking on think they are a bit drunken and foolish, and note the way they keep stepping on each others hoofs. This does not matter.

“A meeting, a kiss, some mutual wonder at the familiar face each has found, though they have never met. Perhaps marriage, many foals, old age together, or perhaps they never meet again. But no matter what, something was created that night that did not exist before. I am an artist, Twilight, and I do not sew dresses, I sew friendships.”

Rarity took a sip of tea. “It's not always foreign romance, of course. Actually, that's a story from one of my delightful paperbacks.”

Twilight gulped. Familiar Hearts, it was one of her guilty pleasures. She couldn’t let anypony know.

“What price the dress?” Rarity said. “No dress, no friendship. What price, then, the friendship?”

“Well,” Twilight said, "to start, how about how much she's willing to pay for it?”

"We discussed this in your house," Rarity said tightly. "One does not pay for friendship."

“I meant the dress.”

“So did I.”

“But you charge for dresses! Too much!”

“Yes! Instead of paying for friendship directly, you buy my dress! Brilliant, non?”

The phrase shabbas goy floated through Twilight’s head.

She sighed and leaned back, rubbing her eyes. “Rarity, if ponies don't want to pay what you're asking, you won't sell any dresses, and you'll go out of business.”

“Their loss!”

Twilight groaned and flopped on the tête–à–tête. “That's the most illogical pricing scheme I've ever heard of, and I just talked to Pinkie Pie.”

“Let me explain it to you,” Rarity said icily. Twilight looked at her in surprise. She hadn't realized the comment would offend her. “I understand full well that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, even if the beholder wouldn't know fashion if it threw her out the window. Ponies do not pay for beauty. They can go outside and look at the grass and the sky and such things. I wouldn't know; I don't go outside.”

Twilight scrunched her face. Rarity was taking her “this is what I think Canterlot socialites sound like” thing too far again.

“Ponies pay for other ponies, Twilight, no pony has the slightest interest in herself.”

“Actually, ponies are self—”

“Self-what? Every pony's self is what other ponies made it! Do you think Applejack grows apples for herself? Fluttershy guards the critters for herself? And Pinkie Pie? The only truly self-absorbed pony I know is Rainbow Dash, and she is loyal to a fault!”

“I do economics for myself.”

“Twilight, please, darling, you're just a little obsessed with a certain princess.”

“I…yeah.”

“And so when I price my dresses, I do not do so based on the cost of the materials, or of my own labor, nor my imagination—”

“I know that!”

“—nor even for the value the pony places on the dress, for you see, the whole world clamors for my dresses, even if not in dress form, as it were….”

Twilight listened, open-mouthed, as Rarity launched into an speech explaining exactly what she had tried to tell Applejack and Pinkie Pie.

“…and I tell the world, be silent, I am working!”

Twilight almost dropped the mug of tea.

“When I fashion a friendship, I do so for two ponies, not one. I charge a price that reflects that. And if somepony asks for a discount, they discount their friendship.”

Twilight leaned back and closed her eyes in concentration. “No, that's just bad price theory. It doesn't matter what your philosophy is, there's a maximum price a pony will pay for your dress. If you charge higher or lower than the price ponies are willing to pay for your dresses, it's the same as throwing money away.

“You care a lot about whether ponies value your dresses. Or maybe you have too much pride to sell to ponies who don't value their friendships, whatever. But you're not acting like you value their valuations!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A bit flustered, are we?”Twilight was still peeved about the way Rarity had done her whole speech about allocating scarce resources. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Opal? No, she's napping. I just didn't understand what you meant.”

“The ponies of the world cry out to you: Rarity, we want to pay, uh, a hundred bits for your dress! And you look down on them and whisper, 'No.' But when you deny them, what happens? They go to another dress store, Rarity!

“Suppose the market price for one of your dresses is 100 bits. You charge 110. Those ponies willing to pay 100 bits is a whole continuum of ponies, a few willing to pay a lot more than 100, some willing to pay a little more than 100, and a very small number willing to pay no higher than 100. Those ponies? They don't buy the dress.

“What's funny about this is that they want the dress, they've told you that. They've told you they want the dress even more than anything else you might do with your resources. That's what the market price means.” Twilight gestured at the never-worn gowns filling the room like silk tombstones. "They honestly tell you they'll buy the dress at a price worth making the dress to you, you make the dress, then they don't buy it! That's why you have a surplus of dresses! That's why you're going out of business; you might as well be throwing away friendsh—money!”

“Ungrateful—lying—”

“No, you're the one who betrayed them! They told you how much they valued the dress, you knew your values were different from theirs and then shut your eyes to reality! Some Element of Information you are! Don't you have some idea of their idea of beauty? Do you think a dress is all there to friendship?”

Rarity blinked. “There's also hats.”

“Exactly! If a pony pays too much for a dress, she can't buy as nice of a hat. What a disaster that would be!”

Inwardly Twilight cringed. I can't believe what I'm saying.

Rarity looked appalled. “Have I prevented a friendship? Un grand cheval...this cannot be! I must undo—no, a sale! New designs, a d-d-discount, two percent off! No, five! Dare I dream? No, I must!”

“Keep your head out of the clouds,” Twilight said weakly. She could never keep up with Rarity's shifts of mood.

“I rather think I should finally put my head into it, as it were.” Rarity's horn glowed: A box on on a high shelf rattled open: A glass-blue crystal floated out and over to Rarity, who gazed at with such singular intensity Twilight felt embarrassed to be there. The crystal looked like a cloud and was the Element of Information. Twilight hoped Rarity wouldn't cause a fuss.

“Now,” Rarity said suddenly, “how do I find this, ah, market price? With my parasprite, I shall be more attentive than any dressmaker ever could!”

...It was the most benevolent abuse of a parasprite Twilight could imagine. “You need to set marginal revenue equal to marginal cost.”

Twilight looked outside. The sky was darkening fast, another early winter night. “If you'll excuse me, I think I should see Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy before the day ends. Thanks for the tea and the talk.”

“Adieu!” Rarity waved goodbye, then frowned. “Marginal what?”

Twilight bumped into Rainbow Dash on the way to Fluttershy’s cottage.

“Rainbow Dash!” She grabbed the rainbow-maned Pegasus and frowned at her friend’s tired eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, I just lost three hundred thousand bits on the stock market,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Oh no! You’re going out of business?”

“No, I’ll make double back tomorrow. What’s up?”

“You’re sure you’re fine? Financially?”

“Yeah! I have way more money than you still.”

“Aren’t you afraid of going bankrupt?”

“It’s not that scary. Besides, I’m not afraid of anything.”

Twilight almost moved on. Something in Rainbow Dash’s voice made her stop.

“Not afraid of anything? Not even death?”

“No. Why should I be? He’s honestly a total sap. There’s no muscles on his bones at all, and I’m way faster than he is. I’ve seen the sand in my hourglass. It’s rainbow colored!”

Twilight’s eyes glazed over as Rainbow Dash spewed nonsense. “That’s great, Pegasus buddy. I’m going to go see Fluttershy now.”

“Oh, she won’t want visitors. I just got back from talking to her. She’s got no money. The sanctuary is closing.”

Twilight hurried through the snow. Fluttershy's cottage was on the outskirts of Ponyville through the woods and far too far away. The wind buffeted her face and pushed her back; tiny shards of ice whipped and cut her; and each step hurt more and more. No pony cleared the roads here, or anywhere in Ponyville, but everypony walking along certain paths did something to melt and smooth the way. Here the snow was untrammeled. Twilight resorted to teleporting through it until she tired and stopped. Then, gasping for breath, she plunged onward.

The moon was rising. A hypothesis was forming in the back of her mind. Dread rode her back, spurring her on.

The trees gave way to the white slopes of endless sleep. Suddenly, in the distance, Fluttershy's cottage emerged out of a snowy haze, a thin trail of smoke visible through the powder now falling from the sky. Blinking it out of her eyes, Twilight forced herself forward step by step.

She didn't notice the darkness around the corners of her vision until it suddenly swam over her; a pulse in her head rushed painfully through and reverberated. The pain forced to her knees and her face to the snow, not feeling the cold until it passed.

She thought about standing up.

Did.

Sagged.

Oh crap oh crap oh crap

Too much magic, too much thinking, and it had to catch up with her here of all places, too far to go forward or back, no pony in hearing distance even if she shouted, and she didn't think she could shout.

The wind whipped around her, cold, cutting. The air was full of scythes.

Blackness like a cloak of night descended.

Smelled like soap. And, at the same time, animal dung.

“Goodness, look at you!” Fluttershy said. “Don't worry, Twilight, I'm going to take good care of you. Mr. Bear, could you please help carry her to my cottage? Thank you so much. Mr. Owl, could you send a message to Spike letting him know Twilight is with me? Thank you!”

“Unghughuh,” Twilight said, which is the concussed version of “Fluttershy, is that you? Thank goodness! Listen, we have a lot to talk about, mostly economics. Let me guess, you've suddenly run out of money to support your animal sanctuary?”

“I’m going to warm you right up and give you some medicine. Just in here, Mr. Bear, oh thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you! Oh, dear, I suppose I'll soon find out. Oh, uh, d-don't worry about it, Mr. Bear, I didn't mean anything by it!”

“Arhbalbahh,” Twilight said, which is Concussed for “Arhbalbahh.”

Author's Note

If you're wondering why Rainbow Dash didn't offer to support Fluttershy's sanctuary, she isn't running a charity.

In the alternate version of this chapter, the one where Rarity doesn't learn her lesson, it begins to snow dresses until the earth is buried under six feet of silk and lace. Make of that what you will.