Dinky and the Blanks

Chapters

The Everfree forest
Entering Moonville
Grey Hoof and Mitta
Ruby
Escaping Moonville (1)
Escaping Moonville (2)
Ponyville
Return to Moonville
Two hundred years
Epilogue

The Everfree forest

Miss Cherilee had instructed them not to leave the clearing; the unexplored areas of the Everfree could be dangerous, and she and Nurse Redheart couldn’t watch all the students if they spread out too much. But the honeysuckle was just on the far side of a few trees, and Dinky knew that her mother loved honeysuckle. Whenever her mother put together flowers or herbs to make their apartment smell nice, she always made sure to include at least a little. She would love it, Dinky thought, if she came home to that smell.

So Dinky shifted from hoof to hoof, wondering whether it would be okay if she just ran over, picked it, and hurried back. She wouldn’t be going that far, she reasoned. But then again, Cherilee was a really nice teacher, and her mother wouldn’t like if it she learned that Dinky had disobeyed her. On the other hoof, it was so close…

“Class!” Dinky jumped a little, but it was just Cherilee reminding them of their assignment. “Remember to look for all five herbs! The first pony to find them all will win a special prize, and – Scootaloo, come back!”

“Aww,” came the distant comment.

“And please stay close, class. All five herbs can be found in this area. You don’t need to leave the clearing.”

Dinky nodded a little as she glanced in her saddlebag. She had four of the herbs that they were supposed to gather as a ‘thank you’ to Redheart for spending the day talking to them about the plants she used to make medicines for Ponyville. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had said that it was a ‘waste of time’ and that the task was just because ‘that old mare Redheart’s being lazy,’ but Dinky didn’t think so. The more ingredients that Nurse Redheart had, the more likely she’d be able to treat any pony that fell sick, and wasn’t that a good thing?

Although, she thought, she still needed to find a sample of the last herb, the strongweed. She would have to quickly decide whether to go for the honeysuckle or not, then get back to completing the assignment. But she couldn’t make up her mind. Was it worth disobeying Miss Cherilee to make her mother happy?

Then she had an idea, and she smiled. What if she used her telekinesis? She’d been practicing a lot, she could probably extract a little honeysuckle and get it into her saddlebag without having to leave the clearing. Her momma had always said that it was important to be creative and ‘think outside the box,’ and even though Dinky didn’t really understand why one would go into a box to think, she got the basic point of the saying. This was definitely an ‘out of the box’ solution!

So she focused on the honeysuckle. Her horn glowed. The flowers and vines began to shake a little, then float up from the ground, then move…

“Hey, DT, look at this!”

The voice behind Dinky was loud and overpowering. Dinky jumped a little in surprise, and accidentally gripped hard with her telekinesis. The honeysuckle she was holding smashed in upon itself.

“Hey!” said Dinky. She looked sadly at the mass of vines and flowers – now dead, and thus not able to produce any sort of sweet smell – and then looked behind her to see a grinning Silver Spoon.

“Nice magic, blank flank,” drawled Silver Spoon. Behind her, Diamond Tiara trotted over from the river that split the clearing into two halves. Silver pointed a hoof at Dinky. “Guess her telekinesis still isn’t working quite right.”

“Oh, don’t’ worry, Dinky,” said Diamond Tiara. “I’m sure you’ll get it eventually. You know, like you’ll get your cutie mark eventually.”

“When you’re as old as Granny Smith!” laughed Silver Spoon.

Dinky looked away, more upset than she wanted to show. She’d never done anything to either of them; why did they act so mean to her? Her mother said that it didn’t matter, and that if she was just kind to them they’d come around eventually. But eventually usually met a long time, and she didn’t want to wait that long for the two foals to be a little nicer to her.

Diamond Tiara then asked, “So, Silver Spoon, how are you doing with the herbs?”

“I got the first three,” she said. “Enough for two ponies.” And she grinned.

“Ooh, I got the last two. Let’s share. Guess we win the prize. I hear that it’s BonBon’s chocolate.”

“Hey!” said Dinky, still rather annoyed at the two. Her stomach grumbled at the thought of the chocolate. “Miss Cherilee said we’re supposed to find and pick them on our own.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t tattle on us, would you, Dinky-Winky?” asked Silver Spoon. She grinned. “Come on, DT. Let’s go show Miss Cherilee how great we are.” And they walked off.

Dinky sighed, looking at the ruined honeysuckle for a long moment before turning around. She still had to find the strongweed. Nurse Redheart had said that it was usually found on the north side of rocks in shady areas, so the big boulder by the oak trees and the north side of the clearing seemed like a good place to look.

“I’m pleased that all of you were able to find all of the herbs,” said Miss Cherilee. “Now Nurse Redheart can turn them into medicines that will benefit our town of Ponyville!”

Dinky clacked her hooves on the ground a few times, though none of the other foals did. Snips and Snails were noisily whispering about something, and Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were murmuring secretively. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were up front, beaming and munching candy. Dinky, as usual, was left without a partner.

It wasn’t that she had no friends, Dinky thought. She did, and she knew it was wrong to act like she didn’t. She could always find a fellow foal to eat with at lunch, or to go play in the parks or playgrounds of Ponyville. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were even willing to let Dinky tag along with them on their various adventures (although Dinky found Scootaloo’s method of transport to be a bit fast for her tastes). But she didn’t have a best friend, and she felt like she was the only pony in the class without one.

After all, if Dinky had to guess, she would say that the other ponies had probably all helped each other on the assignment. The heartroot pieces that Snips and Snails had turned in were obviously one heartroot that had been cut in half. She'd seen Sunny Days and Peachy Pie whispering too, although they at least seemed to have just given each other advice and not actually broken the rules by sharing their samples. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had probably helped each other as well; they usually did. Dinky didn’t want to cheat – that was wrong, and her mother would have been very disappointed in her had she done so – but she still found herself wishing that there was another pony who might have offered to help her. That would have been nice.

“Alright, class. Stay close behind me and Nurse Redheart as we return to Ponyville!” said Miss Cherilee. “It’s past our usual dismissal time, so I think that, once we get back into town, I’ll release you for the day.” A few of the foals cheered at that. “Just write a one-page report on what you learned today, due first thing Friday.” Dinky joined the chorus of groans. Cherilee didn’t seem to notice any of this. “Let’s head home!”

Dinky rebuked herself as she fell into the back of the line. She knew, after all, that she had a lot to be grateful about. She had the absolute best mother in the world, a roof over her head, and food on the table at every meal. She was healthy and, according to her mother and Miss Cherilee, smart for her age. She even had a job with Miss Fluttershy, helping take care of her animals for three bits a week (and the occasional piece of candy). It was wrong for her to be upset about not having a best friend when there were so many ponies that had less than she did. She would make more friends soon enough if she just kept trying.

Scootaloo, the pony directly in front of her, laughed at some joke that Sweetie Belle had just made. “Alright!” she said. “Let’s grab the scooter once we get back to town and zip over to the farm. See if Applebloom’s got time to hang out with us today. There’s three harnesses and a whole lot of rope!”

Maybe trying now would help. Whatever those two were doing sure sounded interesting to Dinky. The purple foal smiled and trotted a bit faster. “Hey, Scootaloo? Sweetie Belle?”

“Oh, hey Dinky,” said Scootaloo. “What’s up?”

“What’re you doing later?”

“Going ziplining with Sweetie and Apple Bloom!” Scootaloo grinned. “We’ve got his big rope, and we’re gonna go zooming down it way fast and land in a huge pile of hay! We’ll be as fast as Rainbow Dash!” She paused. “Uh, almost.”

Sweetie giggled.

Dinky smiled, but she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to go ‘ziplining.’ It sounded fun, but also a little scary. “That sounds really cool,” she managed.

“Yeah! It’ll work a lot better than last time!”

Uh oh. “What happened last time?”

Sweetie frowned. “The rope sagged and we got stuck in the middle. Then it broke and we fell down into a big mud puddle.” She looked at her left front leg, which was still a bit bruised.

“Don’t worry,” said Scootaloo, grinning. “This time we’ll tie the rope tighter. 'Sides, Apple Bloom's good with tools; if she's helping us set up this time, it'll work for sure! Wanna come with, Dinky? We can make you another harness.”

Dinky thought of herself crashing into the ground, and winced. “Um, no. That’s okay. I should really get home so that Momma doesn’t wonder where I am.”

Scootaloo shrugged. “Alright. You’re missing out, though. But after we finish ziplining, Sweetie and I'll be making more ice cream. Do you want any?”

Their last attempt at ice cream making had resulted in a vaguely dairy-like substance with the texture and taste of dried glue. “No thank you,” said Dinky.

“Your loss,” chirped Scootaloo.

Dinky walked in silence for the next few minutes as the group continued to make their way out of the Everfree. Maybe she could talk to Snips and Snails. They were hard to talk to sometimes, but most of the things they did were at least kind of fun. They usually ended up digging for weird grubs or bugs in various places around the town, and Dinky, as a normal foal, was amused and intrigued by this. Or she could try Archer, who was usually pretty cool or –

A flash of gray caught her eye.

Frowning, Dinky turned to the right, just in time to see a pony go zipping off into the trees. Dinky didn’t recognize the gray-coated pony. Was she a new student that she’d happened to miss? It was possible, Dinky concluded. But if it were true, then the new student was about to wander off into the Everfree.

“Miss Cherilee!” called Dinky. But Cherilee was at the front of the line, and between Dinky and her were the loudly-chattering Snips and Snails. Cherilee didn’t seem to hear her.

“Miss Cherilee! Miss Cherilee!” But she was too far away, and the gray pony had already run out of sight. Maybe she should just hurry after her and tell her to get back in line or she might get lost. The Everfree could be scary, she knew; her mother had told her about her time there with her friends as she struggled to find the Elements of Harmony. There were all kinds of monsters and even mean plants that could hurt an unwary foal. Finding the new student and helping her would be the right thing to do. The friendly thing to do.

And it was what her mother would do, Dinky thought. Her mother, Ditzy Doo, was the kindest pony ever. She’d always help a foal who was wandering into the Everfree forest.

Dinky nodded to herself, and then hurried after the gray pony.

Entering Moonville

The sounds of the other foals faded away almost immediately, but Dinky pressed on.

“Hello?” she called. “Come back! You could get lost!”

She was almost certain she heard a faint giggle from up ahead.

“The Everfree’s dangerous!” called Dinky, hurrying on. There was a narrow path through the trees, and while there wasn’t a whole lot of light – the treetops were very close together – there was enough to see by. Dinky could, occasionally, glimpse the grey-coated foal up ahead. Unfortunately, the pony didn't seem to notice her, and she was fast enough that Dinky was having trouble catching up with her.

She debated hurrying back to the class group. The forest felt creepy, and while she knew that she shouldn’t be a scaredy-pony, she had a bad feeling about continuing into the unknowns of the Everfree. There could be sirens there, or poison joke, or… or anything, really. Dinky's mother had cautioned her a few times about wandering into the Everfree, saying that there were monsters in there that could be dangerous to young foals. And, looking around at the shadows, gloom, and somehow offputting trees, it was easy to believe that those monsters were around every corner.

But if they were, they might get the grey foal, so Dinky again gathered her courage and pressed on.

She wasn’t sure how long she dashed through the forest, but eventually she came to a strange little clearing. The light seemed oddly murky, even moreso than before, and it was hard to tell what was at the other end. “Are you there?" she called, looking around herself.

There was no answer.

Dinky walked into the center of the clearing. There was a path out of the far end, she realized, and a bright light was shining from it. It flickered, and Dinky realized that it looked like the light cast by the lampposts in Ponyville. Maybe she had wandered her way to the edge of the forest and was about to get back into town. She smiled. The grey pony had probably just taken this route as a shortcut or something; now she could follow her into town and say hello.

She entered the path and trotted swiftly down it. “Hello?” she repeated.

The path bent around a small hill and led her directly to a large, brightly lit sign. Beyond it was a bright and merry town, with ponies bustling about. It looked like a giant party was about to get underway – there were tables full to bursting with what looked like delicious treats, huge bowls of punch on little columns, and balloons attached to every possible surface. Dinky couldn’t help but grin as she saw a tall pony dressed in elaborate clown makeup practicing a juggling trick, and another two ponies setting up a stand for a carnival game. A phonograph was playing a popular dance tune, and a few of the older ponies were dancing to it on a big lawn.

Dinky glanced up to the sign. “Welcome,” it read, “To Moonville!”

Dinky looked at the party again, and then felt herself stepping into the village.

It was the biggest party ever.

Dinky had never seen so many sweets in one place, not even at one of Pinkie’s famous parties. Her eyes roved from one to the next. They all looked incredibly delicious, with the same level of care and skill that Bon-Bon put into his recipes. She wondered if it would be okay for her to try one.

“Hello there!”

Dinky turned quickly and found herself looking at a tall, grey stallion with a black mane and warm, kind eyes.

“My name is Grey Hoof. You must be a visitor to our town!” He laughed. “We don’t get many of those, so it’s always a treat!”

“My name is Dinky Doo,” said Dinky, calling to mind her mother’s lessons about how to properly introduce herself to strangers. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Grey Hoof laughed again. “Sir? Oh, no, my father is ‘sir.’ Please, really, just call me Grey Hoof, Or Grey, or Hoof.” He paused. “Just don’t call me Groof or Hey.” He knelt down, as if telling Dinky a secret. “Because those names are silly.”

Dinky couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, si – Grey Hoof. What’s going on? It looks like a really big party!”

“Why, it’s the anniversary of the day we founded Moonville! And, as per town tradition, we have a celebration to remember all the good things that happened in the past year, and all the great things we hope to happen in the next!” He nodded, almost solemn. “As the town’s premier party planner, I was asked to throw something together. What do you think?”

“It looks really great!” said Dinky.

“Thanks!” Grey Hoof swept a hoof out over the tables. “I wasn’t sure whether to go with the two tables of cupcakes and donuts and just one table for candy, or add a little more candy and a few fewer cupcakes this year, but I think I finally found the right balance.” He nodded sagely. “Do you agree?”

Dinky had to agree that it looked like a good balance between candy and baked goods.

“Oh, Grey Hoof!” A smaller mare ran up. “The magic show booth is just about ready.”

“Splendid!”

"There's magic shows too?" asked Dinky.

"Of course there are! What party would be complete without a little magic?" Grey Hoof swept his hooves around, and out of nowhere, a cupcake appeared on one of them. "It makes things so much more entertaining!"

Dinky recognized the trick -- Trixie had done that one once -- but she liked it anyway, and she clapped her hooves.

"Here's another!" Grey Hoof swept his hooves around a few times. "Look left, look right, and presto!"

Dinky blinked. She suddenly felt a weight on her nose, as if a cupcake had been quietly placed there while she'd been looking elsewhere.

“Feel free to help yourself!” said Grey Hoof as a giggling Dinky thanked him and shook her head to remove the cupcake.

The foal eagerly bit into the cupcake. It was delicious -- moist and sweet, with hints of peanut butter and chocolate. "Yum!"

"It's my own recipe," said Grey Hoof. "Examined by dozen of foal taste-testers, adjusted for maximum deliciousness."

"Baking must be your special talent," said Dinky, finishing up the cupcake in a few bites.

"Special talent?"

"Yep!" But Dinky looked at Grey Hoof's flank, expecting to see a pastry or something like that, only to see a bare coat. "Hey... where's your cutie mark?"

"My what?"

"Cutie mark?"

Grey Hoof looked baffled. "I don't know what that is... there's nothing wrong with not having one, is there?"

"Oh, no, of course not!" Dinky looked at her own flank. "I don't have one either. I just thought that all adult ponies did."

Grey Hoof shrugged, as if it wasn't important. “I'm glad you like the cupcake. Although, between you and me, I think the donuts came out just a bit better this year. You’re staying for the party, I trust? You'll be able to eat all you like!”

Dinky wanted to, but then again, there was the question of time. Looking at the sky, she realized that it was starting to get dark -- she must have been running in the Everfree for longer than she thought. In fact, she was still deep in the Everfree forest, and if she didn't start for home really soon, she wouldn't make it before her mother began to worry. “Oh… I really want to, Grey Hoof, but I can’t.”

Grey Hoof looked genuinely crestfallen.

Dinky tried to reassure him as quickly as she could. “I really want to stay! But my momma’s expecting me home soon. And, uh, I kind of ran away from a class group, and Miss Cherilee’s probably wondering where I am. I’m sorry if you’re mad—“

Grey Hoof waved this off. “No, no. Of course your first duty is to your family. I could hardly justify asking you to ignore all that for a party. I know some families don’t like parties, and that’s their decision.”

“It's not that we don't like parties.” Dinky smiled. “My momma loves parties. She’d probably let me go to this one if I asked her. But she doesn’t know where I am now, and I don’t want her or Miss Cherilee to worry.”

“What a kind young foal you are.” Grey Hoof nodded. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Dinky thanked him and turned to go, but then Grey Hoof said, “Although, I do have an idea...”

“What?”

“Instead of you going back, why don’t we write your mother – and Miss Cherilee – a letter telling them where you are and inviting them to come here? Then they could participate in the party too!” He winked roguishly. “We could even invite a few of your classmates. You see, it seems that I tragically made a few too many cupcakes and brownies for the ponies in Moonville to eat. A few extra foals could take care of that.”

Dinky grinned. It was the perfect solution! Plus, this would be an even better surprise for her mother than the honeysuckle. She knew that her mother had the next day off of work, so maybe they could even stay late! Miss Cherilee would probably also enjoy a nice party, especially as she was always laughing and having fun. As for the other foals, she just knew they'd love being invited to the Moonville party. Maybe they could even make new friends with the Moonville foals.

“Okay, let’s do that!” she cheered.

Grey Hoof helped write down the letters, which Dinky then happily signed and addressed. Hoof then called for another pony, called Starlet. “Could you take these into the town outside the Everfree please? It shouldn’t be a long run, and it would mean a lot to our special guest here.”

"Sure thing, Grey Hoof," said Starlet.

“You can take them by Ruby’s old route,” called Grey Hoof. “That’s the fastest way.”

“Yes, Grey Hoof!” And she trotted off.

Dinky also remembered to ask Grey Hoof if he’d seen the other grey foal, but Grey Hoof said that he hadn’t. “But if I do see her, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Thank you.” Dinky figured that the grey pony had just gotten into town ahead of her and slipped by Grey Hoof – it was the only place she could have gone from that clearing. She turned back to the buffet tables. “So… when do we get to start eating the food?” She smiled winningly.

“Well, for us townsfolk, just as the moon rises… maybe in an hour. But for a special visitor from out of town, I will make an exception. You can have something sweet now, as long as you promise not to let it ruin your appetite.” Grey Hoof winked.

Dinky grinned and scampered off towards the buffet tables.

The food was beyond delicious, an overstuffed Dinky noted.

At first, she was going to follow Grey Hoof’s rule that she could have one sweet. And she’d carefully picked out what appeared to be the most delicious chocolate brownie, and, holding it as carefully as she could with her telekinesis, had taken it to a quiet corner to eat.

But it was just so delicious, she had to go back for seconds.

The fudge and the caramel tasted brilliant together. The natural chocolate of the brownie – a dark, almost-but-not-quite bitter taste – complimented both other flavors. And there was a delicious aftertaste that hinted of peppermint. Dinky didn’t know much about making sweets, but she did know, from listening to BonBon and Lyra talk, how much work went into turning a good baker into a great one. Grey Hoof had clearly been putting in that kind of effort.

So Dinky got a second brownie, and then she had to try another one of the cupcakes, and that was so good she had to sample a variety of them. And then she was thirsty, and the punch bowls seemed almost to call her name. And when she had drunk her fill of the perfectly sweet, fruity juice, she saw a stocky mare supervising the unloading of a massive cake onto one of the tables, and so she was off to wait for it to be cut and to beg a slice from the server pony.

Once she’d eaten her fill, she decided to talk to the other ponies in the area. The first to catch her eye was a green-coated mare. She was setting up a large wall of flowers that faced out towards the party area. Dinky trotted over in her direction. “Hello!”

“Hello,” said the mare, turning to look at Dinky.

“Do you need help?” asked Dinky.

“No, everything should be ready by tonight.” The mare stood. “You must be a visitor. I’m Three Leaf.”

“I’m Dinky Doo, Miss Leaf!”

Three Leaf laughed. “Please, just Three Leaf.”

“Those look really pretty,” said Dinky. “Are you a gardener?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m the town’s head gardener.”

The flowers, though simple, had been moved into an elaborate tapestry. “It must have taken a long time for this,” said Dinky.

Three Leaf paused. “Yes, I’ve studied this for… quite a long time now.” It sounded almost sad.

“I meant this, uh, plot.” Was it a ‘plot’ or a ‘garden?’ Sometimes Dinky felt that language was being deliberately confusing.

“Oh! Oh, not really. I only started this morning.” Three Leaf smiled, although Dinky thought it looked a little forced. Like when Miss Cherilee had gotten stuck in a conversation with Miss Berry Punch and hadn’t been able to escape for ten minutes.

“It’s really nice,” Dinky repeated.

“Thank you again. Do you like flowers?”

“My momma does, and sometimes I help her set them up in our home,” said Dinky.

They talked about flowers for a few minutes, even as Three Leaf began resuming her work. Dinky marveled as she continued to plant the flowers without looking at what she was doing – she had to be very skilled. Maybe gardening was her special talent? She looked to see Three Leaf’s cutie mark, but she didn't seem to have one either.

“What is it?” Three Leaf had probably noticed her staring.

“Do you have a cutie mark?"

“What’s a cutie mark?”

“Uh…” Dinky blinked. “The mark on your flank that indicates your special talent. My momma’s is bubbles because she’s got such a bubbly and kind personality!”

Three Leaf smiled. “That sounds very nice, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. I don’t think any of the villagers here have one.”

“Really?” Dinky turned and looked at the other ponies in her field of view. Sure enough, she didn’t see a single cutie mark. So it wasn't just Grey Hoof, then

Three Leaf shrugged, and they quickly resumed talking about different types of pretty flowers. Dinky smiled. Who cared if they didn't have cutie marks? Moonville was a really friendly place!

Grey Hoof and Mitta

My little pony, My little pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahhh...
My little pony
Friendship never meant that much to me
My little pony
But you're all here and now I can see
Stormy weather; Lots to share
A musical bond; With love and care
Teaching laughter; It's an easy feat,
And magic makes it all complete!
You have my little ponies
How'd I ever make so many true friends?

Gladstone said, “I told him, ‘No, that’s not a main problem, that’s a MANE problem! Just use a brush!’”

Dinky laughed at the story, a long tale about a friend of his who tended to overreact if his appearance wasn’t quite right. Grey Hoof had introduced her, Dinky, to the carpenter pony, and they were hitting it off well. Just like with every other pony in town. In fact, Grey Hoof had personally introduced her to at least half a dozen of them, and they were uniformly welcoming and kind. Each one of them had spoken happily with her, and not one had told Dinky to go away, or treated her like she was some little baby who didn’t know anything. Moonville had some of the nicest ponies she’d ever met, Dinky thought, excepting of course her mother and Miss Cherilee.

“I think the moonlight works nicely with the paneling, don’t you?” Gladstone had told Dinky earlier about a special polish he used that sparkled in the moonlight. "It really gives it that extra something."

“Yep!” agreed Dinky. The paneling did sparkle and glow in the soft moonlight, and… wait, moonlight?

Dinky looked up. The moon was high in the sky.

No way! I haven’t been here for hours! I couldn’t have been!

Dinky groaned. How could she have lost track of time so badly? Her mother was going to be so disappointed with her when she got home, and Miss Cherilee would be upset too. And then—

Wait, hadn’t Grey Hoof invited both of them? Dinky frowned. Her mother would have either come back with Starlet or would have asked Starlet to return and tell Dinky to come home. She wouldn’t have just ignored the letter. Miss Cherilee would have done the same. And in either case, that should have happened hours ago. The sun had still been up when she’d entered town, and now the moon was high in the sky.

Dinky felt a sense of wrongness, and backed up a few paces from Gladstone. She wished, suddenly, that she were home, safe in bed, and not in this town with a really amazing party and a really weird sense of time. She didn't know why, but suddenly, she wanted to be anywhere else instead of Moonville.

“Is something wrong?” Gladstone asked.

“I don’t know…”

If time had begun moving quickly for some reason, what would that mean? The only way that could happen was if somepony had placed a spell on the village, or maybe on Dinky. But Dinky hadn’t agreed to be part of any spell, and she couldn’t think of any good reason for it to happen. If it was magic, that was probably not a good thing.

Dinky turned around and spotted the town entrance. Her head hurt; she couldn't figure out what was going on. Maybe leaving town for a few moments would help her figure out what to do next. She began to trot in that direction, still trying to figure out what was happening.

The ponies were all so nice, she thought. Maybe I just got wrapped up in conversations and games and cupcakes and lost track of time. But that just didn’t feel right, and her mother had taught her that she should listen to her instincts if they told her that something was wrong. So she would leave town, at least for a moment, and—

“Dinky!”

Dinky turned to see Grey Hoof trotting up to her. “Just the foal I was looking for! The party’s going to start very soon, and I wanted to make sure you had front-row seats for the opening ceremonies!”

Dinky paused, unsure of what to say. Grey Hoof was friendly, maybe she could ask him what was going on. “Uh, Grey Hoof? How long have I been here?”

Grey Hoof seemed puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“How long have I been here?” Dinky’s voice was just a little more high pitched than normal. “Because I didn’t think I’d been here that long but now it’s night and I can’t see Momma anywhere and I—“

“Woah, there!” Grey Hoof smiled and knelt so that he was looking directly into Dinky’s eyes. “Calm down. Tell me what’s wrong, and if I can, I'll help fix it. As the party planner, it’s my duty to ensure the happiness of every one of my charges.”

Dinky took a few deep breaths and decided to start with the most obvious problem. “It’s been a really long time but it only felt like a few minutes, and I don’t understand it. It feels like magic but I don’t want to be magicked right now and it’s not nice, and…”

“No magic at all,” said Grey Hoof. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘time flies when you’re having fun?’ You’ve been playing games and talking to other ponies all evening. Of course it feels like you’ve only spent a little bit of time here. But that’s just because you were totally absorbed in the party. Trust me, none of the ponies here would place a spell on you without asking permission first. I guarantee it.”

Dinky sniffed. “But, if it’s been so long, where’s Momma? And Miss Cherilee?”

“Well, if I may say so myself, this is a pretty big party.” Grey Hoof nodded at the large crowds by the food tables and the carnival booths. “If you ask me, they’re probably here and just haven’t found you yet. But, you know what we can do about that?”

“What?”

“At the beginning of the party, I’ll make a special announcement for all our out-of-town guests and visitors. As part of it, we’ll have one of the spotlights shine on you. And then your mother can find you lickety-split! Does that sound good?”

“I guess—“

“Now,” said Grey Hoof, “You won’t be asked to speak or anything, but we might arrange for you to get a special treat. Just to open the party up. Do you like chocolate or vanilla more?”

“Chocolate–“

Grey Hoof began leading her away from the entrance. “Splendid. And cupcakes, regular cake, muffins, or brownies?”

“Uh – uh, cupcakes.”

“Excellent! Then, as part of the opening ceremony, you will be offered a big chocolate cupcake. With sprinkles, of course. Just like this one!” Grey Hoof waved his front hooves around and again produced a cupcake from nowhere. “Does that sound good?”

“Yes…” Dinky took the cupcake and, not wnting to eat it at the moment, tucked it into her saddlebag. “Yes, it sounds good…”

And so Grey Hoof explained all about the opening ceremony. By the time he was done, they were in the center of town, where carnival games and a large stand for a band were set up. Grey Hoof led her right to the front. “This way,” he explained, “When your mother sees you, she can head around this open space and run right to you. Sound good?”

“Yes.”

Grey Hoof seemed to pick up on Dinky’s lack of enthusiasm and looked away. “Of course… if you really just want to go home, Dinky, I’ll understand. I’ll ask one of the ponies to guide you through the Everfree. If your mother does come by, or Cherilee, I’ll send them after you.”

Dinky was considering accepting the offer, but Grey Hoof seemed very sad all of a sudden. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just, whenever we have a visitor, I… well, I’m the town party planner. It’s my job to throw parties that even a pony who’s new here will like. Guess I’m still learning. But if it’s not to your tastes, that’s not your fault, Dinky, and I won’t ask you to stay just to make me feel better.”

“It isn’t that at all. This party’s really amazing!” Dinky wondered if Grey Hoof was maybe a little sensitive about his parties. She knew some ponies that took their work very seriously. Like the owner of Carousel Boutique, Rarity, who had once gone into seclusion for two days after a fashion show that hadn’t quite turned out the way she’d wished. “Really, it’s a great party.”

“You really think so?” Grey Hoof knelt again. “Sometimes I worry that the other ponies in town, see, they’ll tell me it’s good because they’re my friends. But you’re being honest, right?”

“Yeah!” Dinky nodded her head quickly. “It’s a really wonderful party, and it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen, and the food is great and the games are really cool!”

Grey Hoof smiled, a bright grin that seemed to light up their section of the field. “Alright. Thanks, Dinky. I’ll go pick out another chocolate cupcake for you.”

Dinky looked around, a little more relaxed. Grey Hoof was so nice, and he obviously wanted Dinky to be really happy. He was probably being honest about Dinky just losing track of time; it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened, after all, and he seemed so trustworthy. It was the way he talked, she thought. He was very friendly when he talked, and he always seemed to take into account what Dinky wanted. It was…

It was a little eery, actually. Dinky knew a lot of pony adults, and liked most of them, but Grey Hoof was the only one who had acted exactly like Dinky would want. That was weird, wasn’t it? That Grey Hoof was so perfect?

”If some pony sounds too good to be true, they probably are,” she remembered her mother saying.

And something else gave her pause. She’d heard another pony speaking like him, and recently. Who was it, again?

“How do you do it?” Dinky had asked.

She was smiling brightly. Trixie had just finished a magic show for Cherilee’s class, and every single pony there had loved it. Dinky had been surprised to note that even the normally distracted Snips and Snails were paying attention, as were Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. The tricks had been great, of course, even including the one that went slightly wrong and filled half the room with a cloud of blue smoke, but Dinky had a feeling there was more to it than just the tricks.

Trixie opened up an empty box so that Dinky could put away a few props; in exchange for a few jangles, Dinky had agreed to help Trixie clean up. “Well, I’m just a great illusionist,” she said, smiling.

“Yeah, but what else?”

Trixie laughed. “A big part of it is ‘patter,’ Dinky.”

“Patter?”

“Patter. Talk. A good magician has to be able to draw in her audience with words alone. Talk a lot, get them interested in, and then distract them with your voice…” Trixie clapped her hooves, then pointed to the box. Dinky looked and saw that the box now contained the four aces in Trixie’s card deck. She grinned, wondering how the mare had done it when she, Dinky, had been looking at and talking to her this whole time.

“…and then you can do anything you want with your hooves. There’s other techniques too. Figure out what they want, ask them questions so they ask for it, then give it to them – it makes them feel like they’re in control. Act like you’re best friends with them even though you’ve never met, so they don’t suspect that you’re about to put a big illusion on them. If they have any concerns, agree to whatever they want, then do what you were going to do anyway, and they’ll be so relieved they won’t notice that you’ve tricked them again. If they keep raising objections, get offended and convince them that it's mean to question you.” Trixie helped Dinky put a large set of metal balls into the box. “Seriously, tricks with words are just as important as tricks with cards and dice. Why, you thinking of becoming a magician?”

“Oh, I was just curious.” Dinky wasn’t sure what she wanted to do when she grew up, but she hoped it would involve making lots of ponies happy, like her mother, who delivered the birthday presents and gifts in town, or Lyra, with her music, or Trixie, with her shows. “But maybe one day I’ll be able to patter like you!”

Trixie had laughed warmly at that. “That’ll be an interesting day, Dinky.”

“…talk a lot… be really friendly even though you don’t know the pony… act like, if you're questioned, the questioner is being mean...”

Dinky’s eyes widened. Now she knew why Grey Hoof’s speeches sounded so familiar -- they were just like the speeches Trixie gave during her shows! But, at the shows, all the ponies knew they were going to get fooled with magic tricks. That was why they were fun. But… but if Grey Hoof was using the same ‘patter,’ he was trying to trick Dinky… and Dinky hadn’t agreed to that!

Grey Hoof was trying to trick her!

Dinky immediately looked around. Her sense of nervousness was back and stronger than ever. She didn’t know what Grey Hoof was doing, but she didn’t think she wanted to stay and find out. So she’d just leave. If it turned out that she was wrong, she’d come back tomorrow – with her mother – and apologize.

She took off at a run for the far end of town. Maybe, she thought, she could slip out, go around Moonville, and then trace her way back to Ponyville. She was really scared of going into the Everfree alone at night, but she didn’t want to stay in Moonville for even one more minute. Because now that she thought about it, hadn’t all the other ponies spoken like Grey Hoof? So friendly, even though they hadn’t known her, with lots of random talking and little, easy questions… they’d all been speaking exactly the same way. The way that Trixie spoke when she was just about to fool an audience and reveal some incredible trick. But Dinky hadn’t agreed to be fooled, and she was starting to get worried over whatever the ‘trick’ was.

And, really, now that she was thinking about it, how could such a big town really have been undiscovered in the Everfree for so long? Surely some explorer from town would have found it at some point. What was going on? Where was she?

I’m sorry, Momma, she thought. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m really sorry…

She dashed through town, weaving through the assembled ponies and between the houses. Fortunately, most of the ponies were focused on their work for the party, so none noticed her. She smiled a little when she saw that there was a rear entrance to the town, and no other ponies standing by it. She’d be able to get outside and make her way back to Ponyville!

And then, as she was running up to it, she saw another pony step out of the woods. She tried to dodge to one side, tripped, and wound up tumbling into one of the gate posts. “Ouch!”

When she got up, shaking her now-sore head, the other pony was looking at her closely. “You’re not from around here, are you?” she asked at last.

“Uh, no ma’am.” Dinky smiled weakly. This mare, with a grey coat and a deep-red mane, looked… odd. Like she hadn’t washed in a while. Her coat and mane were both tangled and knotted. Plus, she had a really sad expression.

“Then you should leave,” hissed the pony. “Now. Hurry! Before they start the party!”

Dinky nodded. “Okay. Uh—“

“What are you waiting for?” The pony looked around. “Go!”

“Hey, Mitta!”

The pony stiffened. Dinky froze. The voices came from town, and were accompanied by hoofsteps. Ponies were approaching.

Mitta turned, shoving Dinky behind a tall bush with one leg as she positioned herself in front of it. “What?”

“Hurry up. The party starts in a few minutes. You don’t want to be late.”

“Yes, Luna knows that I certainly wouldn’t want to be late for yet another one of Grey Hoof’s parties.”

“This is the best one yet,” insisted one of the other ponies. Dinky thought that the mare sounded oddly insistent about that.

“As always. Every one is always the best,” said Mitta. Her voice was bitter. “Go have your stupid games and tell yourselves that everything is fine. I’m tired of it.”

“You have to be there,” said the first mare. “You have to.”

“I know, alright? I’ll be there in a minute.” She snorted “Of all the things we could do every day, it’s a party.”

“We deserve a party.”

“Oh, shut up.”

A third mare coughed, then said, “By the way, have you seen a foal around? One with a weird horn on her head?”

Mitta paused. Dinky tried to remain as still as possible. They had to be asking about her. She’d only seen earth ponies in the town, so she was probably the only foal unicorn. And…

Wait. Had she seen any other foals at all?

Before she could figure this out, Mitta spoke. “I think I saw one over by Three Leaf’s house. Heading over to the ring toss. “

“Thanks. If you see her, get Grey Hoof. He’ll know what to do with her.” The other mare sighed. “Visitors, now. How long’s it been?”

“Not long enough.”

“Well, the last ones enjoyed it, eventually—“

“Shut up! Go back to your stupid party. Tell Grey Hoof I’ll get there when I get there.” Through the bushes, Dinky could see Mitta glance upwards at the sky.

“If you’re late, you’ll regret it,” warned one of the other ponies.

Dinky listened until their hoofsteps faded, then poked her head out through the bush.

“Thank you, miss—“

“Just go! Get out while you still can! Trust me, you do not want to be here when Grey Hoof starts that party.” Mitta gestured at the path. “Just follow that path until it ends. Don’t stop anywhere – anywhere! – along the way. Eventually you’ll get back into a normal part of the forest. Find your way out from there.”

Dinky nodded. Then, something occurred to her, and before she could leave she had to ask. Mitta had said ‘while you still can,’ which seemed to mean that after a while she might not be able to. Had that happened to her? “Are you trapped here?” she asked.

“Yes, but not by Grey Hoof. Every pony who is trapped in Moonville deserves it, and I’m no exception.”

Dinky blinked. “But you seem really nice…”

“You don’t know me very well. I can’t leave. I don’t deserve to.” She scowled. “Those idiots… I don’t hate them because of what they did. I didn’t do anything to stop it either. I hate them because they don’t even realize they’ve been damned.”

Dinky blinked, not understanding what Mitta was talking about.

“Anyway. That shouldn’t matter to you. Go home and forget you ever came here, okay? Tell yourself it was a dream.” Her voice grew more urgent. “And if you ever find yourself anywhere near here in the future, run away as fast as you can.”

Dinky nodded.

“GO!”

Dinky fled into the dark forest.

Ruby

Dinky ran as quickly as she could down the path, leaving the town of Moonville behind her.

She was scared, more scared than she’d ever been since Corona had returned and taken her away from her mother. The branches and roots of the Everfree trees whipped at her coat as she galloped down the old path, and somewhere in the distance an owl hooted. Or maybe it was a monster. Hadn’t Scootaloo once told a ghost story about huge owls that carried off foals and—

No! She couldn’t panic. She had to force herself to remain brave. She would stay calm and be focused and she would find her way home. She was already out of Moonville, she reasoned, and the Everfree wasn’t impossible to get through. After all, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were always running around in the woods in search of some new adventure, and Snips and Snails went bug-hunting every weekend, and they’d never gotten eaten by anything. So she’d be fine. Probably.

And so she ran for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Moonville was behind her. When she slowed down, starting to breathe heavily, she didn’t hear the sounds of celebration anymore. It was just the empty forest.

“I’ll get home,” she said, mostly to reassure herself. “I’ll get home, and I’ll say sorry to Momma, and she’ll make me a big pot of soup and maybe she’ll even let me sleep in tomorrow.” She smiled, imagining the scene. “And I’ll say sorry to Miss Cherilee too, and she’ll tell me that it’s okay and she knows I won’t do it again. And she won’t even assign me any makeup homework.”

She trotted down the path, forcing herself to continue the fantasy. “And then tomorrow I’ll tell Scootaloo what a big adventure I had – oh, wait, Mitta asked me not to talk about Moonville. Well… I’ll just say I went through the Everfree at night. Cause I am.” She grinned. “And they’ll all say how brave I am, and…”

She turned a corner and bumped into a fallen tree.

It was a big oak, rising higher than Dinky even lying on its side, and stretching completely across the path. And it wasn’t the only one. The moonlight was still weirdly dim, but Dinky saw that there were more trees, piled up behind and on top of the first, forming a huge barricade.

“No! That – that’s not fair!”

She tried to climb the first tree, but the oak was slippery with moss and rot, and her hooves couldn’t find a good purchase. She fell on her flank and could only stare at the massive pile of trees.

“Mitta said this was the way back to Ponyville!” Dinky sprang up and began trying to climb the pile again. This time, she managed to scramble on top of the first fallen tree by climbing on a couple of branches. She braced herself, then began climbing onto the second.

The wood splintered beneath her hooves.

Dinky cried out as the seemingly-solid tree before her splintered like a cheap toy, and then she was falling into the pile of trees. Her leg slipped into a crevice between two of them, and then she felt it catch on something. She tried to step away, but her leg was caught fast.

“Let go!” Dinky began to cry as she tried to force her leg out, but with no success. “Let go, let go let go!”

And then she began to cry. She couldn’t help it. She was trapped, only fifteen minutes gallop from Moonville, and there was nothing she could do. She was helpless, and no other ponies were around that were able and willing to help her. Even her mother was back in Ponyville, probably worried sick by this point, and even though she was the best mother in the world she couldn’t help Dinky either.

The thought of her mother gave Dinky pause for a moment. Dinky wondered, briefly, what her mother would do were she in this situation. And then it was like she was besides her, so clearly could Dinky imagine her mother’s voice. Calm down. Take a few deep breaths. Don’t panic; that won’t help.

Right. Panicking wouldn’t help. Dinky shut her eyes – she couldn’t try to calm down while staring at the rotting wood or her own trapped leg – and forced herself to take several deep breaths. That would help calm her, her mother had taught her, and prepare her for whatever she had to do next.

Slowly work your way out of the problem. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Dinky began to softly tug her leg upwards. It moved a few inches, then caught. Dinky wiggled it around, trying to find another angle, and managed to do so after about a minute of wiggling. She began to pull upwards again and got another few inches.

Just keep working at it. You’re an amazing daughter and you can solve any problem if you just try.

Dinky slowly, methodically worked her leg free of the trees. There were a couple of tense moments when it felt like she couldn’t go any higher, but she just kept trying and straining and she was eventually able to continue on.

And then it was over. Her leg was out of the trees, and with nothing to hold her on top of the slippery wood, she felt herself tumbling to the bottom again. It hurt, but at least she wasn’t stuck in the trees anymore, and Dinky couldn’t help but feel a little better.

The foal looked around and tried to figure out her next move. Trying to climb the pile of trees was clearly not a good idea. The forest was thick and imposing; wandering off into it to try to get around the trees could just result in her getting lost. But the only place the path led was right back to Moonville, and she didn’t want to go back there. What else was there?

She saw a flash of grey to her right.

Dinky was startled enough that she almost stumbled over her hooves. She’d forgotten all about the grey pony that she’d followed into Moonville. What if, she thought, that foal had also just fled Moonville? Maybe she really was some new pony in Ponyville who had made the same mistake Dinky had, wound up in Moonville, and was now running away.

“Hey—“ Dinky began to call. But the other pony had already moved into the woods along what looked like a very old, almost completely overgrown forest trail.

Dinky hesitated. She wanted to keep trying to find a way home. The other pony might have just been an illusion; sometimes, she knew, stressed ponies saw things that weren’t there (Trixie had done that, once, although she’d been what her mother’s friend Lyra had called ‘wasted’ instead of stressed. Dinky still wanted to know what ‘wasted’ meant.) Or the other pony might exist, but might be some mean pony from Moonville who wanted to bring her back.

So she should probably keep running. She knew that would be what Trixie would say, or Raindrops, another friend of her mother’s. They would tell her to keep going, to try and find a way around or past the trees.

But what if it really was some other foal from Ponyville who was lost and cold and scared?

Dinky’s mother would never leave another pony in that kind of position. And Dinky knew that she couldn’t either, even if it might be a trap. Because if she went away, and it wasn’t a trick, the other pony was going to suffer. Dinky knew that, though she might not say anything, her mother would be very disappointed in her if she found out that Dinky had done that. And Dinky also knew that she’d be very disappointed in herself too.

So she turned and began to follow the grey foal. “Come back!”

The foal didn’t run nearly as quickly this time, and Dinky was able to catch up with her just as she exited into a small clearing in front of an old quarry. The foal was standing at the edge of the quarry, looking up at the moonlight. She sighed, turned, saw Dinky, and froze.

Dinky blinked.

The foal looked weird. She had a grey coat, a bright orange mane, and glowing yellow eyes. Dinky realized that she had no pupils, and that she was faintly transparent. As in, Dinky could dimly see through her. It wasn’t a bad weird, it was just unusual.

The grey foal looked away. “Hi,” she managed.

“Hi,” said Dinky. And then, not knowing what to say, she continued, “I’m Dinky Doo. What’s your name?”

“R… Ruby.” The foal blinked a few times. Then she said, “You’re not scared?”

“Scared?” Dinky was scared – of the town, and the forest – but she didn’t think that was what Ruby meant. “Of you?”

Ruby nodded.

“No,” said Dinky, as if it was obvious. What was there to be scared of? She wasn’t being mean like Grey Hoof or anything.

“Really?” Ruby smiled a little. “I kept trying to make friends for the longest time, but they all got scared when they saw my eyes.”

Dinky nodded sympathetically. “My momma has the same problem sometimes.”

“Your momma?”

“She has stra-bis-mus. So a lot of ponies don’t like her eyes.” Dinky frowned. “But I think she has really beautiful eyes, and—“

She paused. Ruby was grinning. And this wasn’t like Grey Hoof’s, which Dinky could now recognize as being dishonest. Ruby seemed thrilled. “You really mean it? You’re not scared?”

“Nope.”

“YAY!” Ruby bounced up and down. “You’re the first pony I’ve met in two hundred years that wasn’t scared!”

“Two hundred years? That’s older than Granny Smith!” Dinky looked at the pony. She looked no older than Dinky herself, though she had a cutie mark – a little magnifying glass. Dinky thought it looked neat.

“Oh… right. That’s, uh, that’s how my eyes got like this.”

“How?”

“Um. I’m… I’m dead.”

Dinky wasn’t sure what to say to that. Her mother had taught her a lot about being polite, but this situation had somehow never come up. She went for the best thing she could think of. “I’m… sorry you’re dead?”

Ruby smiled again. “Don’t worry. It was a really long time ago. I’m not… I mean, I was really upset at first, but I’m not now.”

“But if you’re dead, how are you still here?”

“You’re really not scared at talking to a ghost?”

Dinky shook her head. “You seem like a nice ghost,” she said, after a moment of thought. Between Moonville and Ruby, Ruby seemed a lot less likely to hurt her. Besides, one of her favorite stories as an even younger foal had been about Canter the Friendship Ghost.

Ruby looked pleased. “You’re really nice too, Dinky. Anyway, I’m still here because… well, I don’t want to leave yet. There’s some ponies I care about very much, and I don’t want to move on without them.”

“I didn’t know ponies could do that.”

“Usually, ponies can’t. But because it was a special case, I was able to stay.” She sighed. “I really wanted to help my friends, but they can’t see me.”

“I could try to talk to them for you,” said Dinky, quickly.

Ruby’s smile softened a little. “My friends,” she said quietly, “Are the Moonville ponies.”

“…oh.”

“I guess you followed me back here?” Dinky nodded. “I’m really sorry about that. I didn’t mean to lead you here. I was just so bored… I’ve been a ghost so long, and I don’t have any friends to talk to. So when ponies are in the Everfree, sometimes I watch them. I really didn’t want to bring you to Moonville.”

“It’s okay. I’m not upset,” said Dinky. She really wasn’t; she knew that her situation wasn’t Ruby’s fault. “I just want to know how to get home.”

“You’ll need to go back through Moonville. The path here’s blocked off.”

“But Mitta said—“

“Mitta didn’t know,” said Ruby quickly. “She hasn’t left town since I died. She wasn’t trying to lead you astray or anything.”

“Oh. But… but I don’t want to go to Moonville again. Especially not during that party. I don’t know what Grey Hoof wanted, but he looked really mean.”

Ruby nodded. “I can explain it to you.”

“Really?” Dinky’s natural curiosity was piqued.

“If you’re waiting for the party to be over, you have some extra time, right?” Ruby smiled. “I can explain to you everything that happened, then. And then… if you’re really not scared, or mad at me for bringing you here, maybe you can do something for me.”

Dinky considered. She wanted to go home. She really wanted to go home. But if Ruby was right, Dinky would need to wait until the party was over before moving on anyway. And besides. Ruby seemed to really need a friend.

“Okay,” she said.

Ruby led Dinky to the edge of the quarry. In the clear moonlight, Dinky could see water near the bottom.

“That’s where my body is,” said Ruby.

Dinky looked down. “Aren’t you… uh, I mean… your body…”

Ruby giggled. “Either one is fine.”

Dinky was glad that the night hid her embarrassed blush. “I could ask some ponies from town to bury you,” she managed.

“That’s okay. There’s not much left for that. But thank you.” Ruby looked into the pit. “Now… first, please, don’t be too mad at the Moonville ponies. They were scared, and it wasn’t all their fault.”

Dinky nodded.

“It used to be that there were two pony towns in the Everfree, Moonville and Star Town. Both towns were founded at about the same time, and we grew really close to them. They had unicorn ponies instead of earth ponies, so sometimes we would ask them for magic help and they would ask us to help them with some tricky crop. We didn’t have much contact with any other villages except for them, but they were all we needed. It was a really pretty town.”

“Moonville or Star Land?” asked Dinky.

“Both. Although I think we were just a bit prettier.” Dinky giggled at that. “But then, one day, a few unicorns came into town. They looked like they were really hurt. Star Land had been destroyed.”

Dinky said nothing, but was paying rapt attention.

“Have you ever heard of something called the ‘cutie pox?’”

“Nurse Redheart said that it’s a disease that causes foals without cutie marks to suddenly get a whole bunch of them. But then they start having to do all the things their cutie marks say they can do. She said it’s dangerous, ‘cause what if your talent is breaking stuff or playing with monsters or something?”

“Yeah!” Dinky noted that, even if Ruby had been a ghost for hundreds of years and sounded as knowledgable about some things as a full-grown mare, she still had the energy and enthusiasm of a foal. “But a bunch of foals from Star Land decided to try to get their cutie marks by eating some weird plant. But they didn’t just get one mark, they all got the pox. And they wrecked the town.” She shuddered. “I only found this out later, of course, but from what I know it was really bad. There were foals tearing down houses, ripping up crops, causing all kinds of weird weather… and they were all unicorns, so they could use magic too. One foal summoned a lion to town to tame it, and it got out. Another summoned this monster called an Ursa Minor, and—“

Dinky blanched.

“You know what those are?”

Dinky nodded. “That sounds awful.”

“They all had to leave. Star Land was completely destroyed,” said Ruby. “And after that, the ponies in Moonville became really scared. They began calling cutie marks ‘curse marks,’ and thought that any curse mark would lead to that kind of disaster.”

“So what did they do?”

“They found… some way to remove or hide their own cutie marks. I don’t know how. The ones that wouldn’t were forced to leave. Since then, any pony who got a cutie mark in Moonville was exiled immediately. And, a hundred years later,” she glanced at her own flank, “I learned I was really good at finding stuff.”

“So they made you go away?” Dinky winced. That sounded awful. She was suddenly grateful that she lived in Ponyville and had a mother who would never make Dinky leave, no matter what.

“None of them even knew why the marks were bad, it had been so long and all the original ponies who knew the story had died. They just knew that the marks were evil. I got mine at the town’s anniversary celebration. Grey Hoof saw it and immediately had me thrown out.”

“I’m so sorry,“ began Dinky. It struck her just how strange this all was; she’d just come from a town full of ponies, yet she felt safer now than then – even though ‘now’ involved her talking to a ghost in the middle of the Everfree forest. But Ruby’s speech didn’t have any of the weird ‘patter’ that Grey Hoof’s had. Even if she was a ghost, she seemed sincere and kind. Friendly, even.

“Don’t worry about it. They’ve… they’ve more than paid for it.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I guess I was supposed to take the path until I got out of the woods, but I screwed up. I ran into a kelpie.”

“Kelpie?”

“They look like ponies with black coats, red eyes, and a lot of teeth. If you touch one, you get stuck, and then it drags you into water and drowns you.”

And just like that, Dinky’s sense of peace vanished She frantically began looking around. What if kelpies were lurking in the bushes?

“Don’t worry! I haven’t seen that kelpie since it got me. It died a long time ago, when the curse was still new.”

“Curse?” Dinky was still a bit nervous about the kelpies, but forced herself to remain calm enough to hear the rest of the story.

“Well… since then, the Moonville ponies are kelpies for half the day. From just before dawn until the evening. And they can’t age or die… they’ll be like this forever, until they move on. It’s their punishment.”

Dinky would have expected her to be mad, but she sounded really sad. “Their punishment is… just being kelpies?”

“They can’t leave the town. And the day ‘starts over’ every twenty-four hours. Every dawn, it’s just like it was on the day they drove me out of town. So they can’t do anything that’ll last for more than a day.”

Dinky recalled all the ponies talking about how they’d set up that huge party in one day.

“They’ll repeat that same day, forever, and as kelpies for half of it, until they get past the curse and move on. It’s not even hard – they just have to want to do it, and understand that they did something wrong when they threw me out. But they won’t admit it. They just throw the same party every day, so they don’t need to think of it.” Ruby looked downcast. “I kept trying to tell them that I forgave them, but they can’t hear me.”

“I think Mitta knows it was wrong,” offered Dinky.

“She… she’s different. She knows it was wrong, but doesn’t want to move on, because that would end her punishment, and she doesn’t think she deserves that. She thinks all she deserves now is to be punished forever.”

“That’s stupid,” said Dinky, without thinking. Then she realized that Ruby might have known Mitta. “I mean, uh—“

Ruby laughed. “I agree. I just… I really want her to be with me. Even more than the others. She was my mother, and I just want to talk to her and tell her that I forgive her. But… well. There’s always tomorrow, I guess. Especially for us.”

“What did Grey Hoof want to do to me?”

“He can’t admit he was wrong, so he can’t admit that throwing me out was a bad thing. So, he thinks that saving foals from getting curse marks is always good. After the party, once every other pony there was a kelpie, he would have made you make a choice. You could become a kelpie too, and stay here forever. Or he’d kill you. Then you could never be cursed.”

Dinky didn’t know what to say. After a while, she managed, “He could make me into a monster?”

“Not directly. But the way they all became kelpies was because they let me be drowned. So what he’d do is wait until another pony showed up – probably one looking for you – and then drown that pony while you watched and didn’t do anything. And then the next day, you’d be a kelpie. He’s done it a few times, although none in a hundred years – no ponies have been by since then, except for you. I guess the world finally forgot about us.”

Dinky looked down. “I never did anything to him. I bet the others didn’t either.”

“He’s… he won’t admit that he’s wrong. Dinky, I’m so sorry I led you here. It was selfish of me—“

“You wanted a friend. There’s nothing wrong with that. What Mr. Hoof does isn’t your fault.” Dinky smiled. “And I’m glad I met you, even with all the, uh, other stuff. You’re the nicest ghost I’ve ever met.”

“…aren’t I the only ghost?”

“Oh!” Dinky blushed again, hoping she wasn’t insulted. “No, I mean you’re really nice, and—“ But Ruby was grinning. And then they were both laughing, and despite everything, Dinky felt happy.

“What can I do to help?” asked Dinky. She remembered Ruby saying that she wanted to ask Dinky a favor.

“When you get back to wherever you live, get some friends together and help the Moonville ponies,” said Ruby immediately. “Help them understand, and break the curse.”

“I will.”

“But – but don’t just say there’s monsters here,” said Ruby. “Please. Because then your friends wil just want to send them all to Tartarus or build a huge magic wall or something. And, and I know they tried to trap you and everything, and you probably hate them, but please don’t just say that there’s monsters here that need to be destroyed.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Dinky, as if it were obvious and settled. “I’ll tell them exactly what you told me. That there’s ponies here who need help moving on, and understanding what they did. I know a really great illusionist who can make ponies see anything – I’m sure she can help!”

“Thank you.” Ruby nodded her head. “Thank you so much, Dinky.”

Dinky looked at the moon. It had moved… rather a lot, actually, since the last time she looked. “Does time move really fast here?”

“It does that, sometimes. If you want to run for it now, it’s probably a good time… if they stay on schedule, now’s when the opening talks are done and they’ll all be at the games and stuff. It shouldn’t be too hard to sneak through.”

“Will you come with me?”

“I can’t go into the town itself,” said Ruby, sounding sad. “And I can’t leave the Everfree. But I’ll go around and meet you on the other side. Then I’ll find you the way out.”

“You know it?”

“Well, it changes.” Ruby grinned. “But I’m very good at finding things.” And she gestured at her cutie mark again. “I’ll be waiting for you at the town entrance.”

“Thanks, Ruby.” Dinky paused. “Oh, uh, can I ask one other thing?”

“Sure.”

“If you’re a ghost, can you go through stuff?”

Ruby paused. And then she leapt over to a tree, walked around it, and poked her head through. “Boo!”

“That’s really cool!” Dinky clapped her hooves. She bet that Trixie would have loved to have a power like that; sure, she could use illusions, but being able to walk through walls herself would make for awesome tricks. “When this is all over, before you move on with the others… maybe we could talk a little more? You’re really friendly.”

“If it’s at all possible, I’d love to.”

Dinky smiled, and then turned to go back the way she’d come.

Dinky poked her head around the post signaling the rear entrance to Moonville. It was just the right time. The ponies were at the games and food tables, none watching the back. She could sneak through in the darkness. Then she could get home and be safe.

So she took two steps through the rear entrance.

And then it was noon, and Dinky got to see for herself exactly what a kelpie looked like.

Escaping Moonville (1)

Dinky blinked, looking all around herself at the now brightly-lit area. It was high-noon now, the worst time of the day, a time when almost all ponies took care to remain indoors. Noon also meant that the Moonville ponies were in their monster forms. And, only two steps ago, it had been night.

It’s cheating, thought Dinky, though she was trying as hard as she could to avoid a repeat of her panic attack from the dead trees. It’s cheating, and not fair, but I’ll get through it. I can do this.

The sun almost seemed to waggle in the sky, as if mocking her.

“You’re mean,” whispered Dinky to the sun. “I bet Corona made you mean.”

But complaining wouldn’t help, so Dinky began running through town. She was small, she reasoned, and fast. If she hurried, she still had a good chance of getting through without getting caught. She just had to be really careful to get by all the obstacles... such as the two kelpie-ponies standing by the door to a nearby building.

Their coats were black, just like Ruby had said. Black and shiny, actually, like a mirror. As Dinky ducked behind a house to avoid their sight, she saw their coats ripple. It reminded the unicorn of water.

She was just close enough to hear them. “…Grey Hoof,” one was saying, “Is going to have our hides if we don’t find that foal.”

“She probably left.”

“You can’t leave. No pony can leave this place. She’s hiding here or in the woods nearby.”

“Then we’ll find her eventually. Grey Hoof’s overreacting.”

The first one hissed. Dinky, peaking around the house’s corner, saw that pony’s eyes. They were a bright, scary red. When she spoke, Dinky couldn’t help but wonder at all the sharp and pointy teeth. “He hates when his parties don’t go as planned. And now we’re way behind schedule on today’s. Let’s find that foal quick before he flips again.”

Dinky slipped around the house, then dashed as quickly as she could over to the next one. She wished, not for the first time, that Moonville had been a little smaller. But it was what it was, and her mother had taught her that it wasn’t productive (she used that word in particular) to complain about tasks being hard instead of just doing them. So she poked her head out, verified that the coast was clear, and then dodged down across the path and to the next house. Then it was a quick trip under the porch, a pause until a wandering kelpie-pony walked by, and a dash to the next building.

Dinky continued to dodge from house to house and made it all the way to the open center of town before having to make a new plan. Several kelpie-ponies were there, all looking nervous and glancing around. The town square held no indication that any kind of party had been held the previous night; a few ponies were getting tables into position as if to hold another party, but little other activity was taking place. Still, enough kelpies were there to make being sneaky impossible. Dinky figured that she’d have to go all the way around the square to avoid being seen. She sidled along the house she was hiding behind, glanced around the corner –

And almost bumped into a kelpie walking right at her.

Dinky jumped back to safety, thanking Luna and her moon and stars that the kelpie hadn’t been looking in her direction. She dashed to the other side of the house, but she could hear a kelpie coming from that side too.

In desperation, she looked up – and there was a window just above her! She pressed on it with her two fronthooves, and managed to slide it up a little bit. Just enough, she thought.

She climbed through and dropped into the house moments before the kelpies rounded the corner.

The house was big and very clean. Dinky supposed that, if the whole town ‘reset’ every day, that wouldn’t leave much time for dust to accumulate. She listened hard, but didn’t hear the sounds of any ponies in the house.

Dinky crept away from the window and through the room she was in – a kitchen, using a lot of devices she’d only seen in history class – and then into a hallway. Maybe, she reasoned, she could wait a little until the kelpies went away, or the time decided to be night again. Although, with her luck, the time would decide to stay noon until she got out of town.

Dinky shuddered, realizing that she’d been outside at high noon. It wasn’t the scariest thing she’d ever done; it wasn’t even the scariest thing of the last day or so, but it was still weird. Scootaloo had told her once that, at noon, Corona had been able to reach down with a sun ray and snatch up any ponies who were still outside. Miss Cherilee said that was just a story, but Dinky had always been a little unsure. If no ponies ever went outside at noon, how could they know it was false?

The hallway led to a living room with a few books and a bunch of toys. There was a sofa, a table, and a large easy chair. A kelpie was sitting in the easy chair, looking out the window and not saying anything.

Dinky froze and began to back up, but she’d been running a lot and was both tense and tired. She slipped, fell, and made a loud ‘thump’ as she connected with the ground.

The kelpie swiveled around.

Dinky could only stare.

They were scarier up close, she thought. The red eyes seemed to pierce into her and fix her in place; though she wanted to run, she couldn’t seem to make her legs move. When the kelpie opened its mouth, Dinky could count the rows of teeth. Her oversized ears twitched in Dinky’s direction, as if zeroing in on her.

“Please don’t eat me,” Dinky managed.

“You’re that foal,” the kelpie murmured. Then, louder, “I thought I told you to leave.”

Mitta!

Dinky grinned, relieved. Mitta, she was certain, wouldn’t hurt her. Ruby had ‘vouched’ for her, as Trixie would say. “I tried, but that path was a dead end. There were a bunch of trees blocking the way.”

Mitta said some words that Dinky’s mother would probably not want her to hear. “Guess I’m still useless,” said Mitta, not getting up from the chair. “Sorry, foal.”

“It’s okay,” Dinky hastened to add. “You tried.”

“Hah.” Mitta turned back around to look outside. “Hope you like the town, foal, because it looks like you’ll be here a while.”

“No. I’m going to get home and then I’m going to find help,” said Dinky. “That’s what I promised Ruby.”

“Ruby?!” Mitta jumped to her feet. “What? How did you know about her?” She raced over to Dinky, who couldn’t help but shrink back – even knowing that it was Mitta, the kelpie was terrifying up close. There was something off about the kelpie, somthing faintly disturbing, and it made her skin tingle and crawl. “Did you read about her? Did Grey Hoof mention her?”

“No, I saw her ghost,” said Dinky quickly. “She had a grey coat and orange hair, and magnifying glass on her flank. She told me all about you.”

“Her ghost? But… but I haven’t seen her since…” Mitta trailed off. “Well, I guess that makes sense. The stars know I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.”

“No, she said that she can’t talk to any of the ponies in town. She wishes she could, though.” Dinky managed, somehow to smile, even though her mind kept reminding her that Mitta’s teeth could easily gobble up a filly in one bite. “She misses you, and she wanted you to know that she forgives—“

“LIES!” thundered Mitta, loud enough to send Dinky stumbling backwards a step. “Ridiculous! Ruby would never forgive me. Nor should she. None of us deserve it. I don’t know what you think you’re trying to do, foal, but it’s useless.”

“Really, she told me!”

“You must have imagined it. It’s okay. All the ponies in town but me went through that phase. Took a few years, for some of them. Wishing to be saved from this nightmare, to be made normal again.” She smiled grimly. “But I was the only one who knew, at first. That there wouldn’t be anyway out for us. That we would stay here until day and night themselves ended and the world decayed into nothing.”

“But why would you want that?” Mitta seemed almost... happy about the situation. Or at least, not unhappy.

“Want that?” Mitta paused. “I always taught Ruby that we should try to make the world more just. That we should live honestly and fairly, and by the same rules we apply to others. Well… this is our just reward.”

Dinky tried one more time. “But Ruby was the one you hurt, and—“

“You should worry about yourself before you worry about my daughter,” snapped Mitta. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? Grey Hoof will kill you, or turn you into one of us.”

The foal didn’t even know how to respond to that. Eventually, she whispered, “Can you help me escape? If – if I can get out, I promise I’ll bring help—“

“Don’t bother. None of us can leave. All you’d accomplish is get your friends trapped here too.”

“I promised Ruby.” Dinky managed to lock eyes with Mitta, even though they were still red and really scary. “And Momma taught me that I should try to keep my promises.”

Mitta was silent for a very long moment. Finally, just when Dinky was about ready to get up and try to see if she could find tools or a disguise or something in the house, Mitta laughed softly. “… wow. Haven’t heard something like that in hundreds of years…”

She was silent for another few moments.

“Alright, foal. You win. I’ll help you however I can. But I can’t promise anything, foal. None of the ponies in town like me, because I’m the only one who won’t go along with their charade. I won’t be able to talk them into letting you go.”

“Charade?” Dinky frowned, not quite sure of the word.

“Act. That everything’s okay. That this curse is really some blessing of eternal youth. That none of us would ever want to leave town anyway, or age, or die. That, if we’re to live the same day forever, we should just do the same thing forever, because that’s the way we can tell ourselves that we did the right thing the first time.” Her voice grew bitter. “That we’re not the evilest ponies to walk Equestria.”

“But that’s not—“

A loud knock sounded from the door.

“Mitta?” It was a low, rough voice. “We heard you yell. Everything okay?”

“It’s fine!” called Mitta. “Just fine!”

“Grey Hoof wants to see you. As soon as possible.”

“Tell him to go jump in the town pond.”

“He’s liable to drag you with him – he thinks you helped that foal escape. You’d better talk to him soon, Mitta.”

Mitta turned back to Dinky. “They’ll be watching the house,” she whispered, matter of factly.

Dinky shivered.

“So we’ll have to run. Get on my back.”

Dinky stared, but she forced herself to approach. It didn’t matter what a pony looked like, she told herself. After all, some ponies didn’t like her mother because of her eyes, and that wasn’t right. If Mitta had red eyes and a lot of pointy teeth, that didn’t matter, and…

Dinky touched her coat and immediately yanked her hoof away. It felt like a thick gel or glue, like that batch of ice cream that Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had produced. “Your coat…”

“Just get on, foal! We don’t have time. They’ll be back to search my house any minute.”

Mitta knelt, and Dinky clambered on. She wrapped her legs tightly and felt them sink into Mitta’s coat a bit. “I’m on.”

Mitta nodded, and suddenly the coat seemed to freeze into place. Dinky squeaked as she found that she couldn’t move any part of her body that was touching Mitta.

“Now they won’t be able to knock you off. Nothing can break free of a kelpie,” said Mitta. “So that gives us maybe one chance in four, foal.”

Dinky was riding a monster and heading out into a whole town of monsters. She was scared. But there was still one thing she wanted to say.

“Um, Miss Mitta?”

“What?”

“My name is Dinky Doo,” she repeated.

“Fine. One chance in four, Dinky. Ready?”

Dinky nodded, then realized that Mitta couldn’t see that from her position. “Yes. I'm ready--”

And they ran.

Dinky watched, and had to restrain herself from cheering, as they zipped by the other kelpies. Most could only stare of jump out of the way, and Mitta didn’t even need to do anything to get around them. One reached out to grab at them, but Mitta dodged to the right and they got by him too.

They weaved through the houses and trees, and Mitta even jumped over a table that a pony had set up in the yard. And then they were through the last set of buildings and sprinting for the town entrance.

But there was a large pony there, directing others to set up tables and booths. It looked just like all the others – black coat, red eyes – but was taller, and standing like it was used to being obeyed. The other ponies all listened to him and were carrying out his orders. Dinky’s eyes widened; she knew the pony that was that tall, with that stance and that air of authority. Grey Hoof was here.

He looked up, saw Dinky and Mitta, and began barking orders to the kelpie-ponies around him. Two grabbed a tablecloth in their mouths and ran to block off the gate. Three others began charging at Mitta. Grey Hoof stood in the center of it all, smiling brightly. There were a lot of teeth in the smile.

Mitta leapt as high as she could, managing to clear the first kelpie that charged at her. She had to dodge to the side to get around the second, leaning so far over that Dinky would have fallen off had she not been stuck fast. Dinky screamed as one of the kelpies struck at, and almost hit, her horn. But then they were past the second, and the third, and then they were going for the exit.

Mitta roared something as she swept by Grey Hoof and towards the two ponies holding the tablecloth. Dinky shut her eyes. They were going to break through, and then they’d be out of the town and safe and…

They didn’t break through.

Dinky screamed as Mitta slammed to a stop, held in check by the two ponies with the tablecloth. Then Mitta’s coat shifted and Dinky could move again. “Get away! Go!” screamed Mitta.

Dinky opened her eyes and tried to jump over Mitta’s head and out of town, but one of the kelpies raised a hoof and deflected her. She fell to the ground, and before she knew it, three more kelpies had swept in behind her.

Grey Hoof grinned. “You can stop now, Mitta. It’s all over.”

Dinky looked around – at the three kelpies behind her, at Grey Hoof, and at the other kelpies, more and more approaching from the town, that were gathering in front of her – and suddenly she felt very small and weak.

Escaping Moonville (2)

Grey Hoof’s voice was impossibly smooth. “Dinky. I am sorry beyond measure that you’ve had such an unpleasant experience. Please, be assured that none of this was our intention. Mitta was always a bit of a hothead, and while her attempting to run you out of town was inexcusable, it wasn’t…. well, it’s understandable, perhaps, given what she’s been through. She lost a foal herself. I hope you’ll have it in your heart to forgive her.”

Dinky saw that she was surrounded by a ring of the kelpies. Mitta had been dragged off by a few others, and was now outside the circle. Grey Hoof was on the opposite side of Dinky as the town gate, which was now guarded by a dozen of the monsters. Grey Hoof himself looked calm and at ease, somehow seeming to ‘fit’ his new look better than most of the others, whose skins shifted and swirled like they were fidgety and uncomfortable. Grey Hoof, though, had perfect control of himself.

“So will you forgive her? For me?” continue Grey Hoof.

Dinky was bewildered. “For what? She tried to help me—“

“Yes, but she did make you miss the party.” Grey Hoof turned to Mitta. ”She was the guest of honor, Mitta, but you drove her away before we even served the cake or toasted her. Shame on you.”

“Go to Tartarus,” snapped Mitta.

Grey Hoof sighed. “Such language, Mitta, with a foal present.”

As confused as Dinky was, she was able to realize that Grey Hoof was trying to talk her into something. If he just wanted to capture me, he could do that now. It’s like when Snips and Snails are trying to lure in a bug or something. But if I’m talking, maybe I can talk some of the others into helping me. Maybe there’s more like Mitta.

So she continued the conversation. “She tried to help me get away before you hurt me!”

“Hurt you? Why would we do that?”

“You’re monsters, and—“

Grey Hoof looked pained. “Dinky. Is that really what you believe? That we’re all horrible and evil just because we have red eyes and a lot of teeth?” He shook his head. “Don’t you know anypony in your life who maybe looks a little different, who is mocked because of it?”

Dinky hesitated. Grey Hoof’s eyes narrowed just slightly. “I think you do. A relative, perhaps?”

“That doesn’t matter,” insisted Dinky, aware that she was somehow losing the conversation. “I didn’t run ‘cause of how you looked! I could tell you were trying to fool me.”

“Fool you into what? Dinky, it was a party. All I wanted to do was help you have fun. Did I try to pressure you into anything?”

“Well, no—“

“Did anypony here? Didn’t we even say that, if you wanted to go home, we would help you find your way through the forest?”

“But you were lying!” Grey Hoof looked faintly disappointed. “I could tell! You sounded just like my magician friend when she’s trying to fool ponies for her shows!”

“Maybe she sounds like that because she’s imitating how friendly and honest ponies sound,” offered Grey Hoof. “Isn’t that possible? Don’t you find that, when she’s not doing her shows, she’s friendly and a good pony to know?”

“Yes, but—“

“So that’s probably where she picked up speaking like that,” said Grey Hoof triumphantly.

“But…” That didn’t seem to make sense, but Dinky was having a hard time saying why.

“Dinky… no, maybe part of it is my fault. I should have worked harder to stop you from getting scared, and I apologize. How about it, Dinky? Do you forgive us?”

It wasn’t working. Dinky could see that none of the kelpies were interested in anything she had to say, and it wasn’t helping that Grey Hoof seemed to be able to use all of her comments to make her look silly or vain. She thought of what Ruby had told her, about how they would try to either turn her into a kelpie and make her stay in Moonville forever, or kill her. Both thoughts were horrible, and she couldn’t help but shake just slightly. That would happen to her unless she found a way out.

“You want to keep me here!” Dinky forced herself to meet Grey Hoof’s eyes, to show that she wasn’t (fully) scared.

“Well, we were thinking of offering to let you move in, yes,” said Grey Hoof. “What’s wrong with that?”

Dinky blinked. She hadn’t expected Grey Hoof to admit it.

“We live in peace and plenty here, with no illness, no strife, no… no homework,” said Grey Hoof, the corners of his mouth edging up slightly. “Every day is a party! We thought you might like that. Don’t you like parties?”

“Yes—“

“Wouldn’t you like to be able to party and play every single day and never have to worry about, say, some rude stallion criticizing you, or your school teacher assigning you a ten page essay, or catching the Flutter Flu? Or you could work on whatever you wished, any talent you chose to cultivate – music, track, dance, magic, any talent at all – and not need to worry about things like chores or even rainstorms interfering. Isn’t there anything that you’ve wanted to devote some time to, but never had the chance?”

There were, Dinky had hobbies, but that wasn’t the point. “But, but…”

Grey Hoof looked at Dinky expectantly.

“But I don’t want to!” Dinky looked away, aware that this wasn’t a good answer.

“Why not? Do you not like us? Have we done anything to you, anything at all, to earn your distrust? Anything besides bear these forms? Hurt you in any way? Detained you? The only pony here who put you in any trouble at all was Mitta, who sent you to that deadfall behind town, and who just knocked you off her back. The rest of us, Dinky, we’ve done nothing but allow you to have fun.”

Dinky felt like there was cotton in her mouth. She wanted to go home, wanted it desperately, but whenever she tried to give a reason, Grey Hoof shut it down.

Grey Hoof advanced a few steps, and Dinky had nowhere to retreat. “All we ask is that you consider it, Dinky. You can see the house, maybe stay a few more days, just to see what it’s like. I give you my personal assurance that no harm will befall you. Well, unless having too much fun is harmful.” A few of the other kelpies chuckled.

She couldn’t make any kind of argument, so she couldn’t convince the other kelpies to help her, and Grey Hoof was going to trap her in town and she’d never see her mother again…

Wait! There was one argument she hadn’t tried yet! “But I’d have to leave Momma, and all my friends.”

“They’re welcome too,” said Grey Hoof, smiling brightly. “We’re always looking for fresh faces around here. They could visit you whenever they liked, or even move in!”

Dinky paused. She could accuse Grey Hoof of lying, which he probably was (or was she only saying that because he was a kelpie? No, Ruby had told her that he was the one who would try to hurt her, and she had to trust Ruby because otherwise she would be even more lost than she already was), but she knew that wouldn’t work. She didn’t have any evidence that Grey Hoof wouldn’t want Ditzy in town. Unless…

“But my Momma,” said Dinky, “Has a cutie mark. Mitta said that you don’t let anypony with a cutie mark into town.”

That wasn’t quite true – it had been Ruby who had said that – but Dinky felt that a little lie was okay, under the circumstances. Grey Hoof couldn’t say she didn’t have one, and he couldn’t say that cutie marks were okay either, because cutie marks being evil was how he’d justified having Ruby kicked out, and Ruby had said that he tried very hard to stop anypony in town from admitting that they’d made a mistake.

Grey Hoof seemed taken aback for just a moment. “Uh.”

Dinky brightened. And – to her delight – a few of the kelpies in the circle looked a little uncomfortable.

But then he recovered. “Oh, that’s no trouble, we found a way to suppress ‘curse marks’ years ago! If your mother wanted to move in, we could get rid of it in a jiffy.”

“Get rid of it? But she likes it a lot!” Dinky turned to the other kelpies. “She said that her getting that mark was the third happiest day of her life!”

“It’s just a mark,” said Grey Hoof, his gaze now directed to the others. His voice grew a little less jokesy and a little more resolute. “It doesn’t matter.”

If she hadn’t been so stressed or tired, Dinky might have been nicer, but as it was, she snapped.

“No! It does! My Momma’s got a bunch of bubbles as her mark, and she loves them! Cause bubbles float up into the air, and she loves flying! And bubbles are a really fun game, and she loved playing with them as a foal! And she’s got a bubbly personality, and she likes it because that means she can be kind to everypony she meets! And when I was really little and curled up to sleep she said I looked like a really cute bubble! It means a lot to her, and she wouldn’t want to get rid of it! She’d NEVER want to get rid of it!”

She stopped talking, and realized that the kelpies were staring at her with new interest.

And then, dimly, she remembered something else.

”…I think that’s everything. Here, Dinky.” Trixie flipped a bit to Dinky.

Dinky caught it in her mouth, smiling, but then she hesitated. “Uh, I don’t have change.”

“Keep it. You were a great help.”

Dinky smiled and tucked it into her saddlebag. “Can you teach me how to patter? It sounds real fun!”

“Oh? And what would you use it for?”

“Uh…” Dinky tried to come up with a good reason. “So I could see if me or Momma were getting pattered! Then we wouldn’t get fooled!”

Trixie chuckled. “I’m going to need a dentist if I keep talking to you.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.” Trixie began to roll her little cart of props and materials out of the classroom. “Actually, there’s a really easy way to show other ponies when somepony’s trying to sweet-talk them.”

“What is it?”

“Be sincere,” said Trixie. “Pick something you really care about – well, hopefully something relevant – and speak as honestly as you can. Patter is just trying to lull all the ponies in the room into trusting you, into thinking what you want them to think. But put one sincere pony in the same room, and most ponies can tell the difference between the sincere one – even if she’s not good at speaking– and all but the best-crafted verbal tricks. I can deal with ponies who try to figure out my tricks, or who yell at me to get off the stage, but the biggest threat to my shows is if some idiot begins ranting that the popcorn costs too much. Cause as dumb as that is, every pony in the audience can see that he’s honestly angry, and I’m just acting.” She shrugged. “It’s not perfect, of course, there are a few ponies who can act so honest that even an honest pony seems like he’s acting next to them.”

“Are you one of them?” asked Dinky.

“Of course I am. I am awesome, after all,” said Trixie. “But for your common flatterers and con-artists, that’s how you beat them.”

And it was true, Dinky realized. The kelpies were staring at her, and many looked uncomfortable. They could tell that Dinky was telling the truth, and Grey Hoof was just putting on a show.

“Look,” said Grey Hoof, “Even if your mother would regard losing her cutie mark as a loss, the benefits of living here would surely outweigh that.”

“She wouldn’t be able to see her friends. Or the other Elements of Harmony. And she doesn’t just want to hide from bad stuff! She wants to help fix it!” Dinky realized she was almost yelling now. “Cause she’s the Element of Kindness and that makes her the nicest pony in the world! And she’d be really sad if she had to stay here all day and couldn’t help any other pony at all!”

“She could help us,” said Grey Hoof. But he looked…

Flustered.

Dinky smiled to herself, but pressed on. “But you just said you didn’t need any help,” she pointed out. “Cause everything here is perfect.”

“We can always use more hooves to help with the parties.”

“Real help.” Dinky drew herself up to her (admittedly short) full height. “When my Momma went and helped get rid of Corona, that was helping solve a real problem. When she helps Fluttershy get out of her house and talk to others, that’s helping somepony who really needs help. This is just a party—“

“The parties are important!” snapped Grey Hoof, without even seeming to realize that he was doing it. He began approaching Dinky again.

Dinky decided that it was time to try to get out. “I want to go home. You know that it’s wrong to keep me here.” Her voice became a little pleading. “I promise I’ll try to find a way to break the curse—“

“There is no curse! We have been blessed with eternal life and endless fun!” yelled Grey Hoof. And many of the other kelpies – but not all of them – stomped their hooves in agreement.

Dinky was almost shaking now, but she managed to hold eye contact with some of the more subdued ponies. “Please let me go home.”

There was silence for a moment.

And then one of the kelpies said, “Look, Grey Hoof, if she wants to leave, what’s the harm? Who cares?”

“No.” Grey Hoof’s voice was quick, but Dinky thought it sounded almost nervous. “We can’t. Not – not until she understands.”

“Understands what?” challenged a kelpie that sounded kind of like Three Leaf.

“That we live in the best place on Equestria,” said a third – Starlet, maybe, Dinky thought. “That we are blessed by the moon and stars.”

“If she wants to turn her back on that, fine,” said the first kelpie. “Grey Hoof, really – it doesn’t matter.”

“It is the most fundamental rule of our town charter that we protect all ponies from the curse marks!” snapped Grey Hoof. “If Dinky leaves, she could get one at any time! She must – she has to stay until she becomes one of us. Then she’ll be safe.” His voice became a little more stable. “If we question this, our most fundamental rule, where will we be? Back in the chaos of the first few years? No. The evil of the curse marks cannot be questioned.”

Dinky used Grey Hoof’s distraction to begin creeping towards the gate.

“Yes,” agreed Starlet. “It cannot. Remember what happened to Star Land.”

“Nothing can hurt us!” yelled a fourth kelpie. “We tried it! The first years of the curse we rioted every other night!”

“But for her sake, we must save her from being cursed—“ began yet another kelpie.

And then they were all arguing. Grey Hoof looked horrified. Dinky couldn’t help but smile slightly. It had worked! She’d beaten Grey Hoof’s lies!

Now she just had to leave.

The gate guards were joining in the squabble. Dinky edged as close to them as she dared. Then she waited, sweating, hoping that none of the kelpies noticed that she’d moved…

One of the guards moved to go argue with another kelpie. There was an opening. Dinky thought she could get through it without touching any of the other kelpies.

She took a deep breath and ran.

The shouting started almost immediately, but Dinky ran as fast as she could and managed to just edge through the gate. Glancing behind her, she saw a bunch of kelpies approach it to charge after her – but a few stood in their way. Mitta was among them.

As the ponies at the gate began to fight, Dinky dashed away from the town. There. Now she just had to get far enough away to figure out where Ruby was, then hide in the woods, and—

“COME BACK!”

Dinky turned to see Grey Hoof leaping over the mob at the gate. He landed on his feet, snorted, and began to gallop right at Dinky.

The foal screamed and fled deeper along the path.

The kelpie-ponies couldn’t go too far from the town itself. That was what Ruby had said. So all Dinky had to do was to get far enough away that Grey Hoof couldn’t follow, and she’d be safe. She just had to outrun him for a little bit.

Of course, she was still a foal, and Grey Hoof was an athletic adult stallion.

“I’m going to catch you!” roared Grey Hoof from somewhere all too close behind her. “I will protect you no matter what!”

Dinky couldn’t scream again. She was too busy running.

The hoofsteps were getting closer. Dinky risked a glance over her shoulder to see Grey Hoof bearing down on her, red eyes blazing like fire. He was almost able to reach out and grab her – and once he did, Dinky knew, she would be trapped. That should have spurred her on to race away from him. But she wasn’t as fast as him, and she didn’t know the path. She had to slow for corners and to get through rough sections that he’d been navigating for centuries.

“Ruby!” she managed to call. “Help!” But Ruby didn’t seem to be there.

Grey Hoof swept a hoof at her. Dinky threw herself to one side, tumbling off the path and crashing into a tree. She groaned, rubbing a hoof against her now-sore head, but the move had worked. Grey Hoof had thundered by her, unable to wheel around so fast.

But now Grey Hoof was ahead of Dinky on the path. Dinky plunged into the woods, struggling through the trees and brambles. She winced as the branches whipped against her coat, but she kept going. If she kept going for long enough, Grey Hoof couldn’t follow her, and then she’d be safe.

Hoofsteps. Grey Hoof was behind her again. “Come back here!”

“No!” yelled Dinky. “I won’t!”

“I won’t let you harm Moonville. I won’t let you ruin everything I have built over two hundred years!” His voice sounded rougher now, his appearance of kindness and fun gone. Now he just sounded mad. And mean.

Dinky pushed her way through a set of bushes and found herself staring at a rock wall. She’d run up against a row of boulders. She turned herself and began running left, hoping to get around the wall. Behind her, she heard Grey Hoof break free of the bushes and begin galloping again.

Dinky ran as quickly as she’d ever run, even more quickly than when she’d been trying to escape Moonville the previous night. She had to get back to Ponyville, she thought. She didn’t want to become a kelpie, or be drowned, and she didn’t want to hurt her mother by never coming home again. She wasn’t going to let Grey Hoof stop her. She just had to keep running.

But she couldn’t outrun the Moonville pony. He was closing in again, and once again she had to leap to the side at the last minute to dodge him. He zipped past, but was much faster in wheeling around this time. Dinky squeaked and dashed into the undergrowth again.

It was starting to hurt to run. Dinky forced herself to keep going. She thought of the friends she’d never see again if Grey Hoof got her, and her house, and her mother’s delicious salads (well, except for the zucchini). And she thought of Ruby and the other Moonville ponies who seemed to want to have the curse lifted. She’d promised Ruby, and she wouldn’t break that –

She was at a dead end.

Dinky realized too late that she’d run into a small cul-de-sac. There were large rock cliffs towering up all around her, and she could never climb them to the top before Grey Hoof overtook her. Nor could she turn around and hide in the trees – the kelpie was too close.

There’s a few openings for caves. Maybe I can hide in a small one. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all Dinky had.

“How dare you try to ruin what we have?” Grey Hoof asked, approaching Dinky at a leisurely pace. Dinky began backing up. “You admitted it yourself. You’d never been to a better party. What else could you want to do?”

“I want to help ponies when I grow up!” managed Dinky.

“That’s because all the ponies you know, Dinky, need help. Each and every one of them. This one is ill and needs medicine. That one is poor and needs food. This one needs a friend, that one some rare gadget from Canterlot. But not one pony in Moonville needs anything. When you stay a while, you’ll learn that it doesn’t matter what happens to the cursed ponies on the outside.”

Dinky gulped. “Miss Cherilee taught us that we should care about all other ponies! Even – even ones like you!”

“If you cared about me, you wouldn’t have tried to fool all the others into being unhappy.”

They already were unhappy, you were just distracting them! Dinky wanted to yell. But she didn’t think there’d be any point. Even she could tell that Grey Hoof wasn’t going to listen to reason.

She bumped into the rock wall. She looked at the cave to her left, only to find that it was little more than a shallow hole. Grey Hoof could easily reach in and yank her out.

Grey Hoof smiled and began approaching a little faster.

Dinky hurried to the next cave, which was even shallower, and then a deep crack that was far too small for her to wedge herself in to. Dinky groaned. She didn’t have anywhere else to run. She was going to die. Grey Hoof would eat her or turn her into a kelpie, and she'd never get to go home ever again. She felt like crying.

“You’ll get used to it in time, just like the others,” said Grey Hoof. “Don’t worry.”

And then, out of what looked like a dent in the rock, Dinky saw a pair of bright glowing eyes.

Dinky summoned up the last of her strength and leapt at the indentation. She struggled inside and found that, yes, there was a little passage going further in! Grey Hoof swung at her, but must have just missed. And then Dinky was crawling through the tunnel, and Grey Hoof could only scream. Dinky herself barely fit; there was no way Grey Hoof could.

She kept on crawling, and slowly, Grey Hoof’s roars faded away.

Ten minutes later, Dinky saw light at the other end of the tunnel. Two minutes after that, she crawled out and found herself on the forest floor.

Ruby was there.

“Are you okay?” the ghost asked. She looked terrified. “I’m so sorry! I was waiting for you but it was all night and I thought maybe you had gotten out and I hadn’t seen you so I went looking for you, but then suddenly I heard him yelling and I went to try to help you but you were really fast and I couldn’t keep up and—“

Dinky smiled. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

Ruby’s face showed obvious relief. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful.”

Dinky tried to hug Ruby, although her legs went through the ghost and she felt vaguely tickly. Ruby giggled, and then both she and Dinky were laughing. Dinky couldn’t help it. After an adventure like that, she just had to laugh.

“We’re far enough away that Grey Hoof can’t follow you here,” said Ruby. She pointed at an old dirt trail. “If you follow that long enough, it’ll take you back to Ponyville.”

Dinky grinned. She was exhausted, but now she knew that she was close to home. “I’ll be back,” she promised. “With friends. We’ll do whatever we can to help lift the curse!”

Ruby bowed her head. “I’m really glad we met.”

“Me too. Are all ghosts as nice as you?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Actually, I bet you’d make a nice ghost.”

Dinky blinked.

“Not that I want you to die!” Ruby hastened to add, but then Dinky was laughing again.

Ruby accompanied Dinky as she followed the path, and as they chatted about random and silly topics, Dinky was cheered by her presence. Soon enough, Dinky could see Fluttershy’s cottage through the trees... as well as some other ponies.

“Dinky? Dinky?” Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle called. They were approaching the woods. “Dinky, are you around?”

“I have to go,” said Dinky to Ruby. “I promise I’ll come back soon. And I'll try to find a way to break the curse.”

Ruby nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be waiting.”

Dinky smiled at her one last time, then turned and ran out of the woods. “Scootaloo! Sweetie Belle!”

“DINKY!” They approached her, and soon the three were hugging. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Where’s Momma?”

“She’s in Fluttershy’s, they’re going to ask some of the animals to look for you—“

Dinky raced by them, somehow finding the strength to run again. She crossed the bridge, passed the chickens, and then saw her mother exiting the house with the yellow pegasus. “MOMMA!”

“Dinky!” Ditzy turned. “Dinky!”

Dinky dove at her mother, and she was nuzzling against her and apologizing and saying how happy she was to be home. And her mother took her under her wing and said that it was okay, and they were going to go home and Dinky was safe now.

Dinky felt faint, her exhaustion catching up with her. “I love you, Momma,” she managed.

Ditzy helped Dinky get on her back. “I love you too.”

“I’m real sorry I wandered off…”

“It’s okay. We’ll talk about it later. For now, let’s get you into bed.”

Dinky nodded, and was asleep by the time Ditzy had left Fluttershy’s property.

Ponyville

Dinky woke up the next day to the faces of her mother, Cherilee, and several of the foals. “Momma!”

Ditzy embraced her daughter. “Hush. Relax, dear. We’ve got good food for you, and Nurse Redheart’s already been in to bandage your wounds.”

Dinky remembered the scrapes she’d gotten fleeing Grey Hoof. Looking at her coat, she saw that it had been cleaned up, and the cuts treated. “Thanks…” she managed.
“Thank you, Momma. I’m sorry I got lost.” She turned her gaze to Cherilee. “And I’m sorry I ran off, Mis Cherilee. I was trying to help Ruby, but then I got split up, and…”

“Ruby?”

Dinky paused, realizing that she didn’t have any real proof of her story. Her mother would believe her, but what if Cherilee thought she was making it all up so she didn’t get in trouble? Cherilee was really nice… but she knew that Snips and Snails did that kind of thing all the time, and…

Ditzy seemed to pick up on Dinky’s problem. “Can we talk about that later?”

“Of course,” Cherilee said. “I’m just happy that you’re okay. I was so worried about you—“

“It’s not your fault,” said Dinky, quickly. “I’m sorry if I made you look all night…”
Cherilee smiled at Dinky. “You’re safe and sound now. That’s what matters.”

Scootaloo put a big basket on Dinky’s nightstand. “We were really worried about you, so we got you some treats from The Sugar Cube.” She smiled weakly. “We weren’t sure what else to get you, so…”

“Thank you!” Dinky opened the box and looked at the donuts and the piece of cake. “They look great!”

Ditzy plucked the box away. “Let’s not spoil her appetite, now,” she said, but she was still smiling brightly.

Sweetie Belle put a little basket of apples on the nightstand too. “Apple Bloom’s still helping harvest, but she sent these.”

Dinky nodded. She would have to remember to thank her later.

Then Snips and Snails pushed a big box onto the nightstand. Dinky opened it to see a huge worm.

“It was my pet, but I thought maybe you could borrow him until you felt better!” said Snails. “He’s really fun! He even wiggles funny!”

“Uh… thanks, guys.” Dinky managed a smile at that. “That’s really thoughtful.”

Ditzy coughed. “I think we’d best let Dinky rest now. Thank you all for coming by; we really appreciate the well-wishes.”

The foals and Cherilee began to leave, although Snips paused to ask Dinky, “Did you see any cool bugs in the Everfree?”

“Maybe a few.” Dinky didn’t really remember the bugs. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Awesome!”

Then all the others were gone, and Dinky looked at her mother. “I’m really, really sorry Momma.”

“I know you wouldn’t have wandered off without a good reason,” said Ditzy. She settled down next to Dinky’s bed. “Do you feel up for telling me what happened?”

“Uh huh.” Dinky nodded. “I was with the class, and we were going back, when I saw this grey pony running into the woods…”

Dinky talked for over an hour, telling her mother everything.

“I really wanna help Ruby and the others, Momma. Ruby was really nice to me, and a lot of the others tried to help protect me from Grey Hoof. And I know it’s gonna be real hard to get them to believe me, but…”

Ditzy embraced Dinky. “I believe you, dear.” She made it sound like it was obvious, like she knew that her daughter would never tell a lie to her, especially about something this important. Dinky smiled, remembering again that she had the greatest mother in the world.

“But what about the others?” She asked after a moment. “They’re really nice, but what if they think I made it up so I didn’t get in trouble for getting lost?”

“You let me worry about that. You just eat, and rest. You’ve been through a lot.” Ditzy smiled. “And I’m very proud of you. For being brave, and for being kind to the ponies you met.”

Dinky blushed from head to toe.

Dinky woke up again much later. It was night out, she noticed. A big bowl of soup had been set out for her – and it was still hot! – so she eagerly drank it down. It was rich and filling and delicious.

When she finished eating the soup (and the apple which had been left by it, and the big brownie which, according to the note, had been snuck into her room by Scootaloo), she became aware of voices from the kitchen. Her body was stiff, but she managed to get herself out of the bed and make her way to the door.

“No pony here is calling Dinky a liar, Ditzy,” said Raindrops. “You know that. All we’re saying is that it’s a lot more plausible that Dinky got lost and hit her head, or got sunstroke, and imagined that story.”

“We’re not trying to take anything away from her,” added Carrot Top. “But if there was really a pony village in the Everfree, wouldn’t some other pony have noticed in the past century?”

“Not if none of them came back,” said Ditzy. “My daughter is not crazy.”

“We aren’t saying she is. But you have to admit that it’s a hard story to swallow,” said Raindrops. “Why don’t we wait a few days for her to recover and then ask her again? Maybe she’ll realize it was a dream or something.”

“Or,” said Trixie, “We could go check.”

“Check how? We can’t go to 'Moonville', because Dinky’s the only pony who knows where it is,” said Carrot Top. “And I don’t think we should take her with us.”

“We know you’re friends with her, but that’s no reason to indulge her… story,” said Raindrops. It was obvious that she’d meant something stronger, and meaner, than ‘story.’

Trixie laughed. “There’s other ways to look it up, and it’s not like it’d be all that hard. No pony in town knew about Moonville before this, right? She couldn’t have heard of it, or this ‘Star Land,’ from any other pony? As far as we know?”

“Right,” said Lyra.

“Carrot Top, tomorrow, go find Pokey and look up the old town records. Go back a few hundred years. Might need to message Canterlot if we don’t have them, but I’m pretty sure we do. See if there’s any mention of either of the towns, or of Star Land being destroyed. Cherilee, what do you know about furniture and architecture from two centuries ago?”

“Well, I have a few books on historic architecture, but—“

“Great. You and Lyra, also tomorrow, get those books and see if the houses and furniture that Dinky described match what’s in the books. If the Moonville ponies really can’t change anything, the styles should be right out of the past.”

“And what will you be doing?” asked Lyra.

“Oh, I have to supervise the town. If there’s really monsters out there, we need a pony at the front lines, making sure we don’t get invaded or… uh…” She trailed off. “What?”

“Why don’t you come with Raindrops and I to examine the other piece of evidence?” asked Ditzy. Dinky smiled to hear her mother defending her again.

“You mean, Dinky’s lunch?” Raindrop’s voice sounded slightly annoyed. “I thought we agreed that didn’t prove anything?”

“She had a cupcake that I certainly didn’t give her,” said Ditzy, with a tone of repeating herself. “None of the foals brought lunch into the Everfree, and there’s no cupcake stands there. She had to have gotten it from that party.”

Dinky grinned. She remembered taking Grey Hoof’s cupcake and packing it into her saddlebag. She’d completely forgotten about it in all the chaos, but now she was glad she’d managed to get the bag back.

“So what?” asked Trixie. “It’s just a cupcake.”

“But cupcakes were baked differently two hundred years ago,” said Cherilee. “And I know just the pony who could—“

Dinky leaned against the door to hear better, and it swung open – apparently her mother hadn’t had the latch fixed yet. She fell. “Ow!” And then she looked up to see the six Elements staring at her. “Uh…”

Ditzy laughed and gathered her daughter up. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, Momma.”

“Wonderful.” She beamed at the others. “Anyway, I think it’s settled. Carrot Top, you will go with Pokey and search the old town records. Cherilee and Lyra, you will look in your books on old furniture and houses. And the rest of us will go examine this cupcake.”

Raindrops sighed, but said, “Alright, fine. Guess it can’t hurt.”

“Wait a minute.” Trixie looked annoyed – probably, Dinky guessed, at being made to do extra work. “Examine it how? Who in town’s an expert on two hundred year old cupcakes?” asked Trixie.

Ditzy smiled.

"Remind me again why you know all this?" asked Trixie.

Pinkie was examining the cupcake with a big magnifying glass. "Well, duh!" she said, looking up at the group. The magnifying glass made her eye look huge. "What if a time traveler shows up in Ponyville? I'll have to throw a big Time Travel Party! But if it's not historically accurate, she might not like it!"

"Oh. Of course."

Raindrops nudged her. Dinky saw her mother grin, and smiled as well. It felt so nice to be safe again, and with her mother, who would protect her from anything.

"Alright. So, as we can clearly see, this dough wasn't mixed nearly as long as most modern bakeries would do it. And it was mixed by hoof! You can tell because of the crumbs." Pinkie grabbed two cupcakes from a neighboring shelf, ate one, and then smashed a bit of the other on the table. "See? The crumbs from this one are much smoother!"

It all looked the same to Dinky. "Okay...?"

"Now, I taste a much higher egg and milk content. Also some berries, which were often used by ponies in wooded sections of Equestria way back when to add sweetness -- chocolate was harder to get then." Pinkie looked sad. "Life was really sad back then. Now, moving on to the flour..."

And so she talked for several minutes. Dinky was intrigued. She had no idea how many different ways there were to make cupcakes.

"And finally, taste how the frosting is a little bit sour.” Pinkie shoved dabs of frosting into Trixie’s and Ditzy’s mouths. “We have better preservatives now, that keep the cupcake tasting fresh for up to a full day after baking! But this one tastes sour after only a few hours, and there's definitely a hint of FrostingFreeze in there -- that's an old-timey sweetener that also preserved the frosting, but not for very long." Pinkie nodded sagely. "No doubt about it. This cupcake was baked with a two-hundred year old recipe!”

“Fascinating,” drawled a clearly-bored Trixie. “This is truly the greatest advent in forensic science since hoofprints.”

“Let’s show it to Bon Bon too, maybe he’ll know more,” said Raindrops. But when Dinky looked over, the cupcake was gone.

“Yummy!” Pinkie chewed furiously. “It’s like eating a piece of history!”

“Next time, I’m going on the library team,” muttered Trixie.

“The town records are… surprising,” said Carrot Top, showing the others a few scrolls. “There really was a Moonville, and a Star Land.”

Dinky grinned. They were all back in the Doo apartment. Trixie and Carrot Top had brought over some food, and Lyra had made a big salad. They had eaten, and now were discussing what they’d found out.

“It’s just like Dinky said,” Carrot Top continued. “Star Land was destroyed three hundred years ago, and then Moonville vanished a hundred years after that. And there were, uh, random disappearances of foals in the Everfree for a hundred years to follow.” Carrot Top blushed. “Um. And there were also a few reports of a mysterious grey foal, with an orange mane and yellow eyes. It sounds like Ruby.”

“The furniture and architecture matches Dinky’s descriptions perfectly,” said Cherilee. “It’s amazing. Even if there were no ponies there, I’d love to go and visit just so I could see everything. Can you believe that there’s perfectly preserved examples of early Ponyville architecture just a short walk into the Everfree?” She was grinning happily.

“So you all believe my daughter now?” Ditzy asked.

Dinky extended a hoof in a futile attempt to reach a distant carrot on the table. She was happy, and also still a little hungry. “Yeah! You all believe me, right!”

“Of course we do,” said Trixie, levitating the carrot and dipping it in a pot of caramel sauce. “I never doubted you for a second.”

Raindrops rolled her eyes.

Dinky eagerly accepted the carrot. Trixie’s unusual tastes were growing on her. “So you can help them, right? You’re the Elements of Harmony!”

Lyra leaned back in her chair, thinking. “What can we do, though?”

“We have to do something,” said Cherilee. “We can’t risk another pony not being as brave and clever as Dinky and getting trapped there.” Dinky smiled at the compliment. “Trixie, is there any precedent for this?”

“Sure, but it depends how we define what they are. That’ll determine what kind of help Luna and the Night Court will be willing to send.”

“For example?” asked Raindrops.

Trixie had a few papers in front of her; Pokey had brought them over. “Let’s say we call them ‘monsters’. Then I can petition the Night Court for a few powerful unicorns from the Shadowbolts, and they can teleport them all to Tartarus. Problem solved.”

“What? No, we can’t!” The caramel carrot fell from Dinky’s mouth. “That’d be really mean to them.”

“I’m not saying we will do that, I’m just laying out the options,” said Trixie. “Now, if we call them ‘ponies, with some magical curse or disease’, we can have Moonville quarantined. Luna’s mages can build a magical wall so that no more foals, or any other ponies, can approach that town.” She sipped from her glass of bourbon.

“It’s not a bad idea,” mused Raindrops. “Keeps us safe.”

Lyra sighed. “Yeah, but it doesn’t really solve the problem… just delays it until the barrier wears off. Anything else?”

“Sure. We can call them ‘normal criminals’ and call in the Night Guards. They’ll,” her gaze fell on Dinky, and she paused. “They’ll, uh… end the problem.”

“How? From what Dinky said,” Carrot Top began, “They already tried that method themselves. Riots and stuff.”

“They aren’t unicorns. The Night Guard has mages. They could rip the curse off and have the kelpies all arrested and punished.”

“But wouldn’t the Moonville ponies get hurt?” asked Dinky.

All the others looked at her, and Dinky felt momentarily annoyed. “I’m not just a little foal,” she said. “I know what the Night Guard does.”

“We know, dear.” Ditzy hugged her daughter, and Dinky smiled again.

“I just don’t want them to get hurt,” said Dinky. “I wanna help them.”

“Why are you so set on that?” Trixie frowned. “I mean, didn’t most of them try to kill you?”

“I promised Ruby and Mitta that I’d try to help them. I said that I’d tell the Elements of Harmony and that I’d ask them not to build a wall or teleport them away but to try lifting the curse.”

Trixie nodded. “Okay, I get it. You promised them that you’d tell us to use a ‘nice’ solution instead of a ‘mean’ one.”

“Yeah!”

“But then you’ve already fulfilled your promise! You only promised to tell us to be nice, and you already told us. So you don’t need to worry!” said Trixie, in a cheerful tone indicating that Dinky could relax. “Anything we do from here on out, you’re covered!”

“But… I… wait, what?” Dinky was baffled. Judging from their expressions, so were most of the other Elements, except for Raindrops, who was thumping her head against the table, and Lyra, who seemed amused. “Momma, I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

“It means that, when Miss Cherilee has a representative of the Night Court in her class to teach you all about the government, you are going to be home sick that day.” Ditzy gathered Dinky into a protective hug.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Cherilee.

Ditzy looked back at the blue unicorn. “Trixie, please. That isn’t what she meant, and you know it.”

“What? That's how things worked at the Court…” Trixie didn’t seem to be making fun of her, Dinky thought. She seemed confused herself.

“We’re not at the Court. We’re in Ponvyille,” said Ditzy, kindly, but firmly. “We are going to help Dinky fulfill not just the letter but the spirit of her promise, because that’s what she meant, and because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Okay, but how?” Trixie asked. “Those are the only options I can think of that let us actually call in the heavy magicians. Without them, it’s just us six, and we have no idea how to lift the curse.”

“They have to understand what they did was wrong, and be willing to accept forgiveness,” said Cherilee. “I’m a teacher. This shouldn’t be too hard…”

“I don’t think they’ll be in a lecturing mood,” said Raindrops.

They argued for a while, but none of them could come up with a really good idea. Eventually, Trixie said, “Look, we’re not getting anywhere. Let’s all go home and sleep on it. I’ll have Ivory Scrolls prohibit any Ponyville ponies from entering the Everfree. Tomorrow, maybe we’ll have another idea.”

After the others had left, Dinky was still nibbling at her caramel carrot – she wanted to savor it. “Momma?” she asked. “Was Miss Trixie making fun of me?”

“No, she wasn’t. She grew up in a place where… where it mattered more what you said than what you meant.” Ditzy smiled. “But she’s a lot better about it now. I think you’re a good influence on her.”

“Me?”

Ditzy grinned. “Yes, you.” She poked her daughter’s nose. “Now, back to bed. Nurse Redheart says that you still need plenty of rest.”

Dinky couldn’t sleep.

“There’s gotta be a way to save them,” she mused. “There’s gotta!”

But she couldn’t think of how. Ruby had said that the ponies needed to admit that what they’d done was wrong and want to be released from the curse. But it had been two hundred years, and they hadn’t reconsidered. Dinky didn’t know how she could convince them, especially with Grey Hoof working against her.

“It’s probably been so long they don’t even remember it,” she muttered. “Grey Hoof probably told them for the last two hundred years that Ruby was a big meanie monster who needed to be kicked out.” She sighed. If it wasn’t for him, she might be able to talk to them – or, more likely, her mother or Cherilee might be able to talk to them – but Grey Hoof was really good with ‘patter’ and might be able to defend against any speech the Elements gave.

But what did that leave? She didn’t want to just have Raindrops and Carrot Top start bucking them. A big wall wouldn’t help them, and neither would sending them to Tartarus. Having the Shadowbolts or Night Guard blow up the town was even worse. But if they couldn’t talk to the Moonville ponies and wouldn’t use force, what was left?

Cherilee always says that it’s better to show a lesson to somepony than to just talk about it. That’s why we went looking for herbs instead of just reading about them in a book. Wish there was a way to show them what they did to Ruby, maybe that would show them they did a bad thing. But she was pretty sure they hadn’t taken pictures of it. Besides, the only other pony there was Ruby herself, and the Moonville ponies couldn’t even see her. As far as she knew, Dinky was the only one who could.

I wish there was some way to just make the kelpies see all the things she did. I bet then they’d understand. Dinky nodded. She believed in the fundamental goodness of all ponies, even ones like the Moonville ponies (well, maybe not Grey Hoof). She was certain that, if they could just see what they’d really done, they’d know it was wrong—

Dinky blinked.

She had it. She knew what to do. She knew how they could save all the Moonville ponies, and do it without getting Luna’s military or mages.

She grinned and quickly scribbled it down on a piece of paper by her bed to make sure she didn’t forget it overnight. All she had to do now was wait until morning. Then she could tell the others, and they could rescue Moonville.

Raindrops sipped her drink. “It’s… it’s not impossible, but do we really think it will work on every pony there?”

They were at an outdoor café. Dinky had just finished recounting her plan and was waiting for them all to tell her it was great. Her mother, for example had immediately pronounced it a wonderful plan, and Dinky could hear the sincerity in her voice. She smiled in delight; it was always good when she could impress her mother. Now she just had to wait for the rest of them to agree.

Lyra looked at Raindrops. “I see no reason not to try.”

“That reason would be getting stuck there and killed or turned into kelpies.”

Lyra shrugged. “I mean, no reason not to try that over any other plan, then. It’s the best idea we’ve had, and it doesn’t involve burning the whole place, or building a big wall and hoping the problem goes away.”

“I liked the wall idea,” said Trixie, but none of the others listened to her.

Raindrops frowned. “Look. Frankly, it shouldn’t entirely be up to Dinky what we do. No offense, but apparently these ponies killed one of their own foals, and a bunch of others for a hundred years. They should be punished. I still vote that we tell the Night Court that they’re criminals and have them arrested.”

Cherilee shook her head. “I vote for Dinky’s idea. The best lessons are those that are shown, not just read out of a book,” she said. “Besides. That Ruby foal deserves to have her story told.”

“Agreed,” said Ditzy.

“Aren’t you even a little mad at them?” asked Raindrops. “I mean, they almost hurt Dinky!”

“I know,” said Ditzy, quietly. “But that doesn’t mean that I can hate them. I try not to hate any pony.” She hugged Dinky again. “And what I want, more than anything, isn’t for them to suffer. It’s for Dinky to be able to grow up safely, and the other foals… and for Ruby to be helped too. That’s the important thing.”

“If you don’t want to help—“ began Carrot Top.

“Who said anything about that? Of course I’ll help. Even if I’m not sold on it… that’s what friends do.” Raindrops nodded. “We’re all in, right? Whatever we decide?”

Every pony at the table nodded.

“Then let’s vote,” said Raindrops.

“Vote? Aren’t I in charge?” asked Trixie. “As Night Court representative, it’s I who—“

They all stared at her.

Trixie sighed. “Okay, fine. We’ll vote.”

Raindrops voted for having the Moonville ponies arrested. Carrot Top and Trixie voted for the wall. Lyra, Cherilee, and Ditzy voted for Dinky’s plan.

Raindrops hesitated. “Then I’m changing my vote to the wall idea.” She looked at Lyra, Cherilee, and then Ditzy directly. “They’re murderers. They don’t deserve the risk we’d have to go through for this.”

Ditzy coughed. “Well, then. For a tiebreaker, I think we should ask the one pony who was most recently affected by Moonville. Dinky, dear, what do you want to do?”

Dinky looked squarely at her mother. “I wanna help them, Momma.”

“Then it’s settled.”

Raindrops sighed, but nodded. “Alright, then.”

Trixie looked unhappy. “Fine. Off to save the monsters we go.”

“There’s no reason to wait,” said Ditzy. “Let’s all head out now. Unless you need props, Trixie?”

“I’ll grab a few on the way.” Trixie sighed. “If we’re doing this, we should do it right. Meet you at the edge of the Everfree?”

“I’ll be right there, after I drop Dinky off,” said Ditzy.

“But, Momma—“

“Dinky, I’m sorry, but you can’t come with us. It might be dangerous.”

Raindrops coughed. “Um. Dinky is the only pony who knows where Moonville is.”

There was silence for a moment.

“The ghost can lead us there,” said Ditzy.

“But Dinky’s the only pony that can see the ghost, right? Besides, we need Dinky to talk to Ruby for the plan.”

Dinky nodded. “Ruby told me that only a few ponies can see her. She doesn’t know why. But none of them ever have cutie marks.”

Ditzy paused. “But… no.” She took a deep breath. “I just got you back and I’m not letting you go there again. We’ll find some other way. We’ll look at the old maps that Pokey found, or…”

“Momma,” whispered Dinky. “I wanna help.”

“You’re too young!”

“But Ruby and Mitta and the others need help! And to help them, you all need to be able to go there, and I’m the only pony who knows where it is or can talk to Ruby! And I can’t just let them all keep being hurt when we can help them!”

“But…”

“I mean,” said Dinky, talking without thinking, “If it were you in my place, wouldn’t you want to do it? Cause you’re the kindest pony in Ponyville and—“

And then Ditzy was hugging her again. Cherilee wiped something from her eye. The others all seemed touched as well, even Trixie, though she looked away and pretended to be annoyed.

“I’m really scared,” whispered Ditzy to Dinky. “I don’t know what I’d do if you got hurt.”

“I won’t get hurt. I’m tough.” Dinky smiled. “And I can’t ignore some pony that’s in trouble because I’m scared. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Mmm…”

Raindrops said, “Dinky will stay in the middle of us. We’ll surround her at all times. She’ll be as safe as possible.”

“No. She rides on my back. I’m her mother, and I’ll protect her.” Ditzy closed her eyes, then opened them. Unusually, they were both focused in the same direction – squarely at the distant forest. “And if any of them lay a hoof on my daughter, I’ll make sure they regret it.”

Trixie got to her hooves. “Alright. Let’s get supplies. Meet up at Fluttershy’s in fifteen.”

And just like that, the meeting was over. Dinky smiled as the others began to talk amongst themselves. She’d convinced them!

“Wait, who put you in charge?” asked Raindrops.

“Princess Luna?”

“Of Ponyville, not of… whatever it is we’re calling this. I think Ditzy should be in charge.”

Meanwhile, Cherilee said, “We should figure out what we’ll say. Work out the speeches in advance. An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of improvisation, and all that.”

Carrot Top nodded. “I’ll get parchment, ink, and a quill.”

“Wonderful! I’ll…”

Dinky tuned the conversations out and hugged close to her mother. “I’m not that scared,” she said. “Because I’m with you this time.”

“I love you, Dinky Doo,” said Ditzy. Her eyes looked almost teary. "I love you and I won't let anything happen to you."

“I love you too, Momma.”

Return to Moonville

Dinky waved as they all entered the Everfree forest. “Hey, Ruby! Ruby, over here!”

“Aren’t you a little old for imaginary friends?” teased Lyra.

Dinky giggled. “Ruby’s not imaginary. She’s really cool!”

Ruby poked her head out of a tree. “Hi Dinky! Are these the Elements you talked about?”

“Yep! They’re all here! This one’s the Element of Kindness, and my Momma, Ditzy!” Dinky gestured at her mother, who smiled and nodded kindly.

Trixie grinned. “This is so weird. Dinky, you know we can’t see or hear any other pony around, right?”

“Oh, uh, Ruby just asked me to tell her who you all are. Ruby, the blue mare there is Trixie, the Element of Magic! And that’s Lyra, Element of Loyalty, Carrot Top, Element of Generosity, Raindrops, Element of Honesty, and Miss Cherilee, Element of Laughter and my teacher!”

Ruby was bouncing up and down on her hooves. “Wow, they look really cool! Which one’s the illusionist? And what’s that thing on Lyra’s back? Is Cherilee a good teacher?” She began poking her head into and through their saddlebags. “Are these fireworks?” she gasped after peering into Trixie’s. “That’s awesome!”

“Yes! And Trixie’s going to be making the illusions we talked about,” said Dinky. “Right, Trixie?”

Trixie swept her hat off and bowed at the woods. “Of course. The Great and Powerful Trixie can conjure any possible vision! Recreating a scene from the past is no trouble at all for a pony of her magical prowess and skill!”

Raindrops groaned. “Trixie, if we have to stop every five minutes for you to brag, this’ll take a week.”

“Hmph. The Great and Powerful Trixie has always disdained false modesty.”

Ruby was giggling at the exchange. Dinky told Lyra, “Ruby wants to know about your lyre.”

“Oh.” Lyra still seemed a little weirded out at talking to a pony that wasn’t there, but she took the lyre from her back. “This is my lyre… it’s a music instrument.” She strummed few notes with her magic. “See?”

“It’s really pretty,” said Ruby. “I wish I could hear more…”

“She really likes it,” said Dinky.

“Thank you, Ruby.”

“This is beyond weird,” murmured Trixie. Raindrops nudged her, hard, and she sighed. “Whatever. Let’s go rescue some monsters that want to eat us. Lead the way, Dinky.”

Dinky nodded. “Ruby, we need to go back to Moonville now, to save all the ponies there.”

“I’ll show you the way.” Ruby smiled. “Good luck. And thank you in advance. All of you.”

It was easy to determine when they were in Moonville territory. One moment, it was mid-afternoon, and the next, it was an hour after sundown.

“Okay, so I guess that part’s true too,” said Carrot Top, looking up at the sky. “Um. You know, I do have a question.”

“What?” asked Trixie.

“If you’re doing everything, why are the rest of us here?”

“In case it doesn’t work,” said Ditzy. Dinky was riding low on Ditzy’s back, snuggling in for warmth. It was a cool night. “If the illusions don’t work, we’re going to use the magic of the Elements of Harmony.”

“Oh. And… why can’t we just do that first, again?”

“Because they might not work,” responded Lyra. “Maybe they can only be used against beings like Corona.”

Ditzy nodded. “The Elements might help us fight Grey Hoof and his companions, but we don’t know if they’ll help us lift the curse – and that has to be our first priority.”

Dinky hadn’t heard her mother speak in this tone before. It was still kind, but very… stern. Even more stern than when she, Dinky, had gotten in a fight with Scootaloo. Dinky smiled. The tone made her feel perfectly safe, even given where they were going. “My plan’ll work, Momma. I’m sure of it. They’re not bad ponies, they just need to see what they did.”

“I hope so, dear.”

Ruby stopped, and Dinky realized that she recognized this clearing. It was the one just outside Moonville, the one that Dinky herself had used to enter the first time. “It’s just around this bend,” she whispered.

Trixie nodded. “Alright. The party’s probably in full swing by this point. We’ll need to grab their attention with a splashy entrance.”

“…splashy?” Carrot Top asked.

Trixie nodded at her saddlebags. “A few fireworks, some smoke clouds, and then we walk out of the mist. That’ll get them looking. I’ll cast a couple illusions of explosions, and—“

Dinky giggled.

“What?” Trixie looked taken aback. “Don’t you like those things?”

“Sure,” agreed Dinky. “But I think that might be, um… not the best way to do it?”

Trixie opened her mouth to object, but Lyra said, “She’s been here before, Trixie. We haven’t.”

“Okay, what do you suggest?”

“I’ll talk to them!” Dinky considered thoughtfully. “And ask them to listen to us. And… and maybe one firework.”

Ditzy and Cherilee laughed, and Trixie looked a little happier.

Dinky smiled. “Let’s go!” she cheered.

Ruby waved at them as they passed, and Dinky waved back. “We’ll only leave once we rescue every pony in Moonville!”

None of the Moonville ponies noticed them at first. They were, Dinky thought, too busy partying. She recognized the exact same tables and games as the last time she’d been in town, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the exact same ponies at each one. When Ruby said that they just repeated the same thing each day, she hadn’t been kidding.

“Make sure to speak up,” said Miss Cherilee. She smiled encouragingly at Dinky.

“Don’t worry, Ditzy” murmured Raindrops. “We won’t let anything happen to her.”

Ditzy nodded a little, though she was obviously still tense. “Alright, dear… I guess it’s time.” She hadn’t wanted Dinky to do the talking, but the others had convinced her that there was a very important reason why it could only be Dinky. Still, she kept her wings lifted upwards, in a permanent embrace. Because, as Dinky knew, she would protect her daughter no matter what.

Dinky hugged her and smiled from ear to ear. “Okay! Trixie!’

Trixie set off the one firework that they were using. It zipped up into the air and made a big explosion, covering the sky in a burst of light. The partying ponies froze, looked at it, then down – and saw Dinky and the Elements.

Dinky stood up tall on her mother’s back and yelled, “HI!”

Dinky, like most foals, could be very loud when she wanted to be. Her voice boomed across the village, and left silence in its wake. It was thus a few moments before the whispers and panicked mutterings began.

“It’s that foal!”

“The one that got away!”

“She’s got friends!”

“Get Grey Hoof! Now!”

“We’re here to rescue you!” said Dinky. “To free you from your curse!”

“We don’t need to be freed!” yelled Starlet. She scowled. “We’re fine the way we are!” A few others cheered agreement.

Dinky tried to remember the tips that Cherilee had given her about public speaking. “You did a bad thing,” she said. “But that was a long time ago. If you admit what you did was wrong, and apologize real hard, you can escape Moonville!”

“We don’t want to escape!” Starlet’s voice was tinged with desperation. “We like it here!”

Some of the Moonville ponies cheered in assent, but not very many.

“Grey Hoof hasn’t led us wrong yet,” said Starlet. She turned to the others. “Don’t be swayed by some dumb foal who doesn’t know a thing about the world.”

“Grey Hoof said I couldn’t escape, but I did.” Dinky smiled. She could see that several of the ponies agreed with her, but just weren’t saying anything. “And he said that getting rid of Ruby would help things, but it didn’t! He’s wrong about all sorts of stuff!” Miss Cherilee hadn’t wanted Dinky to use the word ‘stuff,’ calling it ‘colloquial,’ but Dinky had insisted. She liked that word.

“I’ll bet that he told you that Ruby would be fine when you got rid of her.” Her voice became a little more serious. “That’d she escape the forest and be okay, like all the others. But she wasn’t! And she died, and it was bad and—“

“Nothing was BAD!”

The other ponies parted, and Grey Hoof stepped through. For one moment, he looked furious. But then it passed and he looked just as kind and happy as he’d been when Dinky had entered Moonville the other day.

Grey Hoof turned to the Moonville ponies. “Fillies and gentlecolts, let it not be said that I doubt Dinky Doo’s sincerity.” He smiled easily. “Surely we can all remember when we were foals, how simple the world seemed then! How obvious it was to pick the right or wrong option. But, as all ponies – even us – we grew up and matured. We learned that things are not always as they seem from a… foalish perspective. Let us not criticize the innocence of young Doo here, but let us also not allow her naivety to supplant our wisdom.”

“Ooh, he’s good,” whispered Trixie. “Very slick.”

Dinky yelled, “It doesn’t matter that I’m just a little foal! You tried to kill me like you killed Ruby—“

“We did not kill her. Her death was a tragic accident… but her exile was necessary. She even understood it. She left voluntarily, my friends, to spare us the pain that comes with those marks. I am sure you all remember this. But, should you need more proof, simply examine these travelers. Observe how each of them is cursed save the foal. See the gray mare, for example.”

Ditzy raised her head. And then, as if to show that she was not afraid of, or even concerned, with their thoughts, she turned a little so they could all see her flank.

“Remember what Mitta was telling us last night? About the foal’s mother, with a ‘cutie mark’ of bubbles. Bubbles symbolizing laughter and flight. But look at her eyes, and you can clearly see the effect of this mark. She appears half blind – and note the bruise on her front left hoof.” Grey Hoof shook his head. “Her blindness has made her clumsy, no doubt. Pitiful.”

Dinky’s eyes widened. That was mean, even for Grey Hoof. Chasing her was one thing, but he was making fun of his mother’s eyes, and that wasn’t fair. They were really pretty eyes, and she had to say something to defend her mom, and—

Cherilee caught Dinky’s glance and shook her head quietly. Right. She’d told her that, no matter what, Dinky had to stay calm and not get mad at Grey Hoof. That was really important. It was hard, but Dinky could do it.

Ditzy inclined her head slightly, but didn’t say anything. Grey Hoof laughed. “And look at the others. There, the one with the carrot curse mark. Observe the dirt around her hooves, those faint lines on her face. Unusual for one so young, unheard of in our village, but every bit the mark of a poor and unstable farmer, frantically tilling the earth to eke out one more day’s harvest.” His head shifted. “Or the one with the instrument. I can see at a glance that she’s in equally difficult straits, with a precarious job, few opportunities to make money, and stuck with archaic and old-fashioned music – ah, look how she blushes! It is as good as a confession. But we have no such problems here, precisely because we have no curse marks. And, as for the one with the hat—“

Trixie smiled. “What?”

“One look at her and I can see she is a vain and self-centered egomaniac with no concern for the feelings of others. A common showmare of no value whatever. Such an attitude is common in the outside world, but not here.” Grey Hoof grinned. “You can try to bluff us, with your talk of how sad our lot is, but none of your faults escape my eyes!”

“So?” Trixie shrugged, as if Grey Hoof’s insults didn’t matter. “What, you think that’s special?” She grinned. “So you can cold-read. Big deal. I can do it too. I can name the job of every pony in this town with a glance.”

Grey Hoof smiled easily. “Filly, you are two hundred years my junior. I can see with age what youth misses.” To the Moonville ponies, “You see again that I see and understand what others don’t. That my leadership is preferable to their—“

“Alright, let’s go.” Trixie began pointing a hoof at random ponies in the crowd. “Farmer. Healer. Musician. Carpenter. Painter. Mechanic.”

The crowd began to murmur. The blue mare seemed to be getting all her predictions right.

“What, you never told them how easy this was?” Trixie laughed. “You predicted that a pony with a carrot cutie mark was a farmer, and that a farmer might be poor and have to work hard. You guessed that a pony with a lyre might be a musician and that some ponies don’t like lyre music. Amazing – and wrong, by the way, Lyra’s concerts sell out, but anyway. The pony with the amazing cloak and hat, you said likes being the center of attention. And you brilliantly observed that Ditzy Doo, our best mailmare and the kindest pony in town, has strabismus.” Trixie’s voice grew scornful. “You’re not some all-knowing guru. You’re nothing special.”

“But – but that doesn’t make up for the simple fact that you ponies, you ostensible saviors, are far more flawed than us!” Grey Hoof stabbed a hoof at one of the two ponies he hadn’t discussed yet. “See the purple mare. See—“

Cherilee trotted forwards a few steps. “Yes?”

“Note how frazzled her tail is. How her mane hasn’t been combed in two days. This is the mark, my friends, of an exhausted, run-down pony. See what they wish to bring you back to. In our land, we have no need for exhaustion! We—“

Cherilee began to laugh.

Grey Hoof paused, clearly not expecting this reaction. Dinky grinned.

“Yes, I guess I do get a little run-down sometimes,” said Cherilee. “I’m a teacher, see, and sometimes my little ponies tire me out. But I’m working on improving, on getting a better work-life balance.”

She laughed again. “But that’s what you can’t do, and we can! Ponies outside Moonville can grow and change, and can better themselves. But you all have to stay exactly the same. Isn’t there anything about yourself, Mr. Hoof, that you’d like to improve if given the chance?”

“Nothing!” was Grey Hoof’s immediate, flustered response. But Dinky could see that her teacher’s words had an effect on almost all the others.

Cherilee nodded to Dinky, who moved to the next part of the plan. “You said you’re never wrong?” she challenged Grey Hoof.

“When it comes to leading this town, no. I have made every decision correctly”

“Even about Ruby? You said that she was okay with leaving?”

“She was very mature about it. She understood how vital it was. When she left, it was with sadness, but also pride – pride in making the right choice.”

Dinky shrugged. “Okay. Let’s see.”

The sky flashed, and then went black.

There were murmurs from the audience, and Raindrops hissed, “Trixie, hurry it up!”

“Working on it! I’d like to see you do this!” Trixie’s horn glowed a bright blue. “Come on, come on…”

And then, in the sky, was an image of the Moonville town square.

It was during a party, a party exactly like the one they were standing at. The tables and games were in the exact same places. And ponies were happily milling around. It looked really nice, Dinky thought. It was a spectacular illusion.

“Stop them!” yelled Grey Hoof, but none of the ponies were listening. They were staring in fascination. Even Grey Hoof himself seemed unable to move.

Ditzy nudged her, and Dinky realized that it was time for her to talk again. “Ruby told me that she was really enjoying the party.” A pony who looked pretty much like Ruby appeared – Dinky had done her best to describe her to Trixie, and felt that she had gotten it mostly right – and began running around, happily eating the sweets and playing games. “She was having a great time. She told me that she felt like every single pony in town was her friend.

“But then, one of her friends lost something.” Another pony ran in from the ‘left’ side of the illusion. “He was going to give a present to his marefriend, but he’d dropped it somewhere. He knew that she was good at finding things, so he begged her for help.”

Dinky heard music behind her. Lyra was playing her lyre. The music – it was carnival music, sounding just like the sort Dinky had heard at the party the other night -- seemed to wash over Dinky and get into her voice, which sounded even more powerful than before. It also seemed to be almost entrancing the other ponies, drawing them deeper into the illusion. She grinned. Trixie’s magic was amazing, but Lyra had some cool spells too.

The foal continued. “So Ruby looked all over, and eventually she found it!” The illusion of Ruby looked into a well, grinned, and then bent down and plucked a glowing fire ruby out of it. “And then, something magical happened.”

Ruby’s flank flashed, and then a little magnifying glass appeared.

“Ruby was too excited to notice, though. She ran right off to go find her friend and give the jewel back. Her friend took it, but then he noticed the mark on her flank.”
Lyra began playing a different piece – something more tense and scary. The Moonville ponies shivered. “The pony yelled that she was cursed! Instantly, all the other ponies fled from her! She almost began to cry right then.” The fictitious Ruby looked down, hair drooping. “But she didn’t. Instead, she ran to get the pony in charge, a pony named Grey Hoof. She thought that, as he was so smart and wise, he must know of some cure for the curse.”

The picture of Ruby ran to a picture of Grey Hoof, this one looking exactly like the real one. The fake Grey Hoof took one look at Ruby and jumped back. He didn’t look like a wise leader coming to a difficult decision. He looked terrified.

“Grey Hoof immediately ordered Ruby thrown out of town, as quickly as possible! Ruby did cry then, and she begged, but there wasn’t anything she could do!” The music was getting faster, and Dinky found herself talking faster with it. “They threw her out right there and they said they’d throw stones at her if she came back! And when she tried, they did!” The illusory Ruby fled, crying, as the townsfolk hurled rocks at her. “Even her best friends joined in!”

A few of the ponies in the audience groaned, and at least one was crying. Dinky was starting to feel bad for them. Nevertheless, she had to keep going. “But even though her friends and neighbors had kicked her out, she didn’t rush to escape the forest as soon as she could. She still believed that the others would change their minds in time. So she went to sleep on the side of the path and hoped that, in the morning, they would see things differently.” The music calmed, moving towards a pleasant and hopeful theme.

“But.” And now the music was picking up speed again, faster and almost out of control – and as menacing as a monster. “In the night, a monster approached. A kelpie, which loved nothing more than the taste of foal. It grabbed her and it ran with her and it took her to the water pit and—“

“STOP!”

Dinky blinked. The image froze, the fake Ruby frozen inches from the surface of the water.

It was Three Leaf. “Alright. We get it, alright! We were wrong! We – we forgot, because it’s been so long, but we were wrong! We did a terrible thing!”

“No! No!” cried Grey Hoof. “Stop saying that!”

“It’s true! Just admit you’re wrong, for once in your life!”

“NEVER!” Grey Hoof scowled. “GET THEM!”

A few ponies moved to attack – but only a few. Grey Hoof looked horrified that so few did so. “What are you waiting for?”

“No - -don’t attack them! They said they could help us!” yelled Three Leaf.

Three of Grey Hoof’s followers raced at Dinky. But then Lyra moved in front of them. Her horn glowed as she strummed a few chords, and even from behind, the sheer volume almost knocked Dinky off Ditzy. The ponies charging them were blasted backwards.

“Watch out!” It was Carrot Top, ducking as one of the Moonville ponies moved to grab at Dinky from behind. Raindrops, standing between the kelpie and Ditzy, turned around and bucked the attacker over onto one side. The attacker groaned, and seemed unable to get up.

“Nope,” said Raindrops.

Grey Hoof roared. “Fine! Once again, I will lead you to safety.” He began to run at the Ponyville ponies. The illusion vanished to reveal a sunny sky – it was high noon. Grey Hoof and the others were in their kelpie forms immediately. “I will protect you! Because I am your leader, and I lead!” His eyes flashed. “I wasn’t wrong to drive out Ruby! I will prove it to you NOW!”

He charged.

Dinky could only watch.

Grey Hoof raced at them. Lyra tried to hit him with another chord, but Grey Hoof leapt high into the air and seemed to dodge it. When he landed, he kicked a big rock squarely at Lyra.

“Hey!” Lyra couldn’t dodge in time. She brought up her lyre to block, and did, but the rock smashed into the strings and split them. “No!”

Ditzy began to flap her wings and fly into the air as Raindrops and Carrot Top hurried to get between them and Grey Hoof. Grey Hoof grinned as Raindrops approached.

“Buck him!” yelled Trixie. “Woo!”

Raindrops grumbled something, but continued approaching the kelpie. Dinky tensed, bracing herself to see Grey Hoof get kicked, but Grey Hoof just smiled.

Carrot Top managed to arrive just before Grey Hoof. She turned and began to buck at him, but Grey Hoof nimbly skipped out of the way, dodged, and slammed into Carrot Top from the side. Carrot Top yelled as Grey Hoof began to drag her across the ground. “Help! I’m stuck!”

Carrot Top’s additional weight didn’t seem to be bothering Grey Hoof at all, who sped directly at Raindrops. Raindrops turned and reared back to buck at Grey Hoof, but as Grey Hoof moved into range, he swiveled suddenly to put Carrot Top between them.

“No! Stop!” yelled Carrot Top as Raindrops began to kick at her.

Raindrops checked the buck, but Grey Hoof jerked his body, released his hold on Carrot Top, and sent her flying into Raindrops. The two ponies yelled as they collided and fell over, and a moment later, Grey Hoof easily vaulted over them ton run at Dinky and Ditzy.

“No!” Ditzy flapped harder. Dinky held on tight. They were in the air, surely they were too high for Grey Hoof to hit them. She just had to hang on and her mother would protect her.

But Grey Hoof was smart. He jumped onto the nearest available surface, which happened to be Cherilee’s back. And then he made a flying leap towards them. He only got close enough to bite her mother’s tail, but it was enough. He bit and held tight as they began to fall.

“NO!” Ditzy cried out as they fell to the ground.

Grey Hoof snapped his neck back, shaking Ditzy. Dinky screamed as she slipped, and then felt herself hit the ground – she and Ditzy had both crashed. “Momma, help!”

But before Ditzy could do anything, Grey Hoof seized Dinky and flipped her onto his back. Dinky felt that weird ‘settling’ sensation around her hooves, and realized that she was stuck fast. “Help me! Help!”

“Dinky! Dinky!” Ditzy began flying after them, but Grey Hoof was far faster.

“MOMMA!”

Grey Hoof laughed, and only ran all the faster.

Dinky craned her head around, but saw that Grey Hoof was outdistancing the pursuing Elements. By the time they reached the back gate, the Elements were out of sight.

And then they were gone, into the Everfree forest, and far away from sight or sound of any other pony.

Two hundred years

Dinky yelled something inarticulate as Grey Hoof raced through the woods.

The kelpie had easily outdistanced the Elements of Harmony, but he didn’t even slow down. He just kept thundering along. Still, despite that, he found the breath to laugh. “Now you’ll pay for it. You’ll pay for ruining everything. This is all your fault!”

“I didn’t make you hurt Ruby!”

“Not that! That was the right thing to do! But you spread doubt in my town! You made my ponies doubt my words and wisdom. You questioned my decisions!” Grey Hoof snarled. “And now you pay for it!”

Dinky looked around, but she couldn’t see any way out. It was like when Corona had captured her and all the others and taken them away. There wasn’t anything she could do. She’d been able to talk to the other ponies, but Grey Hoof wouldn’t listen, and Dinky didn’t have the strength or magic that the Elements did.

Grey Hoof skidded to a halt. “Perfect! We’re here!”
Dinky recognized the deadfall, and wondered if Grey Hoof was going to try climbing over it. “Where? What – what are you doing?” She was finding it difficult to keep her teeth from chattering. She’d seen how many teeth Grey Hoof had when he had charged at her. He could probably chew her up and swallow her in one bite if she wanted.

“I’m going to prove I was right to get rid of Ruby. I’m going to prove that, in certain circumstances, there’s nothing wrong or evil about getting rid of a foal that’s going to bring destruction upon one’s community.” Grey Hoof began to push through the trees. “I’ll prove it to every single pony in the whole town. Then they’ll return to me, we’ll deal with your companions, and we can get on with our idyllic life.” He chuckled. “Don’t worry. Once you’re… converted… we’ll forgive you.”

“My friends will stop you! And Momma!”

“They can’t hurt me. Even if they could, they aren’t here. They don’t have a chance.” Grey Hoof shook his head. “You should have taken me up on my offer to live in Moonville, Dinky. Then you’d have a nice, long, blissful life, and your friends wouldn’t have to suffer for it.” He thought. “You know, that might still be an option.”

“I don’t wanna live like you!”

Grey Hoof brayed laughter, but didn’t respond to Dinky. He began to shove his way through the trees, Branches snapped back into Dinky’s face, but Grey Hoof ignored this. “Let’s see, I know that old watering hole’s around here somewhere… hmm…”

Dinky knew that talking was useless, but she had to try. “Mr. Hoof, can’t you just admit that you made a mistake? Ruby misses you too, honest!”

“I don’t make mistakes. I made no mistake,” Grey Hoof snarled. “Trying to make me soft? Trying to be all, ‘oh, I want to help you even though you’re trying to hurt me?’ I won’t fall for that, Dinky. I’m too smart.” He repeated it, more to himself than to Dinky. “I’m too smart to make a mistake about something like that. I did not screw up!”

Dinky understood. “You’re scared too. You’re scared you’re wrong—“

“I AM NOT WRONG!” Grey Hoof snapped his head around to stare at her. His red eyes seemed to bore into her soul. “I did NOT send a foal off to die for no reason! I made the correct choice, the only choice, and as the stars and moon are my witness, I am going to PROVE IT!”

Dinky shivered. She was terrified, more scared now than she’d ever been since Corona had foalnapped her. Grey Hoof wanted to hurt her, and he wasn’t going to listen to any kind of reason. But she could tell that he wasn’t even acting out of hate. He probably thought he was, but he was just scared. Just like the rest of them. Scared, and dreading what would happen if he admitted that he’d done something evil. Scared, like he’d been two hundred years ago.

“Grey Hoof,” whispered Dinky. “Please. Don’t hurt me. You can still break the curse and—“

“No curse. There is no curse. Only blessings. We have eternal life. It is so obvious that I refuse to consider any other possibility” Grey Hoof recited it almost mechanically, like he was trying to convince himself. “We have eternal peace. No hunger. No poor. Everything any sane pony could want. We did the right thing. The Alicorns above blessed us.”

Maybe Corona, Dinky thought. Corona might enjoy setting up some kind of crazy curse like this…

Wait. Something about Corona. There was something very important. Dinky groaned, trying to remember.

“Aha!” Grey Hoof pushed through a set of trees and gestured at what lay beyond – the water pit where Ruby had died. “Alright, Dinky. Very last chance.”

Dinky tuned him out. What was it? What was she missing?

“Your friends can’t help your. Your mother can’t help you. If you want to live beyond the next two minutes, you’ll do what I say! You at last will understand that I’m right, and that your foolish impudence was…”

Dinky’s eyes widened. She remembered. Corona had also threatened to kill them; she’d also said that no other pony could save them. Corona had been wrong, though. The Elements of Harmony had beaten her. And they’d beaten her because they’d never given up hope and kept trying even when things seemed impossible. Moreover, they’d beaten an alicorn, a pony who ruled the sun and the day. Grey Hoof was a party planner with a few special magic powers. Surely, if she just maintained hope, her friends and her mother would save her too.

Of course they would. They were great friends and they had the Elements. And her mother was the greatest mother in the world, with the best Element, Kindness. She wouldn’t let a pony like Grey Hoof who cared only about being right and about himself hurt her. Even if it looked impossible, even if they were far away, her mother and the others would find some way to rescue her. Grey Hoof was just trying to trick her again, by carrying her away, but it didn’t matter. Dinky knew the truth.

“You can either drown, or you promise me, right now, that when I take you back to town, you’ll tell all the other ponies that you were wrong. That they’re fine the way they are. That you understand now that Moonville is the best village anywhere in Equestria. And you tell your friends and your mother that you’re staying here, with me, to be one of us. If they resist, we’ll kill or convert them.”

Dinky still felt scared, but it was a more distant feeling. She shook her head. “No. I don’t believe you. You won’t hurt me.”

“You think I’ll have a change of heart?” Grey Hoof laughed. “Dinky, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can be a little stubborn sometimes.”

“I don’t know. But my friends and my Momma won’t let you. Because they care about me, and they have the Magic of Friendship.” Dinky smiled.

“Friendship? We could be your friends, Dinky. A hundred great, eternal friends.”

Dinky realized something. She hadn’t thought of it before – she’d been too scared – but she suddenly felt like she really understood Grey Hoof. “You’re not friends with any of the other ponies in Moonville. You don’t care about them. If you did, you’d help them break the curse if they wanted it, even if you thought the curse was good! You’d help make them happy!”

There was terrible silence for one moment.

“It’s not about them,” Grey Hoof hissed, And then, almost shouting, “It’s not ABOUT them! I am in charge. I lead this town! It’s their jobs to do what I want! How dare you try to rile up dissent! Even if they’re too stupid now to know it, they have a better life, and I don’t care what I have to do, I’m going to maintain it!”

“Not about them? But you keep saying you lead them—“

“SHUT UP! I gave up too much, worked too hard, to let you go and take my followers away from me. I don’t care if they’re suddenly having second thoughts! They are mine, they joined me willingly, we are in this together, and I will not let you have them! If they can’t see the grandeur of my vision, can’t see how we’re blessed above all other ponies by this so-called ‘curse’, then I’ll do what I have to do to string them along until they get it! Final chance, Dinky. Join us or die!”

And then Trixie’s voice seemed to come from everywhere. “Wow. Cliché too.”

And the trees, the rocks, the water pit vanished, and Dinky realized that they were back in town.

The Elements were standing before them.

The Moonville ponies were behind them.

And each and every pony was glaring at Grey Hoof.

“Put her down,” said Ditzy, stepping forwards. “Now.” She was sweating heavily, like she’d been flying for hours, but her steps were steady and firm.

“But—“ began Grey Hoof.

“We heard everything. Put her down, or we’ll drag you down and sit on you until you do,” hissed Gladstone.

Ditzy kept walking towards Grey Hoof, who tried to shrink back, only to be confronted by a wall of kelpies. “You – don’t come any closer.”

“Put my daughter down,” repeated Ditzy. Her voice was stern and unyielding. “Immediately.”

Grey Hoof paused, but didn’t seem to see any other options. He lowered his head. His skin changed back to a gel-like texture, and Dinky hopped off. “MOMMA!”

“DINKY!”

The two ran and embraced.

Ditzy was crying. “Dear, I wanted to tell you as soon as Trixie cast that illusion but we were so afraid that if we did he’d notice and hurt you or bite you or something. We had to lure him back to town and every moment I was so anxious. Your Momma is so sorry that she—“

Dinky hugged her. “I knew you’d save me, Momma.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so—“

“Momma,” and Dinky smiled. “I wasn’t even that scared. I knew he couldn’t hurt me. You’re the Element of Kindness and the most awesome pony ever and he couldn’t do anything you didn’t want him to do.”

Trixie was on the ground, breathing hard. “Hey. I helped,” she complained. “Sure, you kept up with him, but I was the one casting the illusion. And it had to be good enough so it would fool that lunatic. That was the most perfect set of trees and grass blades you've ever seen--”

Raindrops rolled her eyes. “Yes, Trixie. We know.” She smiled a little. “They both know what you did. Trust me.”

“You carried Trixie through the woods and kept up with Grey Hoof? So she could cast the illusion that we weren’t making a big loop?” asked Dinky. Her mother was strong, but a full-grown pony would be taxing for any Pegasus, and Raindrops would have been too slow to help. That sounded really hard…

Ditzy nodded, still embracing her daughter. Though she was clearly out of breath -- clearly exhausted -- she still found the strength to stand and maintain the hug.

“I was right. You’re the most awesome Momma ever.”

And then they were both crying, and Dinky didn’t even notice anything else that was happening.

When they were done, finally, Dinky looked out at the other ponies. Grey Hoof was by himself, standing awkwardly and glancing about frantically. The other kelpies surrounded him, and blocked any efforts by him to leave the circle. Eventually, Mitta stepped forwards, towards the Elements

“What do you want?” the mare asked. She sounded wiped out. “Why did you come here? To mock us? To show us how wretched we really are? To show that even our strongest is as depraved and weak as the rest of us?”

“To help you,” said Ditzy. She got up. “My daughter wanted us to help you. That’s all.”

“Help us? How? What we did is beyond forgiveness. Beyond redemption.”

Dinky shook her head. “No. Ruby told me that isn’t true! You just have to admit what you did was wrong, and be willing to accept it.”

“I admitted that two hundred years ago.”

Dinky said, “But you kept saying how you wanted to be here because you thought you deserved it.”

“I do!”

“But your daughter wants you to be with her! She doesn’t want you here!”

“My daughter never wants to see me again. No pony in that position—“

“Excuse me.” Ditzy walked towards Mitta. “As you might have noticed, I have a foal of my own. And it’s my… my worst nightmare that I hurt her in some way. Or let her be hurt.” She looked down for a moment before continuing. “Just like I know she would hate it if she did something that hurt me or allowed me to be hurt. But even if we hurt each other, we still love each other.”

“Because we’re family.” Dinky grinned.

“This isn’t some childish scare or scrape! I killed her!”

“Just try asking her. Just like you’d tell her to ask for forgiveness from a friend she hurt.” Ditzy smiled a little. “From one mother to another. You’d be surprising how forgiving family can be.”

“But I…” Mitta looked around. “That’s not…”

“Please?” asked Dinky. “Ruby’s been begging me to try to get you to talk to her and be with her. Can’t you try it for her?”

Mitta hesitated. “You don’t understand. I couldn’t be so, so presumptuous as to beg for her forgiveness.“

“Mitta.” Ditzy’s voice was stern and implacable… yet still somehow kind. “Your daughter needs her mother. It isn’t about your feelings or your guilt. Go be with her.”

The kelpie hesitated, then bowed her head.

“Ruby. Daughter… if you’re there… your mother did a terrible thing,” Mitta began. “And she knows it. She loved you, but she let her fear get the best of her. But she… she still loves you, and she’s missed you so much these two hundred years, and if you can find it in your heart to just, just to let me see you… to let me be with you for one minute… it’s more than I deserve, but please, your mother—“

“Mitta!” cried Three Leaf. “Look at you!”

Mitta looked down at herself. She was glowing. “What?” And then shadows seemed to be leaking off her body. Her pony form began to show through the black, rippling kelpie skin. “What’s going on? What is – Ruby! Sweet Luna, Ruby!”

Dinky turned to see that Ruby was standing at the edge of town, just beyond the fences. “Mommy! You can see me!”

“Ruby!” Mitta ran, shadows dropping off of her as she did so. The shadows dissolved as they left her, leaving only a faint residue that Dinky was pretty sure only she could see. “Ruby, Ruby, my daughter! You’re here! You forgave me!” She swept out her front hooves and embraced her. “RUBY!”

Ruby grinned and nuzzled her mother. “I love you, Mommy.”

Mitta looked down to see that she was sticking partway through the fence. “I… I’m here. At last.” She embraced her daughter. “With you at last.”

“Wait!” cried Three Leaf, looking around. “Ruby, wait! I’m sorry too! Mitta, where are you?”

The others began to chime in.

“We all are!”

“We did a horrible thing!”

“Forgive us!”

Dinky grinned. They were getting it! Even now, she could see the shadows leaving some of them. As they faded into ghosts, their eyes fell on Ruby. “Oh my…” managed Three Leaf, when she saw the filly. “Ruby? Is it really you?”

“Miss Three Leaf!”

“You… you forgive us!”

“Yep! I’ve missed all of you so much!”

“You idiots! STOP! “cried Grey Hoof, but he was ignored.

More and more of the kelpies were shaking and casting off their bodies, fading into ghosts that ran to embrace Ruby. Ruby was jumping to and fro, happily nuzzling against and saying hi to every one of them. “Mr. Gladstone! Miss Starlet! Miss—“

The ground began to shake violently. Dinky gulped as she stumbled against her mother. “Momma, help!”
Ditzy grabbed Dinky and nestled her tightly. “Hold on!”

There was what sounded like an explosion, and then Dinky was staring at a town of ghosts.

Most of them were just looking at themselves or each other with amazement. A few took a few cautious steps, then cheered. “We escaped! We’re free!”

“HORRAY!” cried a few of the younger-looking ones.

Ruby was still running from pony to pony, saying hello and looking overjoyed. “Mr. Wibbles! Hi! Miss Floral!” She nuzzled another pony. “Scooter!”

“Uh, Dinky? What’s going on?” asked Trixie.

Dinky looked back to the other Elements to see them staring blankly through the clearing. “You don’t see them?”

Cherilee shook her head. “They all vanished.”

“They’re all ghosts now, and Ruby’s saying hi to them.” Dinky grinned. “And she’s got all her friends back.”

“Dinky!” Ruby ran over to Dinky. “Dinky, Dinky, thank you! Thank you and all your friends! Dinky, you’re the greatest ever! You saved all the ponies in town!”

Dinky blushed. “They did most of the magic and stuff—“

“But you got them here. You believed in me – and in the Moonville ponies. You’re the best, Dinky.” Ruby smiled. “I just wish that we could have been friends longer.”

“I do too, but… now you’ve got all your old friends back. Aren’t you happy?”

“Yes. I really am.” Ruby nodded. “You’re the best, Dinky.”

Mitta, looking far younger and happier than she looked a few moments ago, picked up Ruby and put her on her back. “Dinky Doo, we are forever in your debt.” She was crying, but Dinky could tell she was happy. “You are amazing. Tell your mother that she’s lucky to have such a foal as yourself.”

“Momma, Miss Mitta says that you’re lucky to have a foal like me,” repeated Dinky.

Mitta laughed, as did Ditzy. “I already knew that, dear.” She nuzzled her daughter.

The ghosts began to fade before Dinky’s eyes.

“Bye!” said Dinky to Ruby. “Have fun.”

“I’ll never forget you!”

There was a flash, and they were gone.

Another flash, and suddenly, it was the right time again; early evening, with the sun just beginning to set. Dinky looked up at the sky. “Wow!”

“That was awesome!” Trixie managed. “We kicked monster butt!”

Cherilee was laughing. “I have to say, Dinky, you get us involved in the most interesting of adventures.”

Ditzy smiled. “That’s one way to put it.”

Epilogue

“Momma? You’re not mad, are you?”

Ditzy looked over at Dinky. “About what?”

Cherilee had insisted that, as long as they were there and it was still early evening, they take the opportunity to explore Moonville fully. This would ensure that there weren’t any ponies that they’d missed. It would be a problem, Cherilee had pointed out, if some inhabitant had slept through the party that night and missed the chance to be free of the curse.

Trixie was sleeping in the clearing – apparently, the tree illusions she’d been casting were so intricate that she had almost completely exhausted herself. Ditzy had wrapped her in a blanket that she’d brought with and was watching over both her and Dinky while the other four poked around.

“I’m not mad at you for running off, if that’s what you mean,” said Ditzy. “I’m just happy you’re safe.”

“But you look mad.” Dinky paused. “At yourself.”

Ditzy frowned.

“It’s not your fault I got in trouble, Momma.” Dinky crawled over so she could lie down and look right at her mother’s face. “I mean, a lot of ponies said it was my fault that Corona almost hurt you, but—“

“What? How?”

Dinky nodded. “After Corona ran away, I was telling all the other ponies how you helped save us even though Corona was threatening all of us. And then Silver Spoon said that, if you’d gotten hurt, it would have been my fault, since you wouldn’t have helped if I wasn’t there.”

“Dear, that’s not true. I would have gone to help any pony. You’re not at fault at all.”

“I know. I know she’s wrong.” Dinky smiled. “But just like it wasn’t my fault that you were in danger from Corona, it’s not yours that Grey Hoof put me in danger. Cause I wanted to help the ponies here, and it was my choice, and—“ But then Ditzy was hugging her.

“I know,” she said. “And you’re a very brave, very compassionate foal. But your mother will always try to protect you as much as she can.”

“I know.”

“Just… let’s try not to have any more adventures for a while.”

“I’m adventured out,” Dinky agreed. “Can I skip school tomorrow to sleep?”

“I think we can arrange that.”

Raindrops floated down. “So, good news and bad news.”

“Good news first, please,” said Ditzy.

“The curse over the village is definitely broken. Lyra did some sort of magic sensing thing. And it looks like almost every one of the ponies got, uh, cured of the curse.”

“Almost?”

Raindrops sighed. “We don’t know if he’s still got the curse or not, but it looks like Grey Hoof got away.”

Ditzy shot to her hooves. “What? How? Why do you think that?”

“There were two sets of hooves leaving the back end of town. Identical. We know Grey Hoof left once, with Dinky… must have left again once all the others began glowing and vanishing.”

“Did any of the others—“

“No. There’s nopony in town, and there’s no other hoofprints leaving. Every one of them moved on, ‘cept Grey Hoof.”

“Well, that’s… that’s good. I hope they’re all happy together.” Ditzy smiled. “But… what’ll we do about him?”

“Trixie’ll probably have to write Luna. Put out a wanted notice. It shouldn’t be a problem, right? We know what he looks like, in both forms. He’s got no followers, no magic besides being a kelpie, and he probably doesn’t even have two bits to rub together. He’s not the lord of town anymore; he’s a party planner who can turn sticky for half the day.” Raindrops chuckled. “I don’t think we have too much to worry about.”

“I don’t get how he could leave. Wasn’t he stuck in town?”

“Lyra has some theories…”

Dinky smiled. She wasn’t scared of Grey Hoof any more. She had her friends, and her Momma, and that was what mattered.

Trixie murmured in her sleep. “Promotion to Countess? Really? Of course I’ll take it. And my first decree is…”

Dinky crept closer.

“I’m gonna make Ditzy Doo the Postmaster General of Equestria. And she and Dinky get all the muffins they want.” Trixie paused. “Second decree is that I get my own palace.”

Ditzy laughed. “Let’s let Trixie sleep, dear. She worked very hard last night.”

“She’s really cool, Momma.”

“Yes, dear. But, you know that when she talks to you about political things, you should always check with me before believing her.”

Dinky nodded. “Yep! But I should still talk with her ‘cause I’m a good influence!”

“You certainly are.” Ditzy nuzzled her daughter. “Now… if you want, it looks like there’s still a few of the sweets from the party here last night. And I don’t think the sweets themselves are evil. So you may have one—“

Dinky was off towards the tables in a flash.

Two weeks passed.

Life had returned to normal. It was kind of a relief, on one hand, Dinky thought. Dealing with Fluttershy’s chickens was frustrating, but at least they couldn’t glue Dinky’s hooves to them and drag her off to some horrible chicken-determined fate. And she was able to sleep in her own bed again, not hide in a cold wood or a creepy town. But it was a little boring too.

At least until class projects were due.

“What do you mean, you lost my project?” Dinky demanded. “I worked real hard on it!”

“We know!” said Snips. “That’s why we wanted to see it! Because we knew it would be awesome!”

“And it was!” said Snails. “Really awesome! The awesomest!”

“Well… then give it back!”

“We would! But, uh, we put it down somewhere.” Snips shrugged.

“And then we forgot where it was.”

Dinky bonked her head against the wall. “But it’s due in an hour!”

“We’ll let you join our group! We did a cool project too!” said Snips.

“Yeah! We tied twenty worms together into a superworm!”

“…I’ll pass.”

“Wait!” said Snips. “I know! We left it in that really big cave in Whitetail Woods! I remember, cause we put it down to pick up a really big bug!”

“It had, like, three hundred legs!” said Snails. “And when we picked it up, it made this funny sound and started smelling really bad!”

“Uh. Fascinating.”

So Dinky ran to the woods, only to immediately groan. The woods were huge. Sure, they were safer than the Everfree forest, but that didn’t mean it’d be easier for her to find her little class project in their midst.

“Come on! I don’t wanna make Miss Cherilee mad at me!” Dinky was trying to look in every direction at once. “Where is it?”

She saw something out of the corner of her eye.

Puzzled, and having no other leads, Dinky began to run in that direction. “Hello?”

She saw a flash of gray from between the trees.

Dinky ran as quickly as she could, making her way through a maze of trees and trails. And, just as she was starting to consider giving up and turning around, she saw it.

Her project, a big diorama of the Doos’ apartment, with two little figure of herself and her mother, had been set down on the edge of an old wheelbarrow. Fortunately, the other two foals hadn’t hurt it. The project looked completely undamaged and ready to be submitted.

Also in the wheelbarrow was Ruby.

“Ruby!”

“Dinky!” Ruby bounced up and down. “Guess what? Guess what?”

“What?”

“Mommy said that I can play with you a little more!”

“You can?”

“Yeah. I don’t get all the rules, but they told us that, when you render a service to a ghost – that’s me – then the ghost should render a service back to you. So, until you decide what the service is, I can hang around!”

“Course I do! But what about your family!”

“Well, I won’t be around you all day every day. I can go visit them too. They all say thank you for saving them, by the way.” Ruby nodded. “But when I’m here, we can play too!”

“YAY!” Dinky carefully put her project on her back. Then something occurred to her. “How did you find this?” she asked. “I thought it’d be lost forever!”

“Like I said. It’s my talent. I can find almost anything.”

The two began to trot out of the woods.

“So what kinds of things do you like doing?” asked Dinky.

“Well, I want to see what happened in the past two hundred years I was stuck in the forest,” said Ruby. “Like, are there new toys?”

“Yep!”

“New books?”

“Yep!”

“Awesome!”

They began to race back to the school.

“I have school now. I’ll show you all my friends and the others,” said Dinky. “And then I’ll show you around Ponyville. Every bit of it! And I’ll introduce you to the other Elements. Trixie will love getting to meet a real ghost; she’s an illusionist and she does all these cool magic shows! And Lyra plays really beautiful music and I’m sure she’ll play some for you. And…”

The two chatted happily as they exited the woods. It was a bright spring morning, and though Dinky was young, she could tell – it was going to be a happy day.