Twilight looked into those twin blue sparks.

“I’ll auction it off.”

“Hold still!” Fluttershy said.

The mare wasn’t breathing.

“Take me inside,” Twilight said. “I’ll sell it to the highest bidder.”

“Sorry for how this turned out,” Spike said while Fluttershy held a bag of ice to Twilight’s head. Their friends surrounded them in a circle, looking on. “Can everypony go home now? Twilight needs to sleep.”

“We just need to make sure she’s okay,” Pinkie Pie said. Her eyes flitted back and forth from Twilight to the tickets and back.

“We should go,” Applejack said reluctantly.

“She’s just going to make another ice chair and sit herself on it,” Rainbow Dash objected. “Let’s take ten seconds to sort it out. Come on, Twilight, who are you going to give it to?”

Spike grabbed some pastel-colored rump and started pushing. “Will you all leave already?”

Rarity wasn’t budged. “Yes, of course. Coming, Rainbow Dash?”

“Right after Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash said quickly.

“I’m not leaving yet!” Fluttershy said. “I need to make sure she’s all right.”

“Then I’ll keep you company,” Rainbow Dash said to the tickets.

“You’d get bored and start flying around distressing Twilight,” Applejack said. “I’ll keep an eye on you.”

“A sleepover at Twilight’s does sound grand,” Rarity said.

“There’s no sleepover!” Spike said.

“Not without Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight’s head throbbed. Despite Fluttershy’s insistence that she rest her head, it was running down a worrying track of thought.

When Shining Armor had first moved in, he sat in her chair, he was singing in the bath when she needed to brush her teeth, he ate the last pancake. After a month though, the heat from his rump was how the seat had always been. It would have been weird for it not to be there. The ritual battle over the last pancake did as much for her budding magical powers as library study. And she didn’t even know she was humming his dumb songs in class until Moondancer asked what it was.

Friendship was an equilibrium, a collection of patterns, habits, rituals, expectations, rules and norms that all added up to a Sunday afternoon picnicking in the grass.

And now she observed that in the presence of overt economic motives, behavior became calculating instead of practiced.

Which was good, of course. Rational behavior. Incentives. Maximization.

It didn’t feel good.

Maybe she could add a feel term to the model.

Maybe then she would know why dogs turned into wolves at the scent of fresh meat.

She still loved them. Once the tickets were gone, they would be themselves again.

The mare met her gaze, penetrating and curious.

“I said I would auction them off,” Twilight coughed. “I’ve thought about it, and this is what we need to do.”

“Stop thinking,” Fluttershy said. “It’s bad for you.”

“I need to think.”

“I’m pretty sure thinking is literally killing you right now.”

“My life is mine to spend,” Twilight said. The pounding in her head suggested that this was very much true. “And I’m sick of these stupid tickets. So rather than ask you all how much you want the ticket and try to compare it that way, you’re all going to tell me. You see….”

And Twilight tried to explain price theory to her friends.

She explained that most of the things ponies want to use have alternative uses. This is called scarcity, she sneezed, and it is often considered the fundamental quality of economics.

She pointed out, rather lightheaded, that ponies needed some way of allocating those scarce resources in a rational manner.

Dribbling snot, she proposed that a system that allowed ponies to freely attach numerical weights to each and every resource for sales so that the resources would be pulled in the direction of the greatest weights would maximize the value of the resources, if the ponies each had a finite amount of weight such that assigning a weight to one good meant less weight could be assigned to another good. That way ponies would assign the most weight to their most valued resources, and less weight to their less valued resources, ensuring the resources would go where they are most valued and away from where they are least valued. Maximizing the value of the resources, Twilight said breathlessly, was a good thing, the very best thing.

The mare stared while Twilight explained that such a system was called a price system, and it was the reason all the ponies here were alive today. Her eyes wide with a worshipful adoration she normally reserved for Princess Celestia, she gushed about the complex problem of global coordination among ponies so diverse that, that, that you don’t even know how diverse they are, and how a price system makes solving this impossible problem so easy that you pay less attention to it than you do the weather.

She slumped against Fluttershy, utterly spent. Everything ached, even her tail. She hadn’t known her tail could do that.

“Huh?!” Pinkie Pie said, voicing the general sentiment in the room. “What did that mean?”

“I’m not choosing,” Twilight said tiredly. “The way it works is you all bid until all but one of you don’t want to keep bidding because the price is too high. That pony gets the ticket. So it’s you all settling things among yourselves. I don’t have to say a word. I don’t even have to listen, just wait until you all stop. So I don’t have to make this choice.”

The mare squeezed her shovel.

Twilight closed her eyes. “Wake me up when you’ve settled on something. Actually, don’t….”

Silence, except for the gurgling of a congested Unicorn. Then:

“That’s weird,” Rainbow Dash said.

“She’s right,” Rarity said uncomfortably. “One does not ask one’s friends to buy their gift. It’s rather cold, actually.”

Twilight groaned and opened her eyes. “It’s not about buying it, it’s about deciding amongst yourselves who should have it.”

“So we wouldn’t have to actually pay?”

“No, you’d have to or it wouldn’t work.”

“Then…no.”

“I can prove with math that this is the best option for everypony.”

“No math,” Fluttershy said firmly.

“Never bought a favor before,” Applejack said. “Ain’t sure I want to.”

“Friends don’t make friends pay for things,” Fluttershy explained gently. “That’s basically what it means to be friends. You do things for them even when there’s nothing in it for you.”

Pinkie Pie, who was pretty sure making ponies pay for things was how she made friends, said nothing.

Twilight’s patience was dying, along with possibly several critical systems inside of her. “Fine!” she snapped, struggling up to her hoofs and wavering without Fluttershy’s support. “If you won’t to make this choice, then I won’t either!”

Her horn flared; a lavender beam flashed: The vaporized ashes of two former tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala lay scattered on the floor.

“Now really!” Fluttershy said. “No magic!”

“Twilight!” Pinkie Pie gasped. “You didn’t have to do that!”

Twilight drew herself up to most of her full height. “You all want to pretend these choices don’t exist! Why shouldn’t I get to do the same, huh? Why think, why know, why try when you can just stuff your hoofs in your ears! Now—” she doubled over as a wave of pain washed through her head— “get out…so I can sleep!”

“How am I supposed to brag to the Wonderbolts how rich I am now?” Rainbow Dash demanded.

“Rainbow Dash,” Applejack sighed. “Let’s go, y’all. Night, Twilight.”

Spike opened the door pointedly. He watched everypony shuffle out. Twilight collapsed the instant they were gone.

“Don’t tell Princess Celestia I didn’t use the price system,” she said. Spike cracked a smile. Thinking, Twilight turned and looked, but she couldn’t find her. Had that bone-thin mare thought Twilight meant her when she said to get out?

It was strange. Twilight couldn’t remember the mare not being there before.

But she was too tired to worry about it, and fell asleep soon after.

Twilight! the mare screamed. Twilight! Twilight! Look at me!

But Twilight did not answer. Twilight did not turn her head. And when her vision had passed over her, the eyes had not seen.

Twilight! Twilight!

The lavender mare dozed under the blanket Spike had wearily fetched.

Twilight! Listen to me! Twilight!

But she went on sleeping.

The mare did not, could not stumble. She did not falter and slump against the bookshelves. But the walls rippled. The air fogged. The house turned upside down—no, she was standing that way, and suddenly everything was hurtling too fast, dangerous, deadly speeds through space—

It flung her out of the Golden Oak Library, out into the freezing wind and biting ice. It flung her farther than that, bouncing along the ground and slamming through mountains, trees ripping her dress, an ocean filling her bones, giant fish with dim glowing eyes—

The mare hung on to nothing, and when the world no longer appeared to be spinning, no longer seemed to be an enormous mossy, puddled rock burning through a vacuum of dust and magic, she slowly, slowly let go. She let physics resettle over her like a party guest who spilled her wine in shock and slowly straightens her glass again.

She didn’t take a deep breath.

The mare stepped forward and was standing by Twilight Sparkle’s friends, watching them talk until one by one they turned away to their own separate paths through the night.

Her Ponyville friends, whom Twilight had chosen over her. Who through their own selfishness and stupidity had driven Twilight to physical and then mental exhaustion over a party the Unicorn had attended most years that she didn’t have anything better to do, such as a good book to read. Who had taken—

The mare couldn’t think it.

Who had blinded—

No.

No!

There must be a way. There must be. She could get Twilight back. They would go somewhere, far away from other ponies, where nothing would get between them. The harshest choice Twilight would face would be which of many books to read that evening.

Stupid Twilight! To choose her friends over her! To choose nothing over something! Death over life!

Twilight had always been stupid. Economics, economics, it was always economics with her, and yet when it came down to it, who was always there to sever the worlds so that her choices meant something? What had Twilight ever said in thanks? “Duhhhhh, tanks.” Her stupid, malformed mouth hadn’t even managed that much. Greedy, lazy, whining, she could have kept her friend and her brother if she had only fought better. She had the Ultimate Reality standing beside her the whole time and failed to use even a fraction of her powers.

What kind of a friend was Twilight anyway? She had chosen to throw away the pony who had always been there for her just so that she wouldn’t have to give anything to her friends! She had cut their legs off and gouged out her own eyes at the same time! How foolish to flee the Ultimate Reality: To throw away nothing means giving up everything! Choose nothing, and get what you wished for!

The mare scowled, glanced about. Her dress was gone. Good. Foolish thing, useless thing. She didn’t need it. Something simpler, more elegant, with a hood. And black. Black was good. Black was mysterious. Black was dangerous.

Ponies in black were too cool for birthday parties anyway.

Her shovel sliced through the air, and the wavy, lustrous darkness it left in its wake she took and pulled to the proper length. She severed it with another swing of her shovel and wrapped it around herself. There, a cloak of shadowed possibility, of Lagrangian otherwiseness. A cloak of sheer stupidity.

How fitting for one who had loved.

Her friends…Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy. The mare knew all names. And as a Reaper knew all lifespans by something baser than instinct, she perceived in an instant all their desires. What ponies called dreams, hopes, and fears the mare saw as plainly as the night sky.

She had seen what they had done to Twilight to hurt her, and what Twilight had done to hurt them back. A plan began to form.

The mare in black knew she could love. And the wrenching pain inside told her she must never love again.

Now she hated.

The Everfree Forest woke up shivering and covered in sweat.

Not literally, of course. She’s a forest. But she did the forest version of waking up shivering and covered and sweat, which involves a lot of branches shaking.

Was it time, yet…?

The Everfree Forest lost her leaves in winter because she’d seen the other forests doing it and wanted to fit in. She didn’t understand that normal trees lost their leaves in winter for actual reasons, the same way she didn’t understand adjustable rate mortgages or overdraft fees on a checking account. The Everfree Forest put a lot of store in symbols, possibly because she had never been to a store before and wouldn’t have known what to make of the all the Hot Bargains.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to do this….

She sent a few vines slithering beneath the earth, past where the apple seeds patiently waited to become trees and into the earth of Ponyville. She wasn’t in Ponyville, she was under it, so she wasn’t breaking the agreement. And when her vines pushed up into the ground floor of Pinkie Pie’s house, that was also allowed, because Pinkie Pie could go into the forest whenever she pleased, so it stood to reason that the forest could go into Pinkie Pie whenever she pleased.

Pinkie Pie was sleeping peacefully, one leg dangling off the bed, a curl of wild pink hair dipping inside her mouth, which she chewed on unconsciously, mumbling something about cotton candy.

It was not time yet.

The vines retreated.

The Everfree Forest went back to sleep.

Author's Notes:

Twilight is not Fluttershy, and only knows that wolves are fast and hungry and have lots of sharp teeth.

She also knows that ponies who turn into wolves are very, hm, thrilling, if imaginary, and, yes, she is writing a fanfic titled Taylor Laungfang, Werewolf Economist. She can't wait to get to the chapter where he starts to write his own fanfic about a pixie economist....