—From the faded inscription on the statue of Frankie Knight. As for where she first read this poem....

Silence woke her like an alarm.

She was under her blanket, dripping sweat in her own straw mattress. Fluttershy must have had one of her critters take her home. And there wasn’t any noise coming through the glass window.

Twilight bolted out of bed and peered outside.

“Huh,” she finally said. “Spiiiiiike!”

Spike clung to Twilight's back as she pushed through the soft, fresh snow. The town was much the same as yesterday except for having turned into a forest overnight.

“It's like Ponyville went back in time,” Twilight said. “The whole town used to be part of a forest, you know.”

She cast a look around at the thick, black bramble spread through the streets, rising here and there out of the snow like a leaping fish. There was no path anymore, just places where the trees weren't as thick and the thorns didn't cut as badly. The ones hidden under the snow made her jump with every unseen sting; she told Spike she was cold and privately thanked the snow for masking a hundred droplets of blood.

“Everything's so quiet,” Spike whispered.

“It's because of the snow,” Twilight whispered back. Anything louder felt like sacrilege.

“It wasn't this quiet yesterday.”

She knew what he meant. This wasn't the damped quiet of a snowy morning, this was the quiet of not a single living thing making any noise at all. Even her hoofs trod through the powder with barely a sound.

“How come no pony else is outside?” Spike asked.

Twilight regarded the mass of black trees. “A forest grew up overnight. Would you go outside?”

“We did.”

Twilight laughed. Her voice bounced off trees and sank into the snow.

“This is amazing!” Kicking, Twilight jumped and bucked through the fresh snow, nearly throwing Spike off. It was a dance punctuated by the occasional gruesome wince as an unseen thorn stabbed her leg. Even that she didn’t mind; the snow numbed it and it was a sharp, living pain, not at all like what had troubled her head the past few days.

“Twilight! Quit it!”

She inhaled deeply, eyes closed. “Do you smell that, Spike?”

“It smells like my nose is too cold to smell anything.”

“It smells like Second Winter! Reality is back, Spike!”

“What are you talking about?”

Twilight jumped, laughing, and spun around. “You can’t sell tickets to your friends! You can’t run a business if you can’t sell tickets to your friends! And you can’t keep out the frost and needles if you can’t run a business!”

“Twilight, hold still!”

“The world is punishing us for being bad at economics,” she said happily. “Don’t you think it’s what we deserve?”

Something prickled on the back of her neck. They were being watched.

“Twilight—”

“Shh!” She whipped around and ducked low, eyes scanning.

“What is it?” Spike whispered, squeezing her back with his claws.

“Something’s watching us.”

“What is it?”

“I…I’m not sure.”

For a long moment, nothing happened.

“Twilight, you’re freaking me out,” Spike whispered.

Twilight’s eyes were wide and uncomprehending. “Did you ever hate those stories where the main character doesn’t remember some crucial fact because it was told to her a hundred pages ago? And so she makes some fatal mistake instead of just rereading a previous chapter like you can?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well…let’s start heading the other way.”

They had hardly gone a dozen steps when they saw something flying below the branches.

“It’s Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said. “Where is she going?”

The rainbow-maned Pegasus flapped drearily on in the direction of her earthen house, disappearing behind a thicket.

“What’s going on?” Spike said. “Why is she outside?”

Twilight remembered that Rainbow Dash was the only one of her friends who hadn’t found themselves facing bankruptcy yesterday. “I don’t know, but we better go find out. Rainbow Dash might be the key to getting to the bottom of this.”

Using the houses amidst the trees as guides, they pushed through the soft powder to Rainbow Dash’s house. Soon the squat building emerged into view. They trotted up and knocked.

Before Twilight’s hoof could touch the door twice it shot open. The furious blue face of Rainbow Dash looked down at her from above and said, “You! What did you do?”

Very early that morning....

Rainbow Dash had lost track of time since no pony would let her sell it as an asset.[1]

[1] She had gotten close with a zebra partner, who suddenly backed out at the last minute, and with a sackful of hours.

She and Tank had been up late and into the early morning analyzing stocks, and the argument had devolved into the “cool vs profitable” debate again. Tank had asked her how she thought money was made, and Rainbow Dash had turned around and countered, “What do you think money is made for?”

She was still feeling pretty good about that sweet comeback but otherwise bleary and exhausted as she flapped to the Sugarcube Corner for some coffee and maybe a cupcake. Thank Celestia they were open 24 hours a day.

Rainbow Dash flew into the clear glass door.

“Ow,” she said. She tried to push the door open. It didn't budge.

Oh. Duh. Pull.

It didn't budge.

Huh.

She went to the one down the street.

Nope.

Across the street.

Nuh-uh.

The one next to the one across the street.

Nada.

Was the Sugarcube Corner...closed?

No. Couldn't be. Not while she needed coffee. Celestia wouldn't be that cruel.

Turning and flapping toward Pinkie Pie's house, Rainbow Dash failed to notice in her morning stupor the trees erupting, the vines spreading, bramble shooting across the snow until it took up root. Nothing disturbed the hush and wonder of that ancient morning except for a single Pegasus, grumbling all the way.

“Bwugghhhh need my coffee Pinkie Pie ughhhhhh….”

It was not her best moment.

She banged on the door. “Pinkie Pie! Are you in there? I need coffee!”

She waited impatiently. Then a familiar pink voice shouted from inside, “There's a morning surcharge for talking to me!”

“What are you talking about? Open up!”

The door shot open. Pinkie Pie glared at her, her pink mane flat and drooping around her face. “You want to talk to me? That's two bits. In the morning? Extra three bits, total of five bits, otherwise I'm going to allocate my scarce resources to something more enjoyable, such as bed. And that door you're banging on? It's my property! I didn't agree to sell you the right to do that!”

“Uh...sorry, Pinkie—”

“No bits no talk.”

“Wait!” Rainbow Dash grabbed the door before Pinkie Pie could slam it on her. “I just want coffee.”

“And I just want to maximize the value of my scarce resources. You can't always get what you want, Rainbow Dash, but if you try using market forces, you just might find that all the ponies in the world leave you and yours alone.”

“What?”

Pinkie Pie leaned in and took on a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re being watched.”

“What? By who?”

“Everypony.”

Rainbow Dash flapped closer. “Seriously?” she whispered.

“Uh-huh. Listen, I’d love to help you, but I can’t. It’s not up to me. Everything’s for sale, and the watchers have deep pockets.”

“Not as deep as mine.”

“Deeper.”

“No!” Rainbow Dash reeled.

“So, there’s nothing I can do, you see?”

“But…we’re friends!”

Pinkie Pie smiled helplessly. “Ask Twilight, she can explain it better than I can. You going to pay?”

“Of course I'm not going to pay my friend to talk to her!”

“Then good night, Rainbow Dash!” And the door finally slammed in her face.

Rainbow Dash hovered there, mouth agape, staring at the door with her hoofs facing up as if to say, “What in Celestia's name was that?”

She hung her head. No coffee.

Morosely, she flapped slowly on back to her house to cry decaffeinated tears into a pillow, seeing nothing around her and nothing below....

“This isn't my fault!” Twilight protested.

“Of course it is! Who else could be responsible?”

“Fluttershy!” Twilight said the first name that came to mind. “She loves trees! I've seen her hugging them!”

“You're a rat under pressure,” Spike observed.

“Fluttershy would consider that a compliment.”

“Trees?” Rainbow Dash said. “What do trees have to do with….” She looked past Twilight and saw. “Ohhhhh...what did you do this time?”

“I think we’d better come inside.”

Rainbow Dash let them in, still gawking at the state of nature outside. Finally a tortoise shut the door and slowly crawled back to her papers.

“There's a forest outside!” Rainbow Dash flew to the ceiling and swooping back and forth like how a normal pony might pace. “Ponyville turned into a forest!”

“I just wonder how,” Spike said. He noticed the red rivulets running down Twilight’s legs. “Hey, you’re bleeding!”

“As to that," Twilight said in answer to his question, ignoring Spike as he frantically ran around for some bandages, "I think there's only one possible explanation. It's got to be the Everfree forest.”

“Huh?” Rainbow Dash jerked to a halt in midair. “N-no, it's probably just a regular magical forest swallowing Ponyville in the middle of the night….” She hung her head. “Okay, it's probably the Everfree Forest. I'm not going back in there!”

“You don't have a choice,” Twilight shrugged helplessly. “You already are.”

“I’m not scared,” Rainbow Dash explained to Tank. “I just can't fly where the trees are thick.”

“I don't know what's going on,” Twilight admitted. "But we should gather the others. I'm sure that together we can solve this problem.”

“If you can afford it.”

“What do you mean?”

Rainbow Dash drifted lower. “When I talked to Pinkie Pie this morning, she wouldn't let me get a word in without paying for it! Said something about maximizing her whatever, said you would know what she was talking about.”

Twilight blinked. “She was using the price system to rationally allocate her scarce time and attention? Wow. Good for her. Anyway, you're rich, right? Let's split the bill and gather them. Can you go round everypony up?”

“You don’t have to pay! I’ll pay!”

“I thought you didn’t want to pay.”

“I—I don’t! But you're not offering to pay and then actually paying! I'm paying! Anyway I'm richer than you and make more money in a day than you'll ever see in your whole life.”

“And you’re not scared of the forest.”

“That’s right.”

Tank turned a page. In the sudden silence, the crackle of paper was as loud as an alarm.

The Pegasus and the tortoise exchanged looks. “Tank and I have been talking, and she thinks we should short Ponyville,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Ponyville isn’t an asset!”

“Uh...Tank said it is, and she said it’s tanking. No pun intended.”

Twilight looked at the mysterious tortoise, then swallowed. “I think you better hurry up and gather everypony. Maybe Fluttershy should bring her medicine box too. Just in case.”

Rainbow Dash hesitated in front of the door.

“I’ll compensate you for the flying inconvenience,” Twilight said gently. “But we really need this to happen, and you’re the fastest.”

“Forget that!” Rainbow Dash said. Wings trembling, she opened the door and flew into the forest.

Once Rainbow Dash was gone, Twilight leaned back in the chair, her legs clumsily wrapped in bandages by Spike, closed her eyes, and did what she hadn't done ever since those stupid tickets showed up: think.

It had been a weird few days in Ponyville. What was the biggest discrepancy? Not the overnight forest, nor her friends going out of business at the same time. (Except Rainbow Dash. Why?) The weirdest thing…was that she hadn’t seen...

...uh....

Did she have a name?

Thin mare, skeleton-thin, wore some kind of clown costume in a desperate sort of way, always carried a shovel, always present, rarely attentive, little spinning globe by her head....

Just now, as she finally absorbed the...the mare's absence from her life did Twilight realize how weird it had been all along. Shining Armor, Moondancer, Princess Celestia, no pony had ever acted like they saw the mare, not her friends either.

Okay.

It couldn't be coincidence that her oldest companion would disappear, and the next day Applejack's farm, Pinkie Pie's business, Rarity's shop, and Fluttershy's sanctuary would all run out of money. Did one cause the other, or did they have a common cause?

What happened first?

...I couldn't see the skinny mare anymore.

If I can't see her...have I been blinded?

Twilight opened her eyes, looked at her hoofs. Vision worked. She closed her eyes again.

Couldn't see the mare. Then....

Then what? Twilight couldn't fathom a connection between her old companion's disappearance and her friends' sudden business woes.

Something that I'm not thinking, a question that I'm not asking, something I wouldn't think to question but somepony looking in would....

But she wasn't anypony else, and she couldn't think of it.

“Tank?” she said. “Have you ever seen a really skinny mare with a shovel standing around with a little spinning globe?”

The tortoise considered the question seriously, then slowly shook her head. If that question was a legal trap, it was a novel one.

“Spike?”

“I’ve never seen a skinny shovel mare. Maybe you're head's still a little woozy.”

No, Twilight thought. There was nothing more certain than the mare's existence.

Certain, certain...it was a strange word, stuck out to her. She played it over and over in her mind, twisting it this way and that. Certain, certain certain....

But she couldn't think of anything.

She was still thinking in circles when Rainbow Dash banged the door open and flew in with an angry snort. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Applejack followed behind her.

Just seeing them filled her with resolve and courage. They had gone through trials more taxing than this one together. Standing by each other’s side, they had fought an Alicorn and united the Elements of Equilibrium. As long as their friendship held strong, nothing could stop them.

“Good, you're all here,” she said as her friends took up seats, or, in Rainbow Dash's case, the top of a tall potted plant. “We need to—”

“Work out a payment plan,” Applejack interrupted. “Rainbow Dash didn't say what we're going to do. She just paid us to come here and listen.”

“Ugh!” Rainbow Dash banged her forehead against the wall.

Twilight frowned. “Applejack, I didn't think friends had to pay friends to help them.”

“That was before we knew we would lose everything for not being perfectly efficient!” Rarity said.

“…What are you talking about?”

“The whole way over, each one of them.” Rainbow Dash continued to beat a head-shaped dent into the wall.

“The world won't let us be ourselves if we're not perfectly what the world wants us to be,” Fluttershy said. She ducked behind a white box with a red sun on the case that she was carrying. “Um, if you'd like to hear more, that'll be five bits...thanks….”

“It's not the world!” Pinkie Pie screeched. Her normally poofy mane was frazzled and full of stray hairs. “That would be just one big loud voice! It's lots of different people shouting at you all at the same time! I can hear their voices! Every...single...voice!” She gripped her head in her hoofs and rocked back and forth in her chair, mumbling to herself.

Um...did I tell them that?

Twilight tried to remember. She had said something like that, but by scarce resources she hadn't meant themselves.

But why not? Yes, why not...?

“I didn't sell you the right to look at me, Rarity,” Applejack said. “That'll be two bits.”

“And when did I sell you the right to charge me money? That'll be three bits!”

“Chargin' for chargin' is four bits!”

“Five bits for arguing where I can hear,” Fluttershy said. “Um, I’m really sorry about that.”

“I hear everything!” Pinkie Pie pulled her hair. “Six bits, seven bits, shut up, ALL OF YOU SHUT UP!”

“I will slap everypony,” Rainbow Dash announced.

“Fifteen bits a go,” Applejack said. “More if you slap hard.”

“Girls, focus!” Twilight snapped. “In case you haven't noticed, the Everfree Forest has somehow violated the ancient Knightian Pact and taken over Ponyville! We need to stop it.”

“Saving the world sounds terribly expensive,” Rarity said. “I’ll have to check my invoices.”

Yes, why not...? Twilight wondered. Is this not working? We're all gathered here just as planned. Rainbow Dash can afford it, it's for the good of Equestria...okay, sure, it doesn't feel right, but what kind of argument is that? Save the world first, friendship second.

Only...that hadn't been quite the order last time, had it?

Think...think....

…Think about that dumb little heroine who can’t remember fifty pages ago. She’d solve the problem with the magic of friendship, and this is not the magic of friendship.

That dumb little heroine is dumb, Twilight countered. That’s not actually a valid argument.

Pay up or shut up. What do you think?

…I think you chase out the state of nature with prices.

WELL THEN SHUT UP AND GET GOING, STUPID!

“Six bits for charging for charging for charging,” Rarity said.

“Everypony shut up!” Twilight shouted. Her friends jumped and looked at her. “Just...just shut up and listen. Right now, outside, the town has turned into a forest. It's like we went back in time to before civilization existed. So what are you all planning to spend those bits of yours on? If you really want to turn a profit, help me defeat the Everfree Forest and save Ponyville.”

Her friends looked at each other.

“Okay, but we also want money,” Fluttershy said.

Twilight led her five friends, four of them richer and one of them poorer and nursing a serious headache, through the snow to...somewhere. She didn't know, actually. There would be a place to make a trade, and this wasn't it, so she walked.

The town was conquered by peace. Trees grew around houses and twisted on the tops of buildings. Aside from the occasional gasp from one of her friends at the transformed Ponyville (they had left a protesting Spike at Rainbow Dash's house with Tank), the whole place was unnaturally silent. Or…naturally silent.

Her friends kept looking left and right nervously. Twilight sympathized. Even she hadn't realized how much fuss and chaos were hallmarks of civilization. You needed strong walls and sturdy fences to be loud and careless.

“Where did this all come from?” Applejack wondered.

Twilight had been thinking about it. “If our world was made by a lion singing” (“Ooh, I like that,” Fluttershy said) “then this is a lot of cats meowing at each other.”

A door opened, a gunshot in the silence. “Twilight Sparkle!” a voice demanded. It belonged to the mayor mare, or possibly Mayor Mare, Twilight wasn't sure. “What is happening to my town?”

“Bank business, ma'am, go back inside,” Twilight answered. She suddenly felt the urge to buy a badge.

The mayor shut the door. Twilight didn’t blame her. There was something eerie about the absence of fuss. It was the stillness that came before a tiger pounced.

She glanced left and right uneasily. Some sixth sense told her she was being stalked.

“The mayor should pay us too,” Pinkie Pie whispered to Rarity.

“You should pay to whisper in my—”

“Shut up!” Rainbow Dash shouted hoarsely. It was swiftly becoming her catchphrase.

Twilight wasn't thinking about where she was going. Without direct orders from the brain, her legs defaulted to habit. Before long the Daughter Bank of Ponyville came into view.

Twilight slowed. Then she stopped walking altogether. Her friends piled up behind her.

“That's strange,” Twilight said. “I don't remember there being a statue in front of the bank.” It was a statue of a Pegasus, tall and proud, wings jutting out under a black cloak, a long staff in one hoof and a black book in the other. “What do you girls think?”

Snow began to fall. Little white flakes drifted down from the sky. Twilight had the strangest thought that it might never end, and the whole town would be buried underneath.

“Girls?” Twilight said. She looked behind herself. “Girls!”

But they were gone.

“Girls? Where….” She faced ahead once more.

The statue had turned.

It looked at her.

And resumed its terrible march.

Author's Notes:

The difference between being stalked and being hunted is that the stalker follows, and the hunter waits....

Not part of the inscription, but a sentiment Knight might have agreed to: “Oh, Celestia's daughters, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”