“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.