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Rainbow’s cloud had drifted just beyond the brook at the edge of the village, resting near the far end of the stonework arched bridge that led out to the wild meadows beyond Ponyville.

Pinkie found herself underneath the cloud and she sat, looking upwards. The edges glowed silver in the light of the moon, the cloud’s outline broken only by a single limp blue foreleg draped over the side, as though Rainbow Dash were lying on her belly atop it. For long minutes Pinkie was silent.

“Rainbow Dash?” she said at last, her soft-voiced call lacking any of her earlier energy.

“Mmnh. Yeah? Pinkie?” came the response from on high, as though its owner had just roused.

“Urgh. This again? Pinkie, I told you, I’m good alright? Don’t worry about it.” The cloud shifted and billowed slightly, Rainbow Dash rolling onto her back.

Pinkie’s head dropped and she found herself looking at the ground. “Oh. Okay.” Rainbow Dash didn’t want a hug. That was... fine. She... well she couldn’t have done any more. Not even for a best friend.

“Hey, I know I can nap with the best of them, but... it’s dark! How long was I out? What time is it?”

“Now that’s gotta be some kind of record,” said Dash, pleased with herself.

Pinkie sighed again and looked up at the cloud, perpetually out of reach. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your hug, Rainbow Dash.”

“I... I promise I’ll start saving, so you can have one soon.” Pinkie’s heavy head drooped once more, a little sniffle caught in her nose.

“Pinkie! There you are!” Twilight’s voice called out from a distance, carried to her cleanly on the dry night air.

Pinkie looked round and familiar shapes resolved from the gloom, approaching at a quick trot over the arched bridge.

“We missed you at Rarity’s,” explained Twilight as they drew close. “We’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon, but you just wouldn’t keep still.”

“Are you alright, Pinkie Pie?” asked Fluttershy in her endlessly concerned, caring voice.

“You do look somewhat down in the mouth, darling,” added Rarity. “Whatever is the matter?”

Pinkie looked upwards again and gestured to the conspicuous cloud. “Rainbow Dash doesn’t want her hug,” she lamented.

A brief, surprised pause followed, four ponies turning their collective gaze toward said cloud.

Pinkie shook her head. There was another short pause, everyone’s attention directed toward the air above themselves. Whatever reason her friends had for tracking her down it seemed to have taken a temporary back seat.

It was Rarity who at last broke the silence. “Well, we’ll just see about that, Miss Pie,” she said. “Let’s see now... perhaps Fluttershy you could be a dear, fly up quietly and pull that cloud down, hmm?”

“Oh. Well... I think she might fly away if we tried that.” said Fluttershy, half embarrassed before whispering, “I think she can hear us.”

“I’ll get ‘er,” Applejack broke in, lasso already out and whirling. With an expert flourish she tossed the rope upwards and it sailed high toward its target. It looped over and around the cloud and its resident lazy-bones, and Applejack gave it a swift tug. The loop was drawn firmly around Rainbow Dash’s middle, effectively pinning the pegasus to the cloud as the trailing length was pulled back down through the white, fluffy mass to its terminus in Applejack’s maw. The recalcitrant racer offered no resistance and as Applejack pulled, Rainbow Dash and the cloud on which she was lying were brought closer to the ground until they came to rest, bumping softly against the grass. Applejack let the rope fall from her mouth.

Rainbow Dash lay there for a moment before rolling her eyes, hard. “Alright, fine. Sheesh.” She rolled onto her front, stood and shuffled the loose coil of rope from her back, letting it fall and stepping out of it. With a swift kick the cloud was dispersed into wisps of vapour that vanished before the eyes. She regarded her friends, Pinkie in particular. Sitting on her haunches she spread her forelegs, holding them wide but limp and without enthusiasm. “Come on then. Let’s get this over with.”

“Yay!” squeed Pinkie, her somber mood fleeing as if a shadow driven back by the morning sun. She leapt forward, wrapped her forelimbs around Rainbow and pulled her in. She hugged her tight, but not too tight, and gave her her best, most warm and soft cuddle, just as she had for every other one of her best friends today.

She readjusted herself, making sure her tummy was super close to Dashie’s and giving her an extra fuzzy, tickly nuzzle just to be sure.

Pinkie unwrapped herself from Rainbow Dash and sat back, looking at her friend with bewilderment.

“What are you talking about? You put your hooves around me and I didn’t buck you into next week. That’s exactly a hug!”

“No it isn’t!” screamed Pinkie. “Somehow it didn’t tell you how I feel!”

“Confused and annoyed?” said Dash who was fast coming to realise she was going to have to look for answers elsewhere. “Could somepony please explain what’s going on right now?” she asked of her friends.

“ARGH!” screamed Pinkie, who looked at Rainbow Dash with a seething stare. When she spoke next, her voice was low, infused with quiet anger. “Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once more: the newspaper told me that after midnight giving hugs is going to cost money because there’s a raw material shortage which means the hugs are going to be regulated with boring forms and they’re going to get really expensive really quickly and I’ve been doing my best to whip up hugs for everypony in town today to keep them cheap enough for everyone to give once the price-hike comes in and that includes giving all my best friends the best hug I can in case I can’t afford them after tomorrow and you’re one of my best ever friends so I need to GIVE YOU A REAL HUG!”

Dash just blinked, stunned. Slowly she turned to her friends. “You all heard that too, right?”

“Raw... material... shortage?” said Dash slowly with a raised eyebrow, as though the words were utterly foreign.

“It’s true: there’s some kind of shortage of the ingredients used to bake hugs,” said Pinkie. “That’s what the headline said.”

Bewildered, Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Pinkie? That’s ridiculous. What ‘materials’ do you need for a hug? Two of these, one of these and one of these... that’s it!”

“Oh, come on,” said Rainbow Dash. “Love isn’t like... something you can just use up! It’s unlimited.”

“Uhhm...” hummed Twilight, gazing vaguely upward, a thoughtful, musing look to her.

“Well... think about it this way: when the Crystal Heart activates there’s a noticeable improvement in the amount of love felt across Equestria. Princess Cadance can use her magic to help ponies actually feel more love. The point is: if external factors can cause us to perceive a noticeable change in the level of love we feel then, logically, that change is measurable. If it’s measurable then it’s quantifiable. And if it’s quantifiable, it must be finite,” said Twilight, treading carefully with her deductive footing.

“So... you can run out of love?” queried Applejack, a skeptical eyebrow quirked.

“Well, no, that would be ridiculous. The amount of love in the world might be finite, but so is the amount of air in the atmosphere; the amount of water in the ocean. You can’t ‘run out’ of either of those things. And there’s certainly no shortage of love in Equestria. Besides, if we’re applying this analogy to hugs, I think ‘love’ fits better as a catalyst rather than a reagent. Still, on the other hoof, the ‘love as a resource’ hypothesis warrants further study. I mean, if Changelings can feed directly on love, it must be an energy source of some—”

“I RAN OUT OF HUGS BEFORE I GOT TO RAINBOW DASH?!” screamed Pinkie, ignoring Twilight completely. “I’m so sorry Dashie! I promise I still love— But wait... that can’t be right! I do still love Rainbow Dash. So how can I not have enough love to bake her a hug?”

“Pinkie? Are you even listening to yourself? Hugs aren’t something you can ‘run out of.’ In fact it sounds like the only ‘ingredient’ you’ve, ‘run out of’ is, ‘ponies who want a hug,’” said Dash without humour, a little annoyed at having to use so many air quotes in one sentence.

Pinkie stopped. Froze. Sat. Her mouth open in a tiny ‘O’. Cold horror crept over her.

The raw material shortage. It wasn’t love. It was ponies! Ponies who wanted hugs! They must have worked out that there were fewer and fewer ponies who wanted hugs nowadays. That was why they were getting rarer and rarer. And if they were rare that would make them more expensive. And after everything she’d done today... there wasn’t a pony in Ponyville who would want for a hug for quite some time. She’d made sure of it! What had she done?!

Was it possible that instead of increasing supply and ‘reducing demand’, she’d simply exacerbated the material shortage the paper had predicted? Had she unknowingly caused the soon-to-be-revealed price of hugs to skyrocket instead?!

She finished her dramatic scream and looked back down at her suddenly-worried friends, several of whom were taking cautious steps towards her. Almost as if they were about to try and hug—! “No! Stay away! I still want hugs! I might be the only pony left who does! That means I have to not-have-hugs so that I always want them so that there’s enough raw materials to... Argh! It’s too confusing!”

And with that she took to her hooves, pelting away back towards town, leaving her friends open-mouthed and shocked.

Applejack took a breath and broke the silence. “Pinkie reckons the paper told her hugs are gonna start costing money tomorrow. So she’s spent all day tryin’ to get hold of all of us to give us a ‘free’ hug.”

“Well, your heart wasn’t exactly in it Rainbow Dash,” said Rarity with a gently admonishing edge.

“It was more than that though. And it wasn’t just you, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight put forward, coming to Rainbow’s defence. “There was something off about the whole thing, don’t you all think? Like Pinkie was... I dunno, distracted?”

“She thinks the whole world is changing tomorrow,” Fluttershy pointed out.

“Sounds pretty distracting to me,” agreed Applejack. “Guess it’s hard to concentrate on giving a proper hug when something like that’s weighin’ on ya.”

“Because we know it ain’t real. She’s convinced herself it is,” argued Applejack. “I mean, imagine if you found out that suddenly you had to fork over bits every time you wanted to look inside a book, Twi. You’d have to go through life always with one eye on your coin purse.”

“I understand that, and I can certainly draw parallels. But even if that example were true, well... I can’t see myself freaking out about it like Pinkie’s doing.”

“I can,” said Rainbow Dash, deadpan, earning herself a level stare from Twilight.

“The point is, the amount of worry she’s hung on this seems sky high compared to what she thinks is happening. Hugs costing bits... as a concept it’s not that frightening. At the absolute worst all she would have to do is give fewer hugs. I don’t know why that would upset her so much.”

All eyes turned toward her. She had to clear her throat with a dainty cough before she could continue.

Dash slapped her forehoof against her forehead. “Thanks, professor,” she moaned.

“No but... think about why she does,” Fluttershy insisted. “Why does she give so many hugs? Why does Pinkie Pie do anything she does? Why does she throw parties, sing songs, tell jokes, or even smile? Who gets the most out of all those things?”

They all looked at each other. Slowly, in each of them the light of comprehension flickered and bloomed. Realisation accompanied by small, content smiles.

* * *

The Best Things In Life...

Sugarcube Corner, late at night. The normally bright, boisterous bakery had sunk into dreary greyscale, cloaked in grey and black; long, inky shadows smothering any hint of vibrancy or mirth. The clock on the wall ticked incessantly, giving the time as ten-past midnight, and showing no signs of turning backward any time soon.

Pinkie Pie sat alone in the gloom at the very table she had been at this morning when the whole day’s debacle had dawned. She recalled she’d been cheery then. Now she sat slumped over, her money-bank overturned on the surface before her, and she regarded a modest pile of gold coins which she would occasionally nudge with her hoof.

That was her sum total of bits. With the time firmly and irrevocably past midnight, she could now give out a mere thirty-two bits worth of hugs.

Rolling a single coin along the tabletop beneath her hoof she idly wondered how many hugs thirty-two bits would buy her, and maths followed. If a hug was going to end up costing five bits or less, she could still hug all of her friends one more time, including Spike. But that would mean Starlight would miss out. And if hugs started costing more than five bits, she was going to have to make some very difficult choices about who needed hugs the most. Which was impossible – everypony always needed hugs. So maybe she could combine a couple of hugs into a group-hug-that-hopefully-wasn’t-going-to-be-prohibitively-expensive and make a saving that way. Then it was just a matter of working out the most efficient group-hug to single-pony-hug cost-to-hug ratio, and hoping nopony would blame her for missing out.

Though... could she even claim that they would all be real hugs, and not some sad, limp excuse? Because that last hug with Rainbow Dash... that hadn’t been a proper hug at all. That snarky adding voice had got in the way and ruined it for her friend. The annoying automatic accountant that kept reminding her that if she ever wanted to hug Rainbow Dash – or anyone else – again... she was going to have to pay for it. What if all her future hugs turned out like that? Cold and impersonal? What if the hugs she ended up giving weren’t worth the bits she was paying for them? Instinctively it felt like hugs that you had to pay to give weren’t as valuable as those that you gave away for free. Odd as that sounded.

But the alternative was not giving them at all, and that would never do. So she returned her thoughts to the pile.

And went over the whole argument in her head again. Like she had several times already.

The shop bell tingled with the opening of the door, causing Pinkie to look up. With a cautious care, five mares stepped into the café, searching, their eyes unaccustomed to the low light inside.

Five heads turned her way and smiled. A moment later five mares found five places around her table.

Rarity was the first the notice the pile of coins, and the first to deduce its significance. “Dear, Pinkie... you’re not putting aside your savings so you can afford hugs are you?”

“Pinkie, we came to talk to you,” said Twilight. “Fluttershy... well, we all talked and we think we’ve finally figured out why you’re so upset.” Gently she pulled on Pinkie’s foreleg, separating it from the gold coin on the table, allowing the glittering disc to fall onto its side. She pulled a little harder, encouraging Pinkie to step down from her stool and sit next to her on the floor even as their remaining friends did the same, forming a loose circle. Finally Twilight raised her head and prompted. “Applejack?”

“I reckon it hit home what you said to me earlier, Pinkie Pie. That there’s times in ponies’ lives when they’re feelin’ pretty rotten. Cursed with doubt, wonderin’ if the whole world’s turned against ‘em. Times when you need a best friend right there next to you, cheerin’ you up cuz nothin’ else will. In those moments, when it gets real dark and lonely, I reckon the right hug at the right time from the right pony... might just be the most valuable thing in the world.”

“But the moment an actual value gets put on that hug, you end up taking the specialness away,” said Rarity, moving closer. “A hug goes from being a freely given, heartfelt expression of love, to just another transaction in the minds of all involved. Something that was once truly priceless... becomes worthless.”

“We know you, Pinkie,” said Twilight. “And we know the most important thing in the world to you... is that your friends are happy. You throw us parties at the drop of a hat. You keep notes of the little things everypony likes. And if one of us is ever feeling sad, you’re the first one there. How better to cheer us up than by giving us something special, that shows us just how much you care about us? Something that bits just can’t buy. And how awful it must have been when you thought that suddenly... that was something that only bits could buy. A hug wouldn’t be an expression of how much you cared about us anymore – just an expression of how much you could afford.”

“But you’d never let that stop you,” broke in Rainbow Dash. “Because if one of us was feeling down, you’d always do everything you could for us anyway. But the thought that one of us might get in trouble, and you being stuck without enough bits to help... must have been pretty scary. So you spent all day trying to literally make hugs ‘worth less.’ The problem is, the minute you have to start focusing on whether you can afford to give somepony a hug, is the same minute you’ve stopped focusing on just making that other pony happy. That’s what happened with me earlier. Spending all day with this idea in your head... all you could think about was how many bits it might cost you just to do what you’ve always done: be there for your friends.”

Pinkie tried to cry out again, but it came only as a squeak in the back of her throat. Her eyes were watering now and she tried in vain to blink away the tears.

“But you mean just as much to us as we do to you, Pinkie,” said Fluttershy with a heart-melting smile. “We all finally saw just how upset you were. And what do you do for a best friend who’s sad, full of worry and wondering why the world’s turned mean and nasty? Well...” she said reaching out herself, locking Pinkie’s gaze with shining teal eyes full of kindness. “They need hugs.”

Surrounded on all sides, Pinkie found herself in the middle of an enormous mass of legs, tummies, nuzzles and squeezes. She scrunched her eyes up tight but it was no good. The tears came and she started bawling loud enough that she had to hope she wasn’t waking the twins upstairs. She reached out with her own legs and wrapped them around the two closest ponies – Applejack and Rarity as it happened – and pulled hard, wracked with emotion.

“I’m just so happy we’re friends,” she wailed as the tears came in floods.

They remained there for a long while, the silence only broken by Pinkie’s quiet sobs until she was able to calm herself down. Eventually they started to break apart, one by one each pony releasing the others and stepping back. All except for Rainbow Dash, who remained, giving Pinkie the one-to-one they’d missed out on out by the bridge. Closure, after all the day’s hysterics.

Finally they too released each other and Pinkie stood. She gave a quick glance back at the pile of coins on the table and took a quick, sharp, realising breath. “Okay, now that was a six-pony group-hug which is bound to attract a premium, but if we all agree to spread the cost between us we should be okay when it comes to—”

“Pinkie!” cried Twilight. “It’s not happening! Didn’t we make that clear?”

Twilight grimaced and rolled her eyes before looking kindly to Pinkie once more. “Pinkie, I don’t know what was wrong with that headline you read but as a Princess of Equestria, and with the written consensus of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna – sorry, I left the letter in the castle – I can absolutely guarantee that you will never have to pay out bits to either give or receive any hug, ever.”

Twilight groaned and found herself rolling her eyes again. “Or fill out a form,” she confirmed.

“Yay!” Pinkie squealed, delight in her eyes, giving a little four-hooved leap into the air.

“Come on, Pinkie, it is pretty ridiculous,” said Dash. “You already drove yourself round the bend trying to figure out how it would work. It makes zero sense!”

“Indeed,” added Rarity. “Can you really imagine a world where members of the community would be willing to pay money simply to procure a physical act of love?”

“That doesn’t sound like it would be a very nice place to live at all,” lamented Fluttershy, rubbing one foreleg with another.

“It’s over,” confirmed Pinkie with a relieved grin, as five other ponies let out five breaths they didn’t realise they’d been holding. Pinkie’s eyes had moisture in them even now. “You guys... are the best,” she said, her voice wobbling a tad.

“Uh... we’re not hugging again are we?” asked Dash. “Cuz I feel like we’ve kinda done that to death today.”

Pinkie smiled. “You know what? After hugging my way through all of Ponyville? I’m good.”

“And pretty beat too, I’ll wager,” said Applejack. “Might’ve been a mistake callin’ on you so late Pinkie, but we were worried. We couldn’t bear the thought of you carryin’ on like that one minute longer than you had to.”

“But Applejack’s right,” said Rarity. “Everypony needs their beauty sleep, and we should probably let you get some rest.”

And with that the five best friends anypony could ever ask for made their exit, leaving Pinkie with a pile of thirty-two bits. Except now that wasn’t thirty-two bits worth of hugs she had to her name. Now it was thirty-two bits worth of cupcakes!

* * *

Sugarcube Corner early in the morning and the kitchen was strangely quiet. Unusual, but perhaps not surprising, for Mr. and Mrs. Cake had awoken with great astonishment to find all of the day’s orders already baked, boxed and bound.

As for Pinkie Pie, she sat up at her familiar table in the café area, enjoying her breakfast pancakes in the company of her finest alligator friend, this morning’s edition of the Chronicle spread out before her.

She’d made it to the funnies in the centre pages without seeing so much as a mention of rising hug prices. In truth today seemed like a busier news-day than yesterday. According to the front page, for example, there had been some kind of rampage in Ponyville the previous afternoon. A pony had been seen racing through the streets at full tilt, accosting anypony and everypony they could find and wrapping their hooves around them and squeezing. Odd that she’d missed it. For now though, she was just finishing up today’s puzzle – a word jumble, as she dotted the ‘i’ on the final word, Pointless. With that done and the comics all read she turned the page... and there it was. In the same place as the article the previous day. Her heart leapt into her mouth for a moment and her breath caught in her chest.

CORRECTION: The headline of yesterday’s article, ‘Price of Rugs Set to Soar’ contained a misprint. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. The article is reproduced below.

That was strange. She read the article – which was very short. It was a few words and a quote from a spokesewe from Black Sheep Co. relating the reasons for their sudden strike action and the effect it would have on the supply of sheep’s-wool in Equestria. Nothing about—

“You’re right!” gasped Pinkie. “I should go find all my friends and give them the good news along with some celebration hugs! Or, maybe I should start to worry about rising rug prices and warn all my friends about the effect that would have before freaking out a little and trying to buy everypony in town a cheap rug? Meh, either way,” she shrugged with a grin.

Then with a determined frown she was on her hooves, bouncing toward the open front door into the bright, sunny morning, ready to track down her friends anew; to share some potentially devastating news about soon-to-be-expensive rugs, and then probably cheer them up with a hug or two.

The End

Free Hugs!

by 8686

Part III