Twilight and Dawn, lacking magical abilities, were forced to drag the toolbox to their desired location at the front of the cave. It was quite heavy, and took much work and time, but they gradually succeeded in their combined efforts.
"Attention fellow woodland ponies," Twilight hollered, her voice echoing through the trees. "Please gather."
Though they were finally exposed to the light, they did obey Twilight's command. Slowly they gathered in a semicircle around the couple.
"Is that all of you?" Many ponies looked at one another, as if they were telepathically asking each other if that was everyone. Not many gestured an answer to Twilight's inquiry, and those who did only shrugged. She counted the eyes. "Two hundred," she mumbled. "Only a hundred?" she asked aloud. "Where are the others?"
There was no reply.
Twilight snorted. "Very well. Let me start this lecture off by saying that your former leader, Bones, will no longer rule over you. My name is Twilight Acorna Sparkle, Princess Celestia's most faithful student of magic...(at least until I broke my horn saving you all from annihilation). But you may call me Twilight. Except Dawn, who calls me Twilie."
The only movement in the audience was the motion their eyes made when they blinked.
"Anyway, I have gathered you all here because, as your new ruler, I will not only make sure you ponies survive, but thrive and prosper in a society you can be proud of - instead of being ashamed of not being part of the society that makes up the population of Ponyville and the rest of Equestria."
Continued silence.
"We will start by building you all homes. From what I can tell, most of you are probably individual nomads, so it looks like we'll only be building one home for pony. That is not a problem, however, since we have plenty of wood and room to go around. You will also assist my husband and me in constructing a fortress for the two of us. Bones may have been comfortable sitting on a log his whole life, but I'm not. I want to be comfortable, and also be able to protect you all from any danger that may come our way. Dangerous creatures lurk in these shadows, besides the population of Ponyville. And I am not comfortable with the thought that any of you could be attacked at any given time."
The silence prolonged. A few more white, puffy clouds drifted into the skies above the Everfree Forest.
"Alright, now to get to work. Split up into halves. Half of you will grab hatchets and axes and saws and gather wood and other building materials, and half of you will grab hammers and nails and build the houses."
There was no groaning or whining or complaining. In fact, there was no noise made at all.
The group gradually split into two equal halves. One half stayed where they were while the other approached the toolbox behind Twilight and Dawn and grabbed their tools as they subdivided themselves up into smaller groups, each in charge of its own tree to chop down.
The Ferals may have been quiet and shy, but they were no stranger to conventional pony life. They chopped and sawed and axed all those trees like professionals. Once a few trees were down, the other half of Ferals subdivided and two or three ponies each took to a tree to build into a hut after they retrieved their instruments.
After a few hours, their progress was visible, and a whole settlement started to appear where there was once only trees. Twilight and Dawn went around the area and checked the architectural stability of each hut, to make sure all of them would hold up. Each one passed inspection. Once the huts were inspected, Twilight and Dawn went to work on the decoration. They used some extra wood the Ferals had left, in addition to a few stones they found from within their cave, to build a campfire so the Ferals could be seen at night. They also instructed a few lone Ferals to set aside some extra logs to be used around the campfire.
They then split up: Twilight taking part in bodily decoration while Dawn took care of the more architectural decor. Twilight found some old paints at the bottom of the toolbox, hidden under all the axes and hatchets and saws. She got the idea for how to let everypony know that they were now Ferals and not just a large group of Nubs and Fwaps: body paint. She started with her face, taking her hoof and drawing several different lines around her eyes, across her cheeks, on her forehead, and even on her other hooves and what she could reach of her torso. Dawn meanwhile painted the official insignia of the Ferals: the Alicorn Amulet icon, inspired by the fight with Trixie Twilight had a while back, on each completed hut as the settlement grew and grew, to establish a keen sense of identity within the Ferals as a society that shall stand no ridicule.
Twilight chose the Alicorn Amulet to be her icon not only because of its dark appearance and intense meaning, but to both symbolize her struggle when she was isolated from Ponyville during Trixie's return, and how the Ferals are "alicorns" themselves. She felt the Amulet ushered in a feeling of superiority over the common earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns who inhabited Equestria. Since everypony there but Dawn was too shy to even speak, no one told her anything; and Dawn supported the idea as he felt that the Ferals all had very low self-esteem, which was probably a result of all the pain and torment they felt.
Once the insignia was painted on every hut and it seems that the original settlement was completed, Twilight then called it a night, and encouraged everypony to sleep in their huts that night. They, of course, obeyed her command. She and Dawn reported back to their cold, lonely cave, where they huddled together to keep themselves warm under the uncomfortably thin blanket over their bodies.
In her heart, Twilight knew that the Ferals were only taking their first steps into their establishment.