"Um... Fluttershy? What are you doing?"

The question was entirely redundant, but Twilight found herself asking it anyway. She already knew what was happening: Fluttershy had suddenly stopped at her kitchen window, stood ramrod straight and saluted something sitting on her fence.

She kept her eyes locked for another second, muttering something quietly under her breath, before she seemed to remember where she was. Blushing, she turned to reply. "Oh, Twilight! I'm sorry, did I disturb you?"

"No, I'm sorry. That came out a little stronger than I meant." Twilight smiled guiltily, taking a mouthful of the horrible steaming herbal concoction that she was still afraid to admit she didn't care for. Fluttershy had been very enthusiastic about it, which, according to some universal law, probably meant she was obligated to at least finish the first pot.

"Are you enjoying the tea?" came the inevitable question, as her host returned bearing an ancient, battered tin of biscuits. "I think I told you before, but I made it myself." she repeated for the third time since Twilight arrived, settling into her seat across the table.

"It's very nice, thank you." said Twilight, while her stomach loudly called her a liar.

"It's definitely an acquired taste." Fluttershy smiled, downing a mouthful herself. "It's very nice after a while, but it does tend to disagree with you to begin with."

Twilight had heard of a mild torture like this, practiced by the aunts of the nocturnal warlords deep in the bowels of Anglia, where the prisoner would have to sit through endless, awkward conversations over steaming pots of poisonous cycad tea and stale biscuits. The fact that Fluttershy clearly had no idea what she was doing did surprisingly little to help.

Small talk would take her mind off it, taken as always with a decidedly unhealthy dose of empty calories slathered in chocolate. "What did you see outside?"

"Oh, that? I saw a magpie in my garden." Fluttershy pointed, and Twilight followed the line of her leg out of the window behind her until it hit a scruffy, black and white bird sitting on the fencepost.

"Do you know him?"

"No, not personally. I hear him on the roof sometimes. They don't like it much around the forest." she answered smoothly, draining her mug and pouring herself another one. "It's bad luck to see a magpie alone." she explained.

"Is that why you saluted him?" asked Twilight, elicting a nod.

"It's silly, really, but I've done it since I was just a filly. I used to be terrified of them." said Fluttershy. "One of our teachers taught us the rhyme in preschool, and I was looking out for magpies for days afterwards." Twilight nodded, no stranger to the terrors wreaked by those entrusted with the young and innocent once the parents were out of earshot. She shuddered silently as the grotesque image of a coffee-stained sweatshirt and thick rimmed glasses, the street clothes of many a childhood nightmare, paraded in front of her mind's eye.

"I think I've heard the rhyme." she said, as the apparition crawled back into the pit from whence it came. ""One for sorrow, two for joy"..."

"Three for a girl, four for a boy." Fluttershy finished, smiling again over her teacup. "I never understood that part."

"I think "girl" is an ancient term for "foal"," said Twilight uncertainly, trying to hold the image of a musty, partially disintegrated dictionary in memory. "I'm lost with the boy part. Buoy? Maybe it came from the seaside, or a boat? That could be where the saluting came from."

"Maybe. They taught me to say "hello, general" whenever I saluted one. Do they have generals on boats?" pondered Fluttershy, refilling Twilight's cup to her hidden dismay. The tea, like most acquired tastes, was doing its level best to resist being acquired by accelerating in the opposite direction.

"I'm not sure. Does the saluting prevent the bad luck?" she asked, picking up her mug with her hooves while subtly magically testing the weight of the teapot, idly wondering if she'd done something terrible to a magpie.

"Yes, I suppose. I think it cheers up the magpie. It must be lonely, if another one brings joy."

"What happens if there's two, but they don't know the other one's there?" asked Twilight, her mind automatically beginning to churn out scenario after scenario of magpie pairings. "Do you have to salute each one, or can you point one to the other? Does it count as one if there's two but one of them flies away?"

"They know, Twilight. Magpies know lots of things." said Fluttershy. "They're very intelligent."

"Corvids generally are." said Twilight, as years of casually reading bird spotters guides, the only books that fit conveniently into the outer pockets of a saddlebag, finally bore fruit. "They're related to crows, which, despite the stereotypes built in fiction, are remarkably resourceful birds." The sound of something landing lightly on the ledge behind her registered in her ears, but got turned away at her brain. "Flocks, or more accurately murders, are known to-"

She stopped at a funny look from Fluttershy, who was suddenly a lot longer than Twilight remembered. Her head felt hazy, like somepony had spent the last hour carefully lining her brain with cotton wool. "Sorry, I'm rambling again." she said sheepishly.

"No, go on, Twilight. It was just getting interesting." said Fluttershy blandly, standing up.

Twilight's mouth moved but no words came out. "Fluttershy, not that the tea wasn't amazing, but what's in it?"

"Oh! Natural ingredients, like I said. Some berries, a little hemlock, some foxgloves, a dash of mint..." She loomed beigely in Twilight's fading vision, a large, unsettlingly alien looking smear across the room. Concern shot across her face.

"Maybe more than a dash. I put a few leaves in there."

Fluttershy's body smiled vacantly at the large, motionless alicorn spilling off her sofa into her biscuit tin. She downed the rest of the mug as the window latch clattered open, admitting a single, beady eyed magpie.

"She's sedated her, sir." she said, with all the emotion of a kitchen sponge. "She took a while to go down, but she's definitely under." She kneeled, bowing her head and exposing the oily feather stuck to her neck beneath her mane, glowing an unhealthy number of colours.

"As we expected. You didn't damage anything important, did you?" replied the scratching baritone inside her head. "You know how hard they are to repair without opening them up."

"No sir. She should be easy enough asleep. I can't say how long we have until she wakes up."

"Better hop to it, then, miss. Don't leave any lasting marks." The bird hopped away, turning just before the window. "And move that damn controller before one of them sees it."

Fluttershy's body saluted what was most likely the most powerful bird in Equestria, standing to attention for the possible future ruler of the country.

"Yes, general." she said.

Author's Note

Forced jokes? Pacing issues? Dialogue clearly written by something that's only ever seen other people in jars? What more could you want?

Well, a lot of things, really. Bugger. Thought I'd solved something then.

Written because I don't have any good ideas, so I have to make do with this sort of thing. Please don't take it seriously, it gives it a rash.