“Umm...Hello? Are you here, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked, poking her head past the castle door.

“Oh, come on in,” Twilight replied as she pushed aside the papers she had been looking at. “Sorry, I didn't hear you knock.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Fluttershy mumbled as she entered the castle, pulling a cart behind her. Inside the cart was a large rectangular object covered by a blanket.

“So, what have you got there? Some sort of boxed friendship problem?”

“Uhhh...not exactly. You know today is Applesgiving, right?”

“Ugh. Don't remind me,” Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. “I don't know why I let Applejack talk me into making that an official holiday. Now half of these,” she gestured to the pile of papers on the table, “are requests from other ponies who want me to make holidays for their favorite foods. It's getting ridiculous. Just look at some of these.” Twilight grabbed a paper at random. “This one's proposing a 'Marshmalloween.' Why in Equestria would we need a holiday celebrating marshmallows?”

“Surely they're not [i]all[/i] bad.”

Twilight eyed the stacks of papers suspiciously. “I wouldn't be too sure about that. Though Princess Celestia did approve 'Cakemas' behind my back.” Her expression brightened as she turned back to Fluttershy. “But enough of that. What can I do for you? As long as you're not here to ask me to give pomegranates a holiday, I'm glad to help.” Twilight's eyes narrowed a bit. “You're not here about pomegranates, are you?”

“Umm. No, I'm not,” Fluttershy said, slightly ashamed nonetheless. “I'm just here about Applesgiving.”

“What about it? Do you have a reason for me to repeal it?” Twilight asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

“No, I actually wanted to help it a bit. You see, right now its problem is that we only celebrate it by eating apples. Oh, and Pinkie decided to wear a giant apple costume.”

Twilight smiled and rolled her eyes. “That's Pinkie Pie for you. So you have a new way for ponies to celebrate Applesgiving?”

Fluttershy looked down and kicked at the ground. “Well, not exactly. It's more of a new tradition than a way to celebrate.”

“Okay, what do you have in mind?”

Fluttershy moved to her cart. “I thought that you, being a princess, could maybe,” she paused to pull the blanket off of the cart, revealing a cage with two plump turkeys inside, “pardon some turkeys.”

Twilight stared blankly at Fluttershy for several seconds. “You want me to...[i]pardon[/i] some...[i]turkeys[/i]? Why? What would a turkey do that needs pardoning? What do turkeys even have to do with apples?”

“It would be, umm, symbolic, mostly. It would show that we support and care about animals like turkeys. There's not really much of a connection between turkeys and apples, but the turkeys do mature around this time of year, so it's at least seasonal.”

Twilight looked from the calm, peaceful turkeys to Fluttershy's innocent smile to the papers on her table. “Well, it's certainly not the worst idea I've heard today. Sure, let's do it.” Twilight cleared her throat and turned to the turkeys. “By the Power of Friendship, I have the power to pardon you. So go on, you're pardoned now.”

Fluttershy waited for several seconds to see if anything else would happen. “That's it?”

“Yeah, it's pretty anticlimactic. But those two turkeys are now officially pardoned, whatever that might mean for a turkey. Now what—”

Suddenly, a magical explosion with the force of one thousand rising suns threw the room into total disarray and confusion. In the center of it stood Princess Celestia, wings flared, horn aglow, and eyes blazing like a metaphor.

Fortunately for Twilight, Celestia relaxed when she saw her. Still, she spoke with a tone of voice that Twilight had only ever heard her use in the most serious of situations, most of which necessitated the use of what Pinkie had taken to calling the “Rainbow Laser Blast of Friendship.”

“Twilight Sparkle, I am relieved to see that you are all right. Last night, attempts were made on my and my sister's lives, and I have reason to believe that the perpetrators are now in Ponyville.”

“What!” Twilight shouted. “Who would do such a thing?”

“We believe that the rebels were two large birds.”

Twilight turned toward Fluttershy, who was hiding under her upturned cart. “Fluttershy, did you just trick me into pardoning two leaders of a coup?” she asked suspiciously.

“Of course not, Twilight. Turkeys don't coo, they gobble.”