“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” chortled Rainbow Dash. “You do know where foals come from right, Fluttershy?”

“Oh, of course.” The pegasus put both hooves up on the table and smoothed out her napkin for no particular reason. “Mine’s not really much of a story though. I mean, it’s a lot like Applejack’s, actually. Except without that last part.”

Her friends looked on expectantly.

“Well, you see, after I fell out of the clouds-”

Rainbow Dash cringed a bit. She had always felt bad for the whole ‘knocking Fluttershy out of Cloudsdale’ thing, even if it had turned out Ok.

“-and landed near Ponyville, I made a lot of critter friends. So I pretty much grew up around them. And you know how critters are about this sort of thing.”

The ponies at the table exchanged glances, but it was Twilight who finally asked the question.

“And, uh, how are critters about this sort of thing, Fluttershy?”

“You don’t know?” The yellow pony tilted her head to one side. “We’re talking about sex right?”

Her friends nodded.

“Oh. I thought everybody knew. I mean, they’re basically doing it right in front of you all the time.”

Her friends continued to stare blankly. Applejack spoke first.

“Well, I mean…I know dogs and cows and such don’t much care who’s watchin’, but I can’t say as I can think of any other time I’ve noticed critters doing stuff like that.”

“Oh sure you can,” said Fluttershy sweetly. “You hear birds singing all the time right?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“And what do think they’re singing about?”

Applejack glanced about at her friends, not at all liking where this was heading. “…Trees?”

Fluttershy shook her head, smiling. Though she didn’t normally like to be anywhere near the center of attention, she was actually quite enjoying this conversation. It was nice to be the one with something fun to say for once.

“Wait.” Pinkie giggled. “You mean they’re…”

“Uh huh. Trying to hook up. Pretty much all the time. Birds and bugs and frogs and all kinds of critters. They barely ever sing about anything else. And that’s just the ones that sing. You know those funny little dances critters do? And how we talk about critters being…” she made little quotes with her wings, “In season? All that stuff is pretty much all about getting laid,” said Fluttershy, with a big, sweet smile. “You should see Angel when there are girl bunnies around.” She shook her head. “And ponies do things like that too, you know.”

Everyone at the table stared on, perplexed. It wasn’t just that the nature of their beloved critter friend’s odd but amusing behaviors had now been revealed so plainly, though that was unnerving enough on its own. It was the fact that Fluttershy, of all ponies, could be so blasé about a subject that apparently drove even the Solar Princess into fits of embarrassment.

Well, everyone except for Pinkie, who snorted into laughter, saying…

“That is SO COOL! Now everything I’ve ever seen is soooooooo much more fun! Every time I look out the window I’ll be all like ‘Which one of my critter friends is getting lucky right now?’ Maybe it’s all of them! Yay! Hmm. I bet there’s a party idea in there somewhere…”

“B-but,” sputtered Rarity. “Surely my Opalescence wouldn’t be so crass as to, to strut around like that in public?” Her face held a note of desperation, which Fluttershy did nothing to alleviate.

“Oh, I’m afraid so. Critters aren’t really very picky about who they, um, strut for. In fact, speaking of Opal…”

“Wait a second,” said Twilight. “You said ponies do that stuff?”

“Yeah,” put in Rainbow Dash. “And how are you even talking about this? I figured you’d be hiding under the table by now. Again”

“Oh, well, I see this kind of thing all the time, so it’s easy for me to see what’s going on between ponies too. It’s never been a big deal to me. I always wondered why everybody else was so uptight about all this.” Fluttershy shrugged as she answered Dash. Turning to Twilight, “And sure. Ponies have some of the silliest mating behaviors of all.”

“But that can’t be right,” began Twilight. “I’ve never heard of ponies…” Crooning poetry to each other under the moonlight. Sending clandestine letters while pretending to ignore each other in public. Pressing close together in a mostly empty dance hall, only to go home alone because it wasn’t the third date yet… Hm. Twilight thought back to some of the almost desperate lengths she’d gone to in the past, hoping to get some other pony’s attention. And the weird stuff some of them had done to get hers… Actually, it all did all seem kind of ridiculous, now that she thought about it…“Oh. Huh.”

Fluttershy smiled again, pleased that Twilight, at least, was getting it. "Some things are really obvious when you look at them from the outside," she said.

“Hold on. So…” Rainbow Dash was thinking so hard her wings started beating involuntarily. She asked the next question from six inches above her seat. “You can like, tell when somebody’s looking to get laid?”

Fluttershy blushed a bit. “Well, I wouldn’t want to brag, but…”

“Maybe we shouldn’t-” Rarity broke her conspicuous silence. It happened that she and Fluttershy had spoken on the subject of reading other ponies before, and she had concerns about where Rainbow Dash might go with this.

Plowing right through Rarity’s interjection, Rainbow Dash leaned in and, with narrowed eyes, demanded “Prove it.”

“Oh, well…”

“You don’t have to, darling. Rainbow’s just upset that you might be better than her at something.”

“Pfh, whatever.” Dash waved her off. “There’s no way Fluttershy knows more about hooking up than I do. Now c’mon. I wanna see this thing she says she can do.”

Fluttershy didn’t have much of a competitive instinct, but this was apparently just the right thing to say to set it off. Between the cider and the chance to humble her egotistical-if-loyal friend, the little yellow pegasus put on her game face and agreed to the test readily.

“Right! So, um…” Fluttershy gave the bar a thorough once over. “Ok, so, see those two at the bar there?” She nodded obliquely towards a bright orange unicorn mare, sitting on a barstool next to a rather less flashy earth-tone pegasus stallion. They were speaking casually.

The entire table turned to look, except for a certain white unicorn, who knew the rules of this game.

“Wait! Not like that,” squeaked Fluttershy.

The table froze, turning back to her.

“They’ll notice us looking. You have to be less obvious. If they know they’re being watched it ruins it. Ok?”

Her friends endeavored to be more subtle, with mixed results.

“Ok, so, see how they’re talking, and they’re next to each other, but they don’t actually face each other? And they only ever glance into each other’s eyes when they talk, and they gesticulate a lot?”

Nopony else had noticed any such things, but they nodded anyway.

“That means they’re friends, but not anything more. The stallion is telling a story about something, I think. He’s…wow, he’s really animated, isn’t he? Anyway, they both keep looking around the bar. So, I bet if two of you went over and asked to join them, they’d both be up for it.”

Rainbow Dash and Applejack gawked at her as though she were some kind of alien creature. Pinkie and Rarity were smiling to different degrees. Twilight had conjured a pad of paper from somewhere and was taking notes.

“Do it again!” exclaimed Rainbow. “What about…”she glanced around. “That table of hot dudes over there?”

Fluttershy gave them a quick look. “Hm? No, I don’t think they’re looking for company. Well, stallions are kind of always looking for company, but, hm. I don’t know. I wouldn’t try this early. Maybe a little later though.”

“How!?” blurted out Dash. “How do you know!?”

Edging slightly away from her friend, Fluttershy answered. “Well, um, they’re r-really involved with each other. They’re all leaning in toward each other, see? And I don’t recognize some of them, so, maybe they’re friends visiting from out of town? That’s not usually a good situation for meeting new people. They might break off from each other later, if they start dancing or something. I think that one on the right might be looking, but I’m not sure. And his friends might run off any other ponies anyway.” She shrugged.

“Whu…what about those two?” Rainbow Dash pointed urgently to a pair of mares, one a mint green unicorn, the other a beige earth pony with an unusual two-tone mane. Rarity was about to jump in and put a stop to this, but Fluttershy perked up without missing a beat.

“Oh, Heartstrings and Sweetie Drops? Those two are a couple. And don’t point please. See how close together they are? They’re interesting though; they’re sitting close, they’re obviously together, but they’re not facing each other. See how they try to catch certain pony’s eyes as they walk by? They’ve got an open relationship, I bet.”

“Oh, I gotta get in on that!” Rainbow Dash pushed away from the table, clearly intent on abandoning it entirely.

“No!” cried Fluttershy. Such was the quiet intensity of her voice that Dash stopped in her tracks. “You can never use it like that!” she whispered.

“I, uh…” Rainbow Dash slid back into her seat, rapidly withering under the power of an Almost Stare.

“Just because you know something about a pony doesn’t mean you can run up and shove it in their face that way! You’ll embarrass them! Oh, I shouldn’t have said anything…” Fluttershy was now rapidly withering under her own Almost Stare.

“Well, ok, but…” Rainbow was thinking hard again, struggling to reclaim her usual level of Awesome. “What’s the point then, if you can know all that and never do anything with it? I mean, they’re an earth pony and a unicorn! All they need is the hottest pegasus in town and they’ll have the whole set!”She managed to fix Fluttershy with something that resembled an inquisitorial glare at the end there.

“Oh, it’s, um, it’s just…” Having lost her momentum, Fluttershy floundered.

“It’s just that you have to be subtle, Dash,” said Rarity, coming to the rescue. “It’s fine to know a bit of gossip and let that guide you into say, starting a conversation, but you can’t just run up to a pony and blurt out now much you want to, ugh, ‘bang,’ or whatever it is you always say.”

“Um, right,” muttered Fluttershy. “It’s a little, um, awkward. If you make it too obvious like that.”

Rainbow Dash was dubious, given that running up and blurting out how much she wanted to bang someone was her usual technique. It worked fine…mostly. Well, it worked sometimes anyway. She didn’t feel like thinking about the reactions she got when it didn’t work, so instead she asked…”So, you’re saying, that if I wanna get with that girl over there,” she gestured vaguely to the distant unicorn, “I have to like, pretend I don’t know she’s looking to get some of The Dash?”

“Um,” started Fluttershy. The Dash? Really? “Not exactly. How would you feel if some crazy pony you didn’t know just walked up and announced that she was going to, um, ‘bang’ you? You really shouldn’t use that word for it, by the way. It sounds, um, bad.”

Rainbow Dash pondered this. “I’d feel awesome. Unless they were fat or something.”

Fluttershy frowned. “That’s…not very nice at all. You just have to…Here, look. It’s easy.” She leaned back and kicked Pinkie’s stool, making it tip a bit. Pinkie shrieked and then giggled as she fell onto Rarity.

The green mare glanced over at the commotion. Fluttershy glanced at her now-entangled friends and then took the opportunity to look directly into the unicorn's eyes. She smiled with a little shrug. The pegasus’ friends watched, enthralled, as Heartstrings nudged her partner and returned with a grin of her own. Fluttershy glanced away bashfully, then looked back. They held each other’s gaze a moment longer before a small group of ponies walked between the two tables, breaking the moment.

Fluttershy beamed, with maybe just the tiniest hint of smugness, at the befuddled Rainbow Dash.

"See? Now she knows I'm interested, without me having to say it. Easy. And you should seriously think about the things you say, Rainbow Dash. You’re not better than anypony just because you weigh less. But I do agree that all those two over there need is the hottest pegasus in town. So, if you’ll excuse me,” said Fluttershy, pushing off her stool, “I’m going to go get us more drinks and maybe tell them I’m available.”

Rainbow Dash stared open-mouthed at her friend as she strutted off to the bar.

“Wow,” said Twilight. “Just…wow.”

“She sure is fun when she drinks!” said Pinkie.

“I…di-” stuttered Rainbow. “Did I seriously just get shown up by Fluttershy?”

“HAH!” cackled Applejack, swatting Rainbow with her hat as she poured another shot for herself. “You were right, Dash. This is a great night.”