It was a mid-morning July day, and Twilight was waiting patiently outside Fluttershy's cottage, her hooves most definitely not tapping and her wings most certainly not twitching in anticipation of their later flying session.

She twitched them anyway: it'd been fifteen minutes now since she'd knocked on the door, arranged things with Fluttershy and then started waiting while the pegasus gave her animal friends breakfast. Rainbow Dash would be wondering where the two of them were, and although Twilight had gotten better at coping with being late, the urge to rush in, gut the bags of animal feed and let every mammal fend for itself remained.

And pressed. And prompted. And pushed.

No, her hooves weren't tapping, but one of them was most certainly pawing the ground.

Fluttershy's half door quietly swung open; Twilight perked up and then deflated. There was a basket inside Fluttershy's mouth with seed for the outdoor birds, a jar of honey for Harry and some fish for the otters under the bridge, all of which carried a "I'll be a few minutes more" feel to them.

"Sorry, Twilight, but I'm going to be a few minutes more," Fluttershy rasped around the basket's handle. She spat it out, picked up the birds seed and started pouring it into the various feeders clustered around the cottage. "If you'll just hold on for a teensy bit longer, I'll be able to come and help out."

Sack empty, she tossed it back into basket and switched to the jar of honey. A well dressed Grizzly took it from her. Holding it in one finely manicured paw, he shook Fluttershy's hoof with the other and then left, tipping his hat to Twilight as he did so.

And then there was just the fish. Twilight made a quiet "eurgh" of disgust as Fluttershy picked them up with her mouth and then trotted down to under the bridge. After a few seconds of non-hoof tapping and non-wing twitching, Twilight joined her.

"Fluttershy, listen. I know you said you'd be with me if I waited just a little bit longer, but, well, we've had longer and I'm still waiting. I know making sure all of your animal friends get breakfast is important, and I respect that, but if you could just... hurry it... eh?"

Twilight was under the bridge, now, with cold water crawling up and down her legs as miniature waves passed by. Fluttershy was a hoofstretch away from her. She made a "ptth" noise as she spat the fish out onto a small wooden pier where they were eagerly received.

"I know, Twilight, and I really am sorry," Fluttershy said, turning her attention back to Twilight's words as if nothing else important was going on, "but my animal friends all have really particular requirements for what they will and won't eat, so it does take a really long time to get them all ready. I'll try to be quicker next time."

Hooves dipping daintily in and out of the water so as not to splash, Fluttershy walked up to Twilight. "We're all done for today, though! The otters are the last ones to get breakfast."

"Those aren't otters," Twilight said. "Those are ferrets."

Fluttershy's eyes bulged. "Erm, no Twilight, I'm afraid they're not. Those are otters: ferrets live in the woodlands, but otters live near water." She splashed a hoof; waves failed to form.

"Yeah, um, no," Twilight said. "Look at the masks on their faces, Fluttershy: you see those stripes of brown fur next to their eyes? I've read Linneighous's work, and I can tell you that those are most -- ummph!"

Fluttershy's hoof was lodged inside her mouth.

"Goodbye friends! Goodbye now! See you later!" Fluttershy called as she walked out from under the bridge, Twilight pushed before her. The ferret-otters waved back, bright smiles on their cheery faces, before they scooped up the fish and carried their breakfast into their subterranean riverside home.

When they were gone, the hoof was removed -- then rubbed vigorously across the grass while Twilight spat its taste out of her mouth.

"I'm so, so sorry, Twilight." Fluttershy's eyes did not meant Twilight's own, and her ears were flat against her head. "I just couldn't let you say such a mean thing in front of Mr and Mrs Otter."

"What mean thing!" Twilight was not happy: her mane was in the frazzled state of 'I'm late, oh Celestia, I'm late' and her eyes burnt with the same fervour of a priest happening upon an orgy -- the world was being wrong in front of her, and it was doing it on purpose: "They're ferrets! Ferrets, ferrets, ferrets! You can't insult someone by pointing out what they are! That's not how being mean works!"

"Well, yes, I know, but... um well, you see, they want to be otters." Fluttershy peeked up from out the curtains of her mane, the smile upon her face one easily scared into hiding. "You see, they self-identify as otters even though they are, in body, ferrets."

"But... But they're not otters! They're ferrets!" Her wings flared outwards in agitation. "I might want to be Princess Celestia, but that doesn't mean you should start calling me Princess and expecting me to live inside a magic castle with guards to protect me and servants to wait on me mouth and hoof!"

Fluttershy said nothing. Twilight's wings slowly retracted.

"Bad example. Look: things are what they are, okay? Ferrets are ferrets and otters are otters, and ferrets cannot be otters. It's hard enough to categorise the whole messy complexity of life into neat little boxes without having to factor in animals who want to be other animals. They. Are. Otters."

Twilight paused and rethought that last bit. "I mean ferrets! They're ferrets!"

"What about Spike? Don't you remember, Twilight? He came back saying how all the other dragons were such grumpy guts that he was going to be a pony. You encouraged that, remember?"

Twilight waved a hoof and snorted. "That's totally different. Spike just culturally identifies as a pony. He still acts like a dragon: he doesn't eat hay or sleep in a bed or expect to get paid for his services like a pony would. Your ferrets are not doing the same: they are actually trying to be otters, the whole living next to water and eating fish shebangle. This is not healthy ferret behaviour."

Fluttershy's hoof scuffed the ground. "Well, I'm sorry Twilight, but I don't really think that's as important to them as being what they want to be, and I think you should respect their life choices and call them whatever they want to be called."

Maybe it was the blatant disregard for the noble science of taxonomy. Maybe it was that she was now half-an-hour late for her morning's flying lesson with no clear end for the conversation in sight. Maybe it was just that being a omnipotent, uber-equinsch princess had finally corrupted her as power always did. But either way, Twilight Sparkle snapped.

"Well, if they don't want to be ferrets so darned much, I'll make them into otters!" she cried.

A flash of purple lightning arched up into the heavens; false-thunder rolled and the air stank of ozone. The water under the bridge bubbled and boiled, and two faint shrieks burst from out the otter's home.

"Twilight," Fluttershy whispered, holding one hoof up pitifully. "Wait," she squeaked.

The light show ended. The thunder boomed off into the distance, sending echoes back from the far-off mountains like postcards wishing you were here.  The water steadied, and two otters staggered out of their home.

Calmly, without much fuss, they began to cry.

"What?" Twilight said. "You're not satisfied, huh? Let me guess: now that you're otters, all you really want to do is become ferrets! I guess life's too boring and plain for you to just be who are you are and accept the lot fate gave you! Well, you gotta suck it up like the rest of us now. No more pretending to be otters: you actually are otters!"

"Oh, Twilight." Fluttershy, too, was crying. "Don't you see?"

"That in an ironic twist, they got exactly what they wished for and hated it?" Twilight's smugness was off the scales: mane strands parted from their usually trim cut waved above a smile that carved into her cheekbones. "It's great, isn't it?"

"No! Oh Twilight, you don't see. They weren't ferrets who wanted to be otters: they were ferrets who wanted to be ferrets who wanted to be otters!"

Twilight's leftmost eyelid twitched.

An hour later, Dash -- who had woken up from her nap and flown to the training grounds to find neither Fluttershy nor Twilight there -- flew over to Fluttershy's cottage.

Only scorched earth remained.