MYSELF (ALSO PIZZA)'."Do demons have a culture?" Cadance asked, eyes wide with a mix of confusion and curiosity. She stirred a bit of cream into her coffee, the spoon clinking out of rhythm with the music softly playing throughout the diner. Around her, ponies talked quietly and the air shimmered around the princess and her companion, making them seem more far away than usual.
Yet they booth they occupied felt surprisingly normal. Solid. The magic did not affect them.
Seated across from her, Sombra stared at her from the booth seat her occupied. Firefly lanterns twinkled in the twilight outside. Had he refused to sleep through most of the day or make an effort to curb his nocturnal habits, this meeting would have taken place in the actual morning rather than Sombra's morning.
"Not really," he said with a shrug, sipping the black coffee that he had conjured, claiming that it could never be made the way he liked it.
Among the napkins and papers on the booth table, a plate of evening pancakes for Cadance occupied the magic-veiled seat; Sombra's enchantment blurred the lines of perception that caused ponies and other mortals to ignore them while Cady looked at a world filled with vivid reflections and ghosts.
Not real ghosts, of course, but in the place she was now, they felt like ghosts. Ponies.
And one day they would be ghosts; as would she. And Shiny. And-
"And are you going to keep getting existential on me, or are we going to keep doing these little meetings of ours without you getting a vacant look in your eyes and vanishing like last time?"
Instantly, Cadance's purple gaze snapped to Sombra. She tucked a strand of her mane behind her ear. "Y-Yes! Yes we are!"
Sombra looked upon her smile with indifference and watched her shuffle papers while he set his mug down. Cadance glanced at it. Today it bore the the simple message of 'I' followed by the tell-tale heart to declare one' love for the surprising array of things that can be told on a coffee mug.
Sombra's said 'I MYSELF (ALSO PIZZA)'.
She didn't question it.
"Why doesn't your species have a culture?" she inquired, tone cheerful and earnest.
Sombra blinked tiredly. His expression was already rather grumpy. He hated mornings. And twilight. And mornings that were twilight. And twilight that served as his mornings. Before answering he briefly contemplated making coffee sacred to him while Cadance muttered about how mainstream the music was.
"Demons aren't like ponies," Sombra began, promptly glaring at Cadance when she interrupted him.
"They're created from magic, yes you told me that. Why don't they have a culture?"
"Maybe if you interrupt me some more, you won't get the answer!" Sombra said, flashing a brilliant, fang-y, and sarcastic smile that Cadance found oddly glamorous in a weird, demon-y way. "There's a thought!"
She was certain demon-y could be a word. Demonic was a word, so demon-y should be too.
Sombra sighed and began anew. "We've been over this before: demons are created, not born. Because of this, there is no stable population - especially when your species isn't composed of social beings with a dreadful her mentality like you ponies have. This would mean that-"
"Can I interrupt?" Cadance asked, curiosity shining in her eyes as she waved her left forehoof in the air a bit, being sure to glance at the papers in front of her to read a line again, just to be sure she hadn't missed something.
"You already did," he mumbled.
"Is it impossible for demons to be born?"
Sombra tilted his head to the side. "What do you mean?"
An impish grin spread across Cadance's face. "If a mommy demon and a daddy demon loved each other very much-"
"Yes, yes, I get the picture!" Sombra snapped, rolling his eyes. "That would be the only way a demon could be born, but there have never been any."
"How do you know that?"
Sombra's expression was completely humorless, but he waved his forehooves in the air before intoning flatly: "I'm magic."
Cadance snorted and grabbed a paper in her forehoof, holding it right in front of Sombra's muzzle. "What about this? I thought up this question in a particularly boring meeting of Auntie's I had to attend this Wednesday."
"I've always been more interesting than any royal duty."
"If by interesting you mean 'insane' then absolutely!" Cadance chirped. "Sooo... how long do demons live?"
Sighing, Sombra snatched up the paper in the grasp of his telekinesis. He glanced at the neat, curly, writing momentarily before passing it back to her in order to answer the call of his coffee.
"'bout the same as ponies, really," he managed while sipping the dark beverage. "But I don't imagine that any in the past would have made it that far. Two centuries is a lifespan, and it's what you do with it that often determines things, yet I still can't envision the average demon - were we to make a lot of assumptions about their nature and typical lifestyle only from what you know of me - would be able to make it past fifty."
"That's awful," Cadance said, with an earnesty that next to none would express towards such a race. "I can't imagine anypony living that short being normal."
"What do you think of mayflies then? They live even shorter lives than that - and there's an understatement if I've ever said one!"
"Mayflies are icky."
"'Icky'," Sombra repeated, giving her yet another look.
"Spiders are worse though. Auntie Luna adores spiders, but all it takes is one look into their creepy little eyes to inspire the deepest despair." To Cadance, the booth suddenly felt much colder and she shuddered.
"Spiders."
"You betcha! They're terrifying! Forget dragons, lich queens, wraiths, and demons-"
"You ponies really haven't changed since the time of the Tribes, you know that?"
"-or anything else. Spiders are going to kill us all. They know exactly where we sleep."
"So do I."
"They have pointy little fang things!" Cadance protested.
"So do I."
"Spiders defy the laws of nature!"
"And once again, so do I."
"But Sombra," Cadance whined, nervously adjusting her crown. "Spiders are vengeful, devious, and otherworldly beings. They're ageless and they power they have over the minds of others is something to fear. The skitter about in the shadows and terrorize the everymare. Spiders are going to kill us all; they're able to bridge the distance between what is mortal and what is a god. Their reign of terror preys on our most primal fears..."
"You're just describing me at this point," Sombra said, taking another sip of his coffee.
The pink princess blinked. "I-I am? ...But you're not a spider. I've never wanted to beg Shiny to hit you with a broom while I cower in fear."
"Wow, you're pathetic."
"It's for everypony's safety, Sombra! Spiders are dangerous and I can't bear to hit them with a broom that isn't on fire."
Sombra narrowed his eyes slightly. "Flaming brooms don't sound that bad... maybe I should try that sometime..."
"I know, eh? Everytime I hear the violent howls of battle and see the fires of madness reflecting in the eyes of one who charges a spider with fire as their friend, I'm reminded of home."
Sombra abruptly swallows a gulp of hot black coffee, but doesn't look as if he felt the burn of the piping hot liquid that dared to think it could wound him. "Alright, now I'm intrigued. How could a sight like that remind you of your home? Didn't you grow up in some dinky hamlet even smaller than where Purple Eyesore lives?"
"Yes," Cadance says, tone light. "I did grow up in a very small village. Nopony in my family liked spiders that much. My father always thought they were only a little gross and was super weird about brushing them onto newspapers - but only after he let me read all the funny pages! - and flicking them outside - but never into the garden where mamma grew her vegetables. Like me, she hated and feared the terrible spiders equally."
Cadance didn't notice that Sombra looked rather intrigued or that his ears pricked forward when her almost dormant accent, dulled with years of living in Canterlot and many lessons, flared up at the particular way she had of referring to her mother.
"What did your mother do about them then, raze the entire bloody village?"
Pulling back at what she perceived as an insult, Cadance stared at Sombra with shock gleaming in her lilac eyes. "No! My mother is the kindest pony I know. She's my hero! She would never hurt anypony who didn't insult her cooking or hurt another pony first - mostly by insulting her cooking. She's the one who always bought me all the best vinyls for my birthday and Hearth's Warming and read to me when I was little. There's no way she'd ever hurt a pony like that, in fact, I think you'd like my mother a lot."
"Uh-huh," Sombra said, not even trying to hide how unconvinced he was. "Are you going to continue to tell me how your mother got rid of spiders then, since I can't resist a tale about a fire of the scale you seem to be implying." He flashed another smile - the kind of smug grin that masterfully communicated that the owner was the one who just lit your house on fire and still had the time to behead each and every one of your tulips. It was brief. It was beautiful.
"My mother values many things: a good cook, a happy home, an honest pony, a loving family, and the luck of the gods."
"So that's why you're so superstitious," Sombra muttered, pricking his ears forward again.
She nodded at his observation. "But the three things she values most in this world - straight from her own mouth - is her daughter, her flamethrower, and her husband."
Sombra's eyes shone with wicked delight and even a bit of surprise. "Her flamethrower..."
"What did you think she was going to kill spiders with?" Cadance asked, eyes bright and innocent. Her voice was as cheerful as her smile.
And she watched as Sombra nodded ever so slightly in what might have been acceptance.