Umbra walked down the road with a filly on her back. "Umbrum... The name implies they are shadow-related?"
"We are shadow." Morning buffed at her chest with a small hoof. "We are the terror of the night! Nightmare incarnate, feeding from and growing powerful from the trembling fear of lesser creatures." She let out a wild cackling laugh that wasn't nearly as scary as it could have been, coming from her tiny form.
"Now, there's something we have to cover." Umbra began up the stairs towards the palace. "I am entirely willing to feed you, but you shouldn't have to rely on me at your age."
"So I'm allowed to scare ponies?" She smiled a little too wide, tail wagging eagerly.
"Not quite that." Umbra walked past the guards that watched her curiously. "If you could enjoy some milk, I bet other food would work." She grabbed Morning Dew in her horn's magic, setting the little filly at a table in the small dining hall they had entered. "They make a lot of tasty things here, take a sniff."
"A sniff?" Morning stared at Umbra like she was crazy. "That's an odd thing to do." Still, she did sniff, little nose wriggling with little tests of the air. "Hm. Something does smell good." She looked around, sliding right over all the food arrayed before her. "What smells good?"
Umbra sat next to Morning. With the chair Morning was perched on, they were closer to equal height, but Umbra was still taller. "It's right here." She selected a cookie to start, floating it over. "Try this."
Morning peered at the cookie. "Try what?"
"Eat it." Umbra nudged the cookie against Morning's snout. "Smells good, doesn't it?"
Morning could smell it, sugary and buttery. But it was also being rubbed against her. She grabbed it between her hooves to stop that from continuing. "What do you want me to do with it?"
"This." Umbra snagged another of the same kind of cookie and made a nice slow demonstration of her taking a bite out of it and chewing it with purposeful slowness. "Mmmm...."
Morning suddenly smiled brightly. "They're good smelling victims? Great!" She snapped a bit off, laughing wildly. "Take that!" She began chewing on the bit she removed as Umbra had done. "Mmm, wow! Your flesh is... Mmmm." She took a second bite, eating quite messily, as perhaps fit a creature that was new to the idea of devouring food. The cookie was soon gone. "I have defeated it!"
Umbra clapped her hooves slowly. "Vanquished thoroughly." She hovered a napkin over and began cleaning Morning up with only mild complaining. "You have to work on your table manners, but you're learning. Notice how I don't have crumbs all over." She waved at her clean chest and snout. "You strike more fear into the other cookies if they know you can perform a clean kill."
Morning's eyes widened. "Oh!" That apparently was an angle that made sense to her. "I will be the precise assassin of their nightmares then." She rubbed her hooves with a dark chuckle. "One bite, one kill."
She grabbed another cookie herself and considered the angles a moment before sinking her teeth into it, covering any escaping crumbs with closed lips.
"You're such a fast learner!" Umbra smooched the filly on the top of her head. That was a reminder that Morning's mane was oddly motive, wafting with unseen winds and forces. "Your mane's alive. Mine is too."
Morning looks up from her cookie. "It is?"
Umbra tapped at her mane. "Say hello." Her mane reached out several tendrils to poke at Morning. "This is Shadow Mane. Shadow Mane, this is Morning Dew."
Morning batted at the curious mane. "It doesn't smell as good."
Umbra wriggled her nose. "Hey, um... not that you should eat it, or me. We're not food." She waved a hoof over the table. "Everything here that isn't metal or ceramic--" She tinked a fork against a plate as a demonstration of those things. "Or glass--" She tapped the same fork against a glass. "Is something you can eat or drink."
"Umbra!" Cadance was wandering through. "I was going to grab a snack, and didn't expect you here." She noticed the little filly and nodded at them. "Well, hello there. Who are you, little one?"
"Morning Dew." She hopped up on her chair. "Slayer of these." She pointed at the half-eaten cookie she hadn't yet finished.
Cadance smiled a little. "A fearsome hunter you are, Morning Dew." She seemed to take it in good fun without prompting. "Where are your parents?"
Morning shrank, sinking to her haunches and looking ready to implode as to not be seen.
Umbra gently pet Morning's side. "I don't think she has one anymore... I think we took care of that."
Cadance's ears danced atop her head. "Took care of that?! I am not in the habit of 'taking care' of any pony's parents in any way that would leave a foal behind. Explain?"
Umbra curled the petting hoof at herself. "If it helps, I was involved. That big fight, all the shadow monsters?"
Cadance frowned at the memory, but also confusion. "That filly is not a shadow monster."
"Am too!" hotly defended Morning. "Fearsome, you admitted it already."
Umbra suddenly hugged Morning close. "She is, and so am I... She's just a foal, like you said. I can't just abandon her..."
Cadance flopped in place, taking a biscuit to chew on. "So... Are you taking care of her? That's a big responsibility."
Umbra tensed. Crap. "Um..." She turned Morning to face her. "Hey... Just checking, but if I did offer to take you in, what would you say?"
Morning blinked with wide eyes. "I thought you had already. Do you want me to go?" Her ears wilted. "I can if you want."
Umbra imagined Morning back in a new alleyway, fearfully hiding from a world she didn't comprehend and didn't like her. "N-no! But... I have a girlfriend, and I should talk to her before I make these kinds of decisions. I was just making sure you wanted it."
Umbra willed Morning up to her back as she stood. "In fact, now's a fine time. Want to meet someone else that can shapeshift and is awesome?"
"Oooo." That caught Morning's attention solidly. "Yes."
Cadance waved at the departing two. "Best of luck." She squinted a little, peering at the connection between them, so very thin, but new, and brightly colored. Perhaps it would grow, given time. Was that the best case? She wasn't going to stop a mare from caring for a foal... "Good luck," she repeated, quietly, the others already gone.
Umbra descended the steps. "Now, I should note, you should eat about three times a day. Your stomach will probably start growling when you get hungry." She flicked an ear back to her new filly friend. "Ever feel that?"
"Yes. The monsters inside me are angry I haven't been enough of a monster on the outside to feed them."
Umbra considered that. "That isn't an awful summary, but eating things like in that room will also make them calm down. And they're helpless and can't complain as you torment them."
Morning clapped eagerly at that idea. "Helpless victims! Poor things." She chuckled darkly, but was still smiling with bright and young cheerfulness. "Let's meet your friend."
"Let's." Umbra walked along at a bounce, Morning bouncing on her with little giggles. "This is where she lives." Umbra waved at the cozy little house, made of crystal as most houses were in that city. "Shifting!"
A window popped open outwards and Shifting Prism poked her head free. "Yeah? Oh, hey!" She waved excitedly at Umbra. "You have a little something..." She waved that hoof at the top of her own head.
Umbra glanced back. "Oh no, how did that get stuck up there? Can you help me out?"
"On it." Shifting closed the window and things were quiet just a moment before she burst out of her door, hurrying over to Umbra. "Hmm..." She reached with her bat wings, plucking up the little filly. "There... we go. All free." She set Morning down gently. "Who are you?"
"Morning Dew." Morning stood proudly. "And you're mom's girlfriend."
Umbra colored swiftly. "Hey! We're here to discuss if that's a thing. Don't just assume. Um... Not how I planned to get into that..."
Shifting inclined her head at the little filly. "We... didn't do the thing that makes foals... so... how?"
Umbra laughed hysterically. "Kids, right? They say the darndest things." She drew Morning close, hugging them from behind in her lap, or what passed for a lap in any creature that sat on their haunches. "Morning here is a shadow critter, an umbrum. She's also a shapeshifter, who taught me to shapeshift... So there's that."
Shifting blinked dumbly. "No!"
"Yep."
Shifting hiked a brow. "I don't meant to doubt you, but prove it."
Umbra considered how to do that. "Morning, how much control do I have over what I 'hide' as?"
"You can hide as anything nice and innocent looking." She cupped her face in her hooves, giving the biggest, most innocent, eyes. "All the better to fool our victims."
Shifting peered at the filly. "So we're both shapeshifting predators... wow... I still want to see this."
Umbra sifted through her imagination. That? No. That? Oh hell no... That? She held the image in her mind, imagining stepping into it like a suit, covering her entirely.
Shifting gasped. "Wow!" She raced up to Umbra, circling her rapidly. "What... are you?"
"A bear, smarter than the average." She, er, he? adjusted the tie he hadn't been wearing before. The tie was made of the same wafting energy that made up Morning's mane and tail. He was an umbrum cartoonish bear. "Adorable?"
"So adorable." Shifting grabbed Umbra in a firm hug. "I'm so happy! We're so much closer now. I thought you'd never know what it was like to be... this..." She waved at herself.
Morning peered at Shifting. "Are you hiding?"
Shifting Prism perked her ears. "Hiding? Um, yes, actually. I don't need to anymore... I bet you don't either. Umbra wouldn't let anything bad happen to you. She's awesome like that. I'm a changeling, ever hear of that?"
Morning shook her head quickly. "I'm an umbrum. Ever hear of that?"
Shifting returned the shaking. "We have a lot to learn about each other then. Are you alright being both our child? If you become hers, then you become mine, because we're a thing." She wagged a hoof between herself and Umbra meaningfully. "And I don't plan to give that up."
Umbra sagged with a sigh of relief. "You're alright with it then?"
Shifting leaned in at the little filly. "I'm actually pretty excited. A child that's already... past all the super awkward parts? That's pretty neat in my book. Way better than the other way."
Umbra casually placed a milk bottle in Morning's reach. "Well, it's partly my fault she doesn't have her original parents... I don't regret... how that went down, but she doesn't deserve to be caught in that backlash."
"Did you kill them?" Morning turned to gaze on her potential future mother in her silly disguise. "How did it happen?"
Umbra cringed. "So direct..." He returned to being a she, a pony. "They came and attacked, wave after wave of horror that brought the city to its knees." The little filly was smiling, perhaps proud of that image. "We had to fight with all of our might... But we won, and they lost, in the end... I don't want war, but losing it is even worse, so we didn't take that option."
Morning skewed an ear to the side. "At least they died in a very scary way..." As if that made up for it somehow. "Were you frightened?"
"I was very frightened." Umbra nodded slowly. "Wasn't even sure I'd live to see another day... But I had a lot of ponies counting on me. I couldn't give up."