"Thank you both for coming." Umbra nodded at either royal figure. "I will aim to excite and please."
"So formal." Cadance patted Umbra on the shoulder. "Relax. We're just three friends, really. Friends who want to have fun doing what the others' like doing."
Shining was grinning like a foal, excited. "What do you have in mind for today? You haven't told us!"
"Because I'm offering a choice." With a flare of dark magic, three papers appeared in the air. "I can show you some new magic." One paper hovered in closer. "We can check out this umbrum eatery that's been doing well for itself." Another came in to be inspected. "Or, I take you to the tsuki and we get hugged a lot." The third paper literally just had a picture of a big happy tsuki on it, arms spread with a smile.
Shining tapped his chin as his eyes darted from one option to the next. "All good picks... Would you be mad if I suggested one?"
Cadance pawed at him. "Stop that! It's her evening to pick one."
"Just a suggestion! I think she might like it." Shining waved his hooves defensively. "No pressure, honest."
Umbra's eyes flared with her dark power. "Well, now I'm way too curious. What's your idea? These three not cutting it?" She waved a hoof over the three floating papers.
"I was just thinking... One of your interesting quirks is your unique point of view." He went in to touch noses with her cheek. "You have pop references and things we don't even get. So..." He slid in against her. "I was thinking, if you could run an O&O game, we could get a taste of it, with you at the helm."
Umbra erupted into a menacing howl of a laughter. "Really? You want to take a visit to my human world through the lens of adventure?" She banished all three papers in puffs of dark flame that fell to so much ash. "Interesting."
"More than that." Shining clapped his hooves with growing giddiness. "You can show us your monsters. Even things you're pretty sure didn't exist." He twirled towards Cadance. "Doesn't that sound fun? You wanted to join our games."
Cadance put a hoof on his chest and pushed him back several inches. "Calm down. I'm no expert, but this is a lot to put on a pony at the last minute. I suggest we take one of the offers she already has ready. Next time, if she wants, we can try the game."
Umbra willed the papers back in new flashes. "So then, which'll it be? I'm ready for any of these, and it'll be fun! Different fun, but all fun."
Shining waved off the tsuki. "That looks adorable, but perhaps slightly painful. I have to be at work tomorrow."
"Death by hug," gently agreed Cadance with a little smile. "There are worse ways to go. That leaves us with dining out, a reliable option, safe, comfortable... Except there's an umbrum involved that I don't know yet. It may be exciting..." She was musing each thing she said as she thought of it, slowly and considering. "Or, it's magic time. Twilight would be so proud."
Shining's horn glowed in sympathy. "Is that something we can do in one evening?"
"Depends on the spell." Umbra tapped her hooves together. "I can show you the basics. You all know how magic works, right?" Her eyes darted from Shining to Cadance. "I know he's a shield expert. What about you?"
"So, funny thing about that." She reached up to tap at her horn. "This is actually an additional part of me. I have a decent throughput." She bid her horn to glow softly. "But my knowledge of the arcane alphabet could use... work. I barely have time to practice with all the princessing I have to do."
Shining tapped his horn against Cadance's. "Is that something you want to fix? We have a wizard in the family these days."
Cadance smiled gently. "If she wants, but I doubt I'll learn the whole alphabet in one evening. It may not be the fun she was looking for."
Umbra huffed. "No." She threw a hoof wide, darkness exploding over them. Her eyes opened in the darkness, visible despite it. "It would be a pleasure. Come and we will explore a bit of darkness, together." The darkness vanished, leaving Umbra glowering with the smoldering embers of her power. "The least I can do. I know you're putting up with a--"
Cadance popped a hoof right into Umbra's snout. "Put a stop to that right now. You're not a charity case. There may have been a few mistakes, but this isn't about charity. You're here because we like you, end."
Shining drew Cadance's hoof free with his magic. "Be a good shadow pony and we'll make a great family. I think we already do. Speaking of which..." He looked to the side where Flurry was crawling into the room with excited little baby noises. "I think somepony else wants to get their input on this."
Umbra darted towards the little filly. "Look who's being a cute little button." She crouched down and scooped up Flurry Heart in her hooves. "It's my darling little niece!" Great shadow lord or not, she had become so much putty before the big eyes of her 'niece'. "Ooo, you're getting so large!" She buried her face against Flurry, the two giggling with shared joy.
Cadance smiled at the exchange. "That reminds me... We did settle on you going first. Shining's turn, as important as it is, remains a matter of deep curiosity and empathy. Yours, on the other hoof, involves what you are, and have been denied." She curled a hoof to her chin. "I only feel guilty for being a mother, then a father all together, but that unfairness would remain whichever of us went next."
Shining colored at the topic matter. "Y-yeah... Either you'd get to do both first, or I would. Um... Technically... We both already did both."
Cadance blinked at that. "Huh... You're not wrong. But there is a difference, even with our shared feelings, between that and what is happening directly to you."
"Don't worry about them." Umbra balanced Flurry on her snout. "They're just talking about boring adult things."
Flurry squealed in agreement, climbing up along Umbra's nose.
"Boring, right?" She pet at Flurry with her magic carefully. "Don't worry, Aunt Umbra is here."
Cadance chuckled gently. "I love how well they get along. Oh! We didn't decide what we're doing today."
Shining nudged against her. "Yes, we did. We're getting some magic lessons, at least tonight. Next time, maybe some O&O."
"Are you ready?!" Umbra whirled on them, wearing a hat composed of wispy shadows. Flurry poked free of the flimsy construct, giggling. "Because I'm bringing the magic tonight! We're going to start right where most pony teachers avoid. You're learning shadow runes first." She carefully set Flurry into Cadance's ready hooves. "Now, shadow magic gets a lot of reputation for being all about dark and terrible things, which is just mean phrasing to start with."
Shining rubbed at his cheek. "I don't know any shadow runes..."
"Glad you asked!" Not that anything had been asked yet. She painted an image with her magic, but the colors were wrong, inverted exactly. "For every up, there is a down. For every light, a shadow. That's just natural. Down isn't evil, or you couldn't get to your basement. Dark isn't evil, you can get a lot done in the dark that's harder in the light, sleep being the most obvious." The image was glimmering with dark pulses, a rune. "This is shadow, the purest, simplest, most direct rune of shadow. It looks like this." She glowed with the dark power, snuffing light around herself in a bubble. "If you focus on it, as you can see, you put out shadow. Makes sense, right? Fire makes heat. Same deal."
Cadance stuck out her tongue, grunting with concentration. Her horn shimmered and sparked, but no darkness came. "I'm not... doing it right."
"Drop your shield." Umbra reached up and took off her tiara. "Let's all feel what the others are feeling."
Cadance and Shining both dropped their guard, able to feel what the others were feeling then. Shining pawed at the air towards Umbra. "How does this help?"
"Because this!" Umbra focused on that rune, playing it over the flute that was her horn. "Feel it."
Cadance grabbed for her horn sympathetically. "Oh! Clever thing... I can... I can feel you doing the magic." She focused on that part of her, the part that was Umbra. "Interesting... I didn't really consider this talent being used this way, but it makes a lot of sense now that I've seen, and felt, it."
Shining's magic shifted from his natural colors to the dark purples and greens of the shadow magic as light dimmed around him, sucked dry by his expression of the new rune. "Woah... That feels... really strange. Not sure I like it."
Umbra pointed up at her own glowing horn. "That's alright. As has been brought to my attention, ponies are creatures of light. That doesn't mean you can't use shadow, but it's not your default." With a bright flash, Umbra flipped from shadow to light magic, bathing the area in brilliance. "I'm a shadow creature, but here I am, lighting up the place. If I can do this." She pointed all the harder. "You can do shadow. It's not the default, but it won't kill either of us. Like a pony speaking backwards, it's just odd, not harmful."
Flurry did her best to speak backwards, not that she could speak frontwards, mostly just babbling along and reaching towards the magic all her caregivers were putting out. She squealed, her horn glowing with its own magic, though it was light, not shadow.
"Such a talented little wizard you are." Umbra took a break to squish the cheeks of Flurry. "You'll be so good at this! I can't wait to start your lessons."
Cadance clenched her teeth with concentration, her glow inverting slowly to shadow as she dimmed the area around herself. "Like... that?" With a pop, the lights went out entirely, neither dark nor bright. "Oops."
Umbra nodded at Cadance. "Don't be discouraged! You had it. The only step missing is practice. Trust me when I say this, practice is, basically, the whole part of it. Listen, read, then practice a lot." She clapped with a big smile. "You two should be super proud. You both managed it. You made shadow. Practice is all that keeps you from doing it whenever you want to do it."
Shining put out a field of darkness, horn glowing invertedly. "But this is just the first rune, right?"
"The first, not the last." Umbra slid from one shadow rune to the next, showing them all off. "But don't worry about that right now. One at a time. I won't even show you the other ones until--"
"--You just did." Cadance tried to make the second rune, to no avail. "You showed us."
Umbra clopped a hoof on her forehead beside her horn. "Stop that! Clever students. Work on the first one. When you got that down, we can move on. Learn the letters, then we get to the fun part! I want to get to the fun part, promise. I'm not that kind of teacher."
Shining leaned in. "What kind of teacher are you?"
"The kind that will swat your bottom if you're bad... or maybe if you're good and you ask nicely." Umbra winked at Shining. "Perv." She looked back to Cadance. "Seriously, just practice the first one, get used to it, and the others will come so much more easily. I had to do the same thing for light runes."
Cadance focused on getting the shadow magic flowing anew. "I will... do my best. Shining?"
"Working!" He was holding up his hooves, a bubble between them, his specialty. Inside the bubble, darkness with flashes of purple and green shadow magic.
Umbra swatted at him. "Is this what teaching me is like? Get the basics down before you get fancy!"