I sat in a large room with perfectly carved counters jutting out of the center. Shelves and pantry space were carved into the walls and a strange room with a metal door acted as a single giant freezer and refrigerator. I hurried into the room, grabbing what I could and what didn't stick of preservation or ice burn.

Fruit, hay, strange grasses and plants sat preserved on every shelf. "This is amazing...." I hurried out into the kitchen again, left to enjoy the warm ambient air of the room, my bare body still slightly damp from my slog through the swamp. I knocked a strange red fruit against a counter, causing a loud glassy thud to echo around the room. I looked at the still frozen fruit. "Hmm.... Sombra, where is heat!? Cooker, something!"

I walked out into the next room, a wide dining room with an actual wood dining table spanning end to end. "What? It's the--" Sombra stopped dead as I walked in. "Alright...I've not seen many of your people, now, you're the first I've seen naked, and that, that is horrifying."

I looked down at my naked body, my only addition a pair of thick boots. "What? I left my clothes to dry."

Sombra closed his eyes and groaned. "You know, most mammals let theirs fall back into their sheaths, you, your kind--"

I looked down at myself. "It's not bad.... Do I intimidate you? Sorry, I would have though a horse would have been hung better." I turned back to the kitchen, leaving Sombra's lame body to wait for me. I honestly didn't care what he said, or even how he said it. I was warm, I was about to be fed, and I could shed the thirty pounds of thick clothing I'd been wrapped in for a month.

The freedom helped to soothe my half melted brain. Too long alone, too long frozen, I'd started to lose my mind and no sooner had I stepped in and thrown Sombra on the bed had I realized how mad I was going. "Sombra, can you--"

"What!?"

I set the food down on the counter and stretched my neck. "Sorry!"

"Shut up! I don't care what you're talking about, or what you think you did, but food first!"

I popped my eyes open and hummed. "Fair enough." I stretched my arms and looked around the pantry wall. "What am I looking for?"

"An oven, idiot!"

I looked at the strange shelves and pits carved into the wall. "It's not my fault if I can't recognize an oven in this crystal castle bullshit." I found a metal grate sitting in an alcove with a funnel overhead. "What even is this?! Medieval crap." I slid the metal grate into the alcove, letting it catch on a small ledge on the sides of the wall. "How did any species advance to modern ages...this would have quashed any inspiration for advancement for me."

I looked back to the doorway. "Firewood?"

"Storage-- Are you really having this much trouble!? How is your kind alive!?"

I huffed angrily and leaned my head into the room. "By fucking yours, taking them as wives and lovers, and impregnating them until they do our bidding, now shut up and help me!"

Sombra glared at me from over the long table. "That is a joke...right?"

I shrugged. "To my knowledge the princess of your land has a human husband...and a child half pony half man, assumptions were made, jokes too perhaps."

Sombra's scowl was visible from the fifty feet of the table. "This...disgusts me...."

I slowly walked over. "I'd imagine procreation would be a rather messy subject for you. Surly a king, however gay, would have--"

"I was undying." Sombra glared at me as I sauntered over. "I didn't need succession."

I shrugged and scooped him up, letting him straddle my back just as before. "I don't think it matters then. You might just-- Uh, you may just be a racist."

Sombra snarled at me. "Crossbreeds have always disgusted me. Celestia had several in the centuries I was aware of her. Dragon blooded ponies...are those still around? A menace, all of them."

I carried Sombra into the kitchen. "As opposed to two grown males, naked in a crystal hall."

Sombra nudged my head towards a door buried in the far wall. "You know, it's not so much your nudity I find horrendous, it's the boots. What did I see it called...cow-men, or something along those lines."

I laughed gently and hurried over to the door. Coals and firewood sat neatly binned or stacked. "Cowboy? Well, the boots are odd. But, better to be in soggy boots than to have my flesh freeze to the ground."

"Oh, oh yes, the freezer...." Sombra nodded. "And as much as I wish you a great amount of pain in the near future, you have uses."

I grabbed a few coals and took them back to the basic oven. "Pragmatic. And as much as I would love to turn you in and clear my name, I do think staying here and enjoying the warm would be better for my mental state."

Sombra huffed as I waddled back and set him on the counter. "You seemed rather pent u--"

"Still am." I shook myself and tossed a few coals into the firepit. "Just less impulsive and far less agitated now that freezing to death isn't such an impending danger." I sighed loudly as a nice stack of coal sat in the oven pit. "PTSD from being frozen to death. Never a good time."

"Can you stop speaking that mud language!?"

"Can you suck my dick!?" I swung around to face him. "English is not my first language! Do you realize how difficult it is to process what you're saying in my brain!? I think in German, you say things, I think, then they make sense!"

"If I did would you shut your flapping mouth!?" Sombra screamed, voice echoing down the halls. "I don't care! You speak like a drunk, or some backwater earth pony in the third century!"

I nodded slowly. "So...how they say, elephant in the room, you just agreed to blow me if I shut up?"

"Making a point--"

I threw my hands up. "Alright, and I really don't think I could take you up on that offer." I went back to the fire pit. "Talking is doing more for my brain than sex ever could."

Sombra laid down across the counter and jammed his hooves into his ears. "Well could you at the very least talk about something relevant!?"

I managed to find a flint and work at getting a fire started. "Fine, how would you like a spit roast! There, sex pun and food!"

"Your mind is in the gutter you--"

"You got a boner from a hug!"

We both stared at each other, eyes locked in a heated staring contest. Sombra snorted and turned away. "I did.... The last physical contact I had was several centuries ago, so forgive that."

I bit my lip and went back to trying to light a fire. "Last time I was in that sort of situation I was still in Russia. Konigsberg. Pieces of shit...."

Sombra made a loud clicking noise with his tongue. "You seem, legitimately bitter...."

I managed to start up a small fire, growing quickly as it engulfed a coal. "Because I am. Monsters started policy against what I am. Uh, how say this. Anti homosexual."

Sombra's eye twitched. "Your people truly are horrid creatures aren't they?"

I licked my lips. "Depends on where you go. Poland wasn't terrible. Germany was...interesting. Neatherlands were, uh." I rubbed my face and sat back, my ass cold when placed against the crystal ground. "I saw a man being mounted by a woman, who in turn was being sodomized." I took a deep breath. "I don't think I'm going to go back there."

Sombra looked down at me. "How? How in the love--"

"Strapon." I scratched my head, a deep frown sitting like a sewage plant on a river. "It was green...."

Sombra shook his head slowly. "Not even going to ask."

I nodded. "It was the day men moaning became horrid." I scratched up and down the parting line in my hair. "Forever will that sight be tied to that sound."

"It's never really an attractive thing, moaning."

I watched the fire roar. "It was--"

"Have you ever heard the dying moans of a pony impaled on a lance?" Sombra's face twisted up into the kindest look I'd seen on him. "I say again, moaning is not a pleasant noise."

"I have not." I tossed a few pieces of age old fruit onto the grill. "And I suppose if that is your...frame of reference. No--"

"Mud speak again--"

I slammed my hands down on the counter. "What is mud speak!?"

Sombra rolled his eyes and stretched his still weak legs. "I suppose it's a reference lost on you. You speak an old Earth Pony language. I had it eradicated in my lands, unifying the language was actually something done before I,"- sombra lifted his hooves and made air quotes -"went mad."

I watched the fruit thaw out, the heat warming my stomach, groin, and face. "Well, I cannot judge." I fished the fruit out with a stick and made sure they were safe to touch. "I know your crimes, most of them. Mine, not as bad, but--"

"Cut to the chase. You've been holding it back, and you're twitching at the words."

I looked back over to him. I jammed a piece of fruit onto his horn, sending him cringing away as it stuck. "Three murdered in a Konigsberg church. All three of them politicians passing anti gay agenda." I took a bite of the sweet meal, the flavor rolling over my tongue delightful when backed by my month of eating pickled food. "I'll assume you can figure out who did it."

Sombra's horn fizzled as he tried to get his magic around the fruit on his horn. "I can't get this off.... Why would you do this?!"

"You're not even listening." I leaned against the counter. "Are you?"

"It's stuck on my damn horn! Why would you stick a Wicken on my horn!?" Sombra reached up with his good hoof and tried to shove it off. "You're an anus!"

I looked at the near fresh fruit in my hand. "Perhaps. Maybe next time a little kindness will be shown to my plight."

"Fuck your plight, get this off my head!" Sombra turned to me with teeth bared. "I will eat your heart if you don't show--"

I leveled a tired look at me. "You have an apple jammed against your forehead...are you so crippled that you can't really remove it?"

Sombra grew red. "You think this is a game!?"

I nodded slowly. "I am underground, eating a fake apple, naked, with a horse with the mane of a lion. I do think this is rather absurd, if not a game." I took another bite. "I am also face to face with someone whom I will put to bed. So, yes, it really is a game."

Sombra sighed loudly and lowered his head. "It is going to end in a bed...isn't it?"

I shrugged. "Spartan austerity will eventually end in another Greek past time."

Sombra groaned loudly. "You know the word, austerity, yet you speak like a peasant! What is this...am I dead? Am I in some fever dream drifting out in the snow?"

"I was planning to come to America before Equestria became a prospect." I took a deep breath and turned to the pile of food I'd pulled from the freezer. "Now, will you be fine here? Can I go--"

"Get the damned Wicken off my head before I lose my mind!"

I slammed my fruit against the very tip of his horn. "Better?"

Sombra glared at me with one eye, the other blocked by the kebab on his head. "I'm going to end your life."

"How?"

"I'll find a way."

"Then who will cook for you? Cripples such as you must be tended to." I patted his head and pulled the fruit away. "Now calm down, we have beds. There is no reason to be angry."

Sombra looked up and watched his horn drip. "I can see one very good reason to be angry."

I set the fruit down before his head. "Where? I see food, I see companion, I see beds, I feel warmth." I popped my fingers up. "I see a colt to fit around me, I see a home for years, and again I see a bed."

Sombra breathed very, very slowly. "I suggest you cut the shit--"

"I suggest you stop threatening me. It's starting to lose impact."

"I will fuck your ass!"

"Do it!" I thrust my chest out towards him. "Stand!"

Sombra glared at me, looking me up and down. "Making fun of a hurt stallion make you feel big?"

I crossed my arms and grabbed some frozen hay and a pot. "No--"

"Don't...if you're going to call yourself big, don't. I've seen you, it's...cute." Sombra smiled wide. "Oh, oh, did that hurt?"

I scratched my cheek, my lips turned down hard. "We eat...we sleep...we stop being hateful. Deal?"

Sombra looked off to the door into the hall. "I wasn't being hateful, I was merely stating facts. It is, cute."

I pointed to him, wanting to say something evil. "You're-- I-- We're even...the dick joke, the horn apple, we're even."

"Cook, then you can call us even."

Author's Notes:

Comment? Maybe? Please?