Celestia laughed in gentle melodious noise. "What an answer... Very well. I would suggest you move quickly, before the mirror decides to close itself." She brought down a hoof in front of Morning. "I will keep watch over her."

Morning frowned at the large ruler. "I can watch myself. I will wait until she returns."

Celestia inclined her head at the monstrous filly. "I hope this is the case, but if she becomes stuck for a time, you will need a caretaker, at least for a little while."

Umbra took a step towards the mirror. "That sounds like I'm allowed. Morning, be good. If things go wrong, I'll owe you a special something when I get back."

"I will hold you to that," calmly assured Morning, watching as Umbra slipped through the mirror, stepping into it. The entire thing became a swirling mass, facilitating the transfer? But it remained there. They would not be able to watch Umbra's journey.

Celestia sighed gently. "This is how we learned that imbalances are made. So long as she is there, it will remain like this, a demonstration that the delicate balance is skewed. Like a tapped pond of water, it becomes impossible to see through."

They would have to wait to see if things worked out.

Umbra fell between worlds. She was far more aware than the first time she had done it. Colors beyond her knowing flashed before her eyes, but it felt like her eyes weren't quite there, detached from her body as she plumetted. Screaming felt like a good option, but she held that back.

Forever, or an instant, she couldn't say which, but she landed in cold snow with a crunch. She scrambled up to all fours and discovered quickly that felt odd and wrong. She raised a gloved hand into view. "Oh." She had become a human, like the last time she visited a human world.

Like riding a bicycle, she got herself to two legs with just a little wobble. "Right, right..." The wind blew harsh and cold, making her hoodie flutter in its attempt to shield her. "This is too damn cold..." But she could see that distant fire and started towards it at a light jog. A jog would help her make more heat, right? Maybe? She tried it.

On the plus side, no sweat! On the negative, she was breathing in more frigid air, and that hurt. Okay, maybe less running... She slowed to a power walk, putting her breathing on manual to slow it down as well.

"Who?" came a voice from the fire. A male? They stood up, snow crunching under their feet. "How?" They gaped at Umbra coming in out of the storm into the relative peace of the fire. "This is... impossible."

"Hi." She waved as she hurried to sit next to that warm blaze. "It is very cold."

"It is very cold," he agreed, sitting with her next to the fire. "And you shouldn't be here..."

"Nope." She didn't argue that. "Are you alright?"

"Am I alright?" He waved at himself. "Me? I was raised here. What's your excuse?"

Umbra inclined her head at him slowly. "So... are you the last?"

"Last what?" He seemed to have accepted her being there, huddling in with the fire.

"Human." Umbra pointed at him. "Two hands, two legs, you know..."

He took a ragged breath, steam misting out with the release. "Can't be." He looked at her, staring. "Either you're one too, or there won't be any shortly."

Umbra flinched faintly, hearing the cold resignation in that voice. "Wow... What happened? Up to sharing?"

"You should know, either way." He swung his backpack around and dug in it. "If this is a last dinner, want something?" He dug out a tin, not sealed, apparently just used as storage as he set out the food within. A meaty mixture? He was fishing out a pan to cook it on, too.

Umbra wanted to flip an ear back, but human ears generally were not built for that, and hers remained where it started. "This is going to sound impossible, but I am a visitor from another place, or possibility, couldn't say for sure which. Maybe time? Kinda hope not that. Either way, outsider."

He emptied out the container onto the pan, soft sizzles greeting the approach of cooked food. "That so? You picked a strange place to visit... You want the story? Fine. Maybe something will remember it." He slackened with resignation. "They have stories where you come from? I heard they used to be real good at them. So good they made things to share them with people they'd never meet."

"Like Television?" proposed Umbra, sniffing gently at the rising scent of the food. It smelled nice, whatever it was. Subdued meat eating parts of her perked, wanting some of that, whatever it was.

"You know of that? I thought my grandparents were just making up words." He spilled the contents of the pan back into the tin. That was not sanitary, but he didn't have a lot of other options. "Come closer. Eat."

They were friends? They were friends. At least, Umbra decided that was a sign of that. She slid in closer to the strange man. He was light skinned, but not caucasian. Inuit? What some people called Eskimo. There was no fork, or second plate. Nope, they were doing it the old way. She buried a few fingers in there and took a scoop. "Mmm!" It was as good as her nose had been reporting. "Did you make this?"

"No... That's the last." He sat back, clearly not filling himself. "They came with a gentle promise. They didn't come to conquer us... Why would they? Gods. They could have erased us with a thought, and the planet with us. They didn't need the planet. They didn't need us. But they were lonely. They wanted more gods. They asked if we wanted to join them, and we replied in the most human way possible."

A few possibilities flitted through Umbra's mind, none of them good. She was tempted to blurt out a guess, but she waited for him to continue instead.

"You're a good listener." He pushed the tin into her hands, surrendering it to her entirely. "We plotted and schemed, but they were gods, and we were caught. They threw us to the ground, cast out of heaven. We weren't fit to be gods, so they left us to die, and we're doing that. Cruel... They could have just ended it, but instead they took our hope, and let us consider our mistakes as we passed."

Umbra winced, not feeling hungry for the warm food in the tin she held in her gloved hands. "What'd they do? You make it sound like they didn't just zap anyone."

"Zap? No... Not a person anyway." He pointed up into the sky. "The sun once bathed us in heat, so much that we were inviting it to scorch even brighter and hotter. It may have cooked us in time. It was maybe a joke. A sad joke with a lethal punchline... They solved that problem by stealing the power of the sun. It barely glows, just hot enough to survive, a while, a little while."

Umbra looked around the frozen hellscape, the wind howling past them. "We aren't in the arctic, are we?"

"Only a mad person would try to reach the poles. Father made that clear." He patted the snow beside him. "Only the middle of the world has some heat to live by."

Umbra clenched her teeth. It was cold! The poles had to be lethal, even in winter clothes. Cold enough for even the gas in the air to rain to the ground, perhaps? Cold. They hadn't blasted away the people or their planet, they just casually turned down the sun and left. What a godly thing to do... "I wonder."

"Hm?" He looked at her with curiosity. "What?"

"They could have ended it. I wonder if they were still... hoping you'd come around." She made circles in the air with a free hand, the other still holding the tin. "A last little hope kind of thing."

He smiled at that, lips chapped with the cold he dwelled in. "And how would we do that? We apologize? How?!" He rose up, shivering. "How?! Do we just shout at the sky?" He looked up into the dark howling winds. "We're sorry! We're... sorry." He crashed to his knees, catching himself on his hands, heaving for breath with painful cold air in his lungs. "We're sorry..."

Umbra reached for the man timidly, but he didn't flinch back, so she touched his back and gently rubbed. "I'm sorry..." She realized how that sounded. "For a different reason, but still..."

"If I'm the last." He pushed off the ground, taking a more natural seating position instead of hands and knees. "Then that's it, all of humanity has apologized. That's the best I can do."

"It's all you can do... But you did it. Feel better?" She set the tin aside, hunger entirely gone.

"It's a strange thing... but I do a little." He slapped her on the knee. "Thanks. So... what are you? Are you a god? Am I dead?"

"You wouldn't even believe me..."

"Try me." He smiled then, a true smile. "I spent years sure I was alone, now a pretty lady wanders up to share my last meal with me. I'm dead, or about to be. A story for a story. That's fair, right?"

Did those humans have religions? They surely believed in the idea of godlike beings, but then, so did ponies. That didn't mean they were active theists. The ponies worshipped Celestia, who was alive and could be poked, with permission. "That's a fair trade." She crossed her arms, inching closer to the fire. "I'm a magical horse from another world. A pony, to be specific. Coming here made me what lives on this world, so I'm a human now. When I go back, pony time!"

He scrunched his face at that idea. "When you go back? You can go back then?" A few fingers flexed in the air. "Can... I go with you? Is it warmer than here?"

Umbra lifted her shoulders. "You'd be living with ponies. Do you know what a pony is?"

"No," he admitted without guile. "Tell me? Are they nice? You seem kind so far."

Umbra smiled at that. She was being a good represenative of ponykind. That was a nice feeling. "You have two legs." She pointed to them to be sure of that. "They have four. Those legs end in flat hooves." She clenched her hand and tapped her two balled fists together. "Like this. Ever seen one?"

"I heard stories... I thought they were made up. They say they didn't survive the cold well." The cold didn't treat any of the animals well, clearly, being the last human around. "They talk?"

"Just like I'm doing." Umbra got up to her feet. "Come on. If you're ready, let's start hiking. It took a bit to get here, and it'll close... sometime... Maybe it already closed, don't know, but really hoping that didn't happen."

He scrambled to his feet. "You should have said that before." He threw things into his backpack in a hurry, just abandoning the fire as he started back the way she came. "You don't want to be stuck here, and neither do I."

Together, they started the journey back. "There's this pony, Celestia. She's in charge, and the biggest one, but very very nice. Just be polite and she'll be happy to see you."

"Celestia?" He laughed low at that. "I am saved from the darkened world, brought to a god with the name of the sun? Perhaps you are the mercy of the gods we spurned."

"I'll take that." She had emerged from a rock in the ground. Among the many snow dunes, it stuck out, the one bit of not-white.

But neither of them knew what was coming.

For once, I know exactly what comes. Praise the sun, for it may one day be gone.

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