Rarity dragged a clutch of palm fronds back to their shelter. She held the bitter stems between her teeth while the leaves of the fronds dragged through the sand and dirt. They were already wilting and brown in some spots, but neither her nor Rainbow could prune any fresh fronds from the trees without her magic or Rainbow’s wings. At least these would do to keep the rain out for now.
She knew it was coming; she didn’t have any reason to doubt Rainbow’s prediction, and even if Rainbow wasn’t there, she would’ve known by the deep rumbling of thunder and the way the wind whipped across the sea. The fronds of the palm trees hissed and swayed in the wind, and all the birds on the island had fallen eerily quiet. Even the flies had finally left them alone. That itself made Rarity half-heartedly wish that the rest of her stay on the island would be rainy and breezy if it meant she wouldn’t be just a walking meal for the damn flies.
She emerged from the inner tree line into the sandy hollow her and Rainbow had decided upon to build their shelter in. Rainbow was hard at work at the more sheltered end of the hollow arranging what vines and wood she could find into a small frame for a basic lean-to. As soon as Rainbow saw Rarity, she pointed to two parallel vines running between a few of the trees at the end. “Cool. Let’s get those palm leaves tied into the vines and we’ll have a basic roof. The trees should shelter us from the worst of the wind and the rain.”
Rarity spat out the leaves in front of Rainbow and eyed the gathering clouds above them. “Are you sure the wind won’t just blow this all away?”
“No, but we don’t have much time to make a better shelter,” Rainbow admitted. “Tomorrow I want to see if we can find any driftwood from the Concordia. That’ll help us make a better hut, one that isn’t just two vines and a bunch of leaves tied together.”
“Well, anything is better than being rained on, I suppose,” Rarity said. She picked up a few of the palm fronds and walked to the lower of the two vines. It took her a lot of work, especially since she wasn’t used to using her hooves and mouth for fine manipulation, but she slowly started knotting the stems of the palm fronds into the green vine. She was just happy that it was a thin vine, still young and malleable, otherwise there’d be no way to fasten the fronds into place to make shelter from.
Once she and Rainbow had the stems tied down, they began jamming the second vine between the ends of the fronds to get them to stay in place. That part was easier, and simple tension meant that the fronds would stay put. They then finished the thing off by jamming more fronds into the spaces between others to try to make as much of a waterproof roof as possible.
Which they finished just in time. As Rarity placed the last frond in a gap, her ear twitched as a raindrop struck it. Within moments, a steady patter of rain began falling on their shelter and across the sand, and both Rarity and Rainbow retreated inside their lean-to before it got any harder.
The air was cool and chilly, and Rarity shivered once as traces of the wind made their way under the lean-to and glided over her coat like ice. The roof gently swayed and shook, but the water soon began running off the rear in little streams instead of piercing the fronds. It wasn’t completely waterproof, as Rainbow noticed when a steady drip began falling on her right flank, but it was better than nothing. Especially as the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed around them, and the rain became so heavy they couldn’t see the other end of the little hollow.
“Such a warm welcome to this island,” Rarity muttered. “If I’m going to be stranded in the middle of the sea, I’d at least like to be welcomed with some sun.”
“Probably won’t see much of it for another day or two,” Rainbow said. “Gotta wait for the storm to get out of here.” She sighed and added, “A storm like that is gonna shut down air traffic for a few days. It’ll be a while before anypony gets out here to find us.”
“Hopefully it won’t take too long.” Rarity sighed and shook her head. “So much for my meeting at the Confederacy. I’ll have to have Sassy schedule another whenever I get back. At least I’ve left the boutiques in good hooves for the time being.”
Rainbow chuckled. “I guess there’s some irony in bad weather stopping me from getting to the griffons to talk about the weather,” she said. “Who would have thought?”
Rarity shared in the laughter, but after a second, her mirth was replaced by a pensive concern. “Rainbow,” she asked, “if worst comes to worst and nopony comes for us… you can fly to either Equestria or the Confederacy, right?”
Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck. “Uh… I think that’d be pushing it a stretch, Rares.”
“Oh?” Rarity blinked. “But back in Canterlot, you said that you could cross the ocean on your own.”
“I didn’t say that,” Rainbow said. “I said I could cross the ocean at full bore in two days if I just flew at top speed without stopping. Realistically, it’d take me a lot longer to cross if I have to stop and rest constantly.”
“How long, exactly?”
“I don’t know, Rares,” Rainbow admitted. “But Commander Hurricane’s exodus across the ocean took him like three weeks. He had a lot of pegasi who couldn’t fly as far or as fast with him, but the advance scouts crossed the sea in two weeks. I probably only would have to go half as far, so maybe a week for me? And I need food and supplies, and I need cloud cover the whole way there if I’m going to stop and rest, otherwise I’d just fall into the sea and drown.”
Rarity grimaced. “Oh…”
Rainbow’s nostrils flared in frustration. “Yeah…” She shifted her good wing. “It’s kinda useless to talk about, anyway. My wing’ll take me like four to six weeks to heal. We’re not gonna find help for at least a month unless it finds us first.”
“We’ll make do until then,” Rarity said. Another bout of wind kicked through the hollow, and again, Rarity found herself shivering. She didn’t see Rainbow move at all out of the corner of her eye, and she crossed her forelegs and pouted. “You aren’t cold at all, darling?”
“Nope! I’m a pegasus,” Rainbow said. “We live at high altitude. It’s always colder there than it is on the ground. I mean, not many of us live at ground level in the tropics simply because it’s way too hot for us and our heavier coats.”
Rarity glared into the sand. “What I wouldn’t give to have a coat like yours right now…”
“Heh. Yeah…”
Rarity’s glare made its way from the sand to her friend. It only took maybe five seconds for realization to dawn on Rainbow’s face, and for her to extend her good wing and wrap it around Rarity’s shoulders like a blanket, blocking some of the wind. “Sorry.”
“Apology accepted, darling.”