//------------------------------// // Another Dawn // Story: Surviving Sand Island // by The 24th Pegasus //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash had pleasant dreams that night. She didn’t really remember what they were, but they probably involved flying. All of her good dreams involved flying. The cold reality of her situation woke her back up the following morning when a gentle lapping of saltwater washed over her nose. Rainbow immediately woke up, flailing and sputtering as her body’s reflexes tried to save her from drowning in a quarter inch of water. After a few seconds of confused thrashing, Rainbow finally fell back on her rump, hooves digging into the damp sand, and managed to catch her breath. “Mmrfff… stupid tide,” she grumbled to herself. Over the course of the night, she must’ve changed positions so her face was to the lagoon, and the rising tide had brought the water right up to her nose. Her coat was covered in sand, and she briefly tried to rub some of the most irritating bits off before giving up on that. Walking through the water would be her best bet, she knew. It’d be a lot simpler as well. So she stood up and trudged her way down to the water. Rarity was still asleep on the shore, a considerable trench worn through the sand around her large siren frame. Not too far away, the ground had been scuffed up from where Rainbow had fallen asleep. She was just glad that Rarity hadn’t accidentally rolled over onto her in the middle of the night. Not only would it have crushed her, but Rarity probably wouldn’t have realized until the following morning. Rainbow decided to file that away for consideration on sleeping with her big scaly marefriend in the future. Getting flattened into pega-paste probably wouldn’t be good for their relationship. After a brief splash through the lagoon to get the worst of the sand out of her coat, Rainbow immediately set her focus on breakfast. While there was some grass a little bit further up the hill she knew she could munch on, there was also an army of sand crabs scuttling across the sand, moving in and out of the lagoon’s waters as they searched for tiny morsels of food. Licking her lips, Rainbow immediately set off after them, using the shallow waters to her advantage to find, trap, and crush the crabs before flipping them into her mouth. She’d been too busy to snack on the crustaceans as of late, but their meat would be good protein for fighting off the atrophy of her wing muscles. A diet of the same three fruits and grass simply didn’t cut it. At least the survivors had food from the Concordia, but that wouldn’t last very long. It wasn’t too much later before Rarity finally began to stir. Her tail started to kick at the water, accidentally dousing Rainbow in a shower of seawater, and her forelegs began to move. A minute later, her eyelids opened, revealing glittery slit sapphires that wandered across the beach before finally settling on her. They shut again as soon as they made eye contact, and Rarity’s scaly brow dropped downward as she groaned. “It’s late, isn’t it?” she asked. “I already know it’s several hours past the dawn.” “Yeah, it’s probably something like that,” Rainbow said, glancing up at the sky. “We needed the sleep I guess.” Rarity slowly lifted her head off of the beach, her jaw quivering as she stretched out taut muscles. “Shame. I wanted to get to see the dawn. I was thinking about swimming out into the sea for a little bit until I could watch the sun rise up from the blue horizon. It would have been a pretty sight.” Rainbow shrugged and took note of the weather: spotty clouds and a thick layer of moisture, promising rain sometime in the next day or two. “It’s another day,” she said. “Another dawn. We’ll have a few more yet, I think.” “Who knows if we’ll be able to enjoy them with the same level of serenity as today,” Rarity said. “We have no idea what we’ll be facing from here on out.” “What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked, fluttering up to her. “We know exactly what we’ll be dealing with. Moon mummies, possibly a few possessed ponies, a masseuse turned into a scary dark alicorn, and an evil moon god spirit thing! Maybe a few minotaurs for good measure! The real headscratcher is figuring out when we’ll have to deal with all this crap.” “When?” Rarity echoed. “Yeah! When!” Rainbow dropped onto Rarity’s nose, making her marefriend flinch. “We know everything that we’ll have to deal with, we just don’t know for sure when we’ll have to deal with it. I mean, yeah, full moon and everything, but that’s mostly just when we think all this crap will go down. Or it could happen on the new moon! We really don’t have any friggin’ idea.” “That’s… not exactly reassuring, is it?” Rarity asked. “I’m not exactly sure what you were attempting to say there, but now I feel worse, not better.” Rainbow blinked. “I don’t really know, to be honest. Just pointing something out, I guess.” She shrugged and idly tapped her hooves on Rarity’s snout. “At least we’re getting to the end of it. One way or another.” “Indeed.” Rarity sighed, the little motion of her head forcing Rainbow to tentatively extend her wings in case she needed to catch herself. “Hopefully we’ll be able to go back to our friends and give them a happy ending to this story.” “Yeah, no kidding.” Rainbow sighed and shook her head. “Jeez, how are the rest of the girls even going to take this? This definitely isn’t a campfire story for the faint of heart.” “I imagine it will take some time to explain it all to them, and certainly not in one sitting. We might need to gloss over some of the darker parts for Fluttershy’s sake.” “She probably wouldn’t take the moon zombies part very well.” “Or the fight with Squall.” “Or the minotaurs.” “Or burying Jetstream.” “Or…” Rainbow blinked. “Jeez, what parts of this story would be good to tell her?” “Maybe the ones with Chirp,” Rarity said, her eyes wandering through the trees. “Though I don’t see the little fellow. I wonder what he’s up to.” Rainbow shrugged. “He’s probably hanging around the camp looking for freebies,” Rainbow said. “I mean, if it’s breakfast time already, then where else would he possibly go?” “Good point.” Rarity turned her attention further inward and rose on her legs. “Then I suppose we’ll find Melody somewhere around there as well. We might as well join our friends and get something to eat before we truly get started with the day.” “Yeah. Way ahead of you.” Rainbow lightly kicked off of Rarity’s snout and hovered in front of her. “I’ll see you on the beach, then.” Rarity nodded. “Yes, that sounds good to me.” “Maybe we’ll find out what happened to the pirate brothers.” “Maybe, indeed.”