//------------------------------//
// Silent Mourning 
// Story: Surviving Sand Island 
// by The 24th Pegasus 
//------------------------------//

Rainbow Dash perched on top of a palm tree, the base of the fronds forming a comfortable-enough platform to sit on. Down below her, the life of the island began to return to normal. The birds woke and began to sing to each other, the bugs began to buzz through the humid undergrowth, and the wind changed direction. But Rainbow felt strangely detached from it all.

She hadn’t bothered to wipe away the sticky blood that dried into her coat. It was all that remained of Soft Step that she could carry with her, and maybe she thought that by keeping the blood warm with her own body heat, she was keeping the mare’s spirit alive with her. But the mare was dead inside the shrine, her suffering finally brought to a merciful end by a pirate’s bullet.

The horizon to the east gradually turned from gray to yellow and blue. It wouldn’t be much longer before the sun came up. But Rainbow knew it would never come up again on the mare she was last morning. She’d been broken in more ways than one, defeated in more ways than one, and changed so much she hardly recognized herself. The crimson feathers that now seemed to be a permanent part of her wings were a sign of that. She’d tried tugging on them with her teeth, but they seemed firmly rooted in her wings. Though she didn’t hate the way they looked—quite the opposite, actually—they would always be a reminder of the horrible pain she’d experienced that night, both physically and spiritually. Every time she preened her wings, she knew she would be reminded of all the friends she’d lost and what it had taken just to make it to the next day.

She could still feel the pistol in her wing, even though she’d left it in the shrine when she’d retreated. Guilt plagued her for pulling the trigger, even if it wasn’t her bullet that had killed Soft. Had there really been no other way? Did Soft really have to die to end the nightmare?

She kept searching the horizon for some sign that there had been something else she could do. Instead, it only repeated to her what she already knew. There had been no other way to walk away from the shrine. It was either kill or be killed, and even though she wasn’t the one who killed the mare, she felt drowned in the guilt regardless. She had been so desperate for survival that she’d tried to kill her friend. The only consolation she had was that she had failed.

And for what? Soft Step was dead. Ratchet was dead. Gauze was dead. Melody was dead. So many people had died. So many people had died, and their deaths would all be in vain, because not enough ponies had died. Three of the totems had been given blood, leaving only one that still needed a sacrifice to lower the barrier. The only way to get it to go down was to sacrifice a pegasus heart… like the one beating inside of her chest.

Rainbow held a hoof over her heart. What was one small thing to give so that everypony could go home? She knew she couldn’t ask Champagne or Stargazer or even Jolly Roger to give it all up for everypony else. She could never ask somepony to do something she wouldn’t do herself. And that’s what it came down to. It would be easier to cut out her own heart and let everypony go home than to ask somepony else to do it for her. It would be easier to die so that Rarity could go home than to live with the guilt that somepony else had died for her. Everything was backwards, everything was wrong, and everything was horrible. Soft’s death had not been the end to their troubles she had hoped it would. If anything, it had only made them worse.

“Hey, Rainbow?”

Rainbow’s ears perked at Gyro’s voice coming from somewhere beneath her. She couldn’t actually see the engineer due to the thick palm fronds of the trees, and she didn’t know if Gyro knew exactly where she was either. In any event, she decided to hold still and remain silent in the hopes that the mare would go away and leave her to grieve.

But Gyro didn’t go away; Rainbow could hear her slowly pacing across the floor beneath her. “I know you’re up there somewhere, Rainbow. What… what happened down there? I saw your rainboom, then I saw Champagne fly out with a totem, and Jolly Roger flew in from nowhere and shot his pistol…”

Rainbow felt her throat tighten, but she didn’t say anything. Sighing, Gyro sat down against a tree, the impact of her body on the sand just barely loud enough for Rainbow to hear from her perch. “Anyway, I guess it’s over now, isn’t it?” she continued, maybe still trying to speak to Rainbow, maybe just speaking to herself. “I saw Soft’s body. I guess Jolly shot her. Rarity used her magic to make a staircase into the shrine, and we got everypony out of there. Ratchet and Gauze, too, and even that minotaur chief. But Champagne said something about the unicorn totem being too dangerous to keep near Soft so we left her down there. We took the ponies to the lagoon, and a bunch of minotaurs showed up and took their chief back to our camp. Heh… I guess that’s theirs, now, but they didn’t attack us. So that’s good.”

Nothing. There was no response Rainbow could give that she knew wouldn’t make her feel worse. If she hadn’t cried her tears away over Soft’s corpse, she likely would have started crying now.

Eventually, however, Gyro seemed to yield. The mare grunted as she stood up again, and Rainbow could barely catch a movement of gray through the fronds between them. “Well… I know you probably feel awful, Rainbow, but you should come to the lagoon. Everypony’s waking up again, and they’d all like to see you. You saved them, Rainbow. Your stupid plan saved everypony. So come and see us, okay? We can all grieve together.” When Rainbow didn’t respond, Gyro pulled out one last request. “If nothing else, do it for Rarity. She’s worried about you. And I know nothing would make her feel better than to talk to you again.”

Rainbow almost formed a response, but the words died in her throat before she even made a sound. Instead, silence reigned until Gyro finally gave up and walked away.

Only then did Rainbow find the room for more silent tears.