//------------------------------// // 1 Where Am I? // Story: Twilight and the Lost Islands // by WolvenHeart //------------------------------// "This is a problem," Twilight Sparkle said to herself, gazing out over the Equestrian Sea from the wide beach.  She shifted a hoof in uncomfortable thought, the fine white sand making a quiet grinding sound.  "A big problem." She looked to her left. A short distance further down the beach, where it had come ashore hard, the jumbled wreck of her kitechaser lay, tatters of the parachute-like sail still blowing in the breeze among jumbled ropes. The hull of the small craft stood nearby, broken in half, a large hole under what would be the waterline clearly visible. It was her own fault, she thought, cursing herself and her overconfidence.  You let your over-enthusiasm carry you away without thinking of all the consequences, and now here you are, wrecked on an uncharted land with no rescue in sight. And to top it off your heat is coming. She'd felt the first twinges of it moments ago. "Great!" she huffed, turning from the ocean to look into the forest behind her.  The verdant carpet stretched from the beach for miles, until a dormant volcano broke through in the distance  to push its bare slopes thousands of feet into the sky, nearly scraping the occasional clouds that drifted by. She walked away from the ocean, to the edge of the forest,and into the shade of its overhanging canopy.  She sat amongst the flotsam and jetsam she had gathered from the wreck.  At least she had started stocking the kitechaser for her transoceanic voyage to the land of the griffins, before taking it out on what was supposed to be a test sailing of just a few hours. She planned the short trip so she would be in sight of Maretime Bay's lighthouse the entire time.  Since she'd be in sight of land, why did she need to wait for the magic-amplifying radio that was late in arriving? She needed to get that test sailing done before the autumn winds arrived, shifting towards Equestria, making it impossible to cross to the griffin lands.  This prototype was the start of a project that would make trade between Equestria and the other lands much cheaper and more regularly scheduled than airships could accomplish.  She would scale the test kitechasers up, one after the other, until the production versions could carry ten times the amount of any airship.  It would be a huge leap forward in tying all the lands together in friendship. So she'd jumped aboard and set out on the test, the kite filling with the off-shore breeze and quickly carrying her experimental craft up to speed and out of the harbor, ponies waving to her from the shore and the jetties, excited to see the Princesses’ favorite unicorn in their small fishing village. They didn't get royal visitors, or at least semi-royal visitors, very often. She'd need to speak to Celestia about that when she got back. If she got back.   She banished that thought away as soon as she thought it, shoving it back into the little mind-box where she kept all her fears and feelings of inadequacy locked up and out of the way.  She WOULD get back.  Somehow. There were probably search pegasi and rescue airships out already, trying to find her. The problem was that when she’d gotten a fair distance out of the harbor, the winds suddenly became incredibly heavy and fast off the shore. They took her by surprise, threw her back in the cockpit, and she smacked the back of her head on the combing around its edge hard, knocking her out.  By the time she came around, she was sailing into the sunrise.  Since she’d set out early in the morning, that meant she’d been sailing at least a day, and maybe more. In spite of her headache and nausea, she had gotten herself up and pulled out the charts, taken a sighting of the sun, did the calculations, and it was now apparent that she'd gone faster and farther, much much farther, than she ever had before. She’d been out for four days. She was lucky to be alive. She was off the charts. She couldn’t come around in the strong winds, and she didn’t relish bobbing in the ocean for who knew how long with the kite cut away, so she left it up and kept going.  It looks like I’m taking the transoceanic voyage sooner than I thought!  At least I’m making good time! Then, a few nights later, as she was sleeping, a hard impact threw her from the bed, and before she could get her bearings she was drenched in seawater. Crying out in fear, her ears filled with the terrible, loud sounds of the hull breaking up around her, she managed to pull herself through the floating remnants of her belongings and up out of the hatch to the deck.  She saw that she had come ashore hard on a sandy but firm beach, and she’d done it at speed, shattering her craft. She jumped into the shallow waves swirling around the hull and waded ashore, nearly getting tangled in the ropes and lines leading to the kite that was ripping itself apart on the beach. After flopping her aching body ashore, she rested, and waited a few hours for the tide to go out. It left the remains of the kitechaser stranded high and dry, letting her get back inside to salvage what she could. She had been told by the griffins that there was wide open water between Equestria and their land, but as fast as she was going, she knew she hadn’t reached the home of the griffins - she was days and days from there.  That meant these lands - islands? - were undiscovered.  So she had to hope the rescuers went way out of their usual range and discovered islands nobody in Equestria knew about which was highly unlikely and why was she carrying on this negative train of thought? She pushed them away again. That mind-box was getting pretty full. She looked over what she'd salvaged from the kitechaser.  Half a dozen big bottles of water, a couple of boxes of rations good for long term storage, her saddlebags, some basic tools and other utensils. It wasn't a lot. She would need to start foraging. "The top of that old volcano would be a good place to set up a beacon of some sort, make it easier to find me," she said aloud to herself.  "I can explore the island, forage on the way. Careful Twi, you could lose your mind being isolated and in heat and wind up talking to yourself." She chuckled with the dark humor. "Why did the heat have to come NOW??" she said ruefully, as if she could control when the heat happened.    With a glow of her horn, she floated the saddlebags onto her back, and the supplies into them, and set off inland, towards the peak in the distance.  She hadn't seen any signs of other inhabitants, but it appeared that some sort of natural phenomenon cleared narrow paths in the vegetation. Perhaps it was some odd wind, or more likely some animals like deer.  She refused to ponder that something more dangerous could have done it.  Several hours in, however, she spotted something on a tree along the path, and stopped cold.   The trunk was wrapped several times around with a thin, beaded string.  The unfathomable tokens and colored, polished beads were made of some sort of stone she was unfamiliar with. Hanging from the string was an object that sent chills into her. It was a carving in the shape of a pony skull. More specifically, judging by the hole in its forehead, a unicorn skull. Twi stared at it a few long moments, then gulped, her mind a swirl of consternation, confusion, and questions.  And then her scientific curiosity reasserted itself and she examined the object closer.  The skull carving had runes inscribed. Larger beads periodically spaced along the string also had runes on them. She'd seen something like these runes before, searching her memory until she recalled some fragments of documents from before the time of the Princesses, thousands of years before.  That anything survived from those times was a miracle, but unfortunately it was an incomplete miracle. Nobody, not even the princesses, had been able to decipher them - there just wasn't any context to go by, no document that also had known pony writing on it to match them with. Yet even though she couldn't translate them, she thought she knew what they said: it was a warning. Probably a keep out sign.  This means YOU, unicorn. It made her horn tingle. She sat there on the path, pondering what to do.  There were no crosspaths that she'd seen on her hike up to this point. If she wanted to try to go around, which she wasn't even sure she could, she'd have to go all the way back to the beach.  Looking at the totem on the tree trunk, it looked primitive.  I've been on adventures before, she thought. I've encountered danger. Even the few times I was on my own, I handled it.  I can handle some primitives. Her courage fortified, she got up and continued down the path.   She didn't see the totem sparkle briefly as she passed it by.