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// Chapter the Third: Civilization 
// Story: The Bigger Pony 
// by Kiernan 
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"All this mud everywhere, you'd think it had rained recently."

Rarity had still not stopped complaining about the situation, and Rainbow had picked up the pace to try to find the blockage and clear it. She was still parched, and not shy about saying so, but with the water still up and stagnant, she didn't want to go in. There was nothing Rainbow could do until the blockage was removed, and Rarity probably wasn't going to help with that, either.

"What do you think blocked the water?" she asked, her first question in the last five minutes that really seemed to connect to their current situation.

"If I had to guess," sighed Rainbow, glad to actually be able to answer, "I'd say a tree. Either one fell and blocked the path, or some of these fronds fell down to act as a plug, or some roots swelled up, something like that. I don't think it was put here by beavers or made by ponies. Ponies would have built walls closer to it and let a basin fill up, and I haven't seen any signs of beavers, like chewed trees and such."

"If there are beavers, I wonder if we could channel our inner Fluttershy and convince them to help us. I wager she'd be invaluable here."

It was a long few minutes before they came to a section of land that seemed to slope down away from the pond. A very slow, but visible current drifted past their hooves from the pond toward what must have been the shore. All of the grass was matted to one side, meaning they must be coming closer. 

Sure enough, through a wall of shrubs just a bit past this, there were clear markings of a river that flowed through a hole in a large stone. Except it didn't. Two palm trees had fallen in front of it, and several shrub branches and palm fronds had clogged it all up, and the bed was dry for several metres until the spillover rejoined it.

"This here's the problem," nodded Rainbow, gesturing to it. "I told you it was probably a tree."

"So now what?"

"Now, we have to move all of this rubble."

Rarity groaned. "I don't suppose you have an excavator?"

Rainbow shook her head and waded into the water. She began tossing palm fronds out of the way, picking up shrubs that had washed into the blockage and tossing them onto the spillway. A few of them washed off and slipped down the riverbed, but there was nothing she could do about that. 

"That's just going further downstream," noted Rarity. "What if those fronds end up caught again? We'd just end up flooding out another section, lower down the way."

"If you're not going to help, can you at least stop complaining?"

Rarity scoffed and walked off, making her way down the river. The thick foliage meant that Rainbow lost sight of her right away. Why couldn't Rarity understand that she was only trying to help her? She'd been so insistent that she was thirsty, parched, even, and Rainbow's attempt to clear all the mud away so she could drink was being treated as an inconvenience.

Rainbow pulled off frond after frond, tossing them to the side. The more she pulled off, the more water flowed through, until the force of the water being pushed through by its own weight was so massive that she was practically stuck against the trunks. If she were to try walking out into the pond, she'd just be sucked right back to the logs. In fact, the pressure was so intense that, if she were not braced against it, she may have very well been sucked between the logs and spat downriver.

She crawled sideways to the broken section of trunk of the topmost tree and used it to climb out of the water. The surface had dropped a good four or five centimetres, and that number promised to keep climbing for a bit as more and more water rushed out of the dam. There was too much pressure for her to still be working in there, and she was exhausted. 

"There's no chance of it blocking up again until the delta," came Rarity's voice behind her. She turned around, and despite the fact that they had arrived with only the debris they had been floating on, she was now sporting four brand new saddlebags. Really, they were baskets made from vines she'd found that had been tied and braided together and placed on her back. She'd even taken the time to weave a pattern of a single diamond on either side of one pair and a lightning bolt on either side of the other. "Unless, of course, another tree falls across the stream and blocks it off."

"You know those won't hold water, right?"

"They're not meant to," answered Rarity. "Yours is full of rocks, actually." She slid it off of her flank and onto the ground.

"Why?"

Rarity looked shocked. "Now, Rainbow, wasn't it you who was insisting that we had to live here until we had the capacity to go home? We need rocks and clay for our fire pit. I actually found a clay deposit just downstream that looks pretty clean. Once we have the pit, we'll need wood to fuel it, some way to light it, some method of clearing a path from the beach we washed up on back to this water source, and all kinds of other things. I doubt you have a tent, so odds are we'll have to make one, but I've been thinking about that, too. That wooden slab we came in on can make up one wall, and the vines downstream make for a pretty sturdy construction once woven. After all, they managed to hold their shape pretty well carrying a bunch of rocks all the way up here. If they make it back to the beach without spilling everywhere, they're probably sturdy enough to build a tent out of."

"Hang on," huffed Rainbow, putting her hooves up. "Do we really need a firepit? What are we going to use it for? We just need to survive. We're not hosting cocktails or roasting marshmallows."

In response to Rainbow's scowl at the thought of unnecessary work, Rarity smiled. "I have a reason. You're going to love it when you see it."

Rainbow folded her hooves. "I'm not lifting a single rock until you tell me what the plan is. I'll stand behind building a shelter, and I'll agree that having a clearly marked path to fresh water is a good idea, but if it's your goal to convince me to haul several baskets of rocks and clay across the island, I'm going to need to hear a good reason."

Rarity sighed. "I was going to save it for a surprise, but fine. Since you need to know so badly..." she reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a big green fruit. "Coconuts are much easier to work with once cooked."