Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Sogno di Volare

Rainbow Dash woke up the next morning with a restless itch pricking at her spine. Even though it was still very early and the sun was hardly up over the horizon, she couldn’t bring herself to sit still and go back to sleep. She had to move, had to do something, and unfortunately for her, lying on the fronds next to Rarity simply wasn’t cutting it.

Carefully extracting herself from the tangle of limbs her and Rarity had become over the night, Rainbow rolled off of their bedding and stood up. She stretched each one of her limbs in succession, finishing with her good wing, which fluttered a few times, sending powerful gusts of wind circulating through the hut. She instinctively tried to do the same with her other wing, but it was still bound in vines, preventing her from opening it. Besides, that wind gust alone had made Rarity stir, so Rainbow quickly slipped outside the hut and into the morning light so she wouldn’t wake her.

Once outside, she held her good wing over her eyes to shield them from the sunlight. It promised to be another good day on the island, warm with spotty cumulus cloud coverage to provide nice shady reprieves here and there. At least Rainbow knew she couldn’t get sick of days like that. If there was one good thing about being stranded on a tropical island…

Her tongue smacked against dry lips, and she turned in place to go to the watering hole. Along the way, she passed by their old hut, now Gyro’s shelter, and heard the earth pony snoring away inside. She chuckled and shook her head. Thank Celestia that she wasn’t sharing a room with them, for Rarity’s sake. Rainbow could sleep through anything, but Rarity slept about as light as she weighed. Which, by now, was lighter than Gyro. The mechanic had really bulked up once she had a steady diet again.

When she made it to the spring, she saw Chirp sitting at the edge, dipping his beak into the water for a drink. Grinning, she trotted up to the bird, who regarded her approach with a sideways-tilted head. “Hey, little buddy,” she said, ruffling the macaw’s neck feathers with her hoof. “What’s up?”

Chirp moved and scratched his beak around a few times. “Ello,” he said, and then he pressed his cheek against Rainbow’s hoof.

“Yeah, good morning to you, too,” Rainbow said, scratching him a little more. Then, stopping, she lowered her head and took a drink from the spring as well. When she lifted her head, water dripped from her muzzle, adding more ripples to the wavy surface of the pond. Her pink tongue darted over her lips, and she bent over for a second gulp.

When she stood up again, she frowned and rolled her shoulders. That itchiness that drove her out of bed still wouldn’t go away. She felt like she could run laps around the island and still have energy to spare. It was probably because she hadn’t been doing much of anything as of late. Though she went up to the south hill and back every day just for the exercise, she needed to do something more. If she didn’t, she was worried she was going to explode.

So she smirked at Chirp and took a few steps back. “Come on, Chirp,” she said, grinning at him. “Try and keep up!”

Then she broke off into a gallop without warning, heading for the north end of the island. Chirp squawked in surprise and extended both of his wings as Rainbow dashed off through the undergrowth and across the silty sand, her hooves kicking up sprays of gray behind her. Her heart, strong and confident, resisted the urge to speed up for as long as it could, only beginning to quicken its pulse until she was halfway across the island.

Trees whipped by and her blue body burst through bushes and scraggly undergrowth. Her big pegasus lungs sucked down air and fed it to her hollow bones, holding the air for as long as possible to suck out as much oxygen as she could before exhaling. Her hooves drummed in a steady rhythm across the sand, and her good wing opened and tested the air a few times on instinct. A flash of color appeared in the corner of her vision, and she briefly turned her head to see Chirp flying after her, the macaw weaving in and out of trees and flapping his own impressive wingspan.

Then she hit the beach. The crashing waves appeared in front of her, but she didn’t slow down, not yet. The loose sand here made her hoofing a little treacherous, but she persisted without losing her balance. As soon as her blue hooves touched the harder, damp sand, she bounded once, twice, then three times, launching herself right at the edge of the water. Her hooves splashed down in the surf and she skidded to a stop as the water swelled along her fetlocks.

But the itchiness remained. She wasn’t done yet.

Before the next wave could roll in, before she even had a chance to stop and catch her breath, Rainbow spun around and launched herself back up the beach. Chirp wheeled a wide half-circle above her and pumped his wings some more, once again chasing Rainbow through the heart of the island. When they reached the pond where they started, Rainbow pressed on, her sights set on the south hill.

Now her heart began to thump in her chest and her breathing quickened. An ache settled in her joints and her hooves, but it was a good ache, the kind she got after not pushing herself for too long. She was Rainbow Dash; she needed to be pushing herself. And she hadn’t been doing that lately. But, as she started climbing the hill, that itch still remained.

But Rainbow knew what she had to do.

When she crested the hill, she kept galloping. A quick scan of her surroundings identified the sharpest drop off to the south, and she angled herself in that direction. As she ran, she turned her head around and bit down on the vines holding her wing in place. With a solid tug on the knot tying it together, she sent them uncoiling and unraveling down the length of her body. A flick of her wing was all she needed to shed the last bit, and then she grinned and lowered her head as the edge approached her, both wings held out to her sides, already playing with the air flowing through them. At the last moment, she started to flap them, and she felt gravity begin to lose its grasp on her. It couldn’t hold her for long, and she knew it.

Then her forehooves touched the rock at the edge of the steep slope, and she briefly hesitated her gallop to bring all four of her legs onto the rock at once and launched herself off of it. The air blew through her face as she started to fall down the side of the slope, teasing and tugging at her feathers. She held her wings as straight as she could, cutting through the air like razors, before she forced both of them down in a single, powerful flap. Suddenly, her momentum changed, her gut dropped down out of her throat, and she wasn’t falling. Another flap, and her glide began to pitch up. A third, and she started to climb that invisible, untouchable staircase in the sky that only pegasi knew how to use.

And just like that, her restlessness evaporated. As she pulled away from the island, one steady wingbeat at a time, she felt her spirit soar along with her body. She could fly again. She could dart through the air and do things other ponies only dreamed of. She was home.

She couldn’t help but cheer and holler as she climbed higher and higher. This was what she was born to do, and it’d been a long, painful six weeks while her wing was out of commission. But now she was back in her element, back in the sky, and it felt so right. She didn’t stop climbing until an ache in her healed wing made her stop. She knew better than to push herself now, but just the mere joy of being airborne again was enough for her.

From up here, she felt like she could see everything. It wasn’t as high of a flight as Cloudsdale, for example, but it still gave her a good view on the surrounding islands. Below her, her home island was little more than bumpy green bundles of palm trees with gently curving beaches, ending with the horseshoe-like lagoon and its rocky arms just beneath the bald south hill. Their campsite was visible from the air as two squared-off masses of gray and yellow palms in an open sandy clearing. To the northwest of the island, she could barely make out what she thought was their raft beneath some trees, still resting exactly where they’d left it.

She heard a squawk from below her, and she saw Chirp slowly circling about halfway between the treetops and where she hovered in the air. Apparently the macaw didn’t want to fly up as high as Rainbow had and was content to stay somewhere lower to the island, but Rainbow didn’t mind. She was overcome with so many emotions anyway at rediscovering her flight that she didn’t know how to properly respond to that. Instead, with some mix of tears of joy and a wicked grin on her muzzle, Rainbow dived back down to the island, passing the bird along the way.

“Come on, Chirp,” she said as her wings flared, braking her airspeed and slowing her down enough for a good, if rough, landing on the hill. “Let’s go tell the girls!”

Comments

[Flisky]

I'm not expecting pranks, no, not at all. That would be silly.

[Neece]

8592079
The best kind of silly!

But hey, now she has a helluva lot more mobility. She can scout worth shit, too. I can see they not taking much longer to return to equestria, with the trio healed.

[RoboRed]

Alright!

[Enclave2277]

Her big pegasus lungs sucked down air and fed it to her hollow bones, holding the air for as long as possible to suck out as much oxygen as she could before exhaling.

toyark.com/attachments/45248d1508213903-sexy-picard.jpg
"Captain's Log [2017.5.12]: I had the most peculiar erection today..."

[Eyes of Avo]

*looks for next chapter button*

Wha...no it has to be here somewhere, I can't be caught up already! It's too good, I needs more.

[Snow]

Y'know I'm really glad that Rainbow managed that safely. During the buildup I half expected that she'd make it a few meters into the air, then her wing would give out, and she'd fall and fracture her good wing.

[Cold Bolt]

It's so good to see Rainbow finally in the air again! I think my eyes are watering...

I hope you're having as much fun writing this as I am reading it. I just spent two days on an archive binge, and I can't wait for more. Maintaining daily updates is impressive even with a buffer to work with.

[FloydienSlip]

This is huge for the girls.

[geb]

Do you like Sid Meier's Civilization?

[Merula]

Sogno di Volare

[zaponator]

I believe she can fly. Why, I believe she may even be able to touch the sky.

[Eroraf86]

Hay yeah! We are back in business!

[Sidetrack]

I have a working theory that chirp isn't learning to talk but those three are slowly converting there language into macaw.