• Published 14th Aug 2017
  • 6,133 Views, 2,641 Comments

Surviving Sand Island - The 24th Pegasus



An airship wreck leaves Rainbow Dash and Rarity stranded on a deserted island. Together, they must find a way to survive until help comes—if it comes.

  • ...
36
 2,641
 6,133

PreviousChapters Next
Didn't Bring My Tackle Box

Rainbow hurriedly trotted through the measly trees of the atoll. Her excitement at seeing the siren put some more energy into her step, and now her mind was spinning a thousand miles a minute. If the siren was here, then Rarity had to be here. She had to. And as far as Rainbow figured, the siren would most likely know where she was.

Brushing aside some ferns and drying plants with her wings, Rainbow emerged into the interior of the atoll. But when she looked around for the enormous scaly creature, she was nowhere to be found. There was only water, gently rippling and splashing against the sandy shore, coupled with a few seagulls waddling across the sand.

Blinking, Rainbow rubbed at her eyes. “She’s… gone?” she asked herself. She trotted out into the edge of the water and frowned. It wasn’t all that deep, and only gradually got deeper towards the center. Was it really deep enough to hide a siren? Why would she even go into the water instead of lounging along the shore?

Champagne caught up to her not long after. “This is a bad idea,” Champagne worriedly muttered. “Yes, let’s go toward the big scary fish dragon! Nothing bad will happen from that!”

“It was a siren,” Rainbow said. “And I’ve seen her before.”

“You have?” Champagne asked. “When? How did she not eat you?”

“Well, she never saw me. She sang at my island once and didn’t know we were there. But I’ve seen her around before. And if anything could take Rarity off of that beach and leave a message, it’d be a big siren like her.” Rainbow’s eyes narrowed at the stilling waters of the lagoon. “But she’s not here. She just… disappeared.”

Champagne looked over the water for a bit. “Are you sure she didn’t go into the water? I heard a splash when she went over the trees.” Blinking, she shook her head in awe. “I didn’t think something so big could move like that.”

“Yeah, well, they can fly too, so there’s that.”

“They can fly?!” Champagne’s face paled. “If she decides she wants a tasty snack…”

“I’ll carry you out of here if I have to,” Rainbow said. “I can outfly her, easily.”

“But for how long?”

Rainbow shook her head. “We can’t worry about it. I’m willing to bet my wings that the siren knows where Rarity is.”

“So how are we going to find her?” Champagne asked. “She went under the water.”

“Yeah, but why?” Rainbow frowned and extended her wings. “There has to be something under there. An underwater cave or something?”

She flapped her wings and flew out over the lagoon, Champagne following her close behind. The two pegasi climbed up a little, just enough so that the glare of the sun wouldn’t be in their faces, and looked down. The sand and grit under the water gently fell away into a bowl shape dotted with reefs and populated by a few small fish. At first, Rainbow didn’t see anything interesting about the lay of the land. There didn’t seem to be anywhere for the siren to go.

“What…?” Rainbow wondered aloud. “How could she have just disappeared?”

“She didn’t jump over the entire atoll, did she?” Champagne asked. “You said she could fly!”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t airborne that long. She had to have landed in here.” Swooping down, Rainbow hovered with her hooves just barely above the water. She took several seconds to peer through the sparkling glare of the lagoon, and suddenly gasped aloud. “There! There’s like… a cave or something!”

Champagne dropped down next to Rainbow and tried to look through the water as well. “She went through that? How are we supposed to follow her?”

The cave in question was little more than three rocks propped against each other, but by the depth of the shadows within, Rainbow could tell it went on for some time. Not only that, but the rocks seemed unnatural. Chiseled, even. Their sides were mostly square, and they were more than just haphazardly arranged. Somepony had placed those three large stones together to make that entrance some time ago. Rainbow didn’t know if it was the Ponynesians or the siren who was responsible for it.

Did that matter? Ultimately, no. The important thing was just that there was a cave in the ground, a tunnel, large enough for a siren to pass through, yet sandy and sunken enough to be practically unnoticeable from the air. It didn’t help that the rocks were covered in colorful and swaying coral. The camouflage was impressive, and Rainbow considered herself lucky that she’d even spotted it in the first place.

But now she’d reached the second part of the problem. How were they supposed to follow her? Champagne had been right in asking that question. With something like that leading down into the earth, the chances that they’d be able to swim it were slim to none. Unless it made a quick bend into a trapped pocket of air, that tunnel was little more than an easy way to swim to their graves. Rainbow wished she could change into a seapony at will like the hippogriffs could; so many problems since coming here could have easily been solved with fins and gills.

“We can’t get in there, can we?” Champagne asked. “We’d never make it.”

“No, we wouldn’t.” Rainbow shook her head and frowned, glaring at the tunnel. “If the siren even went in that tunnel, then we can’t follow her. We can’t go to her and ask her about Rarity. We’re completely at the mercy of her whims.”

Champagne blinked. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that we can’t do anything but wait.” Rainbow drifted back to the shore and sat down facing the lagoon. “Eventually, she’s gotta come back out of there. And when she does, I’ll be waiting for her. I’m fast enough to intercept her before she makes it to the ocean and starts swimming away. I’ll get my answers from her one way or another.”

The Prench mare slowly nodded her head. “If you say so. I would be careful, though. We still don’t know if we can trust her to not eat us.”

Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah, good point, but I’m still gonna talk to her. She knows where Rarity is; I’m sure of it.” Then, sighing, she pushed her hooves through the sand around her. “Why don’t you bring over our supplies, alright? We’ve probably got a while to wait.”

PreviousChapters Next