Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Hoofprints

Rainbow Dash bit into a savory sugar apple and hummed in delight. Breakfast was so much better when she didn’t have a simple bland meal of grass and water to look forward to. The fresh fruit that she and Rarity had picked yesterday was already paying off. And there was so much of it, too! Even if they picked four basketfuls every week, there were so many fruiting trees on the south hill that they’d never run out.

A set of claws tightened around her shoulder, and Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Here,” she said, picking up a star apple and showing it to Chirp, who was perched on her shoulder. The macaw gladly took the fruit and began working on the rind, and Rainbow went back to her own breakfast. “You’re gonna be so friggin’ fat,” she teased the bird as she plucked off another few cloves of the sugar apple. “I wonder how you even survived without ponies like us to give you free food.”

The macaw cooed between bites of its meal and playfully ran its beak through Rainbow’s mane. Giggling, Rainbow patted the bird on the head. “Yeah, yeah, love you too, Chirp.”

Palm fronds shifted behind her, and Rainbow craned her neck around to see Rarity staggering out of the shelter. Smirking, she scooped up a sugar apple and flung it at her. “Think fast!”

“Thi—waghh!” Rarity fell onto her haunches as the fruit struck her horn. Rainbow immediately burst out laughing, laughter which redoubled when she saw that she’d managed to impale the fruit on Rarity’s horn. Rarity frowned and pulled the fruit off, doing her best to wipe some of the juices out of her mane. “Rainbow! Not funny!”

“To you, maybe,” Rainbow snickered. Patting the sand next to her, she took another bite of her breakfast. “Mmmf… good morning, by the way.”

Rarity sighed and sat down next to Rainbow. “Yes, good morning. I would appreciate it if you used your words first next time instead of fruit.”

Rainbow giggled again and plucked the last few cloves off of the sugar apple’s core. “I warned you to think fast.”

“Thinking fast is the last thing I can possibly do after waking up from another poor night’s sleep on sand and palm fronds,” Rarity grumbled. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have a proper mattress to sleep on, even something as simple as a twin!”

“I was gonna ask you how you slept, but I guess you answered that already.”

“Feh, darling.”

Rarity began working on her breakfast, smiling and letting out a little satisfied grunt. “Oh, this is so much better than grass.”

“I know, right?” Rainbow leaned forward to get a few star apples out of the basket, accidentally upsetting Chirp on her shoulder. The macaw squawked at her and flew over to the shelter to finish its meal on a more stable perch. “Sorry, Chirp.”

“I’m glad my little exploration found these,” Rarity said. After finishing off the fruit, she looked off toward the west. “Say, Rainbow, did you hear anything unusual last night?”

Rainbow blinked mid-bite. “Uhhh… no? I was out cold.”

“Of course you were.” She picked up another sugar apple but could only bring herself to nibble on a clove. “I’m not sure if I was dreaming or not. It might have been nothing, for all I know. It sounded like a fair bit of hooting and hollering, though, coming from the west.”

“I’d think if there was anypony else on this island we would’ve run into them by now,” Rainbow said. “We weren’t exactly the quietest two nights ago when we knocked out that champagne bottle.”

“I suppose you have a point.” Rarity grunted as she put her sore hooves under her and stood up once more. “But the west side of the island is the only side we haven’t explored yet. Maybe we should do that quickly?”

“Eh, sure.” Rainbow groaned and stood up next to Rarity, adjusting the sling around her wing and barrel with her teeth. “Gonna need to change this thing when we get back,” she muttered. “All that splashing around yesterday really messed it up.”

“If you want to change it now, there’s no rush, darling.”

Rainbow shrugged. “I need to get some more vines for it. Might as well just pick them up on the way back.”

Rarity nodded and fell in by Rainbow’s side. After a brief drink from their pot of clean water, the two friends set off into the island. Chirp alighted on Rarity’s shoulders this time, and she smiled and nuzzled the bird as they skirted the edge of the pond. All around them, the birds sang their morning songs and flitted from branch to branch, and a few rodents skittered through the low grasses and sands, fleeing from their advance.

The west side of the island was much like the north and east: low, flat, sandy, and decorated with palm trees. But as they got to the shore, they noticed that the waves seemed weaker here. Maybe a hundred feet out from the beach, a long sandbar rested just beneath the water’s surface, breaking up the tide before it hit the beach. The intermediate water was deceptively calm and still as a result, and shallow enough that Rainbow could just barely note the hazy shape of the sandy floor. The shoreline itself was also very straight, running almost in a perfect line from north to south, unlike the more irregular and wavy northern and eastern beaches.

Then Rarity gasped, stealing Rainbow’s attention from the surf. “What is it, Rares?” she asked, trying to see what Rarity was looking at. A split second later, she saw it: churned up sand, blackened sticks, scraps of wilting green leaves.

Rainbow looked up and down the coastline, and even back into the trees a bit, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Frowning, she advanced out of the tree line and onto the beach itself, immediately making her way toward the charred sticks jutting out of the sand. It didn’t take an expert to recognize the remains of a fresh fire, and the sand all around the firepit was churned up. Somepony—or several someponies, rather—had been moving around on the beach very recently. Recently enough that high tide hadn’t washed away the hoofprints, yet.

“There were other ponies here?” Rarity asked. Circling around the charcoal, she placed her hoof in one of the hoofprints in the sand. The print dwarfed her alabaster hoof, and she pulled it away in surprise. “And they must’ve been enormous!”

“Then where are they?” Rainbow asked herself. On a hunch, she moved further down to the waterline, and after some looking around, she found what she was looking for. There, in the sand, she saw several groups of prints on either side of a sharp, straight line. The sand in the line was packed down like something heavy had been resting on it.

Rarity saw what Rainbow was looking at and came over. “Is that a boat?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” Rainbow said. Frowning, she looked over the ocean toward the two islands in the west. “And I think I know where they came from.”

“But why would they come here?” Rarity asked. “They can’t be survivors from the Concordia, the hoofprints were too large. Perhaps they’re natives of some kind?” Shuddering, she stepped closer to Rainbow. “Do you think they’re dangerous?”

“If Daring Do has taught me anything… then probably!”

“That is not what I wanted to hear.” Frowning, Rarity looked at the hoofprints in the sand again. “Apart from these hoofprints being rather large, doesn’t something about them seem… off, darling?”

Rainbow cocked her head and examined the prints. “Yeah,” she said. “There aren’t a whole lot of them…”

Rarity looked between the giant prints in the sand and her own hoofprints up and down the beach. “There’s half as many per set,” she murmured to herself. Gasping, she turned to Rainbow. “I think they’re minotaur prints!”

“Minotaurs?” Rainbow asked, digging through the sand. Swallowing hard, she momentarily stopped digging, revealing something ruddy just beneath the surface. “I… I think that makes a lot of sense now, actually.”

Raising an eyebrow, Rarity trotted back to Rainbow. “What is it, darling?” she asked. “What did you—in Celestia’s name!”

Rainbow pawed at the sand a little more, revealing a set of bones. Tiny bits of sinew and flesh still clung to the ends, and the bigger bones themselves had been cracked open for marrow. But what was more was that the bones themselves were hollow, and to Rainbow, she recognized immediately what they were.

“Pegasus wings,” Rainbow said, swallowing hard. “They’re pegasus wings.”

Comments

[Neece]

Dun dun Duuun!

[Elsaack]

Two sexy young mares are stranded alone on a beautiful desert island. Little did they know it was the Land of the Giant Cannibal Minotaurs! ::cheesy hammer horror theme plays::

[RoboRed]

...OH.
...Well that changes things up a little.

[Zaveryn]

Oh no! That isn't good at all. I knew they wouldn't be as safe as they thought they were, but this is reaaally bad.

[PonySage86]

That...... uh....... holy crap.

[Snow]

A few pounds of telekinetic pressure to the right spot on a neck can cause paralysis and/or death, especially if it's sudden. Rarity has exceptional telekinetic control and dexterity, and not too little power either. Bolts of fabric and mannequins are HEAVY. If it ever actually occurred to a unicorn (Rarity in particular) they'd probably be horrfied at how easy it would be to kill something.

[PropMaster]

:( I bet they taste like chicken.

[zaponator]

Oh, gross.