Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

The Devil Next Door

“Pegasus wings?!”

Rarity scrambled away from the bones in the sand like they were going to hurt her. A wave of nausea rolled over her and she found herself shaking and shuddering. She couldn’t believe it. Those were pony bones in the sand, with pony flesh still clinging to them, leftover tidbits from a meal.

Rainbow kicked sand back over the bones, not wanting to look at them anymore. “There… the meat on the bones was still fresh,” she said. “Whoever they belonged to, they weren’t dead for all that long.”

Rarity squeezed her eyes shut and focused on breathing. Little by little, her mouth stopped salivating and the nausea passed. “Do you think they were from the Concordia?” she asked when she could finally speak again.

“They had to be,” Rainbow said. “That or that pirate freighter. Unless there’s a bunch of native ponies on one of these islands, but I don’t think that’s it.”

“Celestia,” Rarity murmured. “There were other survivors? I can’t believe it…” She swallowed hard. “And now they’re food. They’re food!” Her chest heaved as she started to hyperventilate. “Why, I didn’t even know that minotaurs ate ponies! They could come for us next! We could be the next ones on the menu! I don’t want to be eaten! Oh, Celestia, why couldn’t I have drowned at sea?!”

“Rarity!” Rainbow shouted, startling the unicorn out of her panic. Sitting down in front of Rarity, Rainbow put her hooves on her friend’s cheeks and forced her to make eye contact. “We’re gonna be fine, okay? Those dumb minotaurs won’t find us. They won’t even know we’re here. We just have to be careful about it, okay?”

Rarity nodded and closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said after a few breaths. “Okay, but what do we do?”

Rainbow looked out over the sea and thought things over for a moment. “Alright. Let’s think this through.” She paced over to the marks in the beach from the boat. “The minotaurs don’t live on this island, for whatever reason, otherwise we would’ve run into them already. So that’s good.” Her eyes turned to the two islands to the west. “They’re probably from one or both of those islands, considering the boat landed on this shore. I don’t know about the south one. But I guess it’s a good thing that our camp is on the east side, so there’s less of a chance for them to find us by accident.”

“And what if they do find us?” Rarity asked. “What do we do then?”

“We’ll have to fight, I guess,” Rainbow said, shrugging. “I don’t plan on being made into fried pegasus wings without throwing a few punches and kicks. And once you get your magic back, then they can’t touch us!”

“I’m not sure about that, Rainbow. I’m not much of a fighter.”

Rainbow scoffed and chuckled. “Rares, don’t you remember the wedding at Canterlot? You totally busted some changeling skulls with me, there! Plus, you bucked a manticore in the face and then knocked Applejack into next week when she touched that big rock you were fantasizing about!”

Rarity’s cheeks turned bright red. “One more word out of you and I’ll beat your head into the sand.”

“See! Exactly what I’m talking about!” Smirking, Rainbow helped Rarity stand up. “And then when you get your magic back, you can mess them up that way! You don’t need any fancy spells to go deal with minotaurs! You can like, shoot them with horn lasers or just fling them really friggin’ far with your telekinesis! And then when my wing heals up, they won’t even be able to catch me! We’ll be unstoppable!”

White hooves kicked at the sand for a moment. “I suppose you make a fair point,” Rarity said. “But until such a day comes, and Celestia I pray that that day is never, we should do what we can to lie low. I don’t want to let them know we’re here if we can help it.”

“Yeah, fair point, Rares.” Rainbow shuffled her free wing and fiddled with the sling around her other. “Let’s try to not use fires during the day when they could see the smoke, and we’ll try to stay to the east half of the island. Though I do want to keep an eye on the south and west seas, in case we can get a glimpse of these minotaurs.” Shrugging, she added, “I want to know what we’re up against. Is it just a couple of them? Or, like, a whole army?”

Rarity looked over the hoofprints in the sand. “It only looks like there were a couple here last night. Maybe four?” Her gaze shifted toward the mound of sand over the pegasus bones. “Why would they come here to eat their… erm, meal, instead of on their home islands?”

Rainbow shrugged. “If I knew everything about the minotaurs, then I’d already know how to get off of this stinking place, I’m sure.” She started to walk back toward the center of the island. “Okay, so we’ve got a plan. Good. Now back to the same old, same old.”

“Yes, what next?” Rarity asked, trotting up alongside Rainbow. “You said last night that we should get an SOS signal set up. Any thoughts on that?”

“Well, this changes things a bit,” Rainbow said. Her eyes followed Chirp as he flitted through the trees, occasionally squawking and joining the chorus of birds around them. “I was thinking of making a big ‘SOS’ on the beach, but if there’s minotaurs in boats about, I don’t want them to see it. They’ll know that we’re here, and it’s not gonna do us all that much good if they find us before an airship does.”

Rarity nodded in agreement. “So what then? I don’t imagine us running and jumping around on the beach is going to do much for a passing airship many miles away.”

“A big bonfire, maybe,” Rainbow said.

“But I thought you said that we didn’t want to light fires in case the minotaurs were looking this way?”

“We won’t really have much of a choice,” Rainbow said. “The smoke from a fire would be noticeable to a passing airship, especially if it’s a big enough one. And if they notice a fire, then they’ll come closer and take a look. That’s how we get home.” She swallowed hard. “At least, I hope.”

Rarity bowed her head. “It’s all we can do, I suppose.” Sighing, she looked around as they made it back to their shelter, as if she expected something to have changed in the time that they were gone. “Well, if we’re going to make this bonfire, we’ll need a lot of wood. Shall we get on that?”

“Might as well…”

Comments

[Eroraf86]

For whatever reason, the signal fire idea is giving me flashbacks to Lord of the Flies. *shudders*