Surviving Sand Island

by The 24th Pegasus

Timber

“Is it finished yet?”

“Hold on, darling, I need to make sure everything’s tight.”

Rainbow watched as Rarity strung a length of braided brown cord around the end of a stick. The seamstress used her magic with incredible precision, delicately knotting and looping the cord around the stone wedge protruding from the end of the wooden shaft. When she was finally finished, she cut off the excess cord with a sharpened seashell and floated the makeshift axe over to Rainbow. “There! That should suit our purposes.”

“Awesome!” Rainbow cradled the tool in her hooves. With Rarity’s help, she finally had what she needed to really begin construction of the raft. Now that she could fell trees and shape the wood, she figured she could get the raft finished in a few days. “I can’t wait to test this thing out!”

“If you want my advice, I’d suggest doing it where we’re going to actually build this raft,” Rarity said. “I am not going to help you drag trees from one side of the island to the other.”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you.” Rainbow stood up and practiced swinging the axe. “Good weight to it, too!” she said when she put it down. “I just hope the head stays on.”

Rarity shrugged. “I did the best with what I could,” she said, glancing at the remains of a discarded coconut husk. “Stripping the fibers and knotting them together by horn will only get us so far. If I had the proper machinery, then I could have made something stronger, but we shall simply have to make use with what we have.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Rares,” Rainbow said. Then, hefting the axe, she eyed the western edge of the island. “I’m gonna see how this thing handles, maybe drop a few trees. You wanna come with?”

“After spending the past several hours doing nothing but fashioning makeshift rope from coconut husks, I suppose a change of pace is welcome.” She stood up and shook the sand off of her coat. “Do lead the way, Rainbow.”

Rainbow snatched the axe in her mouth and trekked into the heart of the island, Rarity only a couple steps behind her. They passed by the lake along the way, where they found Chirp drinking from the water. The colorful macaw fluttered over to them and perched himself on Rainbow’s hindquarters, eying the axe she held in her mouth with apparent distrust.

Rarity giggled. “I don’t think he likes the axe.”

Rainbow grunted, unable to say much with the axe handle in her mouth. She moved the axe head a little closer to Chirp as she looked over her shoulder, and the macaw hissed at it and backed away. Chuckling, Rainbow rolled her eyes and pulled the axe away, letting Chirp settle back down, even if the bird kept one eye trained on the menacing new tool at all times.

They stopped at a copse of trees just inside of the western tree line. Swinging the axe, Rainbow buried the head in the bark of one of the trees and let go. The tool hung from the wood, its head resting in the gouge it bit into the tree. Rainbow stepped back with a satisfied hum and tested the end of the axe with her hoof. “Nice and sturdy! Great work!”

“I certainly put my best into everything I do… even if it is fashioning a crude tool from sticks, stones, and coconuts.” Rarity walked a bit closer to the tree line and peered out over the water. “I don’t see any of those dreadful minotaurs. If you wish to start felling trees, now is probably a good time to start.”

“Sounds good. Let me know if you see anything,” Rainbow said. “The last thing we need is those minotaurs seeing us chop a tree down.”

She bit down on the axe handle and wedged the tool out of the tree. After checking her surroundings for a good angle to drop the tree, she adjusted her attack accordingly and started chopping a triangular wedge out of one side of the tree. Even though she feared on every swing that she’d end up breaking the axe, the tool stayed securely together. Once again, Rarity’s expert crafstmareship left little to no room for disappointment.

It certainly took a beating, though; the coconut timber was surprisingly difficult to cut through, with the outer bark very resistant to Rainbow’s efforts to chop through it. Half the time, she felt like she was trying to cut down a pillar of stone, but she made steady, if slow progress. By the time she was halfway through the trunk, at least twenty minutes had passed, with little breaks in between to rest and relax her jaw.

Rarity sat down at Rainbow’s side during one of these breaks and eyed the notch in the tree. “My, those must be some tough trees,” she observed. “I didn’t think coconut trees were that sturdy.”

“Me neither,” Rainbow grunted. “At least the axe is holding up, though I think I’ll have to sharpen the blade after cutting down just one of these trees. And then we have to cut the tops off, too!” She sighed and leaned back, staring up at the canopy above them. “I wish we had a friggin’ chainsaw. We could just slice through these things in no time at all!”

“We’ll have to make do with what we have,” Rarity said. “At this rate, how long do you think it will take us to make a raft?”

Rainbow sized up the tree trunks. “I don’t know, I’d want to cut down at least ten of these things and string their trunks together. That’ll give us enough for a solid raft. The hard part’s gonna be to tie them all together and get them into the water.” She turned to Rarity. “How much can you lift with your magic?”

“Well… erm, I was able to lift a boulder much bigger than us during Discord’s return without too much trouble.” She rubbed her foreleg. “So… at least a ton, I’d say.”

Rainbow blinked. “Okay, uh, wow. I didn’t think you had that in you. That’s really gonna be helpful.”

“Lifting things with telekinesis is largely straightforward, Rainbow,” Rarity said. “It’s simply a matter of horn efficiency and concentration. I shudder to imagine how much Twilight or Starlight would be able to lift, given their proficiency with magic.”

“Right.” Rainbow stood up again and started walking back toward the tree. “Think you can catch this thing when it falls, then?”

“Why ever would I have to do that?”

“I dunno. Just curious. It’d be pretty impressive if you could.”

Rainbow bit down on the axe handle and swung at the opposite end of the tree from the wedge. Blow by blow, she cut a line through the trunk toward the bit she’d taken out earlier, stopping when she was nearly all the way through. Dropping the axe, she put her hooves on the trunk of the tree and heaved. There was a cracking of wood and rustling of palm leaves, and slowly, the tree began to topple.

A blue aura surrounded it at the last second, preventing it from slamming into the ground. Rainbow’s ears perked, and she looked off to the side to see Rarity frowning in concentration, sweat trickling down her horn. After a few seconds, she grunted and dropped the tree into the sand. “Was that sufficient enough?” she asked Rainbow, panting lightly.

Rainbow grinned and galloped over to hug Rarity. “It was awesome!” she said. “Way to go!”

Rarity smiled faintly and sat down. “Phew!” She wiped her brow between pants. “I already feel exhausted from that. And you want me to be able to move ten of those?”

“It’ll feel like five, honestly, once I cut the tops off,” Rainbow said. “But I know you can do it! You just gotta practice!”

“Practice.” Rarity eyed the trunk lying in the sand. “If you say so. I just don’t want to split my horn again. We won’t make much headway without my magic.”

“Just take it easy,” Rainbow said. “We’ve got one tree down, now only nine to go.” Her wing drooped. “And then I need to shape them all… ugh, this is gonna take forever.”

“We could go back to the vain hope of survival finding us on its own,” Rarity suggested.

“Good point.” Hefting the axe again, Rainbow eyed another tree. If it was going to take forever, might as well get started now.

Comments

[iloveportalz0r]

Can she lift a minotaur?

[zaponator]

Cue training montage of Rarity using magic to bench press trees!