"Oh bother," muttered Caramel, looking about. "It appears that we have washed ashore a small island."
"Yes, it does look that way," agreed the unnamed human.
"But hark!" Caramel cried. "We are not alone!"
Indeed they weren't, for hundreds of waterlogged cabbages had washed ashore with them. Some were still rolling in with the tides.
"So, the ship was apparently carrying cabbages? Like a lot?"
"Yes. We shall not starve. Celestia is merciful!"
"But I hate cabbages, and also, I'm pretty sure I need more than cabbages to survive. I dunno. I'm honestly not too sure. High school biology was a long time ago and to be honest I don't know if we even covered nutrition. It might have been a week-long unit in PE? I don't know. I mean I try to eat a pretty balanced diet, but I'm a Canadian, and Canadians are like Americans but with less excess and more hockey and 'ehs' and so I still probably don't eat very healthily."
"Good Goddess, shut up already. Quit looking a gift horse in the mouth."
"Right. Look, I'm just saying, if it comes down to the worst, I'm probably going to eat you. Just being perfectly honest."
"No, no, I get that," Caramel replied, skipping several thousand words of exposition about the island because the author is tired and lazy and has ADHD. Seriously, if you want to read about pony island survival, readMother of Invention by Zaponator. "But I don't believe we will come to that. You know what I admire about humans?"
"Our ability to switch to a plant-based diet if needed?"
"Oi, shut up about that already. This is a frollicking island, not a prison. There's other stuff here. I'm sure there ought to be some birds or spiders you can eat."
"Spiders?"
"Look, I just said whatever small island creatures came to me first, okay? Can I tell you what I admire about humans, or what?"
"Alright, alright."
"Humans, you are tenacious. Bloody resilient buggers, the whole lot of you."
"Why are you suddenly British, Caramel?"
"Skittish, you mean?"
"Well no, most ponies are skittish, but you seem to have a distinctly British accent that I feel the author probably just tacked on because he likes saying 'oi' and 'bloody'."
"Quite possibly. But I am from Skitland."
"Skitland?"
"Yeah, you know, the main part of the Skittish Isles?"
"Nevermind. Continue with your inspirational speech."
"Right, right. So us ponies, sure we've got a lot of crazy insane monsters and power-hungry ponies--mostly unicorns--mind you and a bloody lot of dark magic running around, but on the flip side, we can control the weather and have really powerful magical artifacts on our side and look I'm going to stop talking about the ponies so I can talk about the humans."
"'K."
"Right, so you humans, you ain't got any of that magic. And while maybe today you have a bunch of fancy dohickies to feed you breakfast and water your plants and what have you, but it wasn't always that way. There were dark times in the past where you scraped and kicked and scrounged just to stay alive!"
"Uh, yeah, I guess."
"Eh, but you did! Ponies, bless us, we would have thrown in the towel and kicked the bucket. We're weak and flip floppy and all sorts of sappy rubbish. But you, humans, you fight. You never give up. You are tenacious. When the going gets tough, you get tougher. You band together to survive, make fire, keep on having hope even when there should be no hope left. You survive!"
"Jimminy crickets, you give us too much credit, Caramel."
"No, no, let me finish my impromptu speech!"
"Look, dude, this isn't The Cay. Or whatever surviving on an island book you want. Island of the Blue Dolphins or whatever. I feel like all the island castaway books I read were in school. Probably because I stopped really reading books after that. Huh."
"Right so..."
"Anyway, this is not some happy fantasy. This is Lord of the Flies. This is probably Battle Royal; I don't know, I've never watched the series."
"The manga is better, in my opinion."
"Caramel, you read Japanese manga?"
"Oi, see, point of familiarity. Not so different, after all, you and I?"
"Shut up. My point is, it's a jungle out there, and you're right humans can be resilient and resourceful, but we get there by being vicious. I'm hungry man. I'm hungry! I do dangerous stuff when I'm hungry!" I... I-I might--"
*SLAP!*
"Oi! You cheeky cranberry! Snap out of it! I know you humans suck at being nice! I'm an anthropologist! Why do you think I was on this blasted ship in the first place? Humans used to kill most of each other in tribal warfare! Okay I don't know about most. Like maybe ten percent. I don't know I'm studying modern humans not your ancestors. That's not my point. My point is that you are a resilient species, and that eating me would be giving up!"
"Ow, you slapped me."
"Yes, yes I did! Look, look around you! This is not a desert island. It is merely a somewhat underfurnished island."
"Yeah, so?"
"So don't eat me! You--and I--we can survive here! Thrive? Maybe not. But survive, yes! Look, it's gotta be what, several square miles? tons of tress, which means there's water. And there is life in those trees. We've heard noises. WE. WILL. SURVIVE! Get your bloody head in the game and out of your arse. You're not going to have to eat me! Also if you try to I'll probably kill you first, but it's not going to come to that, because we are going to survive! IS THAT CLEAR!?"
"Alright, alright! We'll play Robinson Carouso."
"Good, good! Friendship!"
"You ponies are so cheesy."
"And you humans are so uptight. Actually ponies can be quite uptight too. Nevermind. Anyway, look, the author hasn't read the original The Savage Way story, but here, on this island, we have resources. We will survive, and we will get rescued."
"Sounds great. So what about the cabbages? I mean, that's supposed to be the main point of divergence here. It's in the title. The author was surprisingly even able to find relevant cabbage cover art."
"Actually, I hate cabbages too. Really rubbish vegetable, to be honest." Caramel said, as the author added in dialogue tags so things wouldn't get confusing. You know, Super Trampoline, you can't just rely on dialogue all the time. You need details and action and description and whatever you call the stuff that isn't dialogue too. You're using dialogue as a crutch.
"I'm glad we agree on that. But we do have a lot of cabbages here. 576 according to the story description. What should we do with them?
"There are lots of things we can do with them. Chief among these is eat them, for I'd rather be grumpy than starving. I'm pretty sure we could come up with some seasoning and boil them or something. Maybe ferment them and get kimchi. We are ponies--err, people--with options."
"Yes, but I'd rather things not come to that. We can use them to spell out 'HELP' I suppose, though the green doesn't stand out very well against the sand. The purple ones should do nicely though. We can also burn them for warmth and to make a fire people will see so they can come rescue us."
"True, but we're on an island full of vegetation," replied Caramel. "We have plenty of other stuff we can burn besides a known food source."
"Speaking, of, aren't you an earth pony? Can't you do stuff with plants anyway?"
"Well yeah, humans and other races tend to forget what we can do and look down on us . We're like the African Americans of ponies."
"One, I'm Canadian, two, I'm not touching that subject here."
"Fair enough. Yeah, plants aren't really my thing, but I'll see what I can do."
The human and the pony together looked inward towards the somewhat-lush vegetation of the island, then together looked outward towards the vast unknowable, ineffable, uncaring sea.
"We're going to survive, unnamed human."
"Yes we are, arbitrarily chosen horse."
"Pony."
"Fine, pony," said the human.
"Thank you," replied the ~~horse~~ pony.
"You're welcome. So now what?"
"I'm not sure. This was all around pretty lackluster and anticlimactic. I feel like a better and more serious author would have written a better story based on this topic."
"Probably. Who you have in mind?" asked the human.
"I dunno. Horse Voice?"
"Yeah, that's a pretty safe bet. Want a cabbage?"
"Fish and chips, sod off, mate!"
Author's Note
What ever did I do to deserve this? Caramel pondered while building a shelter out of cabbages
