In a Sea of Madness

by Flint-Lock

Rating: everyone
Tags: Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Horror, Adventure
Length: 3718

Twilight and her friends are trapped on a desert island. They're the lucky ones.

One day, Twilight and her friends are transported to a desert island, cut off from the rest of the world by a magical bubble. They are the lucky ones.

written for the 2024 Tropical Post-Apocalyptic Story Contest

Published 2024-07-27 05:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-27 05:20:02 UTC

Day 1

It’s official, we’re stuck here.

I just spent the entire day trying to get a message out to the mainland, wherever that might be. Long-range telepathy spells have failed. Without Spike, I can’t send messages through dragonfire, and attempts to contact Luna through our dreams have proven fruitless. We can’t even send Rainbow Dash out to find civilization; the island- and a good chunk of the surrounding sea- is encased within an impenetrable bubble of magical energy.

Though, considering that the ocean outside the bubble just turned to liquid helium, maybe that’s a good thing.

Day 2

If we’re going to survive on this island, we’re going to do it by the book. As of this moment, I’m forming a provisional government in accordance with Section 4 Subsection 5 of the Equestrian legal code.

AppleJack will be my new minister of Agriculture. Discord left us with a three-month supply of emergency rations, but we’ll need to supplement them with local food, just in case. I hope her apple-farming experience is applicable to coconuts.

Rainbow Dash shall be our new minister of Weather Management. From what I’ve read, tropical islands are susceptible to violent storms, especially this far south. Having a weather pony would give us an advance warning of any incoming storms, help us bust any storm clouds that get too close, and provide a source of fresh water. More importantly, it will keep Rainbow busy. A busy Rainbow is a happy Rainbow.

Fluttershy, being Fluttershy, is to be our new Minister of Wildlife Management. We need to know what’s friendly and what’s deadly fast. My knowledge of tropical plants and animals is limited- I’m the Princess of Friendship, not Biology- so I’ll need her expertise.

Now, for Rarity. We’re going to need some sort of covering to protect us from sunburn and sunstroke. Therefore, I’m designating her as our new Minister of Textiles. Working without a sewing machine or needles will be a challenge, but I know she’ll find a way. A true fashionista always enjoys a challenge.

Finally, there’s Pinkie. I’m afraid she’ll be wearing two hats: She’ll be both our Minister of Food and our Minister of Recreation. She’ll have the unenviable job of keeping us fed, and, most importantly, keeping us sane. I hate to dump all this responsibility on her, but if anypony can stay positive while the laws of physics go haywire, it’s her.

Day 7

Everypony is starting to settle into their new roles.

Coconuts and coconut milk have proven a nutritious, if bland, supplement to our diet, and AppleJack is making sure we have a steady supply of both. Every day, she ensures the trees are healthy, applies “fertilizer,” and harvests the coconuts when they are nice and ripe. Of course, there’s been a bit of a learning curve; as AJ put it, “When an apple falls on yer head, it don’t give ya a concussion.”

Rainbow Dash has been putting her weather team experience to good use. Anytime a usable rain cloud drifts close enough to the Island, she wrangles it, hauls it down to ground level, and “milks” it, topping off our fresh water supply. Even now, her competitive side is coming out. She’s even started making a “game” out of it, challenging herself to break her cloud-busting record, flying upside down, blindfolded, anything to add a little challenge. This is good. it keeps her busy. A busy Dash is a happy Dash.

Fluttershy’s taken to her new role with ease. Already, she’s helped identify several edible species of seaweed and a nasty species of venomous coral venomous species. She even struck up a deal with a local albatross colony, fetching them food in exchange for eggs. Also, she somehow managed to befriend a colony of venomous sea snakes; apparently, they’re pretty friendly once you get to know them.
I’ll…take her word for it.

Rarity has been in her element. As she put it, “If we’re going to survive, we’re going to survive in style!” Using palm leaves, leftover coconut husks, and strands of her own hair, she’s somehow managed to weave sunhats, awnings, and tents that protect us from the sun and look incredibly stylish at the same time.

Then there’s our food supply. Survival rations, albatross eggs, coconuts, and coconut milk are edible, I guess, but hardly delicious(When this is over, I’m outlawing all coconuts).
Enter Pinkie. I don’t know how she does it, but she manages to make our basic food supplies and turn them into delicious stews, soups, and other dishes. I don’t know how you turn hardtack, seaweed, and seagull egg into chocolate-chip muffins and frankly, I don’t care. It’s hardly the weirdest thing on this island.

As for myself, when I’m not raising and lowering the sun, I keep myself busy with numbers. The amount of water each pony gets per day, and how long our supplies will last. Most importantly, I act as the rock everypony can rely on. No matter what happens outside the bubble, I make sure that everypony stays focused.

Make sure that everypony stays calm.

Day 10

I was at a slumber party with the girls when the moon started to melt.

It’d been a busy week. I’d been super busy lately preparing for Celestia and Luna’s upcoming retirement, studying reams upon reams of legal texts, and reviewing the Equestrian legal code After all that, it was good to just hang out with my friends, just like the old times.

We’d been chatting about the latest Daring Do novel, sharing a bowl of popcorn, occasionally I’d scribble something down in this journal. Spike was out with Mac and Discord with their weekly O&O session, so it was just me and the girls.

That’s when Rainbow shouted for us to look outside. We’d dropped whatever we were doing and rushed to the window. Our jaws had dropped. The moon was melting. The pristine silvery orb was smearing itself across the night sky, basaltic rock flowed like soft wax across the void.

For a moment, we’d just stood there, staring at the night sky, watching the moon become a gelatinous glob, and trying to comprehend what we were looking at. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real. It has to be some sort of shared hallucination. That was it, a hallucination.

There was a flash of light and a loud “pop” behind us. We’d turned to see Discord standing in the middle of our circle of sleeping bags, a look of utter panic plastered on his face. Before we could react, he’d muttered something about “No time to explain” and snapped his fingers. The next thing we knew, we were all lying on the shores of some distant tropical island, the tide lapping at our hooves. Off on the horizon, we saw the sun slowly poke over the horizon, only to melt into a swirling, golden cloud

That’s when Rarity started screaming.

Day 41

Discord knew something was coming.

In the days leading up to our little protective exile, Discord had been acting… weirdly, even by his standards.

It had been subtle at first. Bloodshot eyes, a forced smile, constant hand wringing. When we asked what was wrong, he’d just brush it off and try to deflect. We’d tried to brush it off as Discord being Discord, but it was clear that something was wrong.

Over time, his behavior became stranger. During his weekly O and O session, Spike told me that Discord had been unusually agitated. He’d spent most of the time distracted, staring off into space, his eyes following something only he could see. Occasionally he’d be heard muttering “No, it can’t be right.”

From what Fluttershy has told me, it only got worse as the days went by Fluttershy tells me that, the night before we arrived here, Discord had been in a state of near panic. He’d stand motionless for hours without blinking, then he’d start stretching and deforming his body into bizarre shapes, almost too fast to see.

He knew something was coming. Something even he couldn’t stop. So why keep it a secret? Even if we couldn’t have prevented it, we could have warned the Princesses, and maybe come up with some kind of plan?

What if he couldn’t? What if he didn’t want to cause a panic?

What if he had to keep a secret?

Day 67

Today I had some good news for a change.

This morning, I gathered everypony together. I announced to everypony that I’d just received a dream message from Princess Luna. She’s alive! Discord managed to whisk her and the rest of Equestria away to his little pocket dimension before everything went to Tartarus.

AppleJack had been skeptical. She’d asked why Discord hadn’t taken us along with him; why strand us here in the middle of nowhere?

I explained that it was part of Discord’s plan: He was already working to restore reality, but he would need our help. We'd know when the time came.

Everypony cheered. Pinkie got to work on a “We’re not doomed” party.

I’m not lying. I really did see Luna in my dream. Yes, it was only for a moment. Yes, she didn’t actually say anything, but it was her. It had to be a message. Yes, I might have exaggerated a little, maybe fudged a few details, but…but it had to be true. Discord was unfathomably old, he could do it. He had to do it.

Even if I did lie, it was for a good reason. Every pony here was losing hope. It was only a matter of time before we completely broke down. One day, when this madness was over and Equestria was restored, they’ll understand.

Lets hope that "one day" comes soon. This morning, I examined the Bubble. I found a tiny, hair-thin crack on its surface.

Day 8

I’m not really sure where we are.
According to Fluttershy many of the species we’ve identified, such as the sea snakes, are endemic to the Southern Lunar Sea. Unfortunately, that puts us anywhere within a several thousand-mile circle. For a more precise reading, I’ve tried calculating our exact latitude and longitude by using the stars. Every night, I stand on the beach, the surf roaring in my ears as I hold the crudely carved quadrant in front of my face, trying to remember Luna’s lessons about celestial navigation.

As Rainbow likes to say, ‘an Egghead’s gotta egghead.’

Sadly, the sky isn’t cooperating with me. One moment, the stars will be in the right place, and all of the constellations will be perfectly intact. The next, the constellations will be scrambled, as if somepony put all the stars into a box and shook it. Or the sky and the sea might swap places, creating an impossible expanse of water suspended over a bottomless, starry abyss. Or the stars might no longer be stars anymore.

Day 35

The biggest threat to our survival is boredom.

Boredom is a subtle killer. It buries you in monotony, dulls your thoughts, and smothers you in blandness. You start making mistakes: a small rounding error when calculating our daily rations, a coconut harvested a little too early—mistakes that, over time, could prove disastrous.

Even worse, you start thinking about the world outside the Bubble. You start to wonder about our families. Is Spike okay? Are Applebloom and Big Mac still alive? Then you start to worry about the rest of Equestria. What happened to the rest of the world? Is anypony left? Is Discord sheltering them as well? Are we all that’s left?

Once again, our Pink party pony is our savior. A Pinkie a day keeps the Crazy at bay. Together, we’ve come up with ways to stave off boredom: when our chores are done, we might organize a hoofrace around the island, or hold a tournament to decide who is the “Supreme Grand Master of Checkers“ (currently, the title belongs to AppleJack). We’ll hold impromptu concerts, and tell each other stories; heck, we even built a 1:1000 scale model of Canterlot Castle out of sand, driftwood, and seashells!

As Pinkie likes to say :"A party a day keeps the crazy at bay!"

-

Day 40

Day 40

Today, the ocean caught on fire.

I had been in a meeting with the girls, working out a work schedule for the following week, when the sky erupted in a blinding flash of light. The girls and I had reeled, slamming our eyes shut, and covering our faces with our hooves. When our vision finally cleared, the first thing we saw was an ocean covered in flames.

Impossible tongues of flame stretched toward the sky—flames that did not belong in nature. Dancing tongues of pink and bronze. Pillars of emerald green and snow white. Rings of indigo and silver. Flames of colors that didn’t exist in nature. All burning in an eerie silence—no crackling of flame, no roar of air rushing in.

As we watched, sparks the size of houses flew off into the night sky. Some landed on the sea, sending up new flames. A few landed on the Bubble and disappeared in a flash of eye-searing light.

Then, as suddenly as they had arrived, the flames vanished. The sky returned to normal. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

What really surprised me was how nonplussed we all were about the whole event. A month or so ago, we would have just stood there, trying to piece our shattered perceptions of reality back together. Now, we just collectively shrugged and went back to work.

For some reason, this worries me.

Day 50

Yesterday we had a dream.

I’d been calculating our food allotment for the next month when it happened. The previous day, we’d had a bumper crop of coconuts, so I had to readjust my calculations to account for that. At least that was the excuse I gave. Truth be told, I just needed something to keep me busy.

The next thing I knew, I was flying high over Equestria, a disembodied, unwilling observer. Below me…

Below me was utter madness.

Equestria as I knew it was no more. The Everfree forest had been transmuted into a labyrinth of glittering green crystal. Griffonstone was just gone- all that was left was a gaping hole in the universe. Appaloosa had twisted itself into a hypercube. And Ponyville.

Ponyville was the worst. Every store, every house was made of flesh, buttressed with bone, with windows of translucent flesh. Roofs were thatched with hair. Instead of grass, the streets were made of wildly thrashing tongues, frantically licking the air. In the town square, bile bubbled from a fountain made of bone. Populating this nightmare were ponies made of wood, plaster, stone, and brick. Stallions, mares, and foals alike stood motionless. Glass eyes were shot with terror. Carved mouths were frozen in silent screams.

I snapped back to reality to the sound of screaming. It took me a moment to realize it was me

Once we’d shaken off the worst of the dream, the girls and I assembled. As I’d feared, each one had experienced the same waking nightmare.

For a moment, we’d simply stood there, none willing to ask the obvious. Finally, Dash broke the silence.

“Twi…?”

Quickly, I jury-rigged an explanation. It had all been a hallucination. A shared hallucination caused by constant exposure to the Bubble coupled with the stress we’d all been under.

Everypony accepted it without question. That’s right, none of it had been real. It had all been in our heads.

That’s what we told ourselves. None of us were buying it. I wasn’t buying it.

Once again, Pinkie came to the rescue.

“Uh…happy birthday, Dashie!”

Rainbow had tilted her head. “Wait, it’s my birthday?” She’d said.

“It is now!” Pinkie had said, prancing off. “I’ve got a party to plan!”
I’d volunteered to help set up. Everypony else gladly joined in.

All in all, it was a good ‘birthday party’. Pinkie somehow managed to whip up a cake and ice cream from our food supplies(when this ends, I’m going to marry that mare). We played games, sang songs, and had fun.

I’m sure we’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow. After all, it was just a dream—that’s right

Day 53

It’s been two days since the Dream, and we haven’t forgotten it. If anything, it’s becoming sharper- a photograph slowly coming into focus. Each of us is remembering specific details.

AppleJack remembers seeing her farm, Farmhouse, barn, and orchards crushed into a ball the size of her head. Fluttershy saw all of her animal friends “melt” into a meaty sludge.

Rainbow recalled seeing Cloudsdale being devoured by “flesh-eating rainbows”, while Rarity saw her Boutique fly apart and put itself back together in increasingly bizarre shapes.

Pinkie, she hasn’t said anything. Judging from the look on her face whenever I asked, that’s probably for the best.

Day 60

The weather’s taking a turn for the worse.

Before the weather was odd, but otherwise harmless. Now, the storms have gone from anomalous to downright dangerous, they threaten more than just our grasp of reality. Just last week, the Island was engulfed by a strange, green fog that blew out of nowhere. I remember how it stung our noses with every breath, that strange metallic taste in our mouths. The next morning, we woke up in excruciating pain as tiny green pyramids slowly grew out of our skin. The week before that, we were pelted by tangles of razor-sharp wire that fell from an otherwise empty sky.

We’ve tried to adapt. Rainbow is on high alert- the moment she sees anything remotely resembling a storm, she sounds the alarm. If possible, she’ll attack the clouds directly to break them up. Otherwise, we’ll all huddle under a forcefield until the storm lifts.

What worries me is the timing. Why now? Why would the weather only turn dangerous right now? And there’s something about these storms—I’m not sure they’re storms at all. I think…I think they’re an immune response.

Day 61

Anything can be a weakness- a cloud that brings up a happy memory. A scent that reminds us of home, it could even be a rogue thought.

Whatever the trigger, it hits dead on, it finds the chink in our armor and blasts it wide open. The result is different for each of us.

AppleJack takes her typical approach and tries to bury the pain. She’ll try desperately to shore herself up with hard work, spending every waking hour tending to the coconut trees, treating them as if they were her own foals, neglecting food or sleep, mumbling “Gotta watch the trees gotta watch the trees”.
Rainbow’s claustrophobia kicks in hard. She tries to flee the Bubble, slamming into the shimmering surface repeatedly, screaming over and over that she needs to get out!

Rarity’s always had problems dealing with anxiety, and our current situation has made it even worse. She doesn’t so much break down as dissolve into a sobbing, blubbering, inconsolable mess.

Fluttershy has the opposite reaction. When she breaks, her personality actually inverts. She becomes irritable and abrasive, snapping at us for the most trivial of things, switching between violent outbursts and tearful apologies.

Then there’s Pinkie. Our friend’s bubbly, optimistic nature has proven resistant to despair- when one of us breaks down, she’s always there to try and cheer us up with a song number, a dance routine or, if necessary, something more carnal. But even she has her limits, when she breaks, she breaks hard. Her mane and coat go completely flat. She’ll completely deflate, becoming an inert, listless lump. She won't eat, drink, or even move. She’ll just lay there under her tent with a blank look on her face, an empty shell.

As for me, well, I can’t afford to break. I’m a Princess; it’s my duty to be strong. When the others break down, it’s my responsibility to patch them back together again, be it by an encouraging speech, an extra ration, or a firm slap on the face. But even I can’t keep this up forever. More than once I’ve caught myself looking at the coral reefs, wondering how easy it would be to break off a bit of razor-sharp coral…

Our little world is coming apart at the seams. We can’t keep this up much longer. It’s only a matter of time before we completely crack.

Day 37

The weather on our Island is binary. It’s either scorching hot or dripping wet, with nothing in between. Rainbow has managed to keep the worst of the storms at bay, busting any clouds that get too close, so we’ve avoided the worst of the weather, though Rarity keeps complaining about how the heat and humidity have “absolutely ruined” her mane,

In addition to the usual wind, rain, and lightning, we sometimes get more…exotic weather. The Bubble keeps out the worst of the weirdness, but sometimes things slip through. For instance, we’ve had freak blizzards of sticky, thread-like filaments that drift down from an empty sky and cloudbursts of quivering jelly that evaporate almost instantly. Once, we had puddles of green liquid well up out of the sand, then hurl themselves, drop by drop, into lime-green clouds that suddenly appeared overhead.

Aj and Dash think that Discord has something to do with it. Somehow, this weird weather and the general lunacy happening outside the Bubble are his doing, leftovers from his time as a villain, ala the plunder seeds. After all, ‘It ain't the first time some old trick of his came back to bite us.’

’Shy and I disagree. This weather doesn’t follow his usual modus operandi. Weird as they were, Discord’s meteorological mayhem- and I can’t believe I’m saying this- had a logic to it. Cotton Candy clouds that rained chocolate milk were definitely unusual and a real pain to clean up afterward, but you understood what they were: mundane objects acting in an anomalous way. Most of the time, he simply rearranges mundane objects into something anomalous, more ‘whimsical’.

That’s the thing about Discord that a lot of ponies don’t understand. He doesn’t warp reality and cause chaos out of malice. He does it because he’s bored.