Rainbow didn’t stray too far from the survivors’ camp during her flight. After all, she had things she wanted to discuss with everypony else when they were all back, and she didn’t want to wander too far away in case she was needed. As it was, she simply sought out thermals over the islands, rode them up as high as they would carry her, and then circled back down to find another.

But at the very least, the constant rising and falling really helped to clear her mind out. Flying high like this, she could forget about her worries for a little bit and just focus on beating her wings and reading the air currents. It pushed the stress out of mind and buried it somewhere to be dealt with later, and it also proved remarkably effective at alleviating her physical pain as well. Now that she was out in the skies stretching and exercising her muscles, she started to feel so much better and rejuvenated, like she’d just received a new lease on life.

From this high above the islands, Rainbow couldn’t help herself but try and use her altitude to spot a white coat prowling amongst the sands and trees down below. She could see the shape of all the islands in the tiny, shattered archipelago, but that didn’t mean she could see to the ground in detail. Like she’d first noted when she’d arrived upon these islands days ago, the density of the trees and foliage made it nearly impossible to glean more than a superficial look of the terrain. Whatever there was on the ground, apart from the open stretches of the beaches, was impossible to see through the jungle. If Rarity was down there, Rainbow had no way of telling from up above.

That worried her, especially because of what it meant for Rarity. If Rarity was hurt out there, if she was stranded somewhere, they’d only be able to find her by combing through the jungle on hoof. And with how thick the jungle was and how sprawling the islands were, that could take them days to find her. Days that they didn’t have.

What were they going to do? Only now could Rainbow really ask herself that question. The situation was bleak and grim, that much was certain. There wasn’t much they could do in terms of finding Rarity, especially if she could have ended up anywhere on the islands. If she didn’t find her own way back to the camp, then there wasn’t enough time for them to go looking for her. And if the doors to the temple opened tonight, they needed to be off of the islands and somewhere safe to wait out the storm. So what were they going to do if Rarity wasn’t found by then?

Rainbow slowly came to the horrifying realization that she’d have to leave Rarity behind in order to save everypony else if it came down to it. Wasting the lives of the rest of the survivors in the vain hope of finding her marefriend wasn’t a trade that she could live with. But could she live with the opposite? That she’d abandoned her marefriend, one of her closest friends and a key member of her Ponyville friends circle, and left her to die? What would the others think? Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, all the others—what would they think of her if they knew she’d left Rarity to die on an island just to save her own hide?

What would Loyalty think of herself?

Again, it was a lose-lose situation, and there wasn’t a good way out of it. Her only hope lied in miraculously stumbling across Rarity before it was too late. But that implied receiving a miracle, and she wasn’t sure that she’d be so lucky. They’d certainly seemed like they had no luck left after everything that had happened the past few days.

Sighing, Rainbow started to drift down from her flight, now that she’d worked up a decent sweat. Though the exercise had cleared her mind, she’d already started refilling it with doubts and worries—simply flying around on her own wasn’t going to be enough, she swiftly realized. She needed to talk with the other ponies and formulate a plan. A plan was the only way that they had a reasonable chance of accomplishing what they needed to. It was their only chance of salvaging something good from the horrible situation they’d all found themselves trapped in. And hopefully they’d be back soon so they could plan before it started getting too much later. Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, it had to be in the waning stages of the early afternoon. They only had, at best, six more hours before night fell and the moon began to shine.

When she was about a hundred feet above the islands, Rainbow veered off to the side and plummeted straight down, aiming for the deeper waters just off the coast. Like a bird diving for fish, she pierced the water like a fuzzy blue torpedo, letting the cool and briny surf wash away the sweat and heat from her body. She hung limply under the water like a pony suspended in in the emptiness of space, her lungs only filled with enough air to keep her neutrally buoyant. Engaging her protective third eyelid, Rainbow surveyed the swirling sands around her, noting a few crabs skittering about here and there below her, checking cracked shells for any meat to scavenge. On her left, the sand rose up to the beach, but off to her right, it continued to drop into nothingness, rapidly declining into the ocean floor.

Once her lungs started to bother her for air, Rainbow used her wings to push herself back to the surface. Breaching it with her snout, she quickly exchanged a few breaths, then resumed marveling at the underwater world around her. It teemed with life off to the southeast, and through the green haze of salt, Rainbow could pick out the colors and twisted formations of coral in the distance. Fish and rays swam all about the deeper waters, and Rainbow realized that, if it ever came down to it, they could take the raft and go out fishing in some of these deeper waters to supplement their food supply. It was definitely something to think about now that she was looking at bringing more ponies back to her home island. They’d be tripling the number of ponies on it, and she doubted it could support all of them for very long without more supplies of food to draw from.

But eventually, Rainbow decided to call off her quick break of playtime and return to the camp. Emerging from the water, she widened her stance, held her wings out to her sides, and shook them violently, flinging water off her body and feathers in an attempt to start drying off. At the very least, the hot sun would finish that for her, but it felt good to dive back in the water and relax for a moment. Now that she was back on land, however, she knew she once more had to turn her attention back to what really mattered—survival.

And so she trotted back through the jungle towards the survivors’ camp, not wanting to waste any more time than she already had.