The only thing harder than felling trees, Rainbow realized, was cutting them up without a saw.

She hadn’t expected it to take this long to shape the trunks into usable timber for a raft. Coconut wood was harder than she thought it’d be at first, true, but it wasn’t so much the wood itself that was slowing her down, but the simple mechanics of the whole thing. All she had was her axe, and to cut the tops off the trees, she had to swing it into the wood against the grain over and over again. It was like splitting firewood the completely wrong way: it simply didn’t work.

“I wish we had a saw,” Rainbow grumbled to Rarity between cleaving treetops off. “My neck is gonna be stiff as a board by the end of the day.”

“I’ll probably have migraines for the next day or two,” Rarity said. Her magic fizzled around one of the trunks as she laid it down on a set of vines. “Heavy lifting is not my forte. My horn is much more attuned to precision work, not brute force.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “I can already feel somepony poking the front of my brain with a hot iron.”

Rainbow looked over their work so far. She’d managed to split the ends of five of the trees, and Rarity had moved those tops off to the side and laid the trunks next to each other. It certainly wasn’t the most perfect raft, since the palm trees were all slightly curved one way or another, but the logs were large enough and stable enough to float. At least, so Rainbow hoped. They really wouldn’t know for sure until they tried to take it into the water.

She tasted copper on her lips, and when she ran a sandy hoof against them, it came back streaked with red. Rarity saw it too, and her hoof drifted to Rainbow’s shoulder. “Perhaps that’s enough for today,” she said. “You’re splitting your lips open, swinging that axe around like a madmare. I shudder to think of what it’s doing to your teeth.”

“I’m fine,” Rainbow protested, but she still tongued around the bars of her mouth regardless. The teeth on each side of the bars were sore, and when she pushed against them, she felt them wiggle a tiny bit. Or maybe that’s just what she thought. It might have been her imagination making her worry too much.

Rarity leaned up against her, and Rainbow used her good wing to hold her close. “It might not be thread, but it looks nice,” Rainbow said, pointing to Rarity’s handiwork around the logs. “Maybe you should make rafts for a living.”

“Oh please. This is hardly the elegance I want to spend the rest of my life fashioning.” Her blue eyes danced over the rough knots she’d made out of the stiff vine to hold the logs in place, but even in their irregularities there was a sort of precision and attention to detail. Even Rainbow thought it impressive.

“You sure there isn’t a market for vine-rope dresses?” she asked. “I mean, fillies make prom dresses out of colored duct tape these days. Surely there’s gotta be a market for that somewhere.”

“How would you of all ponies know what fillies are wearing these days?” Rarity asked, mildly surprised.

“Scootaloo,” Rainbow said. “She told me about when her and the CMC tried making those for fun some time back. You remember that?”

Thoughts of that nightmare came flying back to Rarity’s mind. “Oh, yes, that adventure,” she said. “Sweetie didn’t understand that you’re not supposed to just tape it to your coat. Thankfully I was able to save both it and her dignity by forcing her to sit in soapy water for most of the day and let the adhesive dissolve.”

Rainbow snickered. “Scootaloo learned the hard way.”

“So that’s why she shaved her coat down incredibly short…”

The couple sighed and thought back to all those good days. “Wonder what they’re up to now,” Rainbow said.

“Likely what they’ve always been up to,” Rarity said. “Anything cutie mark related.”

“It’s better than trying to help with ocean exploration or search and rescue,” Rainbow said, shaking her head. “I think the last thing we need is them coming out here looking for us.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them,” Rarity agreed.

Rainbow shook her head. “No, not that. We really don’t need them getting stranded with us. I don’t think I’d survive being stuck here with those three.”

Rarity giggled. “Yes, well there is that too, I suppose,” she said. “It would also be awkward having to explain how their big sisters are… well, together, would be the word.”

“It might raise a few eyebrows at first, yeah,” Rainbow said. She pressed herself closer to Rarity and all but stuck her muzzle in her ear. “But it gets so lonely on this island…”

Tittering, Rarity gently pushed Rainbow back some. “We only do what we must for our sanity and wellbeing, right?” she teased. Her nose rubbed against Rainbow’s cheek. “Is that what we’ll tell our friends when we return home?”

“Psshh. I was just gonna tell them that you’re a friggin’ sexy pony and I couldn’t help myself,” Rainbow said with an idiotic grin. Her blue hoof ran over the curves of Rarity’s flank. “Really, what else am I supposed to do?”

Rarity’s tail gently flicked Rainbow’s hoof. “Watch where you place that, darling,” she said, smirking. “You’re liable to lose it.”

Rainbow teasingly pulled her hoof back after pressing it against the diamonds on Rarity’s flank. “I guess I should be more careful then.”

“You’re like a stallion,” Rarity said, gently bopping Rainbow’s nose. “So forward and direct.”

“I have an aggressive case of tomcolt-itis,” Rainbow said. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“Mmm. I pray it’s not infectious. I much like my feminine charm and ladylike elegance. I wouldn’t be the same without it.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Rainbow agreed. “But remember that one time where you lost like all your mane and you pulled off that punk look?”

Rarity fluffed her stiff but long and full mane. “I will admit, it was rather impressive.”

Rainbow fidgeted slightly. “I almost asked you out right then and there,” she said, blushing. “You were so hot like that.”

The seamstress blushed as well. “I was mostly uncomfortable being out of my element. It reminded me of my teenage years too much.” Then she smiled lightly. “At least you got to enjoy it for a month or two before my mane finally grew back enough to properly curl again.”

“I didn’t want to fly past the boutique during that month because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to fly properly if I saw you,” Rainbow admitted. “That look was deadly.”

“I will admit it was an… interesting change of pace,” Rarity said. “But not something I’d like to go back to.”

Rainbow seemed to deflate a bit. “Aww…”

“And no, I am not cutting my mane short while I’m here.” She touched the sandy thing hanging off her scalp and grimaced at the salty knots and tangles in it. “Well… maybe not that short.”

“Something, something, short manes are in season?”

“You wish,” Rarity said. But, sighing, she added, “Though perhaps I need to make it so. My mane has never—well, almost never—been in such poor condition.” She bunched it up with her magic to about shoulder height. “Do you think this looks suitable? Should I cut it to my shoulders? Be honest now?”

Rainbow blinked a few times and swallowed hard. “It’s phenomenal,” she said. “You should do it.”

Rarity fluffed her mane a bit, frowned, sighed, and finally straightened her posture. “Give me the knife,” she said, gesturing to the tool at Rainbow’s hooves that she’d used for cutting vines earlier that day. “It’s certainly not a divinely sharp pair of scissors, but it’s at least sharp enough to not split the ends too badly.”

Rainbow swiped the tool and held it out to Rarity. “My pleasure!”