Survival Island

Wisp had stopped the moment that Dusk told her she'd had a new crack on her face, but before she could fall into a panic Dusk was already fixing her. She watched him with wide eyes as his spell mended the damage, seeing details that most would likely miss. Since this was such a small crack, this one completely disappeared rather than just mostly like the other one. Wisp didn't notice her cheeks turning red, have any explanation for why she felt suddenly warmer, or know why she was feeling flustered. "Uh, umm, th-thank you," she stammered out before standing up the rest of the way and beginning to proceed onward, her question that she'd almost managed to ask lost in a sea of new and confusion thoughts.

Dusk found himself a little confused as well, but more because he didn't know why Wisp seemed confused. He soon pushed that thought aside though, and he continued following her. He remembered that she was asking him a question before she ran into the tree. He figured he caught enough of it to know what she had asked.

"I assume you wanted to know what my home is like. Trottingham's a rather large city, but it doesn't have the modern look that Manehatten does. It still has cobblestone streets and many of the older buildings, and of course they still have business for blacksmiths like myself. So long as you avoid the back alleys, you don't have to worry about bad ponies. Outside of the city is majorly farmland, you have to go much further out to get to the nearby forests. The ponies there are friendly enough too. I don't know whether or not you'd like it there, since not everypony likes the city life, but it's worth visiting."

"N-no, I wouldn't like it there," Wisp said surprisingly resolutely. Her expression had gone blank and slightly shock like when Dusk mentioned the name of his home town. While she felt like he'd said before, and she knew it wasn't the same, the thoughts of her past experiences still surged forward. "I- I don't want to go to big cities, ever," she specified looking more downcast.

She shook her head shortly after to regain her composure and shot Dusk an apologetic look. "S-sorry," she said with some remorse and worry that she'd offended Dusk in her blind denial of his request.

"Don't worry about it. It looks like you had a bad experience at some point. ...Come to think of it, the Trottingham you knew might be that experience. Anyway, the offer to show you around my Trottingham is still open. Maybe you could even show me around Ponyville a bit, or at least introduce me to your friends. They sound like really nice ponies," Dusk said.

"I-I wouldn't mind showing you Ponyville, but I still don't know that much about it myself," Wisp replied as her grin started to return. "And yeah, all the ponies I met there were really nice," Wisp continued thinking back to the almost scarily nice welcome she'd received at the small town.

"But if it's okay, I really don't want to go to big cities, or at least not Trottingham," Wisp said again, her smile becoming slightly more strained as she spoke.

"That's okay. I shouldn't have expected you'd want to go to a place that once was your living nightmare. And it's okay if you don't know much about Ponyville, we could explore and discover some things together. That is, after we get off this island," Dusk said. He then became a little depressed, as he was hoping he'd get off the island to see his parents and siblings again. He imagined them being so worried about him, and whether or not he'd return home.

"Anyway," he began, "How much further do you think we have to go?"

"Not much, we should be getting close..." Wisp replied as they walked. "Dusk, w-what kind of spell did you use to fix my hoof?" she asked hesitantly after a little bit of silence. She was curious about it considering her situation, and was beginning to wonder if something else might actually be able to completely fix her still slightly cracked hoof.

"It's the same one I used fix that crack on your face," Dusk explained, "It's a healing spell, but it doesn't specialize in healing anything specific, so it can be used for most things. However, your body seems to resist healing magic, though I think it's because your body isn't really flesh. Perhaps if I know what it actually is, I can mend it better with a different spell."

Dusk was really pushing his luck that he'd be able to heal her more easily if she wasn't actually flesh and bone. The only other thing he could really mend was metal, but that required heat and sometimes some scrap metal.

Wisp looked back at Dusk startled. "H-how'd you," she started but then thought back to her injuries and the clues that would have shown that her body wasn't real. "I-I didn't know you knew this," she paused to gesture to herself, "wasn't real. I- I was told I could have this though," she continued before stopping and taking a few steps away.

Setting down, Wisp closed her eyes in concentration and a glow steadily grew around her as she focused. Then suddenly the details disappeared from her body, the tail and mane vanished, the outlines of her eyes faded away, the line of her mouth all but disappeared, and the color faded back to white. Next, a completely ethereal form levitated up from the 'body'. Wisp re-opened her eyes to look back down at the plaster mannequin that served as her body and then at Dusk.

"I don't know what it's made of but maybe you do?" she asked from where she hovered. Even though her wings moved, it was obvious that she didn't need to move them to maintain her airborne position and the fact that she was transparent furthered her ghost like qualities.

"Though I knew your body wasn't real, I didn't exactly want to make it known to everypony. Also, you did once mention that you had only recently received this body," Dusk said. He then took a close look at what Wisp used as a body. "Wow, somepony must've worked hard to make this simple mannequin into your new body, and it's good to know that it's not the mannequin giving you a nice figure. However, I don't have any spells that can fix it, apart from the healing spell apparently. Oh well, it was worth a shot."

Dusk didn't want to mention just how eerie it was to see Wisp as a ghost. He could see why ponies would be afraid of her at first glance. But Dusk soon recalled something in what he said.

Wait. Did I just say she had a nice figure? he asked himself, blushing a little bit.

"Th-thanks for trying," Wisp said, her voice taking an almost eerie hollow quality since she didn't have a physical body at this exact moment. She floated down back into the body, and with the same white flash her features returned, the red tail and mane grew back to their full length, her eyes and mouth reappeared, and her purple fur once again replaced the hard plaster. The abnormal things that grew in addition were the general shape of the mannequin to Wisp's form, the still ghost like ethereal wings that sprouted from her back, and then there was always the complete lack of a cutie mark, but that was more along the lines of something not forming.

Dusk's comment went clean over Wisp's head though, and when she looked back to him, she had no idea why he was blushing. She thought back to what Dusk had said, but couldn't find anything that would make the stallion blush, he hadn't said anything silly, at least not to Wisp's knowledge. So with a shrug, Wisp turned back to where they'd been going, "I think it's just a little farther. Are you okay to keep going Dusk?" She asked taking the first few steps forward, but didn't take anymore until Dusk would be walking with her.

Dusk almost didn't catch what Wisp asked, being deep in his own thoughts. "Huh? Oh, yes. I can keep going," he said, and he started following Wisp again.

Dusk was asking himself why he had mentioned how nice Wisp looked. He wasn't too sure he had an answer, other than that he liked her. However, how much he liked her, and in what way, seemed to be what he was really thinking about. He could call her a friend at the very least, and he figured he'd do that until he was more certain in what way he liked her.

Wisp lead onward, and after a few more bushes, the remnants of the abandoned village came into view. "We're here," she announced pushing past the last of the brush and into the space where the ramshackle shelters stood. Slowly, the mare began to wander about the collection of buildings, occasionally looking into them to see what she could see.

Dusk drew his knife when they entered the abandoned village. He stuck close to Wisp and kept himself on alert in case anything tried to attack them. "Try" was the keyword, since he'd make sure whatever did try, failed.

Wisp continued wandering through the village, occasionally poking her head into additional buildings as she walked. Most of them appeared to be just small single room huts, and not even all of these had beds. One of the first though, Wisp dove into only to pop back into sight a second later with an old bucket clasped in her mouth. She gently set the old tool down and smiled up at Dusk. "This'll help some, c'mon, let's see what else we can find!" she proclaimed happily while going into another of the huts to continue her search for *loot*.

While it was nice to see how enthusiastic Wisp was, he couldn't help but feel that more caution was needed. There had to be a reason why this village was abandoned, and that reason could still be around for all he knew.

However, he silently took the bucket in his mouth, so not to waste magic carrying it for a long time, and followed Wisp.

Wisp continued ducking into and out of buildings, sometimes coming with little recovered items, sometimes with nothing, but either way the smile stayed on her face. In addition to the little bowl, she found a scrap of wash cloth, about half a tarp, a couple old and slightly dented pots, and an old hatchet. After Wisp had combed the houses she turned to Dusk, who she'd left each piece of pilfered loot with, and said, "I think that's everything, are we going to take it all back to the beach now?"

Dusk had found it harder and harder to keep himself ready for a coming fight as Wisp kept loading him up with stuff. He didn't say anything about it though. Seeing her smile seemed to make it all worth it.

When she asked if they should head back to the beach, he felt that was a great idea. "We may as well. But first we'll stop at the hot spring to see if Oliver and Scroll are still there. I don't think they came with us, for whatever reason."

Wisp nodded and began leading herself and Dusk back towards the hot springs. A fresh smile plastered on her lips for what she thought was a 'job well done', and might even earn her some praise. "Do you think the others will be happy with what we found?" she asked happily.

"I think so. We can put everything we've found to use, one way or another," Dusk said with a smile on his own face. Dang, that smile is contagious. I do love to see her smile like that. ...Uh oh. Dusk soon found himself blushing. He couldn't deny that this was starting to become more than friendship for him. Save that for when we're off this island, he told himself, This is not the time to flirt or court anypony.

Wisp suddenly stopped, the smile faltering in uncertainty. "D-Dusk, could you... could you not tell the others about me. About me not having a... real body," Wisp said the last bit forlornly, but without a real clue why. Either way, she was rather upset and uncertain about it all and the last thing she wanted was to be excluded because of her abnormality, again.

Seeing Wisp stop broke Dusk away from his thoughts. When she asked him to not tell anypony about her having a fake body, Dusk saw some wisdom in that. He wasn't too sure how the others would react to that news either. He figured some would be okay with it, while a couple others, Rebel being the most concerning, might see her as a monster.

"You have my word. I'll tell nopony about that," he said with a hoof over his heart, as if swearing an oath.

And with just that, Wisp's smile returned in full as she flew forward and wrapped Dusk in a hug, her wings even encircling him to the best of their ability once she was secured. "Th-thank you," she said quietly before letting go and going back to leading them both back to the hot springs.

Something in a nearby tree shook the leaves. The thing slipped and fell out of the tree, bringing a branch down with it. The two ponies could hear a groan and a cough. The thing had fallen into a bush and now rustled around in it. And odd squeaky noise came from the bush. Something in the bush kicked the branch away and rustled more of the bush. Some water was thrown out of the bush and the sound of something whistling from inside the bush.

The initial sound startled Wisp, forcing her to jump back a bit in fright. But once she saw it was just the bush moving, curiosity took over. She didn't so much as hesitate to wander over towards the rustling shrub and at first just trying to get a peak at what was moving about inside, but if Wisp had to, there wouldn't have any worries about pushing leaves aside so she could see what was hiding in there.

When the splash of water was thrown out, she backed up hurriedly again, but once she realized that it was just water Wisp was right back at the plant again. She wanted to know what was in there, and she was going to try her best to find out.