Lost in a Natural State

It wasn't the sun that woke him up. It was at his back, so it wouldn't be able to shine in his eyes unless it was nearing dusk again. What woke him was a clawing need to eat. His stomach rebelled at him for not eating sooner. He wondered what he had been going on up until this point. He didn't really have any reserves that could be tapped. He felt weak, lifting his head up off of the ground. No real surprise there, much had happened in the past two days to them.
As he raised his head, he felt Northern stir beside him. It was comfortable where he lay, and he didn't really want to move, for more reasons than the comfort if he was honest with himself, but his stomach was not giving him an option in this matter. He nudged Northern lightly in an attempt to wake her nicely. Her mane smelled of the earth that they had lain in for the night. She stirred again, but still didn't wake. He smiled and shook his head. It occurred to him that it might be the poison, and he sniffed at the poison's edge. It didn't smell sick anymore. Using his horn he moved the moss away from where he had made the gash. It was a stretch for him, as he didn't want to upset Northern and wake her before she wanted to. He imagined that her own stomach would wake her just as his had.
The moss removed, he saw that his gash was gone. That baffled him. He couldn't understand it. The moss didn't have magical properties as far as he knew. But the tree might have. He didn't know the name of the tree or really anything about it, besides what it looked like. And that it was a cure. Ruffling the coat allowed him to see the skin underneath. There was no signs of the poison that had been in her veins just a few hours ago. It was gone. She'd be safe. At least from the--NO. he wouldn't think of anything else that would come up. She'd be okay as long as they were together, right? That's what he was determined to believe. He lifted his head away from her leg, straightening himself back up.
To find that Northern was awake now and watching him. "You look pleased. I take it that I'm going to live?" she asked, a smile playing across her features. It nearly made his heart melt to see it.
But he stalled answering it to feel her forehead, checking her temperature again. The fever had broken in the middle of the night, from what he could tell now, and her temperature was regular. So why was she still being like this to him? When did he start grinning like an idiot? "You're going to do better than live." Why did he say that? Oh, right. He had brain damage. But now where did he go with this? "We're getting out of here today." Why did he feel so right in saying that?
The sound of running water began a thought process that the rest of his mind had already put together. The part of his mind that was running ahead of him gave him a small nudge in the right direction. The river runs right out of the forest. If they follow it
"What makes you so sure that we're almost out?" Northern interrupted his thoughts, but allowed him to feel the rightness in what he had said before.
"The river. Unlike everything else in this forest, it makes sense. The river runs straight between Ponyville and Canterlot before turning towards the ocean. If we follow downstream, we should be out of this forest by the end of the day." Solomon explained it as he nudged her, helping her get onto her hooves, before he followed. She stretched out her neck and legs. She had been laying down for over a day. To now be allowed to move without endangerment of herself, she took advantage of the situation, stretching everything that she could in order to loosen herself up from her long rest.
"I think I have sleep sores," she murmured, more to herself than Solomon, though he could hear her, while she craned her head around, rubbing at a spot that she'd been lying on the entire time.
Solomon stood to follow her, stretching out the muscles that had stiffened from the cold ground. His stomach growled, reminding him of his priority. They'd need food before long. "I'm hungry." He was certainly surprised that he was the first to say anything. But he felt that it was something that needed to be put out there. "We should look for something along the way-" he cut off as Northern had already taken off towards the river. He had no choice but to follow her.
They walked along the river bank for a good while. Solomon reckoned a few hours. He had spotted a berry bush a while back that had been full of ripe berries. There they had eaten their fill, Solomon stopping them before they reached a gorge. There were dangers involved in eating too much when they had gone as long as they had without eating. Forcing themselves away, they continued on their trek.
They had been traveling for a spell when Solomon took notice of the river. It was no longer flowing as quickly as it had before. He knew that there was something significant to that, but now he struggled to remember what it was. What was it? And a sound on the edge of his his perception jogged his memory, and he groaned. "A waterfall." Northern looked around at him with a look of apprehension on her face a moment before it cleared.
"Well, we're not in the water, so that shouldn't worry us, right?" she asked, a small hint of doubt creeping into her voice as Solomon continued to appear worried about it.
"I don't know yet," he said in a tired voice. "A tall waterfall could prove problematic, but a short one is easy to deal with." They were soon to find out which fall it was.
The waterfall wasn't as expected. It actually turned out to be a cascade of several smaller waterfalls, falling only a few feet each. Solomon and Northern easily bounded down them, for once ending without some disaster befalling them. But if he were to be honest with himself, Solomon would have actually said that he wanted something bad to overcome. It made things more interesting. And he had come to almost expect the tragedies to befall their travels. Not to mention that they usually got him to be close with Northern. The way she sounded as she breathed, and the smell of her mane as he slept beside her.
He tried to muddle his thoughts, but unsuccessfully, not really wishing for them to continue down this path from the consequences that might arise from it. He paused in his trek, realizing that Northern wasn't walking beside him. A slight skip hit his heart at this realization and he turned around, searching for her. He saw he sitting on the ground staring back up at the falls, seeming at peace, despite where they were. Solomon soon found himself trotting back over to her and sitting down, staring up at the falls. The realization of why she stopped hit him at that moment.
They were a wondrous sight. Who knew that something like this had existed in the forest so close to home? The water came down in several steps, a shimmering and clear blue over a muted gray rock that suddenly became a glistening stone under the water as it rushed by. The mists kicked up by the falls caught the light at the right angle, creating a rainbow that shot out for several feet before fading with the mists. A single flower bloomed on a slight craggy outcropping in the middle of the cascade. It was a wondrous shade of pink that faded at the edges to an iridescent violet while the center seemed to be made of gold. The pestles protruding from the center where a muted silver. It was framed by a cloudless and majestic sky above and slight vegetation all around. It really was a marvel of their fair land.
But after viewing it for a few minutes, the rainbow disappeared as the light moved on. They had passed it at the exact right moment to catch it at it's most splendid, but now they were merely wasting time. They had to move now, else they risked spending another night in the forest. Solomon turned and nudged Northern, getting her attention. Her ears had gone back when the rainbow had gone. Evidently she had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. It was time to go.
Northern looked to Solomon with soft eyes. "This place isn't so bad, once you get to really see it," she murmured softly, almost at the point where Solomon couldn't hear it over the sound of the falls. He agreed with her, but he remained silent. His chest still hurt because of this forest. It might not be bad, but it still made him wary. Northern waited expectantly for him for another moment before frowning slightly, only for a moment, and continuing walking. That frown hurt against his heart, unexpectedly painful. He knew that he had disappointed her. And he also knew that it was because he hadn't said anything. But he couldn't say anything now, so he moved to follow her, stopping again, briefly to look back one last time at the water's cascade. He noted the direction that they fell in, and a smile crossed his face.
They fell to the north.
He decided to call them Northern's Cascade.
With that, he turned and followed Northern.