Lost in a Natural State

They walked for a while longer in a peaceful silence. Northern didn't have the disappointment in him any longer, but the thought still nagged at him. He didn't want to disappoint Northern in any way. And he knew that they agreed on this point. His thoughts raged on what he should do, not wanting to come together to form a unanimous consensus. The damaged part of his brain soon got tired of his thought war and decided to take over again. "This place has a certain majesty about it that's hard to describe." At those words, Northern glanced in Solomon's direction, but looked back quickly. But her glance told him that she was interested in what he was saying. He let his brain damage continue talking. "It's, hmm, I don't really know. It's a type of natural beauty. It doesn't follow the rules that we have come to expect. It engineers the beauty on its own that we have come to expect on a regular basis, and its irregularity makes it more attractive." Northern was now looking directly at him as he spoke, paying attention to him. So he plowed on. "Moreover, it orchestrates its beauty in a way that we can't replicate. I suppose that it has had more practice than our artisans have had, but I don't think that it's merely the skill difference that defines the beauty, but the art itself. Our artists actually have their art look like it's been made, whereas this is like an accidental beauty. Beauty without effort."
The brain damaged part of his brain seemed to have calmed down now. And it had placed his thoughts so well. Northern smiled at him now. He beamed with pride at his mind. Even if it was because of that damage that he felt the courage to say something. Northern just continued on in silence, but it was enough that Solomon knew that he had made up for his past disappointment.
Then something horrible happened. Something that he should have seen coming. "Just like something else that I can see right now." He clamped down on this new disastrous course, but it was already too late. He was grinning like... he wasn't even sure what he grinned like, but he was sure that it wasn't good. Northern gasped at this compliment and he could see her blush a deep red underneath her coat and she turned away quickly so that he couldn't see her expression. He was sure that it was one of horror. If he had been in his own right mind, his would have been.
He wasn't a flirt! He had never flirted before in his lifetime. And now he was doing it to somepony that he had just earned the respect of with that cheesy line? It wouldn't be any wonder if she never spoke to him again because of what he just said. He wrestled with his separated mind, trying to get it under control again so that he wouldn't have to worry about it saying something else, but it remained stubborn with him, refusing to stay under control, until something he didn't expect happened.
"Well, you're not bad looking yourself," Northern stated in a matter of fact voice as she fluttered an eyelid at him. His heart skipped a beat as she walked away. Shaking himself, he followed her. There wasn't any way that that had just happened. And yet it had.
And now, he gained control of his mind again. He controlled the shock that had developed well. He tried to put what had happened just now behind him, and hoped that she would. The more he thought about it, the less that it made sense. He knew that she wasn't like this, and neither was he. What was happening now? The more he tried to think about it, though, the more his mind veered away from it.
His chest was giving him problems again, becoming sore and itching. It emphasized the fact that they needed to get out of here. There wasn't much to tell on whether or not Northern's poison was completely gone. She might still be ill with the poison, as the antidote might have just slowed it down, not cured it. He couldn't tell, and that was worrying him. Something else was bothering him as well, and it just wasn't clicking yet. He'd figure it out in just a short while, he was sure. Why was the river rushing?
It clicked.
A cascade sometimes precluded a larger waterfall. This was the case. Shortly in the distance, the world ended. He could see straight into the sky for quite a while before a tree, taller than the rest, ended his unimpeded view. He stopped right on the edge of the fall to look down. He instantly felt vertigo overcome him as he stared down at the tops of the trees.
"Solomon!" Northern screamed as he felt himself begin to pitch forward, dizzy at the heights. A stinging sensation in his tail told him that Northern had lunged forward and grabbed him by that to stop him. He was pulled back onto the solid ground and fell flat on his rump.
He breathed hard as his heart attempted to beat out of his chest, fear gripping him in its terrible claws. "Thanks," he gasped to Northern. He still felt dizzy and pain was at his chest. He looked down to see that he had broken the matted moss on his chest, exposing his deep scratch again, and it was bleeding once more.
Northern saw as well. It seemed to cause her more concern than it did for him. How strange. "Stay here and don't move," she ordered him. "I don't want you bleeding yourself dry again." And so he sat while she bounded off into the woods. She wasn't gone long before she was back. "There's a cliff not too far over to that side. We're stuck here."
Well that was great. His brilliant idea had backfired on him. He could see the river traveling into the distance, through the trees. If he really strained himself, he could see the edge of the forest. Then they would be free and they'd find themselves home. But first they had to find a way down the side of the waterfall. Northern was checking over the side of the cliff now, this time she was doing it more intelligently than he did, crouching to the ground before leaning over the edge and peering down. He could tell that it caused her to have a moment of vertigo as well, but she got over it in a moment. She hadn't run the risk of falling over the edge because the ground helped her with her stability. He was washed over again with dizziness and he checked himself again. He wasn't bleeding freely, but it was enough to coat the front of him with blood. Down at his hooves, the ground was starting to be coated with the red fluids.
"We have to get down there for some of the moss to patch your wounds," she said when she looked back at him and noticed the blood. Worry etched her face as she noticed how much blood he was loosing. "You won't be able to climb down like that." She could climb down that steep grade? There was more to Northern than Solomon had thought. She bounded back into the wooded area briefly, coming out a moment later with a.
Where did she find a rope out here?
On a second glance at it, Solomon saw that it was green and slick. A vine then. "You stay here!" she demanded of him. Like he could go very many places anyway. "I'll be back. Don't move too much. I'd prefer to have a living librarian when we get home." She worked while she talked. With the vine, she had tied a few knots and looped it over her shoulders as a harness and when she finished speaking she shot over the edge. Solomon jumped to stop her, but a bout of dizziness took him to the ground. The world spun around him vaguely and then went dark.
He was afraid.
To face the dark now, he felt fear.
It wasn't so bad when he knew Northern was near, but now he didn't know where she was.
And that made him fear.
He awoke with a start an undefined amount of time later. Looking around for Northern, he couldn't see her. There was pain in his chest still, but that didn't concern him. The fact that Northern wasn't here did. What concerned him more was that there was only half of her vine here as well. Solomon felt the pit drop out of his stomach as he found the severed vine lying near the edge of the cliff. Northern could still be alive though, at the bottom of the cliff, but hurt and needing attention to those wounds.
In a panic, he limped into the woods, not paying attention to his wounds, despite their ache. He knew that he wouldn't make it down the mountain in one piece if he just tried it like this, but he was determined to get down there. Northern needed medical attention. Searching around, he found the things that he was looking for. Cobwebs and a vine. It was the woods, there were plenty of cobwebs everywhere. He used them like the moss before, stuffing them in the wound. They quickly turned red, but the blood flow stopped completely. Unfortunately, the cob webs were merely sitting on his chest without binding, and they weren't big enough to be tied with Northern's tie, nor the vines. It would have to do for now. He had to get down to the ground. As he held onto the vine with his teeth, and tied the end of it to the severed vine at the edge, he vaguely realized that he wasn't very good a listening to what others told him to do. He also realized that he didn't much care when someone else was in danger. Holding the vine tight between his teeth, he crept to the edge, cautiously peering over it, wondering if what he was fixing to do was a good idea at all.
Probably not.
He wrapped the vine around his torso, making a harness out of it in the same way that he had seen Northern do it earlier, though using an alternate method that he had seen in a book and slipping it farther down his torso in order to not put too much strain on his chest. Again he came to the edge of the cliff and looked down. He didn't like his idea and he was beginning to reconsider it, feeling his heart beating harder and harder as he contemplated what he was fixing to do as he stared down at the ground. Or rather at the tops of the trees. They were thick against the side of the mountain, completely obscuring his view of the ground.
Thinking on it, they might even break his fall enough that he'd live if he just jumped straight down. He still decided against it, in a fear that that wouldn't be all that the tree broke on the way down. He swallowed loudly, not wanting to let the fear take him before he leaped, so closing his eyes, he stepped over the edge. It only hit him then to wonder how long the vine was supposed to be.
His eyes snapped open, suddenly realizing his error. He didn't know if Northern had taken into consideration that particular fact either, but he hadn't seen her do any type of measuring. He was quite possibly falling to his demise, and he was worrying about Northern, he dimly realized in the back of his mind, but it only lasted a second as the vine snapped taut and he hung in the air for a fraction of a second, the wind being jerked out of him as the vine tightened around his midriff. He felt pain shoot across the scratches in his chest and his vision dimmed briefly from the pain, but he shot back into full awareness when the full impact was over and he started swinging back towards the cliff face. Another thing occured to him in that short span before he realized that the cliff was incoming was that he was faced in the wrong direction to stop himself from hitting the cliff.
He slammed full against the rock wall, the wind having never come to him from the first shock, he didn't lose it this time. The harness pulled against him and it started slipping up farther towards his gashed chest. He moved to turn around so that he could use the cliff face to pull himself farther down, having hit the end of his tether, but he didn't move before the vine crossed the lowest of his gashes. He hissed a breath through his teeth, not letting the pain blind him, despite the blackness that ringed his vision. He looked on the bright side of things. At least it helped him gain his breath back.
He finished turning himself around, breathing a sigh of relief, in his pain's spite. He now felt more secure, as he gathered a few hoof holds, having something solid under his hooves, so to speak. Grabbing the vine above the harness, he gave it a yank, hoping to loosen it so that he could continue his climb down. On his first tug, he felt slack enter the tether, but something wasn't right. the slack kept coming and coming. He saw the reason as his knot fell past him towards the ground. A slight tug hit him through the vine as it came to its full extension. His full weight was now on his hooves, and by extension, on his chest. The cobwebs wouldn't be able to stand on this strain for long, he knew. He would need to get down quickly, or he would risk reopening his wound.
He would be risking it anyway, as he went down, the constant moving as he found a way down being enough to agitate his gashes and loosen the cobwebs placed to stop the bleeding. As soon as the cobwebs disintegrated, it would be a race against time to get to the bottom before he lost too much blood. But he was no athlete. He wouldn't be able to climb down the side quickly. Even sitting here for a few minutes with all his weight on his hooves, he could feel himself getting tired. A race against time and fatigue. He looked down. He was just above the tree line now. He guessed that the tree was about sixty feet tall, and he was about five feet above the tree, so that would mean he had sixty-five feet to the ground. Maybe a little more.
He swallowed again, not entirely sure that he'd be able to make it, but determination to find Northern would keep him going. He found his first hoofhold, moving his back hoof to it and placing weight on it. So far, so good. Now to continue on, he moved took another 'step' down, moving from hold to hold. He felt more confident, and only three more feet to the trees. He placed another step, and his hoof slipped from the rock and he wasn't able to regain his hold as the rock his front hoof had been on broke away from the rock wall and he felt himself falling free.
Shock crossed his face as the impact of what was happening hit him. He was fixing to fall to his demise, and there wasn't anything that he could do. Fear clenched at his heart as he realized that Northern would also fall with him. Her death was as certain as his was, and it was all because he failed to reach the bottom of the cliff. Time seemed to slow down for Solomon as he dropped away from the rock wall. He saw his life flash before his eyes: When he got his cutiemark, how he had blackened his hoof, the friends he had made, his first love, his heartbreak, the Grand Galloping Galla, his library, and more. He realized that most of it was spent in a library, but he had no regrets about that. He felt the first brushes of the leaves against his back and time sped up again.
The small twigs pulled and scratched against his back arms and legs, but he felt himself being slowed down by how many of the small branches there were. It still hurt when he hit his first large branch, though, but it broke under his weight, throwing him into a spin that was stopped by another branch. There were more stops along the way, every one of them, turning him a new direction and causing him more pain. He finally felt something wrap around him and he was jerked to a halt, pain enveloping him once again. He opened his eyes and looked down, only a few inches from the ground. And alive.
Shock was his first reaction to not being dead. He had survived. His second reaction was embarrassment that he had been scared that he would die. The third was shock again, when he heard a familiar voice. "You don't listen very well. I told you to stay put, and now look at you." His head jerked up in astonishment, looking at Northern before him, a thick matting of moss on her back. "You're bleeding everywhere." He realized that her voice sounded far away. Her voice was just barely on the edge of his hearing and was almost overwhelmed by the sound of his heart beating. He knew that that was important, but he couldn't think why. His head was too fuzzy now to remember. "Well let's get you patched up."
When she said that, the vines holding him up were suddenly severed and he flopped to the ground. He tried to say something, but his mouth felt full of cotton and he couldn't form words, so he was merely just flapping his gums uselessly. Northern turned him on his back quickly and pulled him to a tree, leaning him up against it. "Now, focus on me. Listen to my voice and don't go to sleep. And quit mouthing things at me." He did as he was told, but now that she said it, he really did feel tired. But he knew that she was right. He couldn't sleep. At least his heart wasn't pounding as hard, now.