Tauren Tale

Chapter 3: Escape from the Pool

Sanja had watched the falls from the valley floor and idly wondered how long it would take to jump from the top to the bottom. She was not a suicidal person – far from it – but it was the sort of thing that you couldn’t help but wonder when looking up at the falls’ majesty.

Sometimes a gust of wind would blow a white jet of water away from the rest of the falls and she would count slowly as it fell. “No... owa... halii... jola...” Sometimes she would get all the way to saji before it crashed down on the rocks below.

Sanja didn’t get to count to saji on this fall, had she even thought to try it. Instead the two fell into a deep dark pool almost as soon as they had left the cliff top. They bounced off of the pool’s rocky bottom (not hard) and immediately popped back up to the surface.

Without a hesitation – this time – the pair splashed over to the edge of the pool and up on some slippery rocks. It had been dim out on the plateau, but it was pitch black here.

“You’re hurting my arm!” Jorga yelled. The falls were so loud that she could just hear his voice over them.

“I’m sorry,” she yelled back. She eased up on the death-grip she held on his arm, but she didn’t let him go.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of cave, I guess.”

“What do we do?” her brother yelled. He sounded very scared. She couldn’t blame him. She was scared too.

Sanja thought for a long while. “We wait. The sun will be up soon. When it shines some light down in here, we’ll be able to come up with a plan.”

“I’m cold!” the boy whined.

She put her arm around her brother and rested her cheek on the top of his furry head.

She was cold too, but happy to be alive.

# # #

After what seemed like an eternity, the sun did rise and it cast a bit of light around their environment. They didn’t appear to be in a cave at all, but instead a notch in the top of the cliff face. Water cascaded off of the plateau above and fell perhaps only fifteen or twenty feet before splashing into the pool before them.

This pool then overflowed into the falls that tumbled down the rest of the cliff's face.

Sanja supposed it was possible that the water fell into a second pool before beginning its final descent down the cliff – you certainly couldn’t see such tiny details from the valley floor – but there was no way she was going to try and get a closer look.

The “notch” was about fifteen yards wide and extended perhaps twenty-five yards deep back from the cliff face. The walls were stone, but worn smooth by centuries of flowing water. Everything was smooth, wet, and coated with slick layer mud.

Sanja craned her neck and looked around as much as possible without standing up. She couldn’t see anything that looked like a good way out. There was a crack here or there that might provide a good handhold, but there was too much bare rock above or below each to afford climbing out.

The waterfall blocked most of her view. She tried to get to her hooves, but her brother clung to her arm. “Don’t go!”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised him.

# # #

The sun rose a bit more and cast its warm rays on them. Ever so slowly, the light worked its way around, eventually illuminating the entire notch.

There on the opposite side of the pool, a miserable-looking mass of black leather and metal studs sat perched on a rock. Theodore looked like drowned rat, and the sopping-wet Gnome beside him looked little better.