There was a bird, somewhere up above him, tweeting away on a rock or in a tree just loud enough that Roger registered the animal. He might have felt the cold more, at first, and heard the stream running its course over and around the smooth river rocks much like the ones pressing into his belly. The bird was more real though, more cutting in the tone he heard lying there with his eyes closed. It was peaceful, tranquil, and the first living thing that he had encountered since the man at his campfire. It was the realization that he was not filled with the deepest dread his body had ever had the misfortune to hold. Just lying there was enough for him as the bird sang, the chill of the water less unbearable than the thought that moving an inch would set it back at his heels, nipping away at his sanity. Sunlight crept into the gully that the stream ran through, touching on his back to let him know that it was there, and finally the bird flitted away, leaving only the stream and the cold.
As apprehensive as Roger was, the calm stayed behind, even as he sat up, pulling his face from the dusty stones on the riverbank and opening his eyes on his resting place. It was an empty gully, not much in the way of larger plants, only little weeds poking out of gaps in the stone, some dangling from the steep walls that stretched up to where he had undoubtedly fallen. he took a moment to look around, eventually turning his gaze to the stream and catching a reflection of his water-drenched form. It was messy, sure, little bits of plant and sediment clutching at his t-shirt and shorts, poking out from the curls of his drying hair. The thing it wasn't was bloody, which puzzled him a bit. He checked the back of his head and under his clothes and was not able to find so much as a scratch. Skyward, his fall should have done more than that, even if he had washed downstream for a while, the cliff wall staying steep and tall for as far as he could peer down the relatively straight meanderings that the stream had carved. He wasn't sore, though that might have been the numbness the water had granted him. Roger had heard of hypothermia, but he wasn't quite able to remember the signs that it was happening. Just to be safe he disrobed and squeezed as much water out of his clothes as possible, hoping they would dry the rest of the way on his walk.
The walk was upstream for the purpose of bacon. The was some back in his Winnebago, just inside the fridge he had and combined with the pan that was lying on his bed last he checked, he would have breakfast, for he was hungry. Thus resolved, and with a quick look around, he began the easy journey beside the stream. If he hadn't drawn blood on anything, the fall must have been shorter than he remembered, exaggerated in his mind, and if he found the place he could likely climb back up and start making his way back to the road. His surety in the notion waned as the sun rose higher and the cliffs stayed higher still, looking down at him from heights that looked injurious, if not deadly.
An hour of walking and Roger was starting to debate which would be the greater miracle, not drowning on his entire float down to where he beached, or falling from such a height and not breaking anything. He was fairly sure about the not breaking anything part. He had stopped to check his limbs and ribs a few times just to be sure, but none of them was bending the wrong way, and as the sun warmed him and dried his clothes he didn't feel pain over and beyond the poke of his finger when he probed for injuries with confused disbelief. That he hadn't drowned, well, the pokes and a pinch at some point meant that he could feel, and he wanted the bacon more than brains, so he was fairly sure he was alive. It could be the afterlife, he supposed, but what kind of afterlife wakes you up soaking wet in a cold stream in the middle of nowhere? From what he was custom to believing, there would have been a bit more fanfare if something like that had happened.
So roger kept on walking as the sun rose, not sure exactly what to think, but rather amused with his own confusion. A net positive, he felt, though he wasn't sure exactly how since he was still hungry and without bacon. The stream bed, if a little barren, had a certain charm to it. Clear water hustling by towards the sun calmed him with its low mumble, seeming to entreat him to really look at the plants and the rocks and the sky, and, if he wouldn't think it vain of the stream, to even take a look at the water as it passed. Roger wasn't crazy, it was more like he was good at inventing character in things. Overactive imagination that on many an occasion had terrified him at least had the decency to drop him some enjoyable thoughts as he walked around in nature.
Around when Roger was noticing his shadow had shrunk down to cower under him, he heard the waterfall. Well, he heard the sound of a waterfall. A small waterfall. Not a large thing, crashing about with loads of white water, but enough of a flow to hit the ear from relatively close by. It was a sound hat he felt confident enough to say came from his stream, and perhaps from a waterfall that was around a small jog in the stream just up ahead. Putting a little more speed into his legs, Roger hurried forward to see it, rounding a bend in the rocks. At this point he felt a familiar, if strange sensation. He was falling. It was a long fall. Looking around, he saw a great big forest down below him, nice and green and filled with trees, a bit of a stream coming out of it to make a pool that happened to be under where he was dropping through space. As his momentum twisted him around, for this was a rather large drop, he saw the waterfall he had heard. Well, waterfall-sound creator. The water was falling up, rising as it were, hitting stones that protruded from a rocky cliff and eventually making a sharp turn to disappear over the edge that he had previously been standing upon as he rounded the corner. Roger hit the water on his back. It hurt, and he was seriously reconsidering his afterlife theory.
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