5. Chapter 5

Chapter five

W hen Haven came to, she almost wished she was still knocked out. The pounding in her head was worse than any hangover or headache she'd ever experienced.

"What the hell happened?" A deep voice off to her right spoke.

Haven startled and looked over to see that Roman was on the ground only ten feet away. She stood quickly with black spots dotting her vision and tried to get over to where he was, noting the scratch marks up and down her arms and legs as she went. Thankfully nothing felt broken.

As if the ground somehow opening up causing her to fall down the side of a cliff wasn't odd enough, what she was looking at now was worse.

Roman was covered in blood, similar to her but with one small differing factor. Haven had actual cuts and marks, something to show where the blood had come from. Roman did not.

Haven checked over Roman as best she could with no prior medical experience and still not quite believing what she was seeing. While he looked injured, rough and generally in bad shape, there wasn't a single mark to show why he looked that way. Examining his arm, Haven found quite a bit of drying blood but nothing else; no cut, no mark, not even a damn thorn stuck in his skin. Haven had plenty of those.

"Wow I must've really hit my head" She mumbled.

"I'm sure it's fine," Roman reassured her, a dazed look in his eye, "It's probably just the adrenaline confusing you."

Haven took a deep breath and nodded, "That makes sense"

Standing and helping Roman to follow, Haven took a few quick glances around. She quickly decided the first thing they needed to do was figure out where they had landed and which way they had come from. It didn't take long, Haven was pretty sure of the direction they had fallen based on the two trails of broken lower branches, bushes that looked like they had been plowed over and the fact that only one way was uphill.

"There's no way we can climb back up," Roman said, following her gaze.

Haven sighed, he was right. They couldn't even see the old brittle railing they had been standing by before falling, too far down the mountain to even think about attempting to climb back up. Their best bet was probably to wait and hope someone found them before nightfall. Haven looked around again, taking inventory of the area around them. She saw trees, trees and more trees .

Annoyed and unnerved by their situation, Haven kicked at the ground, groaning when the impact made her injuries scream. She was covered in scratches, cuts, thorns and had ripped a few holes in her clothes.

"Are you alright?" Roman asked, no longer leaning on her for support.

"Yeah" She responded. Other than a growing headache, none of her wounds appeared overly severe.

"We should clean that out somehow" Roman pointed to one of the larger gashes on her leg. It looked like the leggings had helped prevent her legs from getting completely torn up but they were only able to do so much. There was a five inch mark on her lower leg, it oozed blood but luckily didn't appear deep or wide enough to require stitches.

"Yeah um, let's look around for our water bottles" Haven spoke. They had been holding them before they fell.

A quick search turned up nothing. Apparently their water bottles had been lucky, staying on the cliff edge high above them. If only the bottles had fallen instead of them.

"Okay then" Haven groaned as she leaned up against a tree.

"Wait here while I take a quick look around" Roman said to her.

"No way. I'm not staying here alone!" She protested, having seen enough horror movies to know that splitting up was never a good idea.

"I'm just going to take a quick look around, see if I see any water sources or a trail. It's possible the owners had trails carved out down here since we should be close to the waterfall. You are more than welcome to follow if you want but it's probably smarter to stay here" Roman stated simply. Haven felt like he was entirely too calm considering the circumstances.

As soon as Roman started to walk away, she made a show of following him. He chuckled a bit and said,

"Alright. I thought it would be better for you to rest your leg but okay." He put his hands up in a mock surrender which caused Haven to laugh a little and be thankful she wasn't stuck out here alone. She may not know Roman much but she'd take a kind acquaintance over being alone in this situation any day.

They picked one direction and headed in it, both pretty sure it was the direction of the waterfall. While walking, Roman brought up the fact that one of the owners had mentioned earlier that the trail the rest of the students would be heading down went right by the waterfall, or at least had a pretty good view of it.

After taking a moment to panic about two students falling over the edge of a small cliff, the rest of the group would most likely be headed back to the main grounds to call for help, maybe even organize a search party. Haven and Roman quickly decided that the best plan was to attempt to run into the group, or at least find some sort of trail to lead them back to the main grounds. This direction also provided their best shot at finding some sort of creek, water source or even the waterfall itself to rinse out some of Havens wounds. If it didn't work, they had been breaking off branches as they went along to lead them back to where they landed at the bottom of the cliff.

After about 15 minutes of walking Haven paused,

"Roman, I think I hear something. Can you hear that?"

He listened for a moment, "Yes, yes I can. I think it's this way, come on" Roman picked up a jog and Haven followed, the pain of her fall numbed by hope.

They followed what had been assumed as the sound of a waterfall for only five minutes before they stopped dead in their tracks,

"Wow" Both Roman and Haven declared, voices full of awe.

They had found the waterfall and it was beautiful.