The initially dull and tedious atmosphere during our second half journey to the outer section of the jungle had somehow turned to a more excited and enthusiastic one when we could finally see the waterfall in the distance. At least, that was what I believed at first.
However, not even until twenty minutes of walking along the edge of the gorge that I began to feel fatigued again. I just tried my best to ignore it and just continue right away since I thought that I might slow down the two others if I reduced my pace, but with every several steps that I took I slowly know for sure that my body really needed some rest.
Therefore, I slowly turned to Billy to find out if he was also feeling the same. I had not noticed it at first, but it seems that his facial expression somehow described that he also needed a rest for some while. That, and the fact that he seemed to be either holding some sort of a pain or just really tired since he panted once in every few steps.
"What is it?" Billy asked me as he finally noticed I was looking at him, still panting.
"We definitely need a rest, do not we?" I asked him, wondering what his answer would be.
"We just had one earlier." He said as he pointed his left hand towards deeper into the jungle.
"No. I mean the kind of rest where we can finally relax our body before proceeding forward again." I explained to him.
"It does not look like there will be another cave or something like that where we can take a shelter in nearby though…" he responded with a rather pessimistic tone.
"Nggak tentu juga, Bill…" Jessica disagreed. "Kalau kita bisa nemu sungai, mungkin kita bisa nemu goa kecil."
She told us that if we could find the river and follow it deeper into the jungle, we might find a clue to a location of a cave. She said that it was because if we followed the river and it ended up going underground before showing up again somewhere, then that would be a good indication that there was indeed a cave nearby it, an underground kind with that respect.
"And besides, we can also follow the river after that since we received the information that told us it should end as a waterfall." she finished.
"Huh, is that so…" I muttered, somehow surprised by what she told me. "Well, Bill?"
He did not say anything and just responded by tilting his head a little and put his left hand on his hip. Supposedly, it was a signal of him saying 'I do not mind', and so we had a little change of plans on our mind as we continued our journey again. Thankfully, it did not take us long before Billy noticed that there was a river nearby. We went back deeper into the jungle to follow the direction of the river stream, but it was apparently also going to the direction of the waterfall.
We must have been following the river for some time, before I completely noticed that I could no longer see the gorge from where we currently were. At first I was wondering if it was not really a good idea to follow the river instead of the edge of the gorge, but then I recalled again that Billy had been informed that should there was any river nearby it would most likely ended with that waterfall. When I remembered that Jessica had also mentioned about it earlier, I realized how fatigued I was at that time to not be able to remember such important information.
Shortly after, we came across a couple of giant fallen trees, perhaps less than ten feet away from the river. For a brief moment, I was wondering if it might be caused by the hovering objects earlier or the other aliens, but when I noticed that the trees had fallen with all of their roots out, I knew for sure that it was due to natural causes.
There was nothing strange about the fallen trees, except that it appeared like the roots had been rotten. I was about to pull my attention away from them when Jessica suddenly stopped and had her attention locked towards the fallen trees.
"Are those roots… rotten?" she asked as she squinted both of her eyes.
"I suppose, what about them?" I replied, having no idea what might be in her mind.
"Then it may be a good news for us." she said as she rushed towards the tree.
She examined the roots of both the fallen trees for a rather short moment before she could be pretty sure that they were rotten. She continued by explaining to me that when we were looking for a cave by following a river, an indication of one nearby would occur when the stream went underground.
She then said that the flow of the river water would create some sort of an underground river, which would continuously wet anything it came into contact with, including vegetation roots. Since the cause of root rotting might be caused by overwatering, then there might also be a chance that an underground cave was nearby.
"But… how deep underground may that be?" I asked her. "These roots must be used to be long and lush, so it must be pretty deep underground right?"
"Well, I am not so sure about that…" she sighed. "But, come on we need to find that cave."
When I turned back, I saw Billy seemed to be holding his lower right chest with his left hand, and seemed to be holding his pain. He quickly put his hand away when he noticed that both Jessica and I were coming back to his direction.
"You okay?" I asked him as I began to worry.
"Just a light pain." he responded as he panted. "Probably a slight bruise that I got after that alien in the meadow knocked me away."
To be honest, I did not see in any way that it would be a light pain at all, especially since he was holding his chest in pain. Nevertheless, arguing with him at that time would only slow us down and therefore I decided to ask about it more once we had found and entered the said nearby cave.
We continued to follow the river stream, and about ten minutes later we came upon a sight of which the river was forked into two different directions. I noticed right away that the stream to the left direction was slower but had a deeper depth, while the stream to the right direction was shallower but had a faster flow of water.
"Jess?" I asked her for a suggestion on which one that we should take.
"Right one." She said without any delay or hesitation.
As we continued to walk alongside the river shore, she told me that it was not actually a matter of how deep or shallow the river was but rather, it was more to how fast the stream was. She explained that water always tend to flow from higher surface to lower surface, and therefore the faster stream earlier could indicate that the river on to the right direction was going to the underground cave that we were looking for.
What she told me turned out to be completely true as it only took us a little more than five minutes before we could see the river sloping into some sort of a cave. Without waiting any longer, we quickly headed into the cave, distancing ourselves from the rainwater outside by going in quite deep before we stopped. I reached for my flashlight to light our new surroundings as we had finally found a more adequate spot to shelter ourselves.
Contrary to what I had thought earlier, the cave actually had a rocky surface, wall, and even ceiling. Compared to the previous cave, the one we were currently in was significantly wider and taller. There were countless roots dangling on the ceiling, but only very few reached to the cave ground and to the river surface. I also noticed that we were actually currently standing on the higher ground of the cave, dry and barely mossy, while the lower ground was undoubtedly where the river was flowing.
Unlike before, at that time I was too fatigued to guess how wide and tall the cave was that I did not even bother trying to. By that time, both Jessica and Billy had been sitting down and leaning against the wall right on my left side and panting heavily as well. As I slowly sat myself down, I decided to relax myself for a little while before telling Commodore Quentin what we had encountered in the middle of the jungle earlier. The time was then already 02.10 p.m., but I was just very relieved that we finally found a place where I could lax again…