Chapter 141: Chapter 124 – Wonders of Nature

"O waterfalls of yore, how beautiful you are~

Your falling streams evoke, the grandeur of the falls~

O how I wish I could, enjoy the sight each day~

Madginfjord~ Madginfjord~ So beautiful you are~" - Refrain to "Waterfalls of Yore", most famous song by master bard Ulfnar Thorsson.

 

After they calmed the goats down from the fright the wendigo gave them, Cal and her nieces continued their journey. Surprisingly, after the scare with the Wendigo, those two goats were no longer scared from anything.

 

They had not even flinched when a hungry saber-toothed mountain lion jumped at them only for Cal to swat it down and send it running scared with a kick to its posterior. Apparently after the animals saw her kill the wendigo, they associated her with power, and in the wilderness, the strong ate the weak, while they usually also protected their packs. Those goats probably considered themselves part of Cal's pack and thus were safe with her around.

 

Three more days passed before they reached their destination. The three of them had just hiked halfway up another hill, one that was rather steep at that, and exited a narrow, but well used pathway, before they emerged into a large gap in the middle of the mountain range.

 

Cal, Elaina, and Sidonie were all transfixed by the sight before them, as they stood - or sat on their mounts - with unblinking eyes and mouths wide open.

 

Water from molten ice caps high on the mountain peaks had flowed down the mountain, collected into streams in groves and places where two mountains intersected. Over the ages these groves grew deeper and deeper as the constant flow of water slowly eroded the stone.

 

The streams were now easily as wide and deep as rivers, as they flowed with a strong current down their way. A quirk of geography had resulted in at least a dozen such streams leading towards this very gap, named Madginfjord - Rivers in the Mountains in the local tongue - where the streams of water fell off the steep cliffs to the ground nearly a hundred meters below.

 

It was an amazing sight, the multitudes of waterfalls flowed and sprinkled water everywhere, and as the sun's rays refracted from those droplets a constant, shimmering multitude of ever-shifting rainbows came to life in the air near the waterfalls.

 

All the streams fed a large, deep lake at the bottom of the gap, one that flowed out of another crevice in the mountain range to the outside, and eventually to the seas. The Madgelva river was the end result of this flow from Madginfjord, and once they recovered from the wondrous spectacle before them, Cal led her nieces down into the shores of the lake.

 

An old but well used and maintained set of stairs without railings were carved along the sides of the cliffs by the locals. Cal and her nieces followed the stairs down, and once again looked at the waterfalls in awe.

 

From a lower vantage, not only had rainbows formed and shimmered before the waterfalls, but some of the waterfalls themselves took on a shade of rainbow. To have witnessed for herself what looked like a cascading rainbow was truly something else, and Cal understood at that moment why her father had such fond memories of this place.

 

After all, it was not everyday they get to witness a wonder of nature with their own eyes.

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At the bottom of the gap, Cal saw that the shores were quite narrow, maybe only five meters wide on average, and most of the floor of the gap was dominated by the bowl shaped lake. The water in the lake was crystal clear, while here and there some silver-scaled fish swam and flitted freely in the waters.

 

Deeper in the water - Cal assumed the lake to be around twenty meters deep at its deepest point - grew various kinds of water plants, which when coupled with the shimmering colors of the rainbows above them, just made the place look like a paradise from children's folk tales.

 

She took one look at her nieces' faces, and found the same look in their eyes she knew she had in hers. They nodded to her unasked question, and quickly hammered a stake to secure the goats at. There was quite a bit of shrubbery and moss growing in the area so they would not lack for food, and the chains were long enough they could simply drink from the lake.

 

That work done, the three women quickly shed their clothing and plunged into the lakes, where they swam and played with the water like little children. Not even the frigid temperatures of the water bothered them that much as they basked in the beauty of nature around them and had their inane, childish enjoyment.

 

It was one of the few times Cal truly felt happy and unburdened since the civil war.

 

After the cold finally got a bit too much for her nieces, they left the water, and Cal brought out the portable bath she had bought in paradise. It was honestly a simple contraption, a foldable bathtub with heating enchantment, linked to a cubic meter tank of water that could absorb water from the environment and purify it, or simply recycle used bathwater.

 

As the tool was designed with all sorts of customers in mind, the foldable tub had several configurations of size. Cal usually just used one sized for elves, a longer, narrower tub for one, but with her nieces around, she opted for a configuration meant for large therians, a bathtub large enough to hold the entire cubic meter of water stored.

 

They allowed the tub to heat the water first, and Cal giggled when she saw her nieces clasp their arms and shivered - they were wet and naked after all, after a long dip in frigid waters. She herself didn't find the cold bothersome, as in fact it was tradition in Diao-Nan - where she grew up - for people to break the ice over lakes in winter and bathe in the near freezing waters.

 

Once the water was heated up and the heating enchantments turned themselves off, Cal watched with a smile as her nieces happily jumped into the tub of hot water, while she also stepped into the water in a more relaxed pace before she lowered her body into the hot water.

 

She sighed and relaxed as the heat of the water seeped into her cold body, and the three of them just laid back relaxedly in the tub while they watched the beautiful sights above. When the water started to turn cold, the heating enchantments just re-heated it and allowed the occupants to just relax.

 

They stayed in the hot bath until the sun began to set.

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