Starlight Glimmer opened her eyes.
She was laying on her side on a bank of sand. She was wearing her saddlebags, but they were mostly empty. Her horn burned with a dull fire, her stomach felt as if it had been punched, and her entire body was a giant bruise just waiting to pass out again... but she was alive.
She was also completely drenched. Rivulets of water drained from her coat and mane, and the lake shore water lapped across her legs and hindquarters. A chill night breeze was beginning to stir, and the mountain water was hardly warm. She had to move, or she wouldn't stay alive much longer.
There had been smoke. Downriver, there was a town. There would be safety... she hoped. No, there had to be. She had nothing to her name save for a box, a book and two empty saddlebags, all of which were likely just as waterlogged as she. Three canteens of mountain water, too. She wasn't in a very good position to appreciate the irony.
The breeze caused her blanket to roll over in the sand ahead of her, and she blinked slowly. She had that too, for what it was worth. The thing was wet, which meant wearing it would make her even colder... not to mention how much sand it had likely picked up. The fabric, normally the same midnight purple as her mane, didn't appear much different after everything it had been through, but there was no doubt about its condition.
At least it was something. What she didn't have, and what she needed more than anything, was her-
Her boat. A rectangular shape was bobbing in the lake, floating gradually to her left. Had it somehow survived the fall, too? She shook her head; of course it had. If she hadn't been able to break it, there was no way that dumb waterfall could do the trick.
If it was her boat, it wouldn't stay there for long. Rather than let her best chance slip away, Starlight commanded her body to move several times... eventually getting her hooves to pick themselves up and get underneath her. She stood slowly, balance upset as the various parts of her moved on their own, without central coordination. Shakily, she took one step and then another, first hobbling towards where her blanket had fallen. It was useless now, but she couldn't spare any advantage, no matter how slight.
...Maybe not entirely useless, she thought, slowly spreading the thing out. As dirty as it was, the fabric was intact. Maybe she could wash it, and dry it, and it would be good again. It wasn't ripped, at least. Unfortunately, Starlight was cold now, and that meant she needed an immediate solution. If she could survive this night, she could make anything work. She hoped.
After putting the heavy, water-soaked thing into her saddlebags, Starlight stumped along the shoreline, spitting the taste of grit out of her mouth and leaning sideways with the extra weight. Odds were, she'd have to groom herself again, so she needed to get used to that. The sand shifted under her hooves, a product of countless years of water striking stone and refining it into mush that was only good for clogging horseshoes and annoying fillies like her. Too bad for it she was too tired to be annoyed.
Unblinking, Starlight followed her boat. Eventually, it drifted nearer to the shore... so she marched straight into the water in pursuit. Ripples lapped at her chest fur and tugged at her saddlebags as she approached the box, but it was shallow enough that she didn't need to swim.
The boat greeted her, half-submerged yet somehow upright. At least that had worked. Unable to give it a smile, Starlight got behind the thing and pushed, dragging it closer to shore. Her tail trailed limply in the water behind her, such an unbrushed mess that her streak of cyan was completely invisible, the hairs blended into the rest of the appendage. Wading through her own ripples, the filly leaned and shoved, occasionally backing off and bumping against the box to give it a little extra push.
Once there, she overturned the box and waited patiently as all the water drained out. She had her things back... or, at least, as much as she was going to get. She still had miles to cover. She wasn't hungry. Eating was the last thing she wanted to do right then, but she knew that wouldn't last, and had no food. Wracking her slow, tired brain, she tried to recall the vista she had seen from the clifftop. Had there been any more waterfalls in the way?
The forest around her seemed to increase in size as she thought. Bushes peered out from under trees, leaning toward her like a solid wall of twilit vegetation. Above that, trees towered, and above that? Stars.
She sighed. The atmosphere seemed to be conspiring against her ability to think, but she couldn't recall seeing any waterfalls - at least, none of this scale. Making up her mind on the spot, Starlight righted her boat, threw her saddlebags inside, and began to push it back out onto the water. She was going to fall asleep. She was going to get hungry. She needed to reach safety... so she might as well get started.
Successfully, Starlight climbed into the crate. It righted itself as she had hoped, rocking slightly as she sat down in the middle. The walls were too high for her to see over, which was probably an oversight. But they also shielded her from the wind, and there was nothing she could do about it anyway. They were also wet, so she couldn't tell if her sap was working. If it didn't, it would wake her up, at least. And if it didn't? Well, if she reached that state, there would probably be nothing she could do even if it did.
With nothing left she was capable of doing, Starlight curled up in the middle of the crate and passed out, hoping fervently that the waters would be on her side.