Bambi flirts with someoneā¦
If Bambi would not admit it to anyone else, he would hardly admit to himself that he was lonely. He was lonely and he, sometimes, missed his friends. Even the fair-weather ones he missed as spring came along, the flowers blooming. A sign that it had been almost a year since his father had died. The forest felt almost indifferent to this fact, as they began to emerge from their borrows, trailed behind by their new little ones, their mates. Their families. They gathered in the thickets, in the meadows, in the streams. They shared stories of the harrowing winters. Everywhere Bambi went, there was joy.
It should make him happy, but it made him dreadfully, dreadfully lonely. He was surrounded but not by his own kind. He had no humans to meet in the thickets, in the meadows, in the streams. He had not heard from Calliope and Kiara in months. Mitte was gone too, not that he expected much from her. She had always been fair-weather too. Though their bond ran deeper than most. Bambi felt the threads of these relationships frayed, broken even and he did not know how to fix the or if he should. For mortal ties were the weakness of Princes. It had been his fatherās, had it not? If Bambi had never shown up to Swynlake, if Da had never met Ellaā
Perhaps he would be here, walking alongside Bambi, a hand on his shoulder, speaking in that low, calm voice of his about the birds in the thickets, the deer in the meadow, the fish in the streams. He would smile when they were greeted with bowed heads.
His fatherās ghost just made him all the lonelier.
That loneliness ate through him. The forest heard this loneliness. Felt it with him and the paths peeled back and back. He did not know where the forest was taking him, nor where his footsteps would lead, until he found himself on the edge of the Unicorn Trail, one of the only paths heād kept open. It did not go far into the forest and gave the humans enough room to entertain themselves without bothering the rest of the forest. It kept them away from himāfrom the forest.
But his lonely heart had brought him to the edge of them and he wondered if he should follow the path. If he should go into town, find Ella and share springtime with her. Or elsewise find Callie and Kiara and spend it with them. They would eat honey on toast and laugh and it would be golden.
That thought just made the loneliness open up in his chest and he felt a hollow kind of knocking. No, he did not want to see anyone who knew him and knew his tragedies.
Perhaps, he would meet someone new. Perhaps, he would simply watch the humans as he watched the birds, the deer, the fishāand feel far, far away from them. It was not straddling two worlds as his father had described it. It wasā
Walking a tight rope between the two, feeling as if you could not step down into one territory or the other, fitting in nowhere, trying to be everywhere.
There were plenty of people out, wanting to stroll in the warming weather. They were like the birds in the thickets, the deer in the meadow, the fish in the streams. They laughed and twittered and longed for the warm seasons, wanting to revel in them.
And thenāthere was a familiar sight. A person.
Someone Bambi had met in a dream. He had thought that dream was loneliness too. Creating for him someone who smiled bright and held his hand and kissed him and made him feel warm and new as springtime felt.
Here he was, taking a break from jogging near Atlantis Lake. Bambi stood in the trees, watching, feelingāsomething in his chest.
Before he could stop himself, the trees and branches and bushes pulled back to reveal him. He stepped out of the woods, watching as Terra stretched his lithe, lovely muscles, his skin the color of honey in the morning sunlight.
āI thought you only existed in my dreams,ā he blurted without a thought, his cheeks going pink right away, but he justātried to casually lean against one of the trees. The leaves rustled in laughter.
