bambi eyes || tradley

11. the other side

The light-haired man's long fingers slowly clicked across the laptop's keyboard before hitting the enter key, his leg uncontrollably bouncing up and down underneath his desk as he impatiently waited for the page to load. He leaned closer to the screen after the page finished loading, displaying a row of beautiful lake photos and causing Bambi to gasp in amazement beside him.

"So this is Blackery Waters? The water isn't black, I'm very disappointed," he stated. Tristan nodded in agreement, typing in the search engine again for directions to the lake. The curly-haired boy nudged his hip against Tristan's. "Move over, please."

Tristan scooted to the left, giving Bambi a little room to sit down beside him. "So, you're coming with, Bambi?"

"Of course," the twenty-year-old replied. "What will we try to find?"

The blond's small smile shifted to a grimace once he realised he wasn't sure what they'd be looking for, or why he was going in the first place. Tristan had never been this interested in finding out about his past. He had always imagined his past finding him, like how his foster family did, but at that moment, he suddenly felt a rush of determination to find his family and unscramble the mystery of his past. He wanted to know why his family weren't around, he wanted to know what happened to them and what they were like, he wanted to know if they ever loved him, and on and on. Maybe a stupid lake wouldn't lead him to finding his parents, or finding out what happened to them, but he was becoming too curious, and there was something about Blackery Waters that someone wrote it on the photo capturing his first birthday held nowhere near water.

"I don't know," Tristan honestly answered as he typed the directions on a note in his phone. "My past, I guess."

Excitement filled the boy's wide eyes. "Your past will be there?"

"Not exactly, but it may bring me one step closer to it."

"Maybe you'll get a memory, or a flashback," Bambi excitedly assumed. "Sometimes when I touch things, memories return. They're little memories, though. Nothing to actually help me find out my past. But that's what you're here for, right?"

"Maybe."

That afternoon, the two boys climbed into Tristan's vehicle, Bambi reading the directions out loud to the twenty-one-year-old as he made his way down isolated, unknown streets. The lake was further than he expected - somewhere over an hour - but he and Bambi had nothing better to do. And anyway, it wasn't like Tristan didn't enjoy driving.

"These houses are tall," the brown-eyed boy commented as they sped through a run-down neighbourhood full of vintage residents. The houses were pretty tall and creepy with brown, dying grass and rusted, cracked windows. Tristan wasn't surprised. When a neighbourhood is close to a lake titled 'Blackery Waters,' one wouldn't expect its appearance to resemble a fancy house that seemingly climbed out of a magazine.

"Yeah," the blond slowly agreed before they detached from the neighbourhood and their surroundings pulled off into more of a country setting with acres and acres of grass. Tristan suddenly felt more comfortable. The surroundings weren't familiar, but he felt safer now that they were inching away from the eery neighbourhood.

"Wow," Bambi complimented the scenery. He placed two hands on the car window and looked outside, like he'd never seen green grass before. "I love it here."

"It's quite nice, yeah," Tristan replied in agreement. "Am I supposed to make a turn anytime soon?"

Bambi looked down at the screen of the twenty-one-year-old's phone and scanned the words he'd typed. "No, just keep going straight, and then you should reach Blackery Waters soon."