Collisions

Chapter 9: A Nice Squabble

The sun began to set on yet another day. Corey had progressed on his personal, secondary objective, but had no leads on the location of his target: the final Dimensional Stone, located somewhere in this semi-enchanted forest. But he couldn’t leave to try and find it just yet.

He still had some brotherly duties to perform for the time being. As he thought about his current situation, he noticed that his “brother”, the young Prince, was talking with his friends, who he had not seen for a couple of days-at least, as far as the operative knew.

Now, ordinarily, Corey would have discarded the conversation as trivial, but since he’d interfered to the point where a brotherly relationship was recognized between some newbie who wouldn’t exist normally and the true protagonist of the dimension, he felt entitled to some intelligence completely unrelated to his primary objective.

He decided to take a right turn towards the meadow so that they wouldn’t suspect a thing, but then he hid behind a tree a few yards behind.

“So Ronno didn’t scare you?” Thumper asked, sounding a bit impressed. “That’s very good!”

“It was thanks to all of you that it happened.” Bambi said, still sounding a bit in pain from the beating endured earlier in the day. “You, Flower, Corey, my father, Faline…”

Corey sighed. At least he didn’t say “brother” that time. The hero continued to listen in, just in case Thumper and Flower decided to blow the whistle on what they saw a couple of days ago when they were looking for Bambi. But after a while of listening to the three beat around the bush and talk about old times, Corey decided that it was better to just head on to the meadow and continue his search.

He searched through the tall grass, which produced no less than six sneezes from the boy in disguise. He searched some hollow logs, turned over some stones, and even dunked his head underwater to look for the objective. All of these, however, were dead ends.

The sun had fallen to a point slightly above the trees. Corey estimated it was about seven o’clock in the evening. He had worked his way to another clearing, where a lonely tree overhung. It was surrounded halfway by tall grass. The other half overlooked a part of the meadow, separated only by a minor incline.

As Corey tried to think of the location of his target, Kayla strode up the incline, a slightly happy expression on her face. Corey smiled slightly.

“I take it you saw something that cheered you up?” the boy inquired, feeling the need to know.

“Yes, I did.” The smile seemed to widen slightly.

“Okay then, out with it, what was it?”

“They admitted their…love…”

“Hold up…did you just say ‘love’?” Corey asked, bewildered.

“Yes, what’s wrong with it…”

“The word ‘love’ does not exist…”

“It…doesn’t?” Kayla considered the past of the story, and remembered that Corey was right. “That’s right…”

“Oh boy, things are worse than I thought…” Corey mumbled to himself.

“Don’t worry about it that much,” Kayla looked up at him again, though her voice had dropped in volume. “At least it means that it can be said in a real way, at least for us.”

“I guess you’re right…” The two closed the walking distance between each other, and stared into each other’s eyes. It seemed to go on for ages…just too bad that little brothers tend to nose around into other siblings’ business.

“Oh, there you are…what are you…?” Bambi’s voice came, startling Corey straight out of his trance. Kayla also jumped and turned. “That reminds me of…”

“Yeah, you got me.” Corey conceded. But then he felt the need to conduct some brotherly teasing, so he went on. “But I also got you.”

“What do you mean?”

As Bambi finished his question, Kayla subtly turned to Corey, and winked the eye that wasn’t facing Bambi. After all, the animals weren’t completely like their real world counterparts-the two of them knew that much. With that, she left, leaving an oncoming brotherly squabble in its wake.

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me,” Corey replied, subconsciously trying his hardest not to sound like a prick. “I know about Faline…” Corey resisted the urge to crack even a smile, since he had known all along in the first place. “And why you were reminded of something.”

“Wait, you were spying?” Bambi became visibly angry, much like the younger brother who just got busted for his crush on some girl he met at school.

“I was the one who sneezed.” Corey admitted.

“Well, what about Kayla?” How could he not have seen that coming? Corey was caught completely off-guard by Bambi’s abrupt inquiry. “I just saw the two of you together…”

If there was a time where Corey wished he had a do-over button in life, this would be one of the moments. Too bad life never came with any of those. But before Corey could add to this pointless drivel, Bambi turned around as though sensing something.

“W-what are you two doing here?” he asked, completely shocked out of his mind-and when Corey realized just who it was he was looking at, he also became shocked, nearly falling over. Kayla and Faline were watching the whole event.

“Well, it looks like the two of you are brothers, after all,” said Kayla. After a bit of an awkward silence, all four became laughing. And in the laughter, Corey finally understood what everyone, fictional or not, was getting at in their own ways.