What ever happened to us? Amy thought. Sonic ran about, taunting her with his speed.
"What, you aren't even trying today?" Sonic stopped, looking dissapointed.
"Trying to what?" Amy sighed. "Sonic, I'm tired today. Do you think I like chasing you? All I want is to have a normal conversation." She sank to her knees on the grass. Her long pink quills blowing slightly in the wind.
She really is growing up, Sonic thought. He sat beside her. "Well why didn't you say that in the first place?"
She shook her head. "It was fun, for a few days. Then it got monotonous, but it was something to fill the hours of my day, I suppose." Her sad green eyes watched a caterpillar crawling on a nearby fern.
"I felt guilty," Sonic confided in Tails, years later. "She used to be such a happy soul. Now she always looks so sad."
"Oh." Sonic didn't know how to respond at first. Amy curled into a ball, her shoulders hunched, as if she was protecting herself from any invaders.
"You just noticed?" Scoffed the grown up fox. Tails was now seventeen. Sonic was twenty-four, and Amy was twenty-one.
"Sonic...do you ever get the feeling you're being watched? Like, I feel like I'm being watched, but I'm watching them as well, even though I can't see them." The young woman sighed.
"Look, guy, she's been that way ever since Shadow died. You had nothing to do with it."Tails hid his own pain at mentioning the fallen one.
"Uhh...no?"
Sonic shook his head. "That can't be right."
"It is."
"...Sonic..." Amy stood. She rubbed her neck. "I think I should go."
"It's been nine years!"
"You are so arrogant!" Heatedly exclaimed the fox. "She was in love with him!"
"Sonic?" Amy turned after she walked a few steps away. "Do you ever miss him? Shadow, I mean."
"Heck no!" Sonic shook his head. "probably for the best that he's gone."
Sonic was stunned. But, now that he thought about it, it was obvious. She was more...subtle about it. Little hints that she cared.
Amy turned pale white. "Yeah...It's for the best..." She briskly walked away, but swayed a little, as if she didn't know how to walk.
"Is that so?" Sonic looked to a cloaked figure that was leaning in the doorway. Green eyes met striking red ones.
Sonic worked up the nerve to speak. "Are you a ghost?"
Shadow laughed. "No, I'm not a ghost." he paused, and added, "As far as I know, anyway."
Sonic remained motionless. Shadow sighed, and without another word, left.
"Goodbye, Amy." Sonic, still sitting, whispered, long after she had wandered off.
