The Ghost and His Shadow

When Ghost's eyes opened blearily, he groaned at the sunlight that caused him to flinch and his head to throb. Great Thor, his head hurt, and his shoulder too. What had happened?

He sat up slowly and peeled open his eyes. The light wasn't so bad now, and Shadow was there, one wing blocking out the rays and peering at him curiously. He seemed to be sniffing him, inspecting him for something? What had happened? Had he… had Shadow bitten him? And what was that lightning and those… sensations he'd felt?

He looked down and gaped in shock. Where Shadow had bitten, he'd expected to find a ring of bloody incisions or even his whole arm gone, but the wounds weren't even open. They looked scarred over – years old even – and the scars glowed a faint bluish-purple like Shadow's plasma blasts. He could see where each individual tooth had broken the skin, creating two crescents, one across the front of his bicep, his chest, collarbone, and up the crook of his neck. The other he presumed stretched across the back of his arm and shoulder blade. The skin in between them was patterned with silvery-purple scars like lightning that pulsed with a faint glow in time with his heartbeat.

"What –" he began, turning to look at the Night Fury in shock.

Shadow sat back on his haunches and a voice rang through his head, "Hello." The voice was lower than his own, laced with the whistle of sharp wings cutting through currents of air and excitement-welcome-anticipation, and there was a color brushing against him – black filled with faint indigo pinpricks of light like the night sky.

Ghost's mouth fell open in shock and the Night Fury cackled, preening proudly, and bouncing excitedly at his reaction. The boy opened his mouth to talk, but snapped it shut and tilted his head to the side. If Shadow could talk to him like this, could he talk back?

He tried to reach back, brushing against that hue with his own color – a dappled green like a shadowy forest sparsely lit by rays of sun – and sent back a clumsy, "Hello?" He could tell that when the dragon felt him, he'd also detected Ghost's sense of shock-confusion-excitement, and the dragon pranced excitedly.

They shared conspiratorial grins.

It was time to get to work.