Each Silken Strand

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or the poem used within.

Cross Play of Loves

Author's Note: This is one of Carl Sandburg's Chicago poems, "Choices".

THEY offer you many things, I a few.

"So, now what are we going to do?" Danny asked his mother. "We certainly can't go on like this, with you hating one half of me. And if you were to go soft, Dad would get suspicious."

"I notice you didn't mention your sister," his mother wryly replied.

"She already knows," he said, looking away.

"That explains quite a bit," she answered. "I can tell you what we are going to do though."

"What?" Danny asked warily.

Moonlight on the play of fountains at night With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,

"I agreed," Danny said, shoveling a spoon of cornflakes in his mouth. After chewing and swallowing, he continued, "Sam and Tucker pointed out that Mom has a lot she can teach me."

"I find that highly disturbing," his sister commented, after taking a sip of orange juice. "How do you know she won't try and dissect you? Or tell Dad?"

"I don't," Danny replied. "All I can do is trust her. She did say it was just a few harmless tests."

Silence reigned at the breakfast table for a few moments.

Jazz sighed. "Alright, little brother, just be careful."

"I will, Jazz," he said, standing up. "And thanks."

Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk And a cross-play of loves and adulteries

"They don't realize what he really is," Jack Fenton glared at the young adolescent females on the television fawning on the young half-ghost, who was trying to fend them off, particularly one Paulina Sanchez.

"He looks uncomfortable," Maddie absent-mindedly replied. She stood up. "I'm going to take the GAV and look for Danny, Jack. It's almost time for his curfew."

"I'll go with you, Mads," he offered.

"No, Jack," she told him. "You stay here. This is something I want to do by myself."

"Okay," he agreed, as the news announcer switched to the financial market's latest windfall. "Just be careful."

She smiled and pecked him on the cheek. "Thanks, Jack, for understanding."

And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets: All this they offer you.

"Thanks, Mom," Danny said, as he came running around a corner, in human form, once more.

"What brought you out to the skating rink tonight? I thought you hate skating," she asked, as he slid the door shut. The rabid fan girls had gone back inside once Phantom had vanished into the ground, ignoring Danny Fenton, who had reappeared almost as if by magic, which was the way she preferred it.

"I do," he replied, wincing as the pain in his shoulder. "It was an ectopuss. I took care of it fairly quickly."

"Danny, let me see," she said, turning to face him.

"No," he said, pulling away. "It's nothing, Mom. Just a little cut."

His mother pulled his shirt up over his head, causing him to yelp in surprise and pain. "My God, Danny!" she exclaimed, seeing the multiple scars, bruises and one heck of a laceration, which already appeared half healed. "Don't tell me that's nothing. I'm taking you home to get this cleaned up. And you are going to tell your father," she added, releasing him.

Danny tugged his shirt back down, face paling in alarm. "Do I have to?"

She looked at him sternly. "Yes."

He sighed and turned to look out the window. "Alright," he quietly muttered. "But if he tries to 'rip me apart molecule by molecule', this is on your head whatever I may do."

Maddie said nothing, expecting this sort of reply from her son. She started the car and slowly eased her way into traffic in the direction of FentonWorks.

I come with: salt and bread a terrible job of work and tireless war; Come and have now: hunger, danger and hate.