Follow the butterflies. Hadn't a book once told hime that? No, wait, that wasn't right. It hadn't been a book, and it had told him to not follow the little blips for flickering color, dancing before his toddler eyes. It had been one of the older ghosts that visited him in his woods that told him to keep away from the tiny licks of flamelike wings, shimering in the toxic green of a ghost-zone sunset. They were dangerous. They were bad. They would take you and hypnotize you, and lead you away from your Haunt to a place no ghost had ever come back from. The little Phantom was mesmerised.
The Phantom babe wanted to know more about them. His Elders seemed to understand this, but still didn't tell him much, exept to stay away from the things if he ever came accross them one day, and to fly as far away as possible if they came to him. But now they were here, and he hadn't run off like the others told him. He didn't want to. Why should he? The little glowing insects weren't harming, or even bothering him. In fact, it looked as if they were moving off. No! Wait! He called out to them softly in the voice of one so small. He didn't want them to go, now that they were here. The butterflies were nice he had decided, and he wanted to follow them.
The tiny phantom of the boy ran off into his spectral woods, the trees towering over him like dark centinals on either side to the path, guarding both the forrest and the child that played in it. Oh, those butterflies are awful fast the little boy thought, but I bet I'm faster. He didn't pay mind to the fact that he was almost out of the thick fairytail-like forrest, nor did he acknowlage the shadows of nothing more then those cast by a soft sunset, turning sharper, darker, a veil of malignance seeping from the very hearts of them.
The boy still noticed naught but the flitting flock of spectre anthropods which he chased with the abandon the kind of which only a child can posses. Now, all that warnings his grown-up friends had issued had flown away, swept up in the majesty of curiosity and the fulfilment of.
Dark shapes curled towards the oblivious form of the prancing phantom, licking at the bottoms of the pure white boots, brushing tendrils of softer then silk driven snow hair.
The lure was being reeled in, and the quarry was stupid enough to persue it.
The wooded hills and vales behind them, the boy and the shadows ow stood out on a large flat peice of enpty rock, desolate and devoide of even ghostly 'life', floating amilessly in the acidic and subdued greens of the Zone. A faulter in his step was all it took for the little phantom to pause in his game, a tiny foot catching on a protruding stone. Opon reflex, the vibrant green eyes glanced down to correct the folly and then shot up again to continue on with the run, but as soon at the gaze fell apon the place he thought the butterflies should be, the child realized the insects sudenly, just were not there. Poof, gone, nothing but thin air, like they had never existed in the first place.
Wrong. The sensation hit the boy like a wave of cold water. dread, nausea and the slightest hints of fear settling into the pit of his core. For the first time since deciding to run after the butterflies, Phantom looked around him, and accually saw his environment. And it was Dark, but not bed-time-dark-comforting in the least. It was cold and it felt like the whisps of shadows were moving around him with nothing to move it, like it was alive all on it's own. Wrong.
Subcontiously in an attempt to comfort and protect himself, the young ghost's clean white aura brightened, but it did little to light up the expanse of seemingly endless black that surrounded him. Wrong, it all felt so wrong. The first thoughts of the caution and warnings given by his elders entered his mind since the butterflies had come to him. Now his little friends were gone, leaving him alone on this big dark rock, and he was afraid. Yes, he was afraid and wanting to go home, back to his Haunt, the forest he loved and he knew loved him back. That was nowhere near here though, and try as he might, the small phantom couldn't seem to find the familier crowns of the trees of his home in this horrible dark. The scary, sufficating dark.
A groaning sigh permiated the air of the zone. Then a wimper. Then a sob. The phantom lay curled up on his side , hugging himself and trying to be brave. Someone would notice him, he told himself. THe singer with the blue fire hair, or her friend made of metal with green fire hair. Someone. Another chocked sob escaped his mouth at the thought of his friends. No, they wouldn't come, no one would. Why should they? THey would be expecting him to be in his woods, not out here, and even if he didn't apear when they called for him, they would see nothing wrong with that. Sometimes he didn't come to them when they visited, because he had thought it fun. A game. Ha, some game now. Trying to scrunch himself into an even tightere ball to block out the black shapes that had crept closer over the course of the time he had been there, he failed to see the definite form of a person, padding through the veil.
Truth be told, the person did not want to be seen. At least, not as he was now, a void in the shadows where no light could ever hope to reach and escape to show the features of the creature. A Wraith was on the move, and this wraith had come accross an unpassible chance. A Little one, one of the few left within the world he inhabbited, and just as he'd wanted, the Wraith had lured it into his claws. However, he had not expected his prey to be so...young.
The Phantom hatchling looked little more then three years old, so why was he alone and not with the rest of his nestmates? Now the wraith was shifting slightly within the shadows that blocked him from the sight of the other. Nevousnes threaded through the dark one. Forget the other hatchlings, where was the mother? Shouldn't she have been keeping a closer eye on her brood? The Wraith started at the sound of another sob, bordering tinf time a wail. Oh, this was not good. He shook himself free of such feelings. He should just grab the child and kill him, before the angry parent came for its crying child. He knew from experience that a Phantom female with a nest of babies was not a force to be reconed with. It had been a while since he had gotten a decent meal though as his stomach remined him, and the hatchling Phantom would provide an exilent reserve of energy he could feed off of for weeks, at least.
Making up his mind, the shadow being strode forward, his misty form shifting into his coporeal killing form, fully intent on taking the child. As real feet stalked over the ground, he found himself looking over the body he now sported. As a Wraith his subcontious mind autimaticaly shifted to look like what others would percieve as 'comforting' and would bring the prey in closer, there fore, he never looke quite the same way twice during a killing. This look, however, interested him.
Cearulean skin was the first big change. He couldn't remember much of his other forms, but he knew the skin was very different. Reaching up with black-clad hands, he felt high, devil-horn style hair sitting atop his head. By the tint around his vision, the wraith assumed his eyes were red, and glowing, much like the glowing green eyes staring fearfully up at him.
Ah, phantom babies. The Wraith would never come to understand just how the species could thrive for so long, and then by some miricle be whiped nearly clean from the entirety of the ghost-zone. No one, not even the ghosts who had been around for centuries knew what happened. Yet, here he was, looming over the form of a phantom child, and where there was a child, parents had to exist. Perhaps the species of spectral entity was not compleatly annihilated, no, but the wraith was sure of one thing, by the end of this night, there would be one less phantom in the zone for the world to know of.
Gazing down menicingly into the glowing green orbs of the boy, the wriath felt...almost sorry for it. After all, it WAS only a child, and a very young one at that, but it had strayed out of it's territory, and was at the mercy of all types of the nasty things that go bump in the night. It just so happened that what the little one should run into was a Wraith, a spirit eater, and a top preditor. It was a bit regretable that it had to happen to one who knew nothing of the events about to play out, as was evident by the boy suddenly standing and looking over him curiously instead of with fear, but those were the facts of life. The strong and the smart survived, and the weak and stupid were cleared away by those supirior to them.
Now that he was infront of the Phantom, the old Wraith felt...something. This was accualy new for him, this feeling. But why? He must have killed thousands of spirits in his life, but this feeling was totaly new. What was it? Did he feel something for the child? No! It was food, nothing more. Just kill it and go on his way, not sit here staring at it like an idiot. The Wraith willed his hands to move and grab the boy, his jaws to draw open for a death blow, but they just wouldn't do it. He couln't make himself.
What was wrong with him, this shouldn't be so difficult! Reach down, snap the child's neck, and be done with it! What was all this hesitation and second thoughts? It most certainly was not because the little male below him was sniffling and hiccuping while trying to regain breath from all that crying or staring up at him with a very pleading but hope filled expression that was tinged with curiosity , or crawling forward and hugging his legs-oh!
No! His mind and body both reeled back in pure shock, not fully aware of what to make of all of this. A Phantom hatchling; lost, alone, and so young it didn't even posses flight, was clinging to HIM, a Wraith, a spirit EATER, one whom he should be headed for the hills from! But no, here the little one was, attatched to the wraiths left leg like his whole world depended on it. Hell, it was even making those annoying high pitched squeals in the back of his thraot that phantoms will do to show...affection. The living shadow had a thought then, watching the tiny prey.
What if his prey, had no one to show affection to? Or, more presisly, had no one to receive affection or at least care from. Was this little one perhaps alone?
The wraith would admit, the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Alone...
For a Phantom it was almost unthinkable. Phantoms, at least when it was nesting season and it offspring were involved, lived in larger family groups, consisting of at least three different mating pairs and all the hatchlings. The think that this one kid was totaly alone baffled him, however, the circumstances being what they were, not impossible.
Perhaps he had wandered off to far and gotten lost when he was even younger, or maybe there was something wrong with him that had made the mother cast him out. The boy didn't seem to have a whole lot of self-preservation instinct, that was for certain. But still, the idea of a child being alone, wheather by chance or poor choice still left a bad taste in his-No! Stop!
The wraith gritted his jagged teeth and clenched iridecent eyes in frustration. He needed to stop thinking about this situation. What did he care if his meal was alone or not? What should he care that said meal was not more then a small frightened child unknowingly clinging to his own demise because no one had been there to teach him otherwise? He didn't. Shouldn't. Couldn't, and that was that. In fact, wouldn't it be better to put the hatchling out of its lonely misery and gain from it then let it go on with its unfulfilling life and gain nothing? Of course it was.
The Dark one reached down and picked up the tiny body, which squeaked in response. He firmly grasped the head, so small it could fit in his hand, and so fragile it would take nothing to break and never repair.
Muscles tensed, and flexed in preperation, and then
Those eyes. Those wide, curious, unfearing and overly (and he was loath to ever admit,) cute eyes glanced up to his pupiless red ones and all the fight left within him fled, just as his hunger for the little glowing body in his arms. He could not do it. He just...it isnt...he cant... The old one sighed, the depth of the exhale ruffling a few of the truely pure white strands of softer then silk hair on the phantom child's head.
Well...now what? the old wraith thought. I can't kill the little beast, nore ccan I just fling it away to rot here. It's is lost, and by the way its clinging to me, most likely thinks I'm its parent now or something equily rediculas. So, what to do with it? Might he... No! He would NOT consider THAT option. The life the wraith lead was far to hazardous and, well, for lack of a better word, gorey. Fighting over already torn up prey was common, the wraith had done it enough times to know, and seeing something like that at such a young age would surely affect the little phantom. It might get killed by something or run off. He shook his head. Why was he even thinking like the cute little bugger was going to be coming with him when he left here? Wasn't and he was going to put his foot down on this one.
Not that he wouldn't enjoy the company this one could bring later, after it learned to speak properly. Phantom hatchlings, although able to understand others words, were not known to be greatly articulate untill they were six or seven years old. Mostly comunicating in squeaks and squeals, howls, growls, hisses and the like were used among the young. And the Wraith now held a purring and ever-so-content hatchling in his arms who seemed perfectly ready to use him for a bed, no questions asked. The old one just stared down at the little body he clutched, watching the chest rise and fall in a slowing rythm, the breaths coming deeper and clamer as sleep claimed the tired child. Well. A scoff and an eye roll accompanied the shadow being as he(albeigt, a bit clumblely; he wasn't used to having a real body for extended periods) lowered himself and the toddlerto the rocks.
It was late, and he knew it wouldn't do to ponder this whole situation now, else he'd spend all of the night stuck on the thoughts going in useless circles inside his head. Tomorrow, he decided as he gingerly tucked the boy under one arm while he lay down on his belly. He would let this run past his mind, tomorrow. One last glance down to make sure he wasn't smothering the boy, and he lay his head down on the rocks. Gods, now he, Wraith, one of the most feared preditors of the ghost-zone was playing broody to what should be his dinner. The blue skinned Wraith physically cringed at the thought, but stilled at the sound the action had drawn from the body tucked under him.
Uhg, his only hope was if the boy had run off by morning. The only reward he got for his thoughts was a cold little child snuggling even closer to him. Yes, run away of his own free will...
The poor Wraith hadn't a chance in all of Hell.