Hey there! This one might be a bit confusing if you haven't read about the wisps in Mortified or my Ectober shorts.

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Remora

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The will-o-the-wisp cooed in Danny's ear. He giggled.

"Okay! Okay! That tickles!" he protested, leaning away from the adventurous little ghost. It's cousins (Danny hadn't quite worked out how family groups worked for wisps) peeked out shyly from behind leaves and within knot holes. They were usually more outgoing, but it was broad daylight. The wisps preferred the night.

Danny swung off his backpack, and unzipped it to pull out a bag of caramel popcorn. He pulled off the tab, and unraveled the plastic. The wisp was vibrating in excitement. Danny removed a handful of popcorn, and offered it up.

The wisp drifted down and engulfed a single piece of popcorn, humming happily. The other wisps floated over one by one. Danny tried to make sure that each wisp got at least one piece of popcorn. He might have also taken a piece or two for himself.

The first wisp (Danny thought that its name might translate as Flies-Quickly-Through-Leaves, but he wasn't sure, and he couldn't quite manage the thrill, or the color change, to say it properly.) flew back up to rest on Danny's ear. Then it made a faint inquisitive noise, and drifted upwards to brush against Danny's temple.

"Hm? Do I have something stuck up there?" He rubbed his hand over the offending area and frowned as it came away with flakes of blood and dirt. "Oh," he said. "It's just leftovers from my last fight." He ran a hand through his hair, and suppressed a grimace. He hadn't taken a shower in a while. His hair was kind of greasy and dirty. Actually, that could be used to describe his entire body. He hadn't had a lot of time for hygiene lately.

He sighed.

The wisp whistles sharply, in a hey, over here! way. The wisps converged on Danny, each of them lisping gently over his skin. Danny froze.

The wisps were largely harmless, and very friendly, but Danny's unique physiology made him uniquely vulnerable to them. They didn't mean to trouble Danny, but they didn't always realize that what they were doing affected Danny negatively. Since the last... incident, the wisps had settled on radiating pure ectoenergy and low-key contentment. That mix didn't make him hyper, depressed, or otherwise put him in an altered mental state. It just energized him, as it was supposed to.

But this was different. This was something new. He didn't know how to feel about it.

It was like they were kissing him, and the were very fuzzy and ticklish. Eventually, Danny couldn't help but laugh helplessly. Then they started to card through his hair, and he began to pur. Danny wasn't yet comfortable with his tendency to pur when he was happy. It was an inhuman reaction. Jazz, Sam, and Tucker thought it was cute, which helped, but, well, feelings didn't disappear at a moment's notice.

What the wisps were doing wasn't hurting, though, so he stayed still. Mostly still. Sometimes they would surprise him into giggles. Slowly, he started to relax. After a while, they finished whatever it was they were doing, and gathered around Danny like piles of glowing pillows.

Danny sighed, and laid down on top of them. They chimed and jingled. Danny rubbed an eye, frowned in confusion, then extended the rub to the rest of his face and hair. He turned his attention to his clothes. He was clean.

"Huh," he said. Well, Clockwork had compared the wisps to remora, cleaner fish, when he was first explaining them to Danny. "Thank you."