Chapter Text
The forest is surprisingly loud at night. Wind shushes through the leaves of the trees overhead, frogs croak and crickets chirp. The hoot of an owl makes her jump, and her eyes scan the trees around her as she presses deeper into her little hollow at the base of an oak tree. She waits, tenterhooks digging into her skin and twisting along with the weight of her anxiety, but no wisp of cold breath escapes her carefully quiet breaths. She swallows nervously, her heart slowing from its slight elevation. What was it again? 44 bpm?
I wonder if Danny's is higher, like dad's. She's not sure why she wants to know that, exactly. Idle curiosity, maybe?
Ellie hugs herself as another hoot-hoot sounds throughout the forest, and ice trickles down her spine because owls aren't supposed to sound like that.
Her ghost sense still doesn't activate, and Ellie shivers, feeling suddenly cold. Did dad mess with her ghost sense? No, he's her dad. He promised he'd fix her. He wouldn't, he just wouldn't.
A spark of anger flashes, catching fire and igniting to devour the toxic forest inside her. It eats away at the tangled, twisting thoughts, the barbed words that dig into her like thorns until the whole forest is nothing but ash. For now.
Ellie bites her lip, shaking her head viciously as she stands and grabs the jacket she'd taken from a general store, shaking it out forcefully.
He's not my dad, she tells herself, even as a pang of longing makes her chest go tight.
There was another hoot, from a different direction this time.
Ellie swallows, fear a tangible, frenzied being inside her that claws at her lungs and pulls her towards the dark sky above.
Yeah. Time to book it.
Shrugging on her jacket, she transforms into her ghost form and takes to the skies.