Chapter Text
The wail was high-pitched and utterly distraught, alarming enough to have Clockwork abandon his work and bolt into the room where he’d left Daniel to sulk after he had refused perfectly good ectoplasmic food. Again. Yes, he knew that going from human food to ghostly food would be a difficult transition for the child, but it seemed the real sticking point for Daniel was that it was baby food.
Clockwork had to admit he did not fully understand. What else was Daniel going to eat when his fangs hadn’t grown in yet, let alone the rest of his teeth?
When he entered the room, he expected to see Daniel beset by some enemy. Perhaps an animal ghost that had, somehow, gotten past the defenses of Long Now.
Instead, Daniel was simply crying in the middle of the room, not far from where he’d collapsed in his earlier tantrum, looking more his apparent physical age than he had awake since the Observants had brought him.
Clockwork knelt down beside him and was surprised when Daniel flung himself at him in a desperate kind of hug. He patted the small ghost lightly on the back.
“Daniel,” he said, “what’s wrong? What happened?”
“I ate it!” wailed Daniel, barely intelligible between the tears and the childish lisp he’d picked up.
“You ate what?” asked Clockwork, vaguely worried that he’d left one of his tools out and the child had eaten it out of spite. He did not relish the task of removing a chronostatic magnifying lens from an infant’s stomach.
“I swallowed it whoooooole!” cried Danny, extremely distressed.
“What was it?” asked Clock work, growing more concerned.
“The little blob ghost! I just- I just-! Ate it! I didn’t mean to!”
Clockwork sighed in relief. Was that all? It was a bit early to teach Daniel about ghost hunger, but, honestly, if it was going to be the only way he’d eat.
“I killed it!”
Ghost hunger and levels of ghostly existence.
“No you didn’t,” said Clockwork, picking Daniel up. “Come, now, it’s alright. You didn’t do anything wrong. Let’s talk about this.”