But now that he’s thinking about it he can feel something tugging at him, like an invisible current pulling him deeper into the Realms and farther from the portal. 

He squints, he thinks he can make out something in the distance. He flies closer, tilting his head to the side. It almost looks like depictions of black holes he’s seen. He flies a bit closer.

“Kid!” Someone shouts. “What are you doing!?”

He turns. Embers waving at him. He flies over, and Ember grabs him, dragging him away.

“What do you think you were doing?!” Ember asks as she continues to drag him away.

Danny frowns. “What do you mean?”

Ember glances at him, incredulously. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?” Danny asks, letting her drag him along. 

“The Pull.” 

“What?”

Ember pauses, sighing and turning to face him fully. “I guess I can’t really blame you.” she says with a frown. “I doubt anyone’s told you, and who knows how halfa biology works. Most ghosts are born knowing this kind of stuff.” She runs a hand through her hair and it flares hotter. “Look.” She starts again. “Every hundred years, the Core of the Realms needs to replenish its energy which it gets from concentrated ectoplasm.”

“Ghosts.” Danny says, eyes wide.

“Exaclty.” Ember says. “Honestly, this is the first time I’ve seen it. But from what I’ve heard it normally only pulls in blobs and some of the non-sentient animal ghosts. Everyone else knows to avoid the Pull.”

“Except for me.” Danny says, wrapping his arms around himself.

“It’s not your fault, babypop. Most of us you hang around with haven’t been around long enough to actually see a Harvest take place. That’s why there’s no one around. Everyone’s waiting it out in their lairs. Though,” she says, crossing her arms with a frown, “Clockwork should have told you with how often you visit him.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “If I ask, all he’ll say is ‘all is as it should be.’”

“Probably. But you should avoid the Realms for the next few days. Now one will be starting any trouble until it’s over.”

“Thanks, Ember.”

“No problem, babypop.” she says, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “No one wants anything bad to happen to our favorite ghost boy. What would we do without if we didn’t have our favorite fighting buddy?”

Danny rolls his eyes, but grins at her. “I don’t know. I guess you’d have to find some other ghost to bother.”

“Never, you’re the only one for us.” Ember says, clutching a hand to her chest dramatically.

Danny snorts. “Well,” he says looking in the direction of the Pull, “I’ll see you in a few days then.”

Ember salutes him with a grin before flying off.

Danny’s the first one from earth to travel beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. As far as he knows, that is. So he’s the first one from earth to see this creature. 

They look like turtles except that they have several octopus-like tentacles instead of flippers that it’s using to lazily move forward. It also has jellyfish-like tentacles covering its bottom shell. Danny can see them moving slowly. Every time they come in contact with a small bit of space rock the jellyfish-like tentacles pass it forward to the mouth.

But what’s almost even stranger is the collection of pterodactyls-like creatures just chilling on the space turtle’s back. They seem to be eating what might be the space equivalent of little bugs on the turtle’s back. Danny’s reminded of the birds he learned about in biology that peck little bugs off of cows. 

He decides to follow the space turtle for a while, and his eyes widen when he sees where the creature is heading. In the distance Danny can see a whole stream of space turtles traveling together.

And as he gets closer he sees that it’s not just space turtles and space pterodactyls. There’s a whole menagerie of strange space creatures. There’s a creature that looks like a bird with two heads and no feet. Some fish like creatures that flash different colors. There’s even what looks like a whale with tentacles instead of a tail. There’s jellyfish-like creatures that have tiny pincers at the end of each tentacle. There was also a creature that looked like a deer with large antlers and a mane whose mane and tail looked like the tail of a shooting star. There were manta ray-like creatures with thin almost transparent wings.

He wonders where they’re all going, where they came from. He can now see that they trail off into the distance in both directions. It’s such a strange variety of creatures traveling together. It’s like how ocean animals used ocean currents to travel. 

But if they were traveling then that meant that somewhere out there there are entire ecosystems where these creatures live.

He wants to follow them, to let the space current carry him along, let his body grow and stretch, ectoplasm flowing into a more natural shape. He can feel his body changing, but he doesn’t have time to follow the stream, he doesn’t have time to explore. He needs to get back home. 

But now that he knows where this is he can portal directly to this location next time. He can follow the creatures to where they’re going, or trace them back to their origin. 

He’s always loved space, always wanted to visit distant planets and stars. But now there’s an entire ecosystem, probably multiple ecosystems, he’ll be able to explore.