"From the Day you were Born."

Chapter 1:

School days work in a hierarchy, almost none of them good, most varying degrees of bad. Some days were better than others, and some days one wished never happened at all. But out of all the days at school, Mabel Pines knew immediately what the best one's were: The best school-days were when a dog walked into the school-yard. Thankfully, this was one of those days.

The weather was okay. It was nearly summertime in California, so you'd think there wouldn't be as many clouds. The school-work was okay. It was just a month from the end of school, and then the glorious summer ahead, though the teacher clearly wanted to squeeze every last drop of homework out of them as he could, almost as if he got sadistic pleasure from their groans at every announcement. This was nonsense of course; her teacher clearly had never experienced the concept of pleasure. Despite all that…gosh darn it, this little Alsatian that wandered in through the gates was making today the best day of her life. Sitting at the apex of the group, aggressively but lovingly caressing the neck of the adorable creature, virtually the whole class doted over it in a circle. Mabel always had a way with animals, in that she loved all of them, each and every one. No species was left out in the cold in her world. "Except for Polar bears," she corrected herself once. "They probably need some." For her good faith, animals always seemed attracted to her, and this dog was certainly no exception.

Good things of course, could not last forever, or even an appreciable length of time it seemed. The teacher, Mr. Caesar, with a face so stoic it would injure him if he attempted to smile, scattered the now forlorn group, as the dog was gently led outside the property. The whole class followed this strange traveller as he left, walled back by the railings, all hypnotically transfixed. Some were standing to get the best look, to see off their new, albeit briefly acquainted friend.

Mabel perched herself on the railings and swung backwards and forwards in an evidently unsafe manner. "This is gonna be an amazing day, and I don't even know how yet!" she beamed, excitedly.

She could hear the slowly escalating sound of running feet, coming in her direction. She had known the sound for so long, that she could immediately identify him based merely on the pacing between steps, and of course, the intensifying panting. It was her brother, Dipper, coming to a crashing halt against the rails. So sudden was the stop, his hat nearly flew off his head, if not for his arm racing across the air, with the same instinct that one would use in the face of life and death. Dipper looked around anxiously in all directions.

"Isn't there a dog here?" he asked, miraculously in one breath.

"There was. You missed him," Mabel smirked.

"Aw man." Dipper groaned, leaning his back against the railing to catch his breath. "I heard there was a dog coming in. Why can't I ever be around when this stuff happens?"

"Well," Mabel sniggered, pointing at the book being held loosely in his hands, fingers still dividing the crucial pages, "If you weren't spending all your time at the far end of the playground, reading those silly monster books by yourself, maybe you'd actually see things that us normal people see."

"Hey! Hey!" Dipper arose, the slight of honour having seemingly removed any exhaustion. "These are books about REAL creatures that science hasn't discovered yet! Just look at the eyewitness testimony, the SONAR, the video footage! It-it just all makes sense!"

Mabel climbed off the rail, and smiled the same infuriating smile adults and children alike would give to Dipper when he started to talk about monsters and the like. "Come on Dip, you don't really think we all just missed the Loch Ness Monster now, do you?"

"That's exactly what they said about the coelacanths, Mabel! Supposedly dead for millions of years, and they come back safe and sound! Yeah, I'm not sure about the Loch Ness Monster, but you know about Ogopogo?"

"Ogo-wha-wha?"

For Dipper, this was like someone asking who Abraham Lincoln was. "Ogopogo!" he blustered, waving his hands in exasperation. "It's a plesiosaur in Canada! They have so much SONAR evidence, all these stories, I mean, you just have to read it! Oh man, I'd love to go up there for summer. Imagine it Mabel! Me and you, hunting for dinosaurs! We'll go on the lake, stake out at night-"

"Do a scrapbook!" she interjected excitedly.

Dipper returned confused eye contact, having been walking and talking in his own tangent. "Uh, yeah, if you want…But then we'll find it and boom! We can have anything we want! Imagine the headlines!" he said, looking at the sky, and grabbing Mabel towards him. He stretched his hand above their heads, deepened his voice and let his imagination do the talking: "Piedmont Twins discover creature thought dead for 65 million years! This intrepid duo bravely discovered a real life Plesiosaurus, in the greatest scientific discovery in history! The two are on their way now to meet the President himself to-"

Dipper could not continue with Mabel sniggering so hard. "Sorry Dipper," she laughed, "Go on! It's cute when you do your thing."

Dipper sighed. "I wish." He resigned himself back against the railing, his enthusiasm crumbling like clumped sand. "Instead we have to go to the middle of nowhere to work in some crummy shack. 'Gravity Falls.' Seriously? We're going to spend our whole summer trapped inside a pun so bad it wouldn't make it into that terrible joke book you got me for our last birthday?"

"Hey! That book was a master-class in pun-tastic delivery!"

Dipper broke eye contact to look at his feet, a deeper sense of insecurity creeping inside of him. He sat on the railings, hunched in rejection. "Why can't we even go to Paris, or London, or Rome, like all the other kids our age?" He hesitated. "And with our parents?"

Mabel knew many things about her brother, and one of them was the ability to determine when he needed support. "Oh lighten up, Dip!" Mabel assured him, giving him a gentle but enlivening punch on the shoulder. She snuggled up beside him on the railing. "It doesn't matter if we go to Gravity Falls, Paris, or the Moon! The important thing is that whatever summer we have, we'll have it together. Right?"

This reminder was what Dipper needed. He smiled thoughtfully back at his sister. "Yeah, you're right."

"Come on," Mabel beckoned, leaping up and striding back to school, "I want to talk with all my friends about how cute that dog was!"

"Aw, man, seriously?" groaned Dipper, rolling his eyes skyward, and looking to heaven for a divine intervention he knew would not come. It was certainly not for lack of trying.

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