December 3, 2012

Piedmont continues to provide no new creatures to investigate. I finally got around to searching behind the old dumpster at school, but the shadows turned out to be just ants, not the spider-person larvae I had been expecting. Then some kids saw me, and they started saying I was looking for my lunch and laughing. But Mabel set them straight.

I believe this town may be too close to Gravity falls to contain any natural anomalies; the place's Natural Law of Weirdness Magnetism must have pulled anything of interest out of here. I guess I'll just have to wait to go back.

Man, I miss that place. I wonder what Wendy and Soos are up to. Probably having a ton of fun. And Stan and Ford are having tons of adventures up in the Arctic! We call them every night, and they tell us about all the cool creatures they've seen.

It's kinda sad I have to leave them. But if I was with them, I wouldn't be with the coolest twin in the world. I'm not really super popular; pretty sure most of the kids at school think I'm insane for believing in ghosts and stuff; but Mabel's stuck by me. Keeps saying I'm a thousand times the worth of everyone who teases me. She hasn't made many friends of her own yet, which is kind of unusual for her. I think it might be my fault.

I hope she doesn't mind.

"DIPPER! Are you done writing in your nerd book yet?"

Dipper Pines closed the journal he was writing in and rubbed the pine tree embossed on the cover. Its blue paint was beginning to wear down a little, but he didn't mind. It reminded him more of Journal 3.

"Just about!" He called down the stairs.

"Good, 'cause my algebra homework is starting to look like the stuff Grunkle Ford writes, and I need your help!"

"Coming!"

He ran down the stairs, jumping over the final step, and looked towards Mabel's usual homework spot on the couch. She was staring at a piece of paper and looking slightly stoned, either from the complexity of the problems or from an overdose of chocolate bars. Or both.

"Seriously, I swear you'd need to have a cryptology degree for this," she said as Dipper collapsed onto the cushion next to her. She looked up at the slight puff of air and grinned. "Or just be a massive dork like you!"

The boy laughed. "Hey, just because I pay attention in class-" but his breath left him in a rush as Mabel collapsed against his side in a cotton-covered boneless pile.

"Help me with my homework, dork!" She mock-commanded him with a flourish of the paper.

"I can't, you're squishing me!" He laughed, struggling to free his limbs until Mabel moved back upright.

"Fine, fine," she laughed as he took a look at the first problem. He had that look, familiar as it was comforting, of pure concentration, a piercing gaze upon the paper. It occurred to Mabel that she had almost lost that look a summer ago.

"Man, I don't know what I'd do without you, Dipper," Mabel sighed as she slumped against his side again, softer than the first time.

The boy glanced at his sister, perfectly at ease.

Me neither.

It was dark, crushingly dark. There was a silence around, the kind that presses on your eardrums, squeezes them until you want to scream.

Bill did not scream. Even though he was in agony, the strange phantom pain of finding huge swaths of yourself, your power, stripped away, he stayed silent. He was used to pain of some sort or other by this time.

Something was moving in the distance. He could feel his limited mindspace grow even more cramped as it grew closer, closer, until he could see it.

Oh great. Him.

"Save your calls for help in the future. I cannot revive what is not dead, after all," said the Axolotl. Or something like that. Words were strange here.

"Oh, pardon me." Bill would have rolled his eye if he could have mustered up anything resembling a proper form. "It's not like I thought Mackerel was making it outta that one anyway. Don't suppose you could lend a hand? Or fin, or whatever?"

If he didn't know better, Bill would have sworn the ripples he felt in the mindspace were laughs. "You push your luck, Cipher."

Bastard.

"Great. Fantastic. Well, if you're not gonna help, you can leave. Not like you've been very useful up to this point anyway."

The Axolotl, Great Lord of the Multiverse, nodded silently and disappeared. Bill was glad to see the back of him. It was cramped enough in here without frilly pompous behinds taking up space.

At least it wasn't a total loss. Cramped and hellish though it was, his prison came with options. Maybe even a hope of escaping.

Bill Cipher was a wreck. He had no mouth, no form, not a thing that could convey his emotions. But he thought he was pulling off a smile quite well.