The idea for the character of Mrs. Corduroy, the basis of this story, and one of the memories comes from a fellow author on this site who asked to remain anonymous. I hope you all enjoy the story! Let me know what you think, all feedback is appreciated

"Dude! Watch out!" Wendy's voice echoed through the forest clearing in an attempt to reach Dipper in its middle. He had his head buried in a journal— not one of Ford's, for they had been destroyed by Bill long ago, but one of his own— and his head in the clouds, unaware of his surroundings as he thought about where to go next.

Dipper had started his own journals years ago, during Mabel's and his second summer in Gravity Falls. It had partly been about restoring the research Great Uncle Ford had lost, but also about discovering his own anomalies. Seeing the look on his Grunkle's face when he succeeded made all the effort worth it. Usually, Dipper went about this task alone. But this time, he had a partner: Wendy.

Today, Dipper's original plan had been to finally meet the Hide-Behind. He had come close years ago, although he didn't know it, and had given up on the elusive creature: dubbing it a hoax. But since then, rumors had only grown. Even Grunkle Ford claimed some experience with it. But Dipper still had nothing. If he could get a look— or maybe even a photo— who knew how proud his grunkle would be. That's why Dipper had to try. And that was why he brought Wendy.

But so far, nothing.

No broken leaves or creaking branches. No whispered brush of wind or suspicious shadow. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Dipper was beginning to grow tired of the summer's heat, and from the looks of it, Wendy was too.

Everything changed with Wendy's scream.

Tearing his eyes away from the pages, he glanced up, only to find himself face to face with a charging gremloblin. Dipper froze. Staring nearly too long into the creature's eyes before diving away, journal in hand.

"Go, go, go!" Dipper shouted at Wendy. And together, they took off through the forest. The gremloblin roared behind them.

By the time they had made it a safe distance away, the gremloblin was long gone. Wendy laughed as she realized they were safe. Dipper felt a bit too scared to laugh, but cracked a smile nonetheless as he stood doubled over. He really should have tried harder in P.E.

He may not have grown in muscle, but Dipper had in height. He was now taller than Mabel— although by just a millimeter— and his newfound height put him an inch above Wendy, something Mabel was never letting her live down. His height didn't help much at the moment, anyway. With him doubled over from exertion, he might as well have been twelve again.

Wendy didn't seem to mind.

"It's always an adventure with you."

"Yeah," Dipper grinned, "thanks for the warning. I was almost... well, toast."

Wendy punched his shoulder. "No problem, dude. I don't want my best friend turning into a pancake."

"I'd make the best pancake."

Dipper blinked. Something looked different about Wendy. While she still wore her classic green flannel shirt, dark jeans, and boots, something still seemed amiss. Scratches littered her face from running through bushes and branches, but even that wasn't it. Neither were the twigs caught in her long hair. Dipper inspected Wendy a moment longer. Wendy's eyes shifted.

"Uh... Dipper? Everything okay with your eyes?"

Dipper blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, I'm sorry, guess I thought—" he paused, gaping at her head, "Your hat! That's what missing!" The obviousness of the absent piece struck Dipper. He felt like face-palming. How had he not noticed that before?

Wendy hadn't seemed to realize either. Her face melted into panic the next second, her hands flying to pat her hair only to confirm what Dipper said. The hat was lost. Gone.

"I must have dropped it when we were running from the gremloblin!"

The two teens shared an alarmed look. Slowly, they turned to stare back into the forest they had just escaped from. Dipper wondered if it was just him that thought the trees seemed taller all of a sudden.

"We have to find it," Wendy said.

"Then I'm with you."

The search began slowly. They riffled through bush after bush, retracing the path that had fled down to the best of their memory. Checking behind rocks and around trees, and listening carefully as the forest's rustling grew.

"I hope the gremloblin took a hike," Dipper mumbled, peering behind a particularly face-shaped tree.

"I hope so, too. I have to get back to my family, and if I go back without the hat, my brothers will kill me."

"Why's that hat so important to you, anyway? Couldn't you just buy a new one at the store or something?"

Wendy sighed and tossed a rock down the path. It skipped once. "The hat was my mother's. I haven't seen her in years."

Dipper winced at his previous words. He rubbed the back of his neck, searching for a way to fix the situation. Think Dipper, think. What would Mabel do?

Struck with sudden inspiration, Dipper slid onto a nearby log he had finished checking behind. He patted the space beside him as if it were a park bench. Wendy raised an eyebrow but complied.

Dipper's mouth felt like a desert. He didn't want to mess this up. Still, he found his voice. "Tell me about her," he asked.

Wendy's smile looked like a sunrise: cast between night and day, past and future. She seemed uncertain. By the time she spoke, Dipper had thought she wouldn't and had embraced the silence.

"Well, she was a bit crazy; that's for sure," Wendy chuckled, "Like the rest of my family, she was always a fan of destruction."

Dipper couldn't say what it was about how Wendy was talking, but with every word she said, the scene and the character of Mrs. Corduroy danced in front of his eyes even more. Almost like he was physically there in her memories.

He saw Wendy's mom, clothed in a green dress and wearing Wendy's currently lost trapper hat. He saw the cigar held in her mouth between her fingers, and the twisted but kind smile radiating from her like smoke. Dipper didn't know what it was, but she reminded him of fire-crackers. Full of excitement, endlessly colorful, and could go off in a second. Dipper imagined her marauding through the streets with bands of teens. It was too easy to see Wendy in her mother.

"She taught me how to fish," Wendy said, and Dipper envisioned it.

Gravity Fall's fishing lake spread out before them, the center island and dock visible far off in the distance. They stood on a little cove. Their backs were to a cliff face wall, and every so often, pebbles would rain down from the rocks as squirrels and gnomes scampered across. A young Wendy rubbed her head as a rock managed to strike her there. Her mom handed her daughter her trapper hat for protection, and Wendy put it on gratefully.

The younger version of the cool highschooler wore her same brown hiking boots— though less dirty than they were now— and a white t-shirt underneath forest-colored overalls. Her overalls matched with her mom's dress. Her shoes: her mom's cigar as smoke spiraled up into the sky.

"This will be a new kind of adventure, you think you're ready for it, kid?" Wendy's mom stared out into the lake before glancing back at her daughter with a smile.

Young Wendy was excited. Her small hands clenched into fists as she waited for the action to begin. Two fishing rods and a net leaned against the cliff face, but neither Corduroy paid them any mind.

"Duh!"

Wendy's mom nodded gravely at her enthusiasm. "Today, we embark on the first all-female Corduroy fishing trip." Her eyes glinted. "And it is going to be dynamite." In her hand, she revealed an explosive from behind her back. It didn't look precisely like dynamite, a bomb, or any typical explosive device, but it was obvious that's what it was. Wendy furrowed her brows in confusion.

"This," Mrs. Corduroy said, "is how we are going to catch some fish."

It didn't take long for the set up to be complete. Wendy readied herself with the net as her mom took aim, pulling her arm back before slinging the explosive into the water.

A boom sounded under the surface as a light flashed. The water didn't shoot up in the air like Wendy was expecting, but the bodies of several fish floated to the surface nonetheless. As instructed, she took the net in her hands and tossed one end— carefully so as not to completely let go of the wool strands— and started reeling in the fish.

Her mom joined her. Small hands and calloused ones working together to gain their catch of the day.

"Didn't dad say blast fishing is illegal?"

Her mom shook her head. "Blast fishing is. It damages the ecosystem and whatnot. It's a shame, too. I used to use bigger explosives for fishing; you would've loved the size of the geyser created." Wendy's mom wiped a fake tear from her eyes. Then she pulled out another one of the devices she had thrown earlier. "This is a stun bomb. Old Man McGucket designed these kinds of things for me years ago. Does no damage to the ecosystem, and still lets the fish float to the surface."

Young Wendy pointed out the lake. "Then, who are they?"

Wendy's mom turned to see a police boat zooming towards them. A younger Deputy Durland and Sheriff Blubs stood on deck, and her mom didn't have to say it twice when she declared: "run."

"The rest of the day we spent running from the cops. We were so close to going free until Tambry posted a picture of us online." Wendy grinned, her hands behind her head as she finished the story. "It turned out okay, though. Durland and Blubs had dinner with us, and my mom and I got off scot-free."

Dipper laughed. "Your mom seems pretty cool."

"Tell me about it, dude. There was this other time where she shot herself out of a cannon, and straight onto our roof for Christmas. She wanted us to think Santa Claus had been there, but my brother, Kevin, caught her. I'll never forget the look on her face."

They sat that way for a while longer. The sounds of the woods and each other's breathing filled their ears. Comfortable despite the hard log beneath them.

Eventually, Dipper's curiosity got the best of him. With a voice in his head chanting and warning him not to, he nudges Wendy.

"So... what happened to your mom?"

Wendy's smile drops as her eyes follow the clouds in the sky. "I dunno, man. One day she was just... gone."

"Like, gone-gone or..."

"Dad says she died in the hospital, but she never seemed sick. I never got a chance to say goodbye."

A beat passed as Dipper's heart sunk. "Oh, man. Wendy, I'm so sorry."

She waved him off. "It was a long time ago, relax. But that's why we have to find my hat. It's something of her I have left."

Dipper stood from the log, a miasma of determination about him. "So, let's find it."

The two friends quickly got back to work. They checked behind the log just in case, then roamed the rest of the clearing looking for Wendy's hat. Nothing.

Dipper was beginning to give up, but he couldn't. Not with Wendy's memories of her mom at stake. He would do anything for Wendy.

As soon as that thought hit him, he saw it.

Sitting up in a tree near where they had fled the gremloblin sat Wendy's trapper hat. It lay next to a bird's nest, which explained its location. A mama bird must've seen the hat on the ground and decided it would make for a comfy next. Dipper felt awful, but he couldn't just let the birds keep it.

So up he went. Using a rock for leverage, he jumped up, snatching the hat from its place and ignoring the chirps he got in retribution. Success.

He turned to face Wendy with a grin; she matched him for it. With a twinkle in her emerald eyes, she placed the hat on its proper location.

Still, another question needled its way into Dipper's mind.

"Wendy," he began, "if that hat means so much to you, why did you give it to me the first summer I left Gravity Falls?" At the end of that summer, as Dipper was leaving Gravity Falls, Wendy and Dipper had traded hats. And because of the distance from Piedmont to Gravity Falls, neither saw their respective hats until the next summer. Why would Wendy risk her hat being lost? Risk Dipper losing it, or her never seeing it again? But Wendy didn't seem to share his concerns, judging from the look she sent his way.

"Dipper, it's because you matter to me. I trusted you to take care of it. You're like, the coolest, sweetest guy I know." She rolled her eyes at him. Dipper felt as if flowers were singing in his heart.

"You really mean that?"

"Of course, Doofus. You changed my life."

They stayed there together for a moment longer, remembering the lives they had lived together over the years. The movie nights, the encounter with the shapeshifter, Weirdmageddon, and now this. There's a unique comfort you can only find in the presence of lifelong friends, and that was the peace Dipper felt with Wendy.

"It's a good thing the gremlobin's gone. I didn't want to see my worst nightmares today," Wendy shivered.

Dipper laughed, "Yeah, me neither. I wonder what happened to those poor tourists who did." He remembered the emergency responders taking them to the hospital, but he hadn't thought to check-in. Maybe he should have. Now it would just be another mystery of Gravity Falls, Oregon.

The leaves rustled behind them, and Dipper rolled his eyes.

"Come on, Wendy. I'm not a little kid anymore. I'm not going to fall for that."

"Uhhhh, Dipper?"

At Wendy's trepidation, Dipper turned around. There, with its ember eyes and swampy skin, stood the gremloblin.

"Run?" Dipper asked.

"Run." Wendy agreed.