Archive of Our Own ^beta

 

 "Yay! We're here! And look how many trees there are!" Mabel said, having leapt from her seat the instant the bus stopped.

 

"There are trees at home too," said Dipper as he picked up his bags.

 

"Yeah, but they aren't all wild and piney. Haha, Pine-y?" Mabel said, nudging Dipper in the ribs. He groaned and rolled his eyes, but couldn't suppress a small smile. It seemed like Mabel always knew how to cheer him up. The two of them disembarked the bus and set their bags on the ground. No one else was at the bus stop, so it seemed like their only option was to wait. 

 

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long. Almost as soon as the bus had driven away, a figure appeared from between the trees. 

 

"Hey, kids. Dipper and Mabel, right? I'm your great uncle Stan--but you can just call me Grunkle Stan."

 

So this was their mysterious great uncle. Dipper narrowed his eyes at Stan suspiciously. He'd heard a lot of stories about the man, who'd apparently built his house in an area rumored to be a hotspot for sightings of supernatural creatures, and then turned his house into a tourist trap to profit from said rumors. Stan must have forgotten to take off the costume he used for scamming people, because he currently had gray skin, horns, and wings, like a gargoyle. Although... the more Dipper looked at it, the more he began to see the costume looked a little too real to be a costume. Could his great uncle really be some kind of monster? Sure, it seemed crazy, and he'd definitely need to gather evidence before he could say anything conclusively, but--

 

"Wow! Are you really a cool rock monster?"

 

"Of course he isn't, Mabel. Don't be ridiculous."

 

To Dipper's surprise, Grunkle Stan didn't respond with offense or denial, but rather a resigned sigh.

 

"I guess this was going to come up sooner or later. The short answer is: yes, I'm a gargoyle. We can talk about it more on the way to the shack," he said, setting off into the woods.

 

Dipper took a second to follow his grunkle, still reeling from how casually he'd admitted to being a mythical creature. However, his shock quickly transformed into curiosity. 

 

"Wait, you're a gargoyle? Does that mean that other supernatural creatures are real too?"

 

"Yeah, they are. Believe it or not, some of the stories about this place are actually true. Whole town's crawling with monsters."

 

 "Wait, really? Does that mean the stuff you have in that tourist trap is also real?"

 

"Nah. The idiots who come here because of all the monster rumors are the same kinda idiots who'd flip out and torch the place if they knew it was actually real. As far as any tourists know, anyone weird-looking is just wearing a really good costume."

 

"B-but doesn't someone know? The government or scientists or something?" Dipper was beginning to talk too fast, "I mean, this is huge! A whole town full of real monsters? How is that possible? And why are all the monsters here, of all places?"

 

"That's enough questions." 

 

"Hey Grunkle Stan, can I touch your wings? They look so smooth," Mabel asked, seemingly unfazed by Dipper's frustration.

 

"Uh, sure. I guess," Stan said, leaning down so Mabel could run her fingers over the grooves in his stoney wings. 

 

The Mystery Shack came into view soon after. Stan led them through the house and up into the attic.

 

"You kids'll be sleeping up here for the summer. I'm ordering pizza, and you can come downstairs and get some once you're finished unpacking and stuff." He left, closing the door behind him.

 

"Can you believe this, Mabel?" Dipper said once he was sure their grunkle was gone.

 

"Huh. I thought you'd be super-duper excited about all this monster stuff, but you just sound kinda angry."

 

"I would be really excited, if Stan would tell us anything. I mean, this is insane, right? How do we know he's even telling the truth about any of it?" 

 

"It seems kinda hard for him to fake. When I touched his wings, it definitely felt like they were made of stone, but I could also feel them moving. There's no way he isn't a real gargoyle."

 

"That's the thing! Even if he's telling the truth, and this town is full of monsters, then how come he's one, too? He's supposedly a part of our family, and last time I checked grandpa Shermie's parents weren't made of rocks."

 

"Maybe he thought the monsters here were really cool, so he decided to turn himself into one?"

 

"How?" Dipper asked skeptically. 

 

"Maybe gargoyles work like vampires, and turn you into a gargoyle by biting you or something." Mabel suddenly perked up, "Ooh, do you think there are any real vampires here? Do you think maybe I could have an epic summer romance with one?" 

 

"There could be vampires here, but I doubt they'd want to date you," said Dipper, earning himself a playful shove, "Anyways, if gargoyles really do work like vampires, Stan wouldn't necessarily have to want to be a monster to turn into one." 

 

"Yeah, but that would be really sad," Mabel pouted. 

 

The twins' argument was interrupted by Stan announcing that the pizza had arrived, prompting an immediate race down the stairs. Once they'd finished eating and unpacking their things, it was already dark outside. Mabel drifted off to sleep almost as soon as she hopped into bed, but Dipper tossed and turned well into the night, mind full of questions. It seemed that summer in Gravity Falls wouldn't be nearly as boring as he'd imagined. 

 

Forcing her eyes open, Mabel looked up to see Dipper pacing across the floor of their shared room, clicking his pen in and out.

 

"Dipper, it's early," she moaned, "Why are you even up this early?"

 

"It's almost eight." 

 

"Eight is like the midnight of the summer. Don't you want to sleep in?"

 

"After yesterday, sleeping is the least of my concerns."

 

"Yesterday...?" Only then did Mabel remember that they weren't in their room in California, but in their grunkle's attic in Gravity Falls.

 

"Oh right, yesterday." Then she remembered learning that the monsters living in Gravity Falls were real.

 

"Oh right, yesterday!" She whooped, jumping out of bed and wriggling into the first sweater she could find. 

 

"Since Grunkle Stan doesn't seem willing to give us straight answers, I figure we should just play it cool," Dipper said, continuing to pace, "If anything weird is going on, we should be able to find evidence of it eventually."

 

"Forget about evidence, I just wanna find a hot monster boyfriend!" Grinning, she ran over to Dipper and gave him a playful bop on the head, "Race you downstairs!"

 

She darted through the door as quickly as possible, and Dipper ran after her. When Mabel touched down on the ground floor, she looked back and gave a cheer of victory upon seeing Dipper was still at the top of the stairs.

 

"Hey, no fair, you had a head start," he said teasingly upon finally reaching the bottom.

 

"Try and prove that in court, sucka!" Mabel said. Dipper laughed, and she smiled. She was glad to see him having fun, instead of driving himself crazy over some conspiracy theory. Sure, she had questions about the whole monster thing too, but they had only been in Gravity Falls for a day and they'd already heard about more insane things than she thought she'd encounter all summer! Couldn't Dipper just let the fact that their grunkle was a gargoyle sink in for a while, instead of looking for more mysteries?

 

Stan announcing that breakfast was ready cut through her thoughts. Soon, Mabel was tearing through her stack of pancakes while Dipper, sitting across from her, picked more carefully at his own. When they were finished eating, Stan cleared his throat.

 

"Listen, taking care of you runts isn't gonna be cheap, and I'm not made of money. Which is why, as long as you're staying with me, you have to work at the Mystery Shack."

 

"Isn't that a violation of child labor laws?" Asked Dipper.

 

"Labor laws, schmabor laws. It's not like I'm sending you off to the coal mines or anything. You'll just be restocking the gift shop, helping clean up, and maybe working at the register for a bit whenever Wendy decides to pull a disappearing act on us."

 

"Who's Wendy?"

 

"You'll meet her in a minute. The first tour is starting in twenty minutes, so she and Soos'll have to show you two the ropes while I'm doing that."

 

He got up and directed them to the gift shop. Looking around, Mabel saw that the place was overflowing with all kinds of knick-knacks: she spotted snowglobes, collectibles, t-shirts, books, pamphlets, and even a grappling hook! The most interesting thing in the room, though, was definitely the girl reading a magazine behind the sales counter. Her skin was gray, but not stoney-looking like Stan's, and instead of hair, blue fire spouted from her head. 

 

"Wow! What kind of monster are you?" Mabel asked, choosing to ignore the don't-ask-personal-questions-to-people-you-just-met look Dipper shot at her.

 

"Ghost," the girl replied without looking up from her magazine.

 

"How did you die?" Behind Mabel, Dipper facepalmed.

 

"Huh? Oh, not that kinda ghost. I'm not dead, my entire family are ghosts. I've heard stories of ghosts who are, like, dead and stuff, but we're kinda our own thing, you know?"

 

"Ooh! Like Rapstablook from Belowstory!"

 

"Yeah, I guess? Anyways, I'm guessing you guys are Stan's grandkids or whatever. I'm Wendy."

 

"Stan's actually our great uncle," Dipper said, "He told us you would tell us what to do."

 

"Cool. Buy me a beer."

 

"...I'm underage, and you can't possibly be over twenty."

 

Wendy laughed. "It was worth a shot."

 

The bell attached to the gift shop door suddenly rang, heralding the arrival of a chubby man wearing a question mark t-shirt. His skin had a greenish tint to it, but otherwise he didn't look as monstrous as Stan or Wendy. 

 

"Hey Soos. These are those kids Stan was telling us about." 

 

"Hey dudes, I'm Soos," said the man, who seemed like his name might be Soos. It was then that Mabel noticed the disproportionately small pink butterfly wings on his back. She let out a dramatic gasp.

 

"Are you a fairy?"

 

"Yeah, dude."

 

"Ohmygosh that is so cool! You're so cool! Fairies are so cool, and sparkly, and..." Once Mabel's rambling devolved into incoherent noises of excitement, Dipper stepped up to talk with Soos.

 

"Stan said you and Wendy would tell us what to do here. So, do you have anything for us to do? Anything legal, that is?" He shot a glare at Wendy, who didn't seem to notice.

 

"Oh, sure. There's a new order of t-shirts to unpack, and after that some of the shelves will definitely need restocking." Dipper sighed, but followed Soos into the employees only section anyways. Mabel was right behind him, still babbling about how pretty Soos's wings were. 

 

The rest of the day passed predictably, with the twins hauling around merchandise, cleaning up small messes, and helping the customers that drifted in from Stan's tours. Still, as far as Mabel was concerned, getting to hang out with Soos and Wendy was more than worth it. 

 

At least, that was until one fateful day.

 

"Alright, alright, look alive, people. I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest," said Stan.

 

"Not it," said Mabel, and then Dipper a second later.

 

"Also not it."

 

"Nobody asked you, Soos."

 

"I know, and I'm comfortable with that."

 

"Wendy! I need you to put up this sign,"

 

"I would, but I can't... reach it..." Wendy didn't even attempt to get out of her chair.

 

"I'd fire all of you if I could. Anyway, let's make it... eeny, meeny, miney, you." He pointed at Dipper.

 

"What? Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods, I feel like I'm being watched."

 

"Not this again. Kid, the only monsters around here are just people trying to live their lives. Just because weird stuff happens here doesn't mean something's secretly out to get you. Quit being so paranoid."

 

A few minutes later, Dipper was in the spooky part of the forest, grumpily hammering nails into trees and hanging signs on them, when one of the trees made an odd clanging sound. Tapping his hammer against the tree a few more times confirmed that it was made of metal--and it sounded hollow. Dipper peered carefully at it, and noticed that, while the metal was for the most part an accurate reproduction of real tree bark, a few of the grooves in it seemed a bit too straight to be natural. Sure enough, prying at one of them made the bark open like a door, revealing a hidden compartment with some kind of strange device inside. When he started flipping its switches, a door in a nearby hillside, similar to the one in the tree, opened. 

 

Instead of a strange machine, this one contained an old book, covered in dust and cobwebs. Dipper picked it up and brushed it off, coughing from the dust and moths that scattered in all directions. The book had a red cover with a golden, six-fingered hand on it. A large number three was written in the palm of the hand. Opening the book, Dipper began to read the first page. 

 

It's hard to believe it's been six years since I began researching the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon. Dipper paused. So it wasn't just him! Someone had actually tried to study this town. Flipping through the pages revealed it wasn't just the monsters, either: strange locations, artifacts, and conspiracies were all recorded there. Oddly enough, though, a good deal of the pages were torn out, burned, or so covered in ink and hopefully-not-blood that they were unreadable. Even more strangely, the number of missing pages seemed to increase the further he went, until suddenly the entries just stopped. Dipper flipped back to the last page that had any writing on it: 

 

Unfortunately, my suspicions have been confirmed. I'm being watched. 

 

I must hide this book before He finds it. 

 

Remember - in Gravity Falls, there is no one you can trust.

 

TRUST NO ONE!

 

"No one you can trust..." Dipper muttered, thinking of all the people from Gravity Falls he'd seen, but mainly of Grunkle Stan. He was always so cagey, never giving Dipper straight answers to his questions. And the journal did mention a "he"...

 

"HELLO!" Mabel yelled at the top of lungs, jumping out from behind a nearby log and nearly causing Dipper to lose his grip on the journal. "Whatcha reading, some nerd thing?"

 

"Uh, it's nothing." Dipper instinctively hid the journal behind his back.

 

"What? Are you actually not gonna show me?" Mabel giggled.

 

Dipper thought of the words TRUST NO ONE, scrawled on the last page of the journal, and then looked back at his sister's curious face. He made up his mind.

 

"Let's go somewhere private."

---

To think he'd thought that their first day in Gravity Falls was the weirdest it was going to get. At least Mabel had figured out how to defeat those gnomes. Better yet, Dipper was actually writing an entry of his own in the journal. 

 

Grunkle Stan told me to stop asking questions about this town, but now I know that there was someone out there who had the same questions as me--and found some of the answers. Who knows what other secrets are waiting to be unlocked?

 

Dipper looked up from his writing. "Hey Mabel, could you get the light?"

 

"I'm on it," she said, taking careful aim with her grappling hook. Predictably, the grappling hook shattered both Dipper's lantern and the bedroom window.

 

"It worked!" The twins both laughed. 

 

Soon, Dipper drifted off into a peaceful sleep. His mind still burned with as many questions as before, but now he had a hope of finding answers. Somehow, he knew that whatever the big mysteries of Gravity Falls were, the Journal had brought him one step closer to finding them.

 

"What time is it?" she heard Dipper mumble from across the room. 

 

"Almost 9:30. You trying to escape work by going into comas or something?"

 

"What?" yelled Dipper, "It's that late?"

 

Mabel finally opened her eyes and dragged herself into a sitting position.  Apparently, fighting the gnomes yesterday had taken more out of her than she thought. Just outside the door to the twins' room, Grunkle Stan stood, his tail flicking with annoyance. Dipper had gotten out of bed and was currently pulling on his vest. 

 

"There's cold pancakes downstairs. Woulda been hot pancakes, but apparently you two needed your beauty sleep more than you needed breakfast," At the mention of food, Mabel noticed that it felt like there was a bottomless pit where her stomach should be. She began to drag herself out of bed, while Stan continued talking.

 

"First tour of the day starts in a few minutes, so you're gonna have to eat and head over to the gift shop on your own." With that, he left. Mabel put on the first sweater she could find, and then followed Dipper downstairs. They wordlessly served themselves cold pancakes from the kitchen table, which probably wouldn't have tasted half as good if they weren't starving. Eventually, Mabel broke the silence. 

 

"How are we even supposed to work today? I feel like poop!"

 

Dipper scratched his ear. "Same. You think we could be coming down with something?"

 

"It's summer! People don't get sick in the summer!" Mabel slumped down onto the table, "Uggh, I have the worst headache."

 

"I could try to find you an aspirin, or something?"

 

"You really want to sort through all of Grunkle Stan's weird old man medicine?"

 

"On second thought..." Dipper sighed, "If you insist we're not sick, then I guess we'll just have to head to the gift shop."

 

The morning was hectic, even more so than usual since Wendy had apparently decided to take an unscheduled day off. All the sweeping, restocking shelves, and standing up behind the register wasn't doing them any favors, either. By the time lunch break rolled around, Mabel thought that all the bones in her legs might break if she took another step, and Dipper looked about ready to collapse.

 

"Grunkle Stan, can we have the afternoon off?" he asked.

 

"Sure." 

 

"Wait, really?"

 

"Normally I'd say no, but you two look pretty sick, and I don't want you spreading germs to all my customers."

 

"We're not sick. You can't get sick in the summer," Mabel halfheartedly objected. 

 

Dipper practically dragged her out of the gift shop. For a while, the twins lay on the couch and watched Ducktective, but they quickly realized they were too tired to keep track of the plot. Even though Mabel hated the idea of going to bed early in the summer, it seemed like the only reasonable option. Once she'd reached the attic and changed into her pajamas, Mabel immediately collapsed onto her bed. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

 

---

It must have been sometime in the evening; Quickly fading light seeped into the room at odd angles, making Dipper's sleeping silhouette look strange and malformed. Across the room, Mabel watched drowsily, trying to recall the strange dreams she'd been having before they fled from her memory like birds disturbed by a gunshot. Suddenly, pain flashed through her body. Head throbbing, she hugged her nearest plushie to her chest and shut her eyes.

 

When she opened them again, it was dark out. Mabel was parched. She trudged downstairs and into the kitchen, not bothering to turn on any lights. The gurgling of the sink seemed far too loud against the odd silence of the Shack at night. After she had a glass of water, she went back to the attic and settled back into her bed, falling asleep as easily as if she'd never gotten up in the first place. 

 

If she hadn't been so tired, she might have noticed that her every step made a clicking noise.

 

His normal, noodley human legs were completely gone. In their place was the body of a deer, with four slender, furry legs that ended in cloven hooves. Flailing around in a blind panic confirmed that all four legs were definitely attached to him. Dipper felt something brush against the side of his head and he swatted at it, only to realize it was one of his ears, which were now long and fur-covered. Two small antlers, barely more than nubs, poked out of his curly hair. 

 

"Mabel!" Only after he had called her name did it occur to Dipper that his sister might have been transformed as well. Looking over to her side of the room confirmed his fear. In general terms, she now looked similar to Dipper, with her upper body still mostly human looking and her lower body replaced by a four-legged one. However, her fur was a glimmering white where his was dappled brown. She had a leonine tail, ending with a tuft of fur with the same color and texture as the hair on her head. That was another thing that had changed: though at a glance, Mabel's hair looked the same as before, streaks of it now gleamed with rainbow colors. Even the parts that were still brown had an iridescent sheen to them. The most alarming detail, though, was the spiraling white horn poking out from the center of her forehead.

 

"What is it?" Mabel asked, yawning. 

 

"I'm a deer!" Dipper shrieked, gesturing at his lower body, "And you're..."

 

Failing to produce a coherent sentence, he instead pointed mutely at her forehead. Confused, Mabel reached up. She let out a gasp that sounded a little too excited for Dipper's liking when her fingers brushed against her new horn, before looking down to take in the rest of her appearance. At first, Dipper thought that Mabel wasn't reacting at all, but then he realized she was releasing a squeal so high-pitched that he could barely hear it.

 

"I'm a unicorn!" she said once she'd recovered her composure, "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me!"

 

"Well, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me," Dipper responded, "I don't even know how to move all these legs, and on top of that I look completely ridiculous!" 

 

"You look great! And don't worry about the legs thing--watch this!" 

 

At that, Mabel energetically wiggled over the side of her bed, landing facedown on the floor with all four legs splayed out under her. She pulled the human half of her body up into a sitting position and then began to scramble wildly. To Dipper's surprise, she actually managed to stand up, planting all four of her hooves firmly on the floor.

 

"Success!" She cheered, taking a single step before falling on her face once again, her horn leaving a small dent in the floor. 

 

With a giggle, she lifted herself off the floor and tried again, and again, and again, letting out little squeals of happiness the whole time. Meanwhile, Dipper had managed to roll away from the wall only using his arms. Less fortunately, he had also managed to roll off the bed and onto the floor. Warily, he looked down at his new, hoofed legs and then began moving them one at a time. His hind legs weren't too different from human legs, besides having hooves. The forelegs were harder to figure out, though it helped when he realized that they moved more like stretched-out arms than legs. Moving each pair together felt intuitive, but moving all four at once felt like rocket science. After what felt like an eternity, Dipper managed to maneuver his legs so that all four of his hooves were touching the ground. Knees trembling, he carefully lifted himself up.

 

"I did it!" Dipper let out a relieved laugh.

 

"You did it!" Mabel yelled, plowing into his side and knocking both of them back to the ground.

 

Dipper glared at his sister as she giggled. With surprisingly little flailing, Mabel stood back up and then leaned down unsteadily, offering Dipper a hand. Rolling his eyes, Dipper took hold of it, managing both to regain his footing and to cause his sister to lose hers. She stumbled, but stood back up without any flailing this time. Dipper took a few tentative steps forward, making sure three of his legs were firmly planted on the ground before moving the fourth. He'd made it about halfway across the attic when, ears suddenly pricking up, he instinctively froze at the sound of approaching footsteps. 

 

"You kids are sure making a lot of noise for people who were too sick to work yester-" Grunkle Stan froze in the doorway, staring at the twins. 

 

"I'm a unicorn!" Mabel cheered, galloping directly into Stan's stoney legs and falling back onto the floor. 

 

"We just woke up like this. I hope whatever this is wears off soon, because I don't think I'm ever going to get the hang of these legs. At least you can't deny that something weird is going on in this town anymore, though," Dipper explained, ending with a pointed glare in Stan's direction.

 

"About that..." Stan glanced around nervously. "What do you want for breakfast, kids? I'll make you anything you want."

 

"Pancakes with sprinkles!" Mabel shouted.

 

"Yeah, sure. I'll go... work on that and we can talk about this after breakfast." He hurried away, clearing the entire flight of stairs leading down from the attic in a single, wing-assisted leap. 

 

"Huh. Is it just me, or did Stan seem kind of freaked out?" Dipper asked.

 

"You think everyone is acting weird all the time. Relax!" 

 

"I guess you're right. Well, guess we should get going so we don't end up eating cold pancakes two days in a row." Dipper took several still wobbly but slightly more casual strides before pausing just outside the door to the twins' room. 

 

"Mabel?"

 

"Hm?"

 

"How are we going to get down the stairs?"

 

"You tried that, and you fell down the stairs! I'm being careful about this." 

 

Dipper stood with all four of his legs crammed awkwardly onto the second step from the top of the staircase. Experimentally, he extended a single hoof towards the next step down. It slipped slightly, causing him to let out a squeak of panic and scramble all the way back to the top of the staircase, undoing a good five minutes of progress.

 

"Alright, this is taking too long," Stan grumbled, unfurling his wings and swooping to the top of the stairs in a single, surprisingly graceful, motion.

 

Without warning, he wrapped his stony claws around the fur covered portion of Dipper's body. Dipper let out a startled shriek that continued even as Stan descended the stairs in another quick swoop and dropped him on the ground floor. In fact, he didn't stop screaming until he noticed Mabel, who was covering her mouth with both hands in an ineffective effort to hide her laughter. Cheeks reddening, he let out a weak chuckle and took a few wobbly steps forward. 

 

By the time he actually made it to the kitchen, his sister was already there, jumping up and down with her eyes fixed on the pancake Stan was in the middle of cooking. He flipped the pancake onto a plate and handed it to her, and she thanked him before drowning his hard work in maple syrup and trotting over to the table. Only then did she realize that the kitchen chairs weren't exactly made with quadrupeds in mind. Unfazed, Mabel plopped onto the floor and set her plate in front of her, before simply picking up the pancake and scarfing it down like a raccoon eating trash.

 

Flipping the second pancake onto a fresh plate, Stan looked over just in time to see Dipper slam into the table leg and collapse awkwardly onto the floor. With a sympathetic wince, Stan set the plate on the ground next to Dipper.

 

"Seriously?" Dipper asked, propping himself up to a semi-comfortable sitting position.

 

"Your sister seems fine with it," Stan gestured at Mabel, who had finished her pancake and was now licking maple syrup off the plate, "And besides, it's not like you can sit in a chair anymore," 

 

"Can I at least have a fork?"

 

Stan complied with his request, and Dipper prepared to eat his mediocre breakfast. Unfortunately, the lack of a table combined with the added height from his deer body resulted in his fork having to travel an awkwardly long distance to get from his plate to his mouth. Leaning down towards the floor just made things more uncomfortable. Briefly, Dipper considered putting the plate on his lap, before realizing he didn't really have one of those at the moment. He tried using one of the chairs as a makeshift table, but those were too high to eat comfortably from. Eventually, he just had to resign himself to the awkwardness of eating off the floor. 

 

A few pancakes later, both twins were comfortably full. Stan had served himself a pancake, but didn't seem interested in eating it. As hard as it was to pinpoint what Stan's glowing eyes were actually doing, Dipper had a feeling he was giving them some sort of look.

 

"So, do you kids want anything else, or..."

 

"No thanks."

 

Dipper knew he wasn't making it up anymore--Stan was acting suspicious. A tense minute or so passed with Dipper sitting on the floor, Stan looking as nervous as a gargoyle could look, and Mabel obliviously prancing about. Finally, Dipper broke the silence. 

 

"Man, eating on the floor sucks. When this is over, I'll never take my weak human legs for granted again."

 

"Yeah, about that..." says Stan, "I, uh, don't think you're going to get those legs back anytime soon. Or... ever."

 

"What?" Dipper asked.

 

Mabel froze mid-canter and looked up at Stan with a baffled expression. Stan let out a resigned sigh.

 

"Look, I... I'm sorry, kids. Usually it takes a year for the curse to... to get people, y'know?" 

 

"You knew this could happen?" Dipper shouted. His ears flicked downwards so quickly they nearly knocked his hat from his head. Mabel's eyes went wide and almost pleading, like she was trying to find some way that Stan's words could mean something, anything else. 

 

"Yeah, I knew about the curse. It's the reason I look like... this," He gestured at his stony body.

 

"Hold on, curse?" Dipper asks, curiosity briefly outweighing his anger.

 

"The monster curse, yeah. Basically, anyone who stays in this town for too long turns into some kind of supernatural... thing. Like I said, it normally takes at least a year, and it usually takes even longer for kids, so I thought you two would be safe, but..."

 

The secrets of Gravity Falls, the secrets Dipper's been wondering about all summer, the secrets Stan insisted didn't exist, were finally in front of him, and Dipper couldn't enjoy it. He couldn't shout his knowledge from the rooftops or revel in his mystery-solving skills or even say "I told you so!", because finding the secrets of Gravity Falls had come at the cost of being able to sit in a chair or walk normally or lead any semblance of a normal life, maybe forever. Some part of him wondered if somehow, the town itself heard his wish to know its secrets and decided to grant it in the most cruelly ironic way it could. 

 

The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him.

 

"You could have told us! I even asked you why there were monsters in this town. You could have told us then. But noooo, you just had to lie to us, and get us stuck like this--maybe forever. I knew you were keeping something from us, I just didn't know it was this bad." Dipper turned around with a stomp of his hoof, still a hint unsteady but moving much more confidently than he had been earlier. He left the room without another word to Stan.

 

Mabel looked at Stan with a plaintive expression, before turning to follow her brother. Stan heard her let out a quiet sob as she left the room. Still, he didn't even try to object, just watched as she walked away. Soon, even the echoes of the twins' hoofsteps faded, leaving Stan completely alone.

It wasn't until Mabel had trudged up the attic stairs and dragged herself onto her bed that tears began to fall from her eyes. She'd dismissed Dipper's claims that Stan was hiding something as his usual paranoia, and somehow this was the one time he turned out to be right on the money. Even as Stan admitted to hiding the truth, Mabel hadn't wanted to believe it. As strange and sometimes off putting as her Grunkle was, she'd thought he really cared about him--but how could that be true, when he'd gotten them turned into monsters forever? She couldn't go back to California like this. Unless they wanted some sort of government agency hunting them down, Dipper and Mabel were probably going to have to live in this stupid town until the day they died. Wiping the tears from her face, Mabel tried to retreat into sweatertown, but found that her horn pushed the collar of her sweater back down onto her face. Sighing, she pressed her face into her pillow.