Sometimes Falling isn't Down

Chapter 9

Turns out looking for the clearing from a different fixed point was a lot harder than you expected. You returned to the forest without stopping to consider a single thing, like: how difficult it would be to gain your bearings in a forest with no landmarks to follow, or how it would have been infinitely easier if you'd just gone back to the town first, but instead, you started directly from the mansion straight into the forest with no directions, convinced you would somehow psychically know where to go.

Funnily enough, there's no such link between you and a random clearing in a forest- in fact, you might even be lost.

You never thought you'd say it, but you were really starting to get tired of trees.

You ducked under a branch, the bend of its long stretched outline sticking in your head like a chewed piece of gum being slapped onto the underside of a desk. You vaguely acknowledged it as you stepped around a bush, the shape of it another piece of gum under the desk. You stepped over a gnarled root, another piece stuck. Then through a break in the trees, and another piece stuck. You continued like that for a few more steps, your surroundings becoming more and more pieces of gum stuck to the bottom of your desk until it congealed into a huge slab of gum you couldn't possibly continue to disregard.

Did... Did you know where you were? If you turned right here the clearing should be... that way. Shouldn't it? You stared through the trees, nothing about them indicating you were right, no lapse in the trees, no path, nothing.

...But nothing indicated you were wrong either, and... well, honestly you had nothing to lose. Sure, maybe you'd been walking for so long your brain was becoming desperate and was willing to fabricate any possible escape, some sliver of control and hope that you weren't going to be wandering for the rest of your life, but really, going one random direction wasn't any better or worse than going another random direction- whether your brain was playing tricks on you or not.

So you trusted your instincts and went where your feet took you.

You hadn't walked far before a sound pricked your ears, tilting your head with its disturbance and dragging your breath back into your throat, holding it there.

...Voices. There were voices.

Voices meant people. And people meant the town- or, if you happened to be so lucky, it meant the exact people you were looking for. Either one worked for you, one could lead to the other easily.

"...so stupid, stupid, stupid!" Dipper was hitting his head against the trunk of a tree over and over again, rustling the leaves and causing them to break off and shower around him like a personal Autumn just for him.

And also, he was definitely referring to you. And that made you want to kick him in the shin.

"Heard you the first thousand times Dipping Dots." Mabel was laying sprawled out in the grass a few feet away from him, staring up through the slowly depleting leaves at the starry sky.

Dipper spun on her, giving the tree a second to breathe and hold tighter to its remaining leaves as he exclaimed, "Well it's true!"

"Maybe if you say it a thousand more times, the portal will open just so you'll shut up."

Dipper folded his arms, scrunching his nose and rolling his eyes, "Haha, very funny Mabel."

The wind rustling through the leaves replaces their voices, Mabel continuing to stare up and Dipper staring at his feet. Dipper twitched all over, beginning to tap his foot on the ground and his finger on his arm, then his eye began to twitch to accompany the tip-tapping.

His fidgeting started making you feel antsy like his energy was radiating out and enveloping you in his frustration.

He stopped tapping, instead squeezing his arms and squeezing his eyes shut before he exploded with a loud exclamation, beginning to march in a circle, digging his hands into his hair and ruffling it roughly, sending his hat flinging off his head and coming to land a few steps from your spot within the tree line.