Into the mindscape

The forest

(A/N: Hello! This story is still a WIP, but I have the plot already planned out and I'm excited to share my first story on Wattpad with everyone in here. There'll be updates every Friday and it'll have a total of five parts, so stay put for more. Hope you enjoy the ride!)

Dipper has learned two things since he woke up in the mindscape forest. One, that there do exist other things than gray vegetation barren of life; and two, that the forest isn't as barren as he'd first thought.

Those two are very different lessons.

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The forest is grey all around him. Dipper huffs, and continues walking through the unpathed forest floor, stepping on fallen branches and protruding roots from time to time. It's disconcertingly easy to ignore the lack of greens and browns on the trees and all around him, even if it makes navigating through the forest somewhat harder. Still, his hands come to his line of sight from time to time, even if just at the corner of his eye, pale pink a harsh reminder of his situation.

Not that the forest is helping much in distracting him from it. The trees are as familiar as the back of his hand, the floor feels like he's walked on it all his life and yet...it's different. There's no path beaten by his shoes through the years, no marks where he cut a piece of bush or uprooted a plant for scientific (and/or magical) purposes. No mesh of broken branches and stray threads of yarn where Mabel once got one of her projects tangled in, much to her displeasure.

The forest floor and surroundings are clear all around, untouched, and the way they clash against his mental image of the place is threatening to give Dipper a headache. Even the fallen tree where the gnomes had stabbed their pointy hats on that one time is missing, fallen tree unscathed if downed. Dipper stops in front of it, hands caressing the rough wood as he frowns faintly, before a sigh escapes him and he slumps down on the nearby stump.

Nothing is the same, but everything is the same. Dipper throws his head back, and leans his hands on the edges of the stump, feeling the bits of uneven wood dig into his flesh. The sky is the same grey than the rest of the world, dull and washed, and Dipper glares at it and how useless it is at the moment. At least if it were night he'd have the stars to guide him. In the middle of the day, and with the forest clashing with his memories and confusing him to the point of irritation? Not much to help him get by.

Dipper sighs again, looking at the familiar-but-strange forest in front of him, and gathers his strength and willpower to continue with his headache-inducing trek. He still has a long ways in front of him, after all.

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The crunch is barely audible, but still makes Dipper's body freeze, muscles tensing as his attention snaps to his surroundings. Fine-tuned instincts make him jumps to his left, the shadow of black ink crashing against the spot Dipper's body was in a few moments ago. His eyes widen as he takes in the inky creature, that seems to be...reforming after its failed attack, and his legs break into a run as he realizes there's danger and he really should run as fast and far away from it as he could, now. Dipper hears the thing growl, a guttural sound like the howls of a thousand tortured voices under the static of tv, and the feeling of the thing following only makes his legs run faster, even as he begins to feel them weaken. Panicked thoughts of tripping and falling overtake his mind, but Dipper keeps running, the heavy chant of familiar words engraved into his mind and breaking through the fog of fear long enough to keep him from falling into the nightmare's trap.