Gravity Rises (S1)

VV: Part Seven

"What are we going to tell Ford and Melody?" Dipper asked.

Mabel stopped, her feet sinking deeper into the snow, and turned to him with wide eyes. "What are we going to tell them?" she repeated, a touch of horror appearing in her voice. "Ford will know we came out here, after he told us not to!"

"Maybe Ford won't see," Dipper said, tugging her along gently. "He's holed up in his lab most of the time, anyway."

"But what will we tell Melody?" Mabel suspected she would be the one who would help the twins: She seemed to do most of the jobs around the Museum as it was, and she was there for much of the day.

"That we got attacked by a perfectly normal animal. Like bats!"

"But then she'll think we got rabies," Mabel pointed out. She thought that the fairies hadn't transferred any diseases to the twins. She hoped.

"We can probably tell Melody the truth," Dipper said. "Don't you think?"

"I don't know," Mabel said. Melody was nice, and Mabel enjoyed being around her; her upbeat nature had made the last three days a bit more bearable than they might have been. But did that mean that Melody could be trusted? She might tell Ford that the twins had disobeyed him. She might help Ford keep the twins trapped inside the Museum, so that they couldn't get hurt again. And, yes, the fairies' attacks had hurt — they still hurt — but Mabel thought it was worth it. After all, they had gotten to see fairies — even if those fairies were jerks. The fact that their first supernatural adventure ended in mild injury just made it more exciting.

"We don't have to show her the Journal," Dipper said. "We can just say we ran into the fairies, and they attacked us. That is what happened."

Mabel took a few more steps before answering. "Okay," she finally said. Maybe Melody knew something about fairy bites and how to treat them that the twins didn't. At the very least, they needed an adult's help, even if it wasn't Ford's.

The way back to the Museum seemed longer than the trip out had — probably because the twins were tired, plus Mabel had to navigate with her compass to make sure they were going the right way. Finally, they saw the building through the trees. Mabel had been so excited to leave the Museum this morning; but now that she was tired and cold and injured, she was happy to return to it.

The twins entered quietly, and Mabel hurried up the stairs to hide the Journal in their shared attic room. When she came back down, she found Dipper rummaging through the kitchen cupboards. "Maybe we can find something to put on the bites ourselves," he said. "Where do you think everybody is?"

"Melody is probably running a tour, and I bet Ford is back in his lab," Mabel said. Aside from meals, the twins rarely saw their great uncle. It was frustrating and lonely — although, now that she had the Journal, Mabel thought Ford's absence might work to her advantage.

Maybe, by reading the Journal, she could get to know her uncle the adventurer. The adventurous Ford seemed to be gone now, and all Mabel got were glimpses of her uncle the recluse; but maybe, just maybe, the Ford described in the Journals would live up to Mabel's hopes.

Maybe it would make up for his behavior in real life.

"Here we go!" Dipper pulled out a tube of pain relieving cream and held it up so Mabel could see. "This'll work, right?"

"I think so," Mabel said. The twins rubbed the cream into each other's fairy bites and theorized about why the fairies were so mean. Mabel thought they'd simply had bad experiences with humans coming into their home, but Dipper thought they had once been humans and they were just mad about being so small. With that, the twins' debate turned to what was better: being small, but having wings, or being human size. Mabel thought it'd be hard to be so tiny if everyone else was big, but wings would definitely make up for that. Besides, the fairies handled themselves just fine against the human-sized twins.