Winged Falls

//Chapter Five//

Mabel squirmed as sunlight beamed through her eyelids. "I don' wanna get up," she mumbled, rolling onto her side. But there was something in the back of her mind, something she had to do, and it refused to let her return to the comfort of sleep. The thought slowly worked its way up through the fog of her mind...

Dipper. Today was the day she would go find her brother in his so-called "human life," and hopefully, hopefully, begin finding a way to get his memories back.

That thought was enough to get Mabel up and moving. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and unfurled her wings from their protective cocoon around her, preparing to face the day.

"Okay," she said, brushing some leaves off her sweater. "Dipper doesn't remember me right now, but that doesn't mean it's permanent. There's gotta be some kind of magic that can restore it!" If there was, Mabel certainly couldn't do it, but there had to be something that could.

And she wasn't going to give up until she found it.

"And then again, he only saw me for like ten seconds," Mabel reasoned with herself. "Maybe if he talks to me more, then his memories will come back!" It wasn't likely, she knew, but that didn't stop her from clinging to the desperate hope.

First, though, she had to go find him. Mabel glanced down at her sweater, bits of dirt still clinging to it, then frowned back at the wings poking through the slits in the back. "Well, I can't exactly waltz into town wearing this, now can I? Where did I put my bag?"

She turned and scanned the small clearing for a few seconds before her eyes landed on the pink handbag dangling from a tree branch overhead. It was just out of reach of her fingertips, but a quick flutter of her wings brought it within her grasp.

Back down on the ground, Mabel stuck an arm into the bag nearly up to her elbow, hand searching for the familiar texture of knitted fabric. Not finding it, she reached deeper, her arm disappearing up to her shoulder.

The seemingly-normal bag was one of Mabel's prized possessions; it had belonged to and was made by her and Dipper's mother. Although it appeared small on the outside, the purse could fit— well, so far Mabel hadn't found a limit. Dipper had explained how it worked to her once. There was something about a mini-dimension— Mabel hadn't understood it, nor did she particularly care to. However it worked, she was incredibly grateful that she had been wearing it when she went through the portal.

After a bit of digging— should probably clean this out— Mabel's hand closed around what she was searching for: a pink sweater knitted yesterday, made without wing slits to disguise her as a human. In order to get it made in a day, she had used a spell Dipper found a year before, which let her enchant her knitting needles to make the sweater themselves. Using the spell brought a smile to Mabel's face— even when he wasn't there, her brother was helping her.

All she had left to do was add a patch. She reached back into the bag, fingers searching. "Hmm... I need something that'll pass as human," Mabel murmured, somewhat reluctantly dropping the emblem for Singeing Sky back into the purse; Mabel knew humans wouldn't understand what the Avem racing team was. "Darn, and they did so well last season, too!"

After half a minute of searching, Mabel pulled a patch out of the depths of the bag. "A shooting star!" She grinned at it at first, but something about the shape seemed familiar; and, as Mabel realized why, her smile faded.

Shooting Star. That was what Lilith had called her in the dream. That thought alone was nearly enough to make Mabel throw the patch back into her bag, but after a moment she took a breath. "I'm not gonna let that stupid dream demon get to me! I can wear whatever I want on my sweaters, and a shooting star is a perfectly lovely design."