𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐈 °┊𝑮𝑹𝑨𝑽𝑰𝑻𝒀 𝑭𝑨𝑳𝑳𝑺

𝐓𝐖𝐎

CH2 - Faded Stars

Midnight approached slowly, crawling over the town until it found a place in the centre and lay down, settling over the society peacefully. The dark sky yawned over their heads, wrapping its wings around the valley soothingly. An owl's tranquil hoots lulled it to sleep and sang its lullaby to the midnight as it arrived. It flapped away to seek out another to nature, but instead of a song, it screeched, and all fell silent.

The delicate bones of the mother bird crushed under the pressure of a creature's jaws. It cooed weakly as the life drained from its eyes, meekly giving up the struggle. By the time it died, it had already been half eaten by its attacker, flesh peeled from each of the bones that had been exposed. Nothing but the skeleton and an untouched head was left behind, swept carelessly into a small pool by a scaled tail.

It had gotten late quickly in Mabel's perspective. One minute she'd been on a bus with her brother, the next there was a party, and then suddenly everyone was leaving, one by one. When the last people had left around twenty minutes ago, her eyelids felt heavy; her social battery had kept her energy charged, but now that there was nothing powering it, she felt exhausted. She'd flopped onto her bed in their attic bedroom, and now completely lost in thought with her eyes fixed to the ceiling.

From the corner of her eye, she could see that Dipper had a smile on his face as he wrote in his journal. He was never without the thing and wrote basically everything that wasn't normal down in there. She'd bet, out loud, that by the end of the summer, he would have filled out at least three now that they were here. He kept the letter Wendy had given him in a paper pocket glued on the inside of the cover, she thought that was sweet.

He batted his eyes to the side to catch a glance of Mabel sprawled across the bed on her back as he wrote. She could tell he was trying not to laugh. "Do you think we'll see any of those creatures again?"

"I hope so," Mabel said, holding her stare on the ceiling, gazing at it like it was the most important thing in the world. "Is it weird that I even missed the gnomes? You know, the ones that tried to kidnap me and make me a gnome queen? Is that weird?" she paused. "Actually, wait, don't answer that."

Dipper laughed. "No, not really. Four years away from the general feel of this town, honestly made me feel the same way," he said, pausing. He turned his head to the window and frowned. "Did you hear something?"

Mabel sat up as the pair fell silent, listening out for anything that was outside of the normal forest sounds. She didn't think anything was off aside from the abrupt stop of an owl's hooting and so shook her head. "No, you're just insane, dork," she joked with a grin, dropping her head back onto her pillow. "I know you want to make any excuse to go paranormal hunting, but maybe we should wait until tomorrow before we go looking for vampires."

"You're not really still into vampires, are you?"

"You'll never know~!" Mabel sang. She liked to leave Dipper guessing, but she'd long moved on from reading Twilight books on the daily and writing weird fanfiction on the Omegaverse. Now she only read them once a week! She was more than happy to have moved on from that phase, it had been worse than that boy-crazy stage, so, so much worse. She shuddered at the thought.

Dipper looked back to the window as she giggled, squinting his eyes at the darkness outside. At first, Mabel didn't have much concern, but the longer he stayed there...

She sighed, sitting up again. Peering out the window, she looked around, from the trees to the trail that led up to the Shack, all the way up to the sky. "There's nothing out there, Dipper."

Dipper sighed, reaching for his journal and shut it. He slid it over the table between his and Mabel's beds, beside the lantern he used as a bedside lamp. "Yeah, you're probably right," he said, flicking off the light. "We can look into it tomorrow though, because I swear I heard something."