Post The Book

Dipper

The Mystery Shack
Sunday, 15th September 2024 (8:30AM)

The new moonstones have been placed in their places, the Mercury has been sorted, and now? The most tedious one of them all... the unicorn hair. It's my turn to replace them. It's still early out so I'm hoping I can get it all done and replaced by the late morning so that I don't spend all day doing it.

When I step out of the shack I notice a small breeze, it's refreshing in a way. I take a lungful of the morning air before stepping off the wooden landing and letting the bag fall off my back, onto the grass.

I still feel a faint tiredness bugging me today - it must have followed from my journey to ask the unicorns for more of their hair. Times like this I miss Mabel, a lot. She'd have no problem talking to the unicorns again, they're... a piece of work. Even after promising unlimited supply of hair after we saved them ... from... during... I shiver. In short, I don't like them.

I rub my eyes and open the rucksack, before pulling anything out I kneel before the landing to see if the hair which sticks to it has yet lost it's colour.. and.. no surprises here, it has. It's gone all grey and dull, losing it's shimmer. Few strands still have their faded colours but.. eh.. if I'd known it's gotten this bad I'd have replaced it early.

I get to work, reaching to pull off the old hair - I pick at the grey strand to peel it off like a thin sticker. Something begins to spill from under strands. Oh Gross!

What is this??

I lean closer, it looks like some kind of glowing sap - it's colour an unnatural neon yellow.

What.. is this?

For a moment I just watch it slide down the wood, below it I see a green caterpillar crawling, directly in way of impact. The neon goop slivers over to the insect, and as the two merge, I notice two events happening simultaneously. The first to happen is a change of colour in the goop, it pulsates with a light, and the yellow is overcome by a light blue. Secondly, the bug which is subjected to the effects, alongside also emitting a light, begins to transform. By the time it's crawled away from the sap-like leakage, it's skin is left glowing. Literally. Glowing. It's like a mini glow-stick.

"Woah" I let out a breath which whistles. I've never seen this before! This must be some new development, or, a new discovery! An anomaly! Is it linked to the unicorn hair? Is this some type of rotting? Did something cause this reaction? So many questions are swirling in head, and I need answers. But I also need to quickly replace the hair.

I quickly reach into my rucksack, pulling out not only the hair, which has been neatly bundled in a hair-tie by Wendy, but also a journal of my own. One which I've felt massively proud of. I fish around for a pen before frantically skipping to the next blank page of my journal, trying my best to sketch what I'm seeing and begin scribbling down everything I just saw.

I need to find a compartment to store this, so that I can test it, and figure out what going on.

But I can't do that right now, I need to finish replacing everything, which is frustrating.

After having written everything down, my wrist starts to ache, but even so I begin pulling fresh unicorn hair from it's bundle and sticking it to the wood right above the newly discovered sap.