I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them.

Day Trip

(Thursday, August 11, 2016)

Maybe because of the heat, business at the Mystery Shack had slacked off to its normal pre-Weirdmageddon days level—maybe fifty or a hundred tourists all day, easy enough to deal with. Soos warned that after maybe one more lazy week, they'd get busy again as families went on trips before school began again, in the run-up to Labor Day.

But that Thursday things promised to be so slow that when Dipper asked if he and Mabel could take a day off, Mr. Mystery cheerfully granted them the free time. Of course, being Soos, he would have done the same if they'd asked off in the middle of the heaviest influx of tourists ever known, but Dipper felt comfortable about taking the time, since he had an errand to run and since he knew that Soos, Melody, Abuelita, Wendy, and Teek had the situation at the Shack well under control.

Mabel, of course, insisted on driving, though she conceded that she might possibly consider giving Dipper a turn at the wheel if in Portland he'd buy her some of the great hot chocolate that Wendy had told her about. As she started the engine, she held up her right hand. "Look, Broseph. My ring's really pretty in the sunlight!"

Dipper agreed. He had helped Teek brainstorm its design—a friendship ring, but with a symbol for infinity worked into it, and at the center, the birthstones of both Mabel and Teek, a peridot and a sapphire. She wore the ring on the fourth finger of her right hand. "It's great, but watch the road and keep both hands on the wheel, please," Dipper said.

"We're engaged to be engaged," Mabel said with a sigh. "Oh, stop nagging me. You know I'm a better driver than you are! Admit it, Brobro!"

"Maybe by a millimeter," Dipper said, making sure his seat belt was fastened.

She snorted as she turned onto the highway. "Yeah, yeah, make fun of me all you want, but I've never got a ticket."

"Nether have I!" Dipper pointed out.

Smugly, she said, "Maybe not, but you never outran a cop car to avoid one!"

Dipper gazed at the scenery as they left the Valley and settled in for the Interstate run to Portland. After a while, Mabel said almost defensively, "Wendy thinks my ring is beautiful."

"It is beautiful," Dipper said.

A sly note crept into Mabel's voice: "Yeah, and her hand looks all bare and empty—"

"That," said Dipper, "is why we're going to Portland. Her ring's ready at the jewelers."

He grabbed hold of the armrest as a squeeing Mabel threatened to drive them off the shoulder and possibly into the Columbia River. "Get a grip!" he yelled.

She straightened out the wheel and they moved back into the lane. "OK, OK, don't have a fit! Dipper, is it an engagement ring? Not a friendship or a promise ring? A real, true engagement ring? How big's the diamond? Remember, I'm Maid of Honor! What's the color scheme gonna be? Never mind, I'll design it all myself. Muslin! I'm gonna need yards and yards of muslin!"

Dipper settled back in the passenger seat, his heart pounding from the scare Mabel had given him when the car veered onto the shoulder. If Mabel got started on a monologue like that, the best thing to do was just to let her slow the flood of words down, coast, and finally glide to a stop on her own terms.

She'd finally calmed down by the time they reached the outskirts of Portland. He got directions from his phone GPS app—he'd only ever been to the place twice before, after all—and he navigated for his sister until she reached the Landlord of the Rings, an independent jewelry store owned and run by two nice ladies, a comfortable couple in their forties, both of them sort of former hippies and artisans. Oh, and gifted jewelers.

"What a nice little place!" Mabel said as she parked in front of the business. It had once been a private home, a neat little tan-colored and red-brick frame Craftsman-style bungalow, but the business district had engulfed it, and the owners had retrofitted it as their shop. The front window declared it had been there since 1995. Inside, chrome-and-glass cases sparkled and gleamed with absolutely one-of-a-kind bracelets, necklaces, chokers, and rings, fashioned by Gladys, the taller, thinner one, and Avondine, the shorter, darker one. Avondine was at the counter, very businesslike in a white shirt and Navy pants suit, and she called out a cheerful greeting as the twins came in: "Hey, Glad, come out here! Dipper's come for his ring!"

"Hi," Mabel said as the strawberry-blonde Gladys parted some hanging curtains that concealed a doorway to workroom and came in smiling. "I'm Mabel, I'm Dipper's twin sister, and I love this place! This is beautiful work! Ooh, snowflake necklaces! How do you do this? It's so delicate!"

Gladys, still wearing a black heat-resistant apron, came over and peered in at the necklaces Mabel was staring at. "Well, that's filigree wire. It's a matter of time and patience—oh, look, Avvie, she's wearing the ring we made for the O'Grady boy!"

". . . for the O'Grady boy. Oh, are you the girl?" Avondine asked, coming over. "His girl? It looks good on your hand, love!"

"You made this?" Mabel asked.

"I made the ring," Gladys told her. "Avvie set the stones. That's a nice design."

". . . nice design," Avondine. "Yes, so glad to meet you, Mabel."

"I hope you think we did a good job," Gladys said with a wide smile at Mabel, who obviously loved her ring.

". . . good job," Avondine echoed. "We took special care. Mr. O'Grady provided us with the stones, and we did the rest."

"It's wonderful," Mabel said. "Every time I look at it, my heart just sings!"

". . . just sings," said Avondine. "We're so glad you like it."

"My sister's quite an artist herself," Dipper said. "She's going to major in art in college, after we graduate from high school."

"Oh, is that true?" Gladys asked. "How wonderful! Dear, what is your medium?"

". . . your medium?" Avondine chimed in.

Mabel giggled and shrugged. "Anything and everything!" she said. "I'm into painting, sculpture in wax, cast bronze, and stone, mixed media, photography, videography, little bit of metallurgy, but I've never tried jewelry." She turned to Dipper. "Brobro, find the photo of the portrait I did for school!"

Dipper took out his phone and found the mosaic portrait that Mabel had done of Mrs. Pepper, her beloved art teacher in her freshman year. She had passed away suddenly, and Mabel had the inspiration to create a memorial portrait of her formed by very tiny photographs of all the students that Mrs. Pepper had taught over the years, or as many as she could reach. The two jewelers admired the full portrait, and then they gasped when Dipper showed them a close-up of Mrs. Pepper's eye. Mabel, in a white sweater, was the twinkle in it.

The two ladies exclaimed over the photos, and Avondine put on reading glasses to see them better. "These are just amazing!" Gladys said.

". . . just amazing!" Avondine agreed. "You have a great talent, Mabel. Use it well!"

"I am so gonna try!" Mabel said. "Meanwhile, thanks for making such a magnificent promise ring for Teek and me. Oh, Teek is what we call him. T.K. O'Grady, but we use Teek for short."

Avondine laughed. "And we're Glad and Avvie!" she said. "So we completely understand."

Gladys had gone to a cabinet and came back with a walnut ring box, bound in gold. "And here you are, Dipper! See if this is what you wanted."

Dipper opened the box, and Mabel immediately snatched it away from him. "Ooh! Mabel like!" she said.

"I don't know where you found the diamond, but it's a fantastic stone," Gladys said.

". . . fantastic stone," agreed Avvie. "It's the best diamond we've ever seen, isn't it, Gladys?"

"I think it is," Gladys said. "Not the largest, but so brilliant! Your fiancée is a lucky girl."

". . . lucky girl," said Avvie. "Is she that nice, striking redhead who visited the shop with you?"

"That's her," Dipper said. "Wendy Corduroy. I'm giving her the ring on August 31, and we'll get married in a year."

"Ooh, a long engagement," Gladys said. "That's so nice. So many young people rush—"

"NO!" yelled Avvie, suddenly grabbing Mabel's wrist and holding on hard.

Mabel looked startled. "I was just gonna try it on—"

"Oh, no, dear!" said Gladys. "No, no, no! You must never, ever try on someone else's engagement ring! That's terribly bad luck!"

". . . bad luck!" repeated Avvie.

"Oh," Mabel said in a small voice, replacing the ring in its box. "Sorry. I'd never heard that."

"All jewelers know that," Gladys assured her. "If anyone else tries on a girl's engagement ring before the marriage, all the love runs out!"

". . . runs out," Avvie said.

Mabel glanced guiltily at Dipper, who shrugged and subtly rolled his eyes.

Gazing at the ring sparkling in its box, Mabel murmured, "I'm sorry. I won't do anything like that again."

"It's all right, dear," Gladys said. "You didn't know."

". . . didn't know," Avvie said. "But now you do"

"It's OK, Sis," Dipper said, taking the box at last and admiring the ring. The two ladies had done an amazingly fine job of it—white gold, the central diamond—actually a crystal of Rhidicollite, salvaged from the downed spaceship and laser-cut by Fiddleford into a brilliant gem—centered between a bright green emerald and a more subdued green peridot, Wendy's and Dipper's birthstones, in heart shapes.

"I love the birthstones," Mabel said, recovering some of her verve.

"Teek and I kinda thought up that approach together," Dipper said. "I'm glad you like it. I hope Wendy will."

"Wendy will love it!" Mabel said. "Wow, I'm gonna get a big sis! And someday I'll be an aunt! Yes! My long-range plan is all falling into place!"

Dipper owed the last payment on the ring, five hundred dollars. He had it in cash, ten fifties—he was still too young for a credit card.

"Um, how much are the snowflake necklaces?" he asked.

"We usually ask seventy-five dollars for one," Gladys said.

"—seventy-five dollars, but I think we might give Mabel a discount?" Avvie said.

"Ten per cent?" asked Gladys.

"Ten per cent," agreed Avvie.

That brought it to sixty-seven fifty—Oregon having no sales tax—and Dipper paid with three twenties and a ten. "Pick one out," he told Mabel.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! The one in the top row, middle, right where I'm pointing. Don't wrap it up! I wanna wear it. Maybe it'll bring us cooler weather!"

"It's only a necklace," Gladys said, smiling. "Not a magic charm."

"—a magic charm," Avvie said. "But maybe it'll help you think cooler thoughts!"

Gladys took Dipper's money for both ring and necklace, and as she rang the purchase up and printed out his receipt, she said to Mabel, "I hope you won't think we're just a couple of silly women, Mabel, that business about not trying on Wendy's ring. It's just that we're jewelers, and every craft and every art has its own mysteries."

". . . its own mysteries," Avvie said.

"That's true," Dipper told her. "For instance, if an actor whistles in a dressing room, that's bad luck, and the actor has to go through a little ritual to take the curse off. Or especially if an actor calls Shakespeare's Macbeth by its real title, that's horrible, and the actor has to do penance for not calling it 'the Scottish play.' It can wreck a performance, or a whole theater, because of the witches in the play."

Mabel nodded. "I remember when we were in school plays, Mrs. Olmart told us it was bad luck to wish an actor good luck! So we had to say, 'Break a leg.'"

"And in the days of sailing ships, no captain would leave port on a Friday," Gladys said. "That would bring disaster on the voyage."

". . . the voyage. And there are many others."

"Yeah," Mabel said thoughtfully. "I read once that Dr. Seuss had a collection of hundreds of hats, and when he started to draw or write, he had to go to his special closet and find the hat that would give him inspiration. He had writer's or artist's block every time until he did that! Really, I don't think it's so odd to have superstitions. I do myself."

"Thanks!" Dipper said, making sure the ring box was securely in his pocket. "I know Wendy will love this."

They said their goodbyes, and in a nearby soda shop Dipper treated Mabel to a salted-caramel hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, and then they set off for Gravity Falls again, with Dipper actually driving. Mabel had asked if she could see the ring again—"Not to try on, just to look at"—and for about ten miles, she just stared at it, turning it in the sunlight to make it sparkle. "It's really beautiful, Dipper," she said. "You did great, especially since you didn't consult me first."

Dipper laughed. "I couldn't do that—Teek and I kinda planned the look of the rings ourselves, and they're a little bit similar with the birthstones and all, so if I'd showed you anything, you wouldn't have had the fun of being surprised by your ring. Teek came up with the infinity symbol, by the way."

"I love my ring," she said, snapping the engagement ring box closed. She sighed. "I hope my engagement ring looks this good."

"I wouldn't worry," Dipper said. He didn't add that Grunkle Ford had provided two crystals, and Teek had one to put into Mabel's eventual engagement ring.

"I wonder if that's true, about trying on a ring bringing bad luck. I mean, it's a superstition, but you and I have run into stranger stuff than that, right? What do you think? Magic or pfbbbt?" She blew a raspberry and turned thumbs down.

"My philosophy," Dipper said, "is why tempt the fates? There's probably nothing to it—I mean, I wouldn't turn and run if I saw a black cat crossing in front of me, and if I broke a mirror, I wouldn't expect seven years of bad luck. But ordinarily I don't see black cats, and I hardly ever break mirrors. It's as easy not to do it as to do it, so, like I say, why tempt the fates?"

"Good thinking," Mabel said.

"If you think so, maybe I'd better re-think everything," he teased.

She was fiddling with her silver snowflake pendant. "This is so pretty, so delicate. I'll definitely tell Grenda to check out this place. Marius is supposed to give her an r-i-n-g some time this year."

"I can spell," Dipper said.

"I hope so, you a big writer and all. Hey, thanks for the cocoa, too, Brobro. It was scrumpmabellyuptious. I just made up a new word." She sighed and leaned back. "And thanks for inviting me on the trip. I love it when we do things together."

"Yeah, we used to all the time. We ought to plan out something to do together at least once a week, every week."

"That sounds good to me!"

Dipper smiled. He was glad that Mabel had come with him—though if she hadn't, he probably would have had to beg a ride from Stan, because Mabel could be very touchy about agreeing that he could drive Helen Wheels all on his own. He felt happy that she and the jewelers thought the ring was as pretty as it should be to go on Wendy's finger.

Mabel started humming, and Dipper grinned. It was a special song, "I Will Always Believe in Fairy Tales." It was one he had written for Wendy a couple of years back.

He didn't sing the lyrics out loud, but at the moment, driving on a bright hot afternoon in August toward the Shack and toward the girl he loved, yeah.

He did kinda believe in fairy tales. And happily ever afters.

The End