"Dipper? Dipper!"
The brown-haired boy keeps his eyes shut as he swats the air in his sister's direction. "Not now, Mabel," he groans, shifting in his seat on the coach bus.
"C'mon, bro bro," Mabel says. "You're missing this!" He imagines her face pressed against the back window, her brown eyes wide. "Check out all these trees! I've never seen so many at once!"
Dipper ignores her, trying to catch some more ZZZs. He feels his cheek slide an inch down the window he's using as a pillow, his hat lifting an inch off his head. The noise blurs to nothingness, his breathing slows...finally, he can get more sleep, see more of that strange dream...
His eyes shoot open when something digs into his armpits. "M-Mabel, stop!" he says, cracking a grin and giggling.
"Time to wake up, sleepyhead!" Mabel says, almost laying on top of her brother as she tickles him awake.
"I'm up! I'm up!" Mabel sits back in her seat, smirking at her brother. He straightens in his seat and readjusts his brown hat. "How long until we're there?"
Shrug. "Maybe ten minutes."
"That long? You could've let me sleep longer!" He gives her a teasing glare. "You woke me up from my dream!"
"Ooh, did it have fairy princesses in it?" His sister beams, flashing her silver braces.
Dipper stares at her. "Why would my dream have fairy princesses?"
Another shrug.
He looks over the top of the seat in front of him - but just like when they got on the bus at Piedmont, they are the only two passengers. Nevertheless, when he sits back down, he beckons his sister closer and says in a lower voice, "I dreamed of that maze again."
Mabel's smile vanishes. Ever since they were really little, the twins have had a recurring dream of being lost in a dark, tall maze. They never told anyone else about it, not even their parents. "Anything new?"
"I think there was a shadowy guy following me, but you woke me up before I could see any more."
"Sorry."
The twins fall silent, each one thinking about the mysterious maze. Lately, they've been having this dream more and more, but other than small things - like the shadow figure this time, or the triangle from last week - nothing changes. Just the same dark pathways, midnight sky, and looming sense of danger.
"Next stop," the bus driver says over the speaker, "Gravity Falls."
Mabel and Dipper press their faces to the back window, watching the pine trees turn into buildings as they enter the sleepy Oregon town. Mabel then suggests playing What's Under the Seat, which Dipper halfheartedly agrees to play. In no time at all, they arrive at the bus station. They grab their suitcases and make their way from the very back of the bus to the front door. Dipper carefully steps down the stairs, but Mabel has a spring in her step as she descends. Both of them look up to see a wrinkly, old man in a black suit, glasses, and red fez smiling at them.
"Hey, kiddos!" their great-uncle Stan says, throwing his arms wide out. "Welcome to Gravity Falls."
A few days later...
Something just happened. He can feel it in his very being.
He blinks, and his vision changes to show him Gravity Falls. Specifically the forest behind the Mystery Shack. He doesn't care for the shack at all - in fact, that's where the intruders came from. He sinks a couple inches at the memory: he remembers having to fight the bad man to protect the royal family, he'd rather not have to do it again with someone else.
But the shack isn't what catches his eye. It's the boy, one of the twins from the bus. He's looking through something...the journal! But how? The third one was hidden in a place with an enchantment so only the reincarnated twins could find it. There was nothing he could do to keep Crescent Claw from getting the first journal, and he had no way of getting to Journal #2 before Pentagram , so he did what he could to protect the last journal. And now, some boy's reading from it.
"Hello!" says the female twin, popping up behind a fallen tree, startling her brother. "Whatcha readin', some nerd thing?"
Well, it kinda is, he thinks with a chuckle.
The boy stammers before saying, "It's nothing."
The girl imitates the boy, then laughs. "Are you actually not gonna tell me?"
Gompers, the goat, then comes up and starts nibbling on the journal.
Wait a minute, he thinks. That goat only appears when there's something big going on. Either there's something supernatural going on I'm not aware of, or fate led those twins here. He squints at the twins, gets a better look at them. His eye widens. "It can't be!" he hisses aloud. He blinks again, and his vision reverts back to the two empty thrones in front of him. He turns around, hands clasped in front of him. He thinks back to thirty years ago, to that one fateful day, images flashing on his triangular body as he recalls the events. The royal twins were dying; he cast a spell on them so they could come back someday, somehow. He also wiped their memories so they wouldn't remember the pain or suffering they went through. The twins in the forest are slightly paler than the royal twins - other than that, they could be identical. What if these two - "Dipper" and "Mabel," as they're called - are the ones he's been waiting for?
He blinks, and his body reverts back to its glowing yellow form. Hands behind his back, he paces back and forth through the air. These two better be the twins I've been waiting for, he thinks. The portal's supposed to open again this summer, and I can't mess this up.
