Sometimes Mabel wandered through the woods alone. They were just so perfect for exploring, and the knowledge that there were really strange creatures living in it who may or may not want her as her wife didn't make them scary, it just made them more exciting. And with everybody else busy with the Shack and Dipper busy with reading or whatever, Mabel wandered on her own, free as a manatee.

Sometimes she saw nothing, only heard crunching twigs and breathing things and felt trees catching her hair, or at least she only thought they were trees because whenever she turned around, there was nothing but sheer forest surrounding her. Sometimes she saw things from the corner of her eyes, quick little things that disappeared so that she didn't even have time to question whether she saw what she had just seen.

Once, she just chased a plastic bag that flew in the wind because it made her think of ghosts. It amused her for about an hour.

Today, she found a cave. What really caught her eye was the 'Welcome' mat in front of the entrance.

"Hellloooooooo," she trilled, wiping her feet on the mat to be polite. Her voice echoed and bounced, coming back to her like a proud dog with a stick. Eventually, a sleepy reply wound its way to her.

"Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat."

She took it as an invitation to go inside.

The cave was cold and dank and wet, but this was the exact reason why she wore sweaters in the summer. It was getting dark, though, the further she walked in, and it was taking a while for her eyes to adjust, which was why she walked right into a table.

"Heeeey," a nearby voice moaned. "That's my stuff."

There was a dark figure in front of her, and Mabel's eyes were adjusted enough to see that the figure was tall and gaunt and dressed in super-black clothes and she started to connect the dots in her head.

Lives in a cave? Lives in the dark? Super shadowy?

"Wow!" she said, not noticing the figure covering his ears. "You're totally a vampire! Like Batman that one time!"

"Yes. Please don't shout," said the figure.

"You aren't gonna drink my blood, are you?"

"That's disgusting. You're too young."

With that potential danger out of the way, Mabel was free to remember her vampire fantasies. She had been quick to get bored with the ideas of an epic summer romance, or at least to tone down her boy-chasing in favor of awesome forest adventures, but she still was fervently excited about the idea of a vampire boyfriend. Such a relationship would absolutely boil over with drama and nighttime adventures and tension and inner turmoil and sometimes outer turmoil and it would definitely be something that the other girls in school wouldn't have done over the summer.

So it was time to turn on the unpatented Mable charm.

"Hi, I'm Mabel! D'ya have a light in here? I wanna see your face! And also your name, if you have a nametag, but I don't think you do, so I guess I have to hear it."

The tall figure had folded itself into a chair-shaped thing and yawned. "Kid, you broke into my house. Is there any way I can get you to…leave…? Or something?"

Uh-oh, this totally wasn't working. Her charm was already turned up to eleven, though. If she turned it even higher, there could be dangerously charming consequences.

She turned it up anyways.

"I don't know a lotta games we could play in the dark, but we could totally play a game or something, like flashlight tag! Or flashlight sword-fighting! But it's like lightsabers, not swords, I guess. I don't have flashlights though."

The figure massaged his forehead. "Please. I was sleeping. I'm tired."

Well, that made sense, from what she knew about vampires. "Okay, well, what if I come at night? We could hang out then, and I'll definitely bring flashlights."

Long fingernails tapped on the table. The cave ceiling dripped all over her sweater. She was going to be itchy later. "I'll probably be asleep tonight."

Mabel ceased rocking on her feet. "You sleep both day and night?"

"Yeah," said the figure, scratching at his hair. "After a thousand years of this schtick, there's not many things that interest me anymore besides not being bothered by anybody and getting my sleep."

"But…what do you do in your free time, then?"

"Eat. Sleep. Listen to the forest. Take a bath every hundred year or so."

Mabel suddenly decided to leave the cave.

"Vampires suck," she complained later to Dipper at the Shack.

"That's very common knowledge," he replied, grinning into his book.

Mabel punched him in the shoulder.