Chapter 36 – June

Maria realized that an important day was coming up about a week into June.

She'd almost forgotten Stans' and Fords' birthday.

She hadn't gotten around to getting the younger twins' gifts for their birthday back in August – that had come up on her so fast that she hadn't even realized it was that close – but this? She'd been in their dimension for almost a year; she had to come up with something.

"You know you don't have to get them birthday gifts, right?" Dipper asked while Maria gnawed on the end of a pen. The two of them were sitting in the kitchen, Maria trying to come up with a list. "I mean, you got them a lot of cool stuff in December. They probably aren't expecting anything from younext week."

"Still, I can't help but feel like I should get something put together." Maria frowned. "I've been living with you guys for this long; it's the least I can do at this point."

"Besides helping Grunkle Sixer?" Dipper frowned. "Maria, you're already doing a lot. They're not gonna think badly of you if you don't do anything for their birthday."

"Yeah!" Mabel bounced in, carrying a box of craft supplies. "I mean, you're working to save the world! That's gotta take up a lot of your time, right?"

"You'd be surprised," Maria replied dryly. She shook her head and twirled her pen between her fingers.

"When's your birthday, by the way? I wanna put together a party so that we can celebrate it!" Mabel dropped the box on the table, grinning.

Maria stopped twirling the pen. "My birthday?"

"Yeah! I mean, you have to have one, right? You're not from some weird dimension where people don't know their own birthdays, are you?" Mabel frowned at Maria.

"Our dimension has birthdays," Vash said from the kitchen doorway. "It's just that Aunt Maria stopped celebrating hers a long time ago."

Maria sent Vash an annoyed look, but he did his best to ignore it. As it was, his shoulders rose up a little as his expression went sheepish.

"What?!" Mabel looked at Maria with an aghast expression. "Why?!"

Maria sighed and put the pen and the list down on the table. She rolled her eyes. "It's because I'm so old and I've traveled across so many dimensions that it really doesn't make a difference to me anymore. So I've lived for another year; so what? Not as much time as passed in my dimension, most likely – or so much time as passed that I've gained another five years to this world's one or something like that." She sighed.

Mabel stared at Maria with such an intense stare that it made Maria feel…slightly unnerved by the focus she had.

"When. Is. Your. Birthday."

Maria met Mabel's stare, but after a moment, she snorted and turned her gaze away. "May 28th. We've already passed it."

Mabel gasped in dramatic fashion. "How dare you be so concerned about Grunkle Stanford's and Grunkle Stanley's birthday and never even tell us you had one and we missed it! You're not making any birthday gifts for my grunkles, sister – no!" She snatched the list off the table and proceeded to eat it.

"Hey!" Maria reached for the scraps that were sticking out from Mabel's mouth, but she swallowed it before Maria could grab even a little piece.

"Nope! Don't you go worrying about birthday gifts when you dared to make me skip yours over the silly idea that you're too old for them!" Mabel paused. "…how old are you, anyway? Or are you at the point where you aren't keeping track of that, either?"

"Eehhh…."

Maria sent Vash another look. She hadn't expected the birthday conversation to bring up her birthday of all things, and she hadn't been planning on celebrating it herself, either.

"Age isn't something that I keep track of so closely anymore." Maria leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "But if it makes you feel any better, last I checked I'm somewhere around a thousand years old according to my home dimension. If I was adding up how much time I've spent in other dimensions…" She paused in thought. "I get the feeling that it would be a larger number because of fluctuations in time between those dimensions and my home dimension. I mean, I once spent seven years in a dimension where it was only a week's time in my home dimension."

Maria's statement was met with wide-eyed stares from both Dipper and Mabel.

She shrugged. "So age doesn't mean anything to me anymore. Not when time bounces around so much."

"…you're older than Grunkle Sixer is," Dipper said. "But – how is—"

"Time is a variable construct," Vash said. "Especially between dimensions."

"I need to go and talk to some people," Mabel said. "Don't you go planning on giving Grunkles gifts on the 15th! Not yet!" And she scrambled out of the kitchen. Seconds later, Maria heard the door slam behind her.

There was an awkward moment of silence afterwards. Maria decided to break it.

"Not even a few days out of ninth grade and she's already got more than enough energy to handle the summer," Maria commented.

"You telling her that you don't celebrate your birthday anymore just gave her more energy, I think," Dipper replied. "She's gone into full party-planning mode, if she wasn't in it already for our grunkles."

That gave Maria pause.

"So…she's going to plan something for me, is what you're saying."

"I think so?" Dipper shrugged. "I mean, your reason for not liking your birthday isn't as bad as Soos with his dad."

Maria nodded.

"So…I don't think you're going to wait for Mabel to do something."

Maria shook her head at Dipper's statement. "No, I'm not. I'm still going to give presents to someone."

Dipper frowned. "Are you sure? I mean, it's not like you have more stuff that they might want…do you?"

Maria tilted her head to one side, considering Dipper's question.

"Considering that I gave away everything from my subspace that I either no longer use or think that the rest of you would find useful, I've probably exhausted my ability to give gifts," Maria admitted after a moment. "Fiddleford has most of my old tech, I split the rest among the Fords – except for Sixer; I gave him a set of pencils and a sketchbook. I dunno if he's made use of it."

That caused something else to occur to Maria.

"…I think I know what I want to do."

Time Break

June 15th arrived, and so did all the chaos of an almost purely Mabel-planned birthday, although the promise was that it was going to be quiet this year. Maria suspected that was because of what was likely coming at the end of the summer.

Planets of impossible colors and little boats of different models hung from ropes that ran from Shack to Shack in a crazy spiderweb that looked almost impossible to put up without anyone else noticing. Tables were dragged out into the open while Mabel, Mabelcorn, Maple, and Mizar shut almost everyone out of the kitchen in Alex's Shack. Alex and Karen insisted on remaining present, which the girls were more than fine with.

Thankfully – or, perhaps, strangely – the afternoon didn't bring with it crowds of folks from the main part of town. Maria wondered if they didn't know today was the twins' birthday, or if they didn't turn it into a big, extravagant party on purpose.

"They didn't want you to help?" Sphinx looked at Star with curious surprise.

"I don't know how things work in a kitchen." Star fidgeted a little.

"Well, we'll have to fix that at some point." Sphinx smiled a little.

"I'd go in there and help, but they didn't want me going in there either." Maria folded her arms across her chest and frowned.

Sixer frowned at her, curious. "Why not?"

"Because Mabel found out last week that we didn't celebrate my birthday because I didn't tell anyone when it was and I think she's now combining it with yours this year."

Sixer blinked, looking confused.

"Seriously?" Stanley frowned. "When was it, March?"

"May 28th." Maria shrugged. "The end of the school year was usually accompanied by a birthday celebration for me. It just…stopped, after a while."

Maria wasn't sure when exactly she'd stopped celebrating her birthday. It had been sometime after the Continuum Shift, she knew that much. Maybe after she'd spent time traveling around with a pirate crew?

"Huh." Stanley frowned. "You really thought you could get away with not telling Mabel what your birthday is."

"It honestly never came up until last week." Maria shrugged. "And Vash happened to be there and mentioned that I didn't see a point in it because of how long I've lived and…that was that."

The looks she got in response to that made her blink in confusion. "What?"

"Kid, you saw everything that happened to us in that cartoon thing," Stan said flatly. "Did you really think that you could live with us for a year and not tell her when your birthday was?"

Maria ducked her head a little at the stares she was getting. "…it was worth a shot."

Stanley snorted. "Not wanting to celebrate it because you don't count the years isn't as bad as other reasons. Let the kid have her fun just this once, all right? Besides." He grinned. "It's not like you've had birthdays with us before ya got here."

As much as Maria wasn't looking forward to being reminded that she was a year older and that much older than those who stood around her…Mabel's insistence that they celebrate her birthday was starting to stir older memories back out into the open.

As much as those memories hurt to remember, as the people who surrounded her in them passed a long time ago…the memories were still warm.

Maybe this year would give her the chance to make some kinder memories.

"…I'm not even sure of how old I'm supposed to be."

Maria looked over at Sixer at his words. He looked troubled. "Do you mean the exact number or something else?"

"…a little of both, I think? I know that the tails of a kitsune dictate its age, but – every time a tail started to split, the process was sped up. I don't know if…if time was slowed or sped up around me just because seeing my tails split quickly was…." Sixer trailed off, uncertain.

Maria got the feeling that Cipher thought it was amusing to see Sixer in pain no matter what the cause. Her gaze hardened a little. "We'll figure things out. You probably need time to adjust to time again, and then we can figure out your age from there. Besides, since you have six tails, telling people you're about 600 will probably be enough, unless they're incredibly nosy about the exact number."

Sixer was about to respond to that when door to Alex's Shack was suddenly kicked open, and four Mabels – accompanied by Alex and Karen – as they carried out trays of sandwiches and one big platter with a large cake, decorated in dark purple frosting covered in splatters of white that almost resembled the Milky Way.

The sight of the cake was appropriately greeted with oos and aahs from group of Pines gathered in the clearing. The group of artistic teenagers who had put everything together grinned proudly at the positive response.

"All right, everybody! Before we commence with the birthday celebrations, I got a little announcement to make!" Mabel climbed up on a table, standing between sandwich platters. "We almost missed an important birthday! Maria's birthday was on May 28, and she didn't tell us!"

Her announcement was met with the appropriately over-dramatic gasps from Mabel's counterparts while Maria suddenly found herself at the center of everyone's stares.

"So we're gonna celebrate her birthday and our Grunkles' birthdays!" Mabel concluded. "And then I'm gonna figure out when Vash's and Knives' birthdays are so we can do that too!"

"Um…" Vash raised a hand from the back of the group. "We were born in space, technically? So I don't know what date it would have been on Earth."

"Well, pick something!" Mabel replied. "It doesn't matter what the date is, so long as you celebrate it at least once a year!"

"We'll consider it," Knives replied shortly. "Perhaps we should keep our focus on the people who have important milestones today?"

"Right! Let's eat cake!"

"We gotta sing first!" Maple corrected quickly.

Mabel slapped a hand against her forehead. "Right, right! I almost forgot! Ready, girls?"

"Ready!" came the response of three other Mabels speaking at once.

Maria mentally braced herself for what was probably going to be the most interesting and possibly dissonant rendition of "Happy Birthday" she had ever heard.

It ended up being one of the nicer renditions, although having it sung by four identical girls with identical voices was the strangest thing Maria had heard recently. Still, they sung it with great enthusiasm, which warmed Maria up a little.

It made Maria remember some of the nicer memories she had of being at home when school had finished, creating a warmer feeling in her than she'd been expecting.

The cake was passed out – dark chocolate and vanilla, mixed together in such a manner that it looked like they were eating the night sky even without the frosting. It tasted delicious.

Maria saw Sixer going for a second slice and almost laughed when Mabel pointed him towards a large bowl of jellybeans. The way his eyes lit up with child-like wonder and delight felt like a present in and of itself.

It felt even more like a present when Sixer took two handfuls of jellybeans and proceeded to eat them with an expression of nostalgic bliss that only came with finding something you had been missing for a long time. He definitely deserved those.

"We've got presents!" Mabelcorn started making her way through the group, handing out gifts from saddlebags that hung from her sides. They weren't very big things – books on recent scientific discoveries, little drawings and crafts to keep as trinkets.

And then Mabel pressed two DVD collections into Maria's hands.

"They released Ducktective on DVD, and Dipper got you a copy of his favorite nerdy show, too." Mabel grinned up at Maria. "Since you haven't really sat down and watched them, now you can!"

"And it's really rare for a show like Ducktective to be released on disk," Dipper added. "The last time the company let a series be released like that to the public, it was back in the mid-90s with some kind of magical bear show."

"Huh." Maria looked down at the two disk sets with a raised eyebrow. "Thanks, guys. I'll have to look into watching these later."

Mabel and Dipper beamed, then moved off to help distribute more gifts.

As they did, Maria saw Sixer standing off to one side with a nearly-empty bowl of jelly beans held against his middle and a book tucked under one arm. Maria could barely see the title – something about Asian myths, it looked like, but Maria wasn't entirely sure.

"I see that some things never changed." Maria motioned to the jelly beans as she spoke, getting Sixer's attention.

Sixer blinked, then swallowed his mouthful of candy goodness. His tails were twitching and flicking while his ears turned in order to track the sounds of his counterparts and Crescent and his counterparts thanking Mabels and Dippers for their thoughtful gifts. "I…I missed eating them? I think that's the appropriate response?" He looked down at the bowl. "I hadn't realized that I had ever missed them until Mabel showed me this."

Maria smiled, but it wasn't a full smile. "Yeah. I get that too, sometimes." She looked down at the two DVD collections in her hands. "I was…kinda starting to think that birthdays were useless endeavors, after I stopped keeping close track of my age. But something about today…it's making me rethink that. Just a little."

Sixer smiled a little in response. "It is…nice." His smile faded. "But if we cannot stop what's coming—"

"I know." Maria patted him on the arm with one hand while she made the DVDs disappear with her other. "We're preparing all that we can for that, and I think that we're going to be able to beat him back. So, in light of that…." She pulled something out from under her jacket and held it out to Sixer.

She hadn't bothered to wrap it – and she was glad she hadn't, considering how full Sixer's arm was with the bowl of jelly beans. So the burgundy red journal was out in full daylight, sun glinting off the gold that adorned the corners and spine of the cover.

But it wasn't what was at the corners that caught Sixer's attention.

"You – this is the one you were planning on writing about—"

"I know," Maria replied. "But I think that it'll see more proper use in your hands."

She'd already put a symbol on the cover, and it would probably be a familiar one to Sixer specifically.

The six-fingered hand of a Ford, over a pinwheel of six fox tails.

"Use it to re-record information from your old journals you want to keep, or write new things about the forest, or yourself. I don't care what you do with it – I'm considering this my birthday gift to you." Maria pushed the journal forward a little.

Sixer took the book with his free hand, looking it over with an expression of amazement. "You…you didn't have to do this."

"Probably not. But…I wanted to."

Maria knew that Sixer as he currently was wouldn't be able to completely grasp the definition of that word, but she felt in this context, there was no other word that could possibly work.

Sixer winced a little, but he recovered quickly. There was still that look of amazement or gentle awe on his face. "Thank you."

Maria smiled and patted him on the arm again. "Anytime, Sixer. Let's see if there's anything else sweet around here to munch on. I'm pretty sure that you're nearly out of jelly beans!"