Earth, July 27th, 2012
Stan hadn't had a good night's sleep in forty years. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep in thirty. Now, he could barely cobble together a night's sleep at all. He preferred to just work on the portal until he dropped, but it was coming to the point where he would never drop for long and he was too old to run on nothing but caffeine. Sometimes he would just stay up watching TV and eat popcorn to turn his brain off, but his sides felt empty without children next to him and he would continually come across shows he'd watch with Mabel.
So sometimes, he just had to try to sleep. It required a lot of whiskey to manage anything. Otherwise, he would just obsess over Mabel and rehash the same questions over and over again in his head: is she okay could I have done something what will I tell her parents how will Dipper cope why can't I do anything right why did Stanford have to make that thing in the first place will either of them ever come home why did it have to be Mabel it should have been me
Was it healthy? Probably not, but since when did his health matter, really?
Dipper didn't have the benefit of self-medication. This was the fourth night in a row that Stan could hear the kid pacing in his room instead of sleeping. Enough was enough.
Stan didn't immediately force himself out of bed. Instead, he rolled to his side, staring at the bottle of whiskey that had made its home on his floor.
He pushed it carefully under his mattress and then lumbered upstairs.
Dipper was pacing around mumbling to himself in the middle of his room, surrounded by copies of journal pages and designs for the portal. The floor was littered with Ford's old textbooks, dug up out of storage for McGucket. Many of the old earmarks on them were from Stan, accumulated over thirty long years of learning interdimensional electrical engineering without so much as a GED.
"Kid."
Dipper stopped his pacing and turned his heels to face Stan. The kid looked like a particularly twitchy raccoon.
"You and I are going on the porch." Stan started going downstairs again, bracing himself on the banister. The stairs wobbled under him; clearly, he had drunk just a touch too much.
"Grunkle Stan, it's one in the morning." The kid followed him downstairs anyway.
The night was warm and humid, but not oppressively so. Bugs tended to avoid the place since Stan sprayed everything down with possibly carcinogenic pesticide. The couch creaked under his weight as he settled in, his bones popping about as much as the couch. When did he get old?
"Sit down. We're going to talk man to man."
Dipper didn't sit down immediately. Instead, he stared at Stan, holding his hands close to his chest like a cornered animal. "Are you drunk?"
No hiding anything from this kid, huh? "Nah, just a little buzzed. When I'm drunk, I fall asleep on the floor. Now sit down."
The boy was grimacing, but he sat down next to Stan anyway. His weight barely made a ripple in the couch. "Stan, I really don't think I—"
"You think I don't know exactly how you're feeling right now?"
Dipper fell silent. The crickets were too loud for Stan's tastes. He could hear rustling in the woods, but it was probably just gnomes, retreating now that they saw the humans of the house were awake and likely to stop them from nabbing food.
"I'm not sure if I…" Dipper trailed off, pulling gently at his hair and hunching his shoulders. He always did that when he was nervous. He'd been twitching like a dying chicken ever since that awful night.
"You haven't slept properly in four days, kid. It's time to deal with your pain like a man: avoid eye contact while you talk about your feelings." Stan crossed his arms and settled back in the couch. (More joints popped. At this point, his body was just being spiteful.) "So you might as well get on with it or this will be ten times worse."
Dipper grimaced, hunching and hiding his face in his pajamas. It was a gesture hauntingly like what Mabel did when she wanted to hide in her clothes, except Dipper didn't have the sweater to hide in, so he just folded into his body to block out the world.
The boy was clamming up. Stan sighed, lolling his head backwards so he could stare sightlessly at nothing.
"Well, I'll tell you how I felt. My biggest thought was that it should have been me who fell through the portal."
He felt more than he saw Dipper's ears perking. He kept staring at nothing, because even with whiskey, it was painful as hell to talk about this kind of thing. Admitting to all those feelings felt like admitting weakness, but Dipper was only twelve and he was a sensitive kid and he couldn't be expected to lock up all that awfulness inside him like a grown man. Dipper would destroy himself if he tried, and Stanley couldn't stand the thought of losing his grandnephew too.
"I went through the whole gamut. Wishing that I had been the one who fell in, running through it all in my head to figure out how I could have saved him, hating myself for getting into a fight in the first place—you know, all that stuff."
He waited a beat for Dipper to start talking. Waited for the kid to open up—but Mabel was the open twin, even if Dipper was every bit as sensitive as she was. Even so, Dipper was still listening, so this wasn't a total wash.
Stan allowed himself to look at the sky. Not for the first time, he wondered if Stanford was looking at the same stars. "My brother was like the second coming of Einstein or something. He was supposed to do great things."
Dipper was silent, but he knew the kid was listening intently even if he didn't look at his face. Both his grandniece and grandnephew were painfully expressive and had no idea how to hide their feelings. Just from the shift in the couch, Stan could feel Dipper leaning towards him, like that would somehow help him hear better.
"I didn't want him to go do those things, though. Not without me, at least, but it's not like I coulda helped him on the way. I'm no Einstein." The alcohol eased the sting of truth, but not by much. He was opening up a forty-year-old wound, one that festered and wept and tore at him until he couldn't breathe, but he had to do it. "And our stupid fight messed up everything. He couldn't do all those things, and I couldn't be with him."
He couldn't let Dipper turn out like him.
"Has Mabel ever told you what she wants to be when she grows up?"
Dipper was so quiet that Stan could barely hear them over the crickets. "I think she said something about wanting to be a fairy princess that commanded an army of millions."
"Well, yeah, that's basically it." Dipper didn't unfold from his bubble, but he let one arm dangle over his knees, picking imaginary lint from his pajama pants. For once, he wasn't a thrashing mess of nervous tics. "She wants to be president. The first woman president. I always thought it was kind of unlikely because, you know, politics are dishonest and Mabel isn't. But if anyone could do it honestly, she could."
Dipper gave a weak shrug, not making eye contact. "I'm smart, but… not world-changing smart. She's world-changing. I'm… me."
Feelings that couldn't be articulated but Stan understood completely dangled in the air. The sense of inferiority, of stealing something from his twin and the world at the same time—and being such a poor replacement for the better twin, the more accomplished twin. But neither Mabel nor Dipper were the 'better' or 'worse' twin. There was no gap between them, even if they had respective strengths and weaknesses.
"You're selling yourself way too short." Stan understood why, though. The lost twin always loomed so much larger when they were gone. "You're both good kids, and you'll knock them all dead as adults." The question of whether or not Mabel would actually be there to grow up and knock them dead oozed over the back of his head like poison, but Stan couldn't put it to words. It would be too awful for either of them.
Dipper shrugged again, still picking at the hem of his pajamas, probably drowning in guilt and self-loathing. Stan couldn't save him from that, but he could support him while he got ready to save himself.
"Why did you and your brother fight?" Dipper asked. The question made Stan's gut twist despite the whiskey. He knew it was coming, and he was going to come clean, but he didn't know what that would mean anymore. It had been so long since he'd told the truth.
"That's a long story. It started over ten years before he fell into the portal." His gut hurt like he set it on fire, like telling the story could burn him until there was nothing left. "We had a falling out in high school. I broke a science project of his that could have gotten him a full ride to a fancy college. It was an accident and I thought I fixed it, but honestly, I wanted it to be broken. I wanted us to stay together forever, even if it meant neither of us got degrees. I couldn't imagine my life without him. And just like that, my folks kicked me out and we never talked again for a decade."
Dipper took a sharp breath next to him, pulling him back from the edge before he fell too deep in the memories. This was it, Stan. The day you finally admitted the truth would be the day it swallowed you whole. All your flaws laid out for your nephew, if only so he'd learn what he should not be, even if it meant he hated you.
"Let me tell you, ten years on the street? Not fun. Can't deny it's made me who I am, though. Hard times shape you more than the good ones." Thinking back to all the people in Gravity Falls, from McGucket to Soos to Wendy's entire family, just reinforced that conviction. "Then one day I got a postcard from Gravity Falls. Stanford wanted me to come see him. I dunno what I was expecting, but I was hoping to start mending things. He never stopped being my twin, you know?"
Stan shrugged, like the pain of that day didn't still keep him up at night. "Whoever I met here wasn't the same guy I left in Jersey. He was paranoid. Angry. You wouldn't have known I was his brother and not some old classmate he was calling in. We both lost our tempers, we got into a fistfight, and I pushed him into the portal. Last thing I ever heard was him begging me to do something."
The sky was nice and clear. That was probably part of the reason Stanford made the Shack so far away from the town. He'd always complained about not being able to see stars from the city.
"Grunkle Stan?" Dipper's voice was barely a whisper. Under normal circumstances, Stan would tell him to speak up, teach him to assert himself. He couldn't really bother now. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you."
Stan shook his head, daring to look at the boy, red-faced and shrunken on the couch beside him like a shadow cowering from light. "That's not what this is about, kid. I'm not mad. I wouldn't have trusted me either." He had, as usual, completely messed up by lying to the kids. Sometimes he wondered if he was just doomed to continually fail. "My point is this: I've spent my whole life trying to fix that one mistake. Thirty years gone and I don't know if Stanford is dead or alive. Even if he did walk back out of that portal tomorrow, he won't be the man I remember, and I'm not the man he remembers. I don't want that life for you."
Dipper was staring at his hands now, his cheeks bright red from shame. "Grunkle Stan, I…" He took a deep, shaking breath. On the edge of crying, Stan could tell. Oh well. The kid had earned his right to cry. "I'm… I'm sorry things turned out the way they did for you. Both of you. But… I can't not spend my life on this if that's what it takes. She's in there because of me, Grunkle Stan. She's in there 'cuz…"
The boy crumpled in on himself like a demolished house, leaning until his head was between his knees and his shoulders were shaking. Stan let out a long, slow sigh and rubbed circles into the boy's back.
"I can't go back to California without her," was all Dipper managed with a thin, cracking voice.
Stan supposed he didn't expect anything less.
"If that's so, then we're going to lay down some ground rules." Stan looked away from Dipper again at the sky. It was easier to do this when they weren't looking at each other, though he kept rubbing circles. "One, if this goes past the start of the school year, you go to school. We'll figure out how to register you here in Gravity Falls. Your parents say you've been getting A's, so you should keep getting them. Mabel's not coming home to see you've dropped out because of this."
Dipper didn't look up from his knees, but he nodded, sniffing. God, Stan had no idea how he was going to sell this to Dipper's parents. He still didn't know how he was even going to tell them what happened. If he would tell them what happened.
"Two, you eat and you sleep. I don't care if it tastes like ash and you do nothing but stare at a ceiling all night, but you eat and you sleep."
There was more hesitation, but he got another nod.
"Three, this is not going to become your life." Dipper's hands tightened on his knees, but Stan waved off the coming objection. "I don't care if I have to lock you out of the lab, kid. I'm not saying you can't work on the portal, just that you gotta have a life outside of it. You're going to go outside and talk to kids your age and do whatever nerdy things you liked doing before. I'm old and washed up and I can dedicate all my free time to it instead. Capisce?"
Dipper didn't answer. After a few seconds, Stan decided to take the silence as reluctant acquiescence.
"Four…" Stan heaved a quiet sigh. "Don't let your guilt be what keeps you going."
Dipper peered up at him. The boy's eyes were puffed and blotchy. Mabel probably would have teased him for it. "What?"
"Don't keep going back to how bad you feel about pushing her in when you need a boost. You're going to burn yourself out and become old and miserable that way." Stan crossed his arms over his chest. "Instead, go back to how you feel about her. How much you care and how you'll do anything to get her back home safe and sound. That's what can keep you going without eating you alive."
Dipper stared at him with those wide bloodshot eyes, but then he slowly nodded again. "I'll try."
"Good, because I don't want to deal with you having a breakdown on top of everything else." Stan stood up from the couch, all his joints popping, but instead of letting that be the end of it, he picked the boy up by the scruff and balanced him on a shoulder. Dipper didn't do much more than mumble in protest. "Now you're going to bed."
Dipper didn't try to fight him. The boy leaned against his head and allowed him to carry him all the way to the attic. Stan lay him on his bed, and Dipper immediately rolled so his back was to Mabel's empty side of the room.
"Grunkle Stan?"
"Mmm?"
"Do you mind if I… talk to you sometimes? If I need it?"
Maybe it was the darkness or maybe it was the alcohol, but Stan ruffled the boy's hair and threw the blanket over him. "Any time, kid." He turned to leave. "I'll grab you some allergy medication."
"Ugh, that stuff knocks me out."
"Exactly."
It sounded like the old Dipper, so Stan felt better when he left. He didn't hear any pacing in the attic that night.
(Then again, the Benedryl might have had something to do with that.)
Dimension ?, July 26th, 2012
Mabel dreamed of home.
She was back in Piedmont in her family's plush household. She and Dipper sat on the floor, playing video games together while the adults sat on the couch. Her parents sat together. Grunkle Stan and Ford sat together too. Her grunkles leaned against each other while they talked, shoulders touching the way hers and Dipper's did when they sat next to each other, the way that said 'I love you' in a non-awkward sibling way. They talked about grown up stuff while she and Dipper just focused on beating each other up in a digital world.
Ford didn't move, but he was suddenly standing next to her. Stan's side looked empty without him.
"Time to go, Mabel," he said.
Mabel's leg hurt. It was bleeding all over the rug. Her dad would be mad about all the stains. "I'm not ready."
"It doesn't matter if you're ready."
Mabel woke up in the dark, surrounded by fur and ice. She was alone.
"Grunkle Ford?" She crawled into the burrow's exit, dragging her bandaged leg behind her, just to see that the ice tunnels were dark and empty. All of the merchants had put big versions of the black crystal in her pocket on their stands, uncovering them to suck in all the light. "Grunkle Ford?"
She crawled back inside, curling around her half-done knitting. She should keep working on it, but her heart was aching too much and her stomach was shriveling on itself because she hadn't had anything to eat in the last day or two except seeds and that awful tooth-cleaning thing Ford had given her.
Try to stay positive. Think of the super cool adventure stuff she'd done today. Grunkle Ford braided her hair, she made friends with lots of aliens, she taught a giant bug how to knit, all that fun stuff. The thoughts rang hollow in her head. It didn't feel right to have adventures without Dipper.
She wasn't stupid. She could see in Ford's eyes every time she talked about Dipper that he didn't think they would ever go home. Sure, the portal could destroy the world and fixing it was way beyond anything Dipper could do on his own, but he and Stan could pool their resources and figure it out, right?
Right?
Mabel pulled the collar of her sweater up over her eyes and started to sob quietly.
The adventures were cool, but she was hungry and her leg hurt and she wanted to go home. She wanted her brother and her Grunkle Stan. She wanted her parents. She didn't want to leave Grunkle Ford, either. He was old and awkward and really serious but he was her grunkle and he deserved to go home too.
She didn't know how long she was crying in Sweater Town before she heard her Grunkle's heavy footsteps approaching the entrance of the burrow. She tried to quiet down her crying, but he wasn't stupid either. She heard him pause midway through crawling into the burrow. Maybe he was thinking about going back outside and doing whatever it was he was doing before.
Instead, he finished crawling into the burrow.
"I found meat we could eat," he offered with that weird tone people get when they don't know what to say. She knew she should stop crying because it just made Grunkle Ford uncomfortable, but she couldn't stop. She kept curling up until her face was hidden by her sweater and her knees.
"That sounds good," Mabel mumbled into her sweater. Ford was quiet before he started rifling through his bag.
"It's hard to eat through your sweater," he said quietly. She peeked over her collar to see that he was offering her something that looked a little like some alien iteration of a sandwich. She didn't really want to leave Sweater Town, but her stomach gurgled and twisted in her gut and she was forced to pull her collar down.
"Thanks, Grunkle Ford." She took the sandwich and immediately started to eat, staying curled up. The 'bread' she was holding didn't feel like bread at all, but like dry meat slabs. There was something that had the texture of cheese curds between the meat, but it tasted… fruity?
Ford leaned back, needing to duck his head so he wasn't really sitting so much as slouching because of the low ceiling. He was frowning at her. She already knew she didn't like it when he frowned at her, because it felt like he was always frowning for some reason and she didn't want to be another reason.
"I'm sorry today has been rough," he said, finally breaking the weird silence where she could only hear herself chewing.
She winced, scrubbing her eyes with the heels of her hand and forcing a smile between bites. "No, it's been a good day! You know, except for the first part. I got to meet aliens and teach them how to knit sweaters and—"
"I admire the brave face, Mabel, but you don't need it right now. I know it's hard."
Mabel's smile fell away. Ford took off his glasses and pulled a soft cloth from one of his million pockets, looking down to start cleaning smudges that weren't there. Stan did the same thing when he didn't want to make eye contact for some reason.
"I…" Ford huffed softly. Mabel wanted to touch him, maybe to give him a hug, but he kept flinching whenever she did, and he never touched her on his own unless he needed to. He just didn't like touching her, it seemed. "I haven't seen another human for a very, very long time. I wasn't very good at dealing with them when I was on Earth, and I've just gotten worse. So…"
He gave a little wave of his hands before pushing his glasses up his nose again. "You're going to need to give me guidance. Tell me what you need and I'll do my best to give it to you. I just need to be told." He clasped his hands together like he was in a business meeting, finally looking at her with that same serious frown he always seemed to have. "So what do you need?"
What did she need?
She needed Dipper. She needed her parents. She needed to go home to her brother and Stan and Waddles and Soos and Wendy and Candy and Grenda.
None of those were things he could give her. She had to think hard about something that could suffice in the meantime, her grip a little too tight on her sandwich as she did so.
"I need…" she straightened up her spine and looked Ford in the eye, puffing out her chest. If he was going to treat this like a business meeting, then so would she. No more weepy little girl. She was mature enough to deal with this. "I need you to tell me if you don't like it when I touch you."
"What?" His eyebrows shot up and he looked a lot like an owl. (More than usual, that was.) He jerked his head back in surprise, then tilted it to the side as he frowned at her, now in confusion, and it didn't help the owl-like appearance. "I, uh… it's not that I don't like it. I'm just not used to it." He blinked at her like she was a big jigsaw puzzle. "But… I'm not used to a lot of things about this. I'll get used to it."
"Okay." Mabel finished off her sandwich. It calmed the pain in her stomach, but not in her chest. "So then… can I have an awkward grunkle hug?"
He jerked his head again in surprise, like hugs were some new-fangled slang the kids came up with in the last thirty years. His frown softened. He spread out his arms just enough for her to crawl into them. "Of course."
Mabel wiped her hands on the fur lining the burrow before wiggling between his arms and pressing her cheek against his shoulder. It was indeed an awkward grunkle hug—his arms stayed looser than she would like, and he remained rigid, but he eventually leaned his head against hers.
"It gets easier," he said softly. "I promise it gets easier."
She stayed curled up against him for a while, and while it was never really a satisfying hug, it was still a hug. It made her feel safe to have him so close, the same way Grunkle Stan could make her feel safe.
Grunkle Stan must be missing them both so much right now.
"What do you do when you miss home?" she asked.
She could feel him shift under her, like he needed to get comfortable. Weird things seemed to make him uncomfortable sometimes, like saying he did things similar to his brother.
"Honestly, I try not to think about home too often. It's hard not to dwell on it if I start."
"Oh." She couldn't imagine a situation where not thinking about home and the family she had there would be the best option. Had Ford spent thirty years pushing all of them out of his head? Was it just that painful to think of the people he loved? (Surely, he must love his family like Mabel did. It didn't occur to her to consider otherwise.)
The idea put a rock in her gut. She wondered if it was painful for him to have her here. The question danced on the end of her tongue, but she didn't want to know the answer.
She couldn't bear to not think about Dipper and all the people back home, so she had to think of something else to feel better. She took a deep breath of her uncle's scent as she thought—leather, salt, the tang of portal energy clinging to his skin, but something familiar under it all.
"It wasn't so awful." She took another deep breath. "This world is really cool, and I get to be one of the only humans to see it. I'm grateful for that." She tucked her hand close, starting to count on her fingers. "And I got to punch Bill in the eye. That was pretty cool."
Ford's huffed laugh brushed against her hair. "That was cool, wasn't it?"
Mabel smiled, part of her preening at her Grunkle's approval, and counted off another finger. "And we got to learn alien braids. That was nice of Anise. I'm grateful for that."
Her mother used to tell her to count her blessings whenever she got caught up in feeling sorry for herself. Maybe she should take her mother's advice.
"Count with me, Grunkle Ford. What's something you're grateful for?"
Ford shifted again, but this time, it was more of a 'thinky' shift than an uncomfortable one. He balanced her on his knees and his arms relaxed around her waist. "I'm grateful to see a new world."
"I already said that," but Mabel was smiling as she relaxed as well against his chest.
"Well, you're counting off good ones, so I might as well count them too." He held up a finger too, beginning to count off on his hand as she did. "I'm grateful we can keep your hair out of the way." Mabel looked up at his face just to see him wink. "And it didn't hurt to get to see my long lost grandniece stab Cipher in the eye."
"You're cheating." Mabel couldn't stop grinning as she started counting again. "I got to teach aliens how to knit sweaters."
"My niece is a natural diplomat." He started to smile too. It made Mabel's heart lighter. "I rephrased it. Does it still count as cheating?"
"Yes." She poked his arm gently. He didn't get rigid, so she took that as a good sign. "But I guess you can cheat until you think of something you're thankful for on your own." She counted her fingers. Four things she was grateful for so far. Her smile softened as she thought of a fifth. "Thank you for saving me from the fish."
His hands twitched, like he wanted to move them but he wasn't sure where. "I'm thankful you're okay."
For number six, she counted out an imaginary sixth finger on her hand to match the real sixth finger on his.
"I'm glad that, if I have to be out here, then that I'm out here with you." And that she could get to know the man long lost to her family, in all his awkward grunkle glory.
His fingers curled in against his burnt and bandaged palms. "Likewise." After a moment went by without another thing to be grateful for, he moved one arm to prop himself up, now only loosely holding her with the other. "Do you feel better?"
"Much." Mabel rolled out of his lap and picked up her half-done knitting. She had some sleeves to finish.
"Good." Ford offered a small smile before taking out a journal—journal number thirty-four according to the cover, which would freak Dipper out to no end—and starting to write in it. "Has Anise come to drop anything off?"
"Not yet. They probably need to get used to making stuff for someone with two arms and legs."
"Hmmm."
The silence that fell between them felt nice. It was peaceful, and eventually Ford fell asleep because he hadn't slept a lot like Mabel had. He snored. Mabel had to resist the urge to giggle. He sounded like Grunkle Stan.
She wondered what Grunkle Stan was up to right now. Probably working hard on the portal with Dipper to save them both. She had faith that neither her grunkle nor her brother would give up on her, even if it took them a while to get the portal to work again.
Before finishing the sleeves of her sweater, she pulled on the white gloves she knit for herself while Ford was gone. Wiggling her fingers to make sure they fit, she dug into Ford's bag and pulled out the glass jar full of shimmering sharp silver hair.
Anise had said offhand that the hair couldn't cut through her fur, so now was the moment of truth. Mabel gingerly reached into the jar, wincing as she closed her fingers around the hair and pulled it out.
And it didn't cut her. The gloves protected her fingers.
Excitement flared in her gut as she twisted strands of the hair together, making it strong before folding it into the yarn cast onto her needles. She was going to knit a ring of the hair around the hems of her sleeves and attach a little knitted button to each sleeve so she could fold them up just enough to keep from accidentally cutting something. Since the sweater was knitted with the white alien fur, the silver hair wouldn't cut her or chop through the protective flap.
Next time a fish tried to eat her, it was going to get smacked with a knife sleeve. That would show it.
When she finished two special white sweaters, she folded them neatly and lay them down next to her just as all sorts of people outside started to put coverings on their black crystals and light was allowed to shimmer through the ice again from the never-setting sun.
Ford was still curled against his bag when Mabel heard scratching outside and a familiar voice that shook the ground saying, "Foreigners!"
Mabel grabbed the coins Ford set aside to pay Anise, letting them clink together as she crawled to the entrance. Anise towered over the burrow, dropping a full leather bag in front of Mabel and snatching the money from her hand without a word, backing up and counting the coins Mabel provided.
"You have to leave now," Anise said curtly.
"What?" Mabel's heart pounded in her ears as she quickly grabbed the bag. She hadn't even had time to get to her feet yet. "Why?"
"Another foreigner came. She's offering money if someone leads her to you, but you paid me first. There are many more portals on the other side of the world. Cross over the crystal field." Anise was already turning to leave. "She's coming for you, little foreigner. It's time to run."
No warnings for this chapter.
Also, side note: the vast majority of this story was written before Journal 3 came out, and definitely before I had a chance to read Journal 3. Therefore, I recommend putting Journal 3 out of your mind while reading it for the most part. I won't rule out revising to make it more compliant, but I also don't feel it's absolutely necessary.
Thank you once again to Tsukara for betaing this. Also, thank you everyone who has reviewed. Comments, compliments, and critiques are all very warmly welcomed.