"Shut up," Wendy says over the chatter of the diner.

"Shh," I hiss. "She's right over there."

Wendy leans forward, intense bewilderment on her face. "Again?"

"Yes, again. Or they never went away. I don't know."

She peers around the seat of the booth and stares at the subject of our conversation, who is currently making tip-worthy chit-chat with an elderly couple.

"Stop staring," I say. "She'll know we're talking about her."

Wendy turns back to me, expression steadfast. "Well, P, you have to tell her."

My eyes narrow to slits. "In what world would that ever be the case?"

"What do you mean? She's single now."

"Oh, I'm sure she's instantly ready to go out with me, then."

"Maybe not instantly, but she totally would. You know there are feelings on her side, too."

"I know that? I don't know that. Do you know that?"

"Well why else has she been sleeping in your apartment for a month?"

"Because we're friends? Because she doesn't want to stay at the Shack, not only because it's lonely and empty, but because it reminds her of her abusive ex-boyfriend?"

"Okay, okay," she says, waving her hand around like a politician. "Then how about this: She tried to kiss you a few weeks ago."

A pause, while I try to discern if I heard her correctly. "When? Are you high?"

"In the theater. Remember? I was talking to her about that play she was in, and as soon as you appeared she whipped out her phone and told you to act out a kiss scene with her."

I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. Looking back on it, that was a little out of the blue. I glance up at Mabel now, behind the counter, smiling while she taps on the screen of the cash register. I remember how she looked at me on the stage, fully expecting me to transition smoothly between reading lines and locking lips. I say, "she didn't have any problem with you doing it instead."

"Why would she? That'd be too obvious."

"Okay, smart-ass, if you're so sure that she's into me, why didn't you say anything before?"

"Because last I heard you were pursuing Katie Heywood. I didn't want to make things weird for you."

"You're the queen of making things weird for me."

She shrugs. "Not since last time."

The 'last time' she is referring to happened during my last semi-serious relationship, with a girl called Natalie. She hadn't lived here for long before I served her at the diner (in this very booth, actually) and we struck up a romance. After a stream of successful dates we hit up a house party on a Saturday night but unbeknown to us, Wendy, having been drinking all afternoon, stumbled around informing everybody that Natalie was my sister visiting from out of state. While Wendy found this hilarious, it did cause a great deal of discomfort when Natalie and I started making out on a couch in plain sight of the entire house, and the host had to interrupt us and say that, while he considered himself to possess a very open mind, we were making certain guests "uncomfortable." We, of course, interpreted this as an unusually direct display of homophobia, and made quite a show of leaving the party by waving our middle fingers at the individuals that were casting us dirty looks, and also by pausing in the doorway to worm our tongues into each other's throats one last time. After Wendy told me what had happened the following morning, I ignored her calls and apology gifts on my doorstep for two months, by which point Natalie and I had grown tired of the amnesiac old woman across the street murmuring "incestuous freaks" whenever we passed by, and we had decided to break up.

"I didn't get anywhere with Katie," I say, tilting my head in Mabel's direction, "because of her."

Wendy takes a long sip of her coffee then sets it down, twists it around in circles with her fingers. "You've got it bad, then."

I look in her eyes and detect the warmth, a far sight away from the drunk Wendy that takes pleasure in ruining my relationships. This one, I feel, I can confide in. "She's great," I spew out, as if I'm afraid that the words will hurt me. "We've had nights lounging around in the apartment where I've felt so peaceful. Like I did with Nina, but... I don't know. There's something more. I just block out everything else in the world, I'm only focused on her. She makes me laugh a lot. And she's beautiful."

A sad smile forms on Wendy's face. "She's also walking over here."

I jump at the hand on my shoulder. "Hey," Mabel says. "More coffee?"

"I'm good," I say, as Wendy holds out her cup. "I should probably get back to work, actually."

"Wait," Wendy says, grasping my wrist more firmly than necessary. Mabel wanders back to the counter, out of earshot. "What are you gonna do?"

"Nothing."

Wendy blinks. "Nothing. You're going to do nothing."

"Well what can I do? Even if, for the first time ever, you're right-"

"Rude."

"-and she is into me, it doesn't matter. She's still getting over her ex, for one thing. And in a couple weeks she'll be back in California, and I'll be here, same as it's ever been."

"Come on," Wendy says softly. "You and I both know that California isn't that far away."

I shake my head. "That's not what you said to Dipper."

For a moment I worry that I've overstepped, because she tenses up, but after a second she sits back in her seat and forces a grin. "Good point."

The gravestones lining the top of the hill silhouette against the sunset, my dad's standing the tallest of all of them. The paved path forks at an oak tree and instead of going left up the hill, I continue to the right, Mabel alongside me. She wanted to see Ford before we headed north into the woods, to read his last letter and find whatever it is he has left behind.

The engraving on his tombstone is generic, only including his name, birth year, and year of death. He didn't leave behind any instructions, except for "no funeral" and the riddles for his family. Plus, Mabel says, the engraving was charged per word, and Stan refused to entertain such a pay plan.

Mabel picks the wilting flowers out of the plant pot and I pass her the fresh ones that we bought this morning, at the town market. I stand silently beside her for a few moments while she kneels in the grass, her hand on the stone. Then she stands up, smiles at me, and we walk back to the car without a word.

In much the same fashion, we drive back into town for a dangerously greasy dinner at Yumberjacks. I eat slowly, the nervous energy gnawing away at my appetite. We've adventured into the night plenty of times now, but this feels different. This is the last time. Mabel hasn't said a lot since we left the apartment, and her anxiety seems to have carried over to me. We've had a whole week to speculate over what awaits us in the clearing Ford directed us to, and tonight we get our answers.

"I called Dipper today," Mabel says, snapping my attention away from the window where the dusk is becoming dimmer. She makes a loud noise with her straw indicating that her cup is empty, then sets the cup aside and scowls at it. I push mine across the table and she looks up. "Are you sure?"

I nod. "You were saying?"

"I told Dipper about Jason."

"Oh. I thought you were going to wait until you were back home?"

"I was. But I needed to... vent, earlier, and I picked up the phone to call him and he knew there was something wrong right away. I couldn't lie to him."

I frown and fiddle with a napkin. "What was bothering you earlier?"

"I was thinking about Jason again. I'm trying not to, because it only ever hurts, but sometimes I can't control it. I think I just needed a familiar voice."

"You know you can talk to me about it, too. Seriously, even if you have to wake me up. I want to listen. I want to help."

"I know," she says lightly, covering my hands with hers across the table. My heart surges to life and my muscles tense up, while she rubs her thumbs along my fingers, completely unaware of the effect. "And I really appreciate that. You've been really great and I have no idea what I would have done if you weren't here this summer. Sometimes, though, I need my brother. More twin quirks."

I swallow discomfort and nod in understanding. "Of course." She picks up my hands, squeezes them, then goes back to my cup. "How did he react?"

"He freaked out. He wanted to drive up here and see me right away, but I got him to calm down. I told him I was staying with you, that you and Lindsay had really helped me get through the shock and the trauma. Then he got mad that I hadn't told him sooner, then he apologized for getting mad, then he got mad at himself for getting mad in the first place. It was very emotional."

"He always was."

Mabel smirks but it quickly fades away. "He's a good guy. Like, a really good guy. Not just because he's my brother. He just is. He would never do anything to hurt a woman. And it really makes me wonder, if I grew up alongside a guy like that my whole life, how did I convince myself that what Jason was doing was okay? How did I accept that as normal?"

"Because you loved him. Love can make you blind to a lot of things."

"Yeah." She chuckles humorlessly. "Tell me about it."

"At least you're able to recognize it now as an awful, awful thing. You're able to sit here and talk about it because he doesn't have that leverage over you anymore. That's a huge step. And it speaks to your strength."

She looks up with something akin to wonder in her eyes. That look alone I'd fall in love with, any day of the week. "Thank you," she says.

"What did Dipper say after he calmed down?"

"He wanted me to come home as soon as I'm finished with Ford. But I'm going to stay here for the next two weeks anyway. Then when I'm home we'll talk properly. He reluctantly promised to keep this from my parents, too, until I'm back home. No doubt they'd drive up here and cause havoc if they knew now. Probably visit Jason in jail and throw things at him."

"That sounds awesome."

"Yeah, right? I doubt it's legal, though." Mabel turns to look out the window, and I follow suit. "You think it's dark enough yet?"

Cars pass with their headlights on, their colors barely distinguishable. "It will be by the time we get to the woods, yeah."

She inhales deeply and looks back at me. "Then shall we go?"

"Let's do it."

My foot slips, and I clamp my eyes shut because I know my arms aren't going to move quick enough to protect me from the fallen tree that's about to smack my forehead. Years of facial care, wasted. But what I fall into is soft and warm, and after a second of questioning whether I'm dead, I steady myself and look up into Mabel's eyes.

"Careful," she says softly, sweeping hair out of my eyes. The beam of her flashlight points up at her chin.

"Shit," I gasp, steadying myself and taking a step back. "How'd you do that?"

She shrugs. "Cheerleading. I had to catch a lot of ladies."

I notice that I'm still gripping her arms like a harness on a rollercoaster. I let go and blush in the darkness. "Thank you," I murmur, stepping around her and continuing along the overgrown trail.

It's been forty-five minutes since we parked on the furthest point north in the affluent residential area, which was difficult, because the territorial snobs that live there don't take kindly to anybody parking within a stone's throw of their driveway. One woman chased us away with a broom.

We've just crossed the second river, meaning that if the satellite photo we printed out is accurate, we're almost at the clearing. The signal strength on our phones is spotty, but they last updated our position five minutes ago, and we're still following the dotted line on Google Maps, despite the trail sometimes splitting off in two directions, neither of which appear traversable. I've had to brush a hedge's worth of leaves out of my hair from crawling under branches and my socks are wet from crossing streams. Every few seconds I have to stop to swipe mosquitoes away from my face. Mabel, on the other hand, takes it all in stride, like some natural-born wilderness warrior.

It happens abruptly. And when it does happen, my first thought is aliens. We are being abducted by aliens. Without even realizing, we've reached a break in the forest, and as soon as we cross that boundary from bracken to flat, open grass, the floor is awash with rippling waves of red, green, and blue light. I freeze in my tracks, and Mabel stops right at my side. It's like walking into a silent, lifeless nightclub. She makes a noise - trying to say "what?" and not quite getting the whole word out. Our heads drift to the sky in unison and it's the same up there; every inch of visible sky is lit up, in no particular pattern, with one of the three mesmerizing colors, obscuring the stars and flooding our vision. I'm surprised to find that I don't need to squint, the light gentle enough on my eyes despite having existed in a tunnel of black for an hour. I don't know how long it takes for reality to catch up with me, but I glance over at Mabel and watch the light dance across her face, her hair, I watch as a minuscule version of the same display takes place in her eyes.

She glances down at me, her mouth ajar, silently asking me the questions I don't know the answers to, the most prominent being is this real?

I take a step back towards the woods, then another, and another, and then freeze up again because the lights vanish. I blink my eyes furiously as they adjust again to the circular clearing, but now it's only painted in pale moonlight. My gut sinks, worried that we've lost it, that the moment is over, but then I see the colors swirling over Mabel's head, her neck craned upwards, as if the lights are still there, I can just no longer see them.

"Mabel," I say. "Come stand here."

She does, and I watch her face as she goes through the same mental process I just did. "Oh," is all she says. A disappointed child on Christmas morning. She paces slowly forwards. I follow. And at the threshold of the woods, we're greeted by the warm embrace of the light show again. "It's incredible," she says now, her voice inflecting at the end, the shock giving way to unadulterated excitement.

I take her hand and guide her further into the clearing, stepping over rocks that turn from blue to green to blue to red to green, and in the approximate center our hands detach and we both twirl on our feet, gazing up at the tips of the pine trees, the same colors on all sides of the circle. Without meaning to I laugh, the most innocent joy that I've ever felt blossoming within me. "This is it," I say. "This is what Ford wanted you to see." I take two steps over to Mabel and pick up her forearms. She looks down at me and I wipe away the tears brimming in her eyes. "The letter," I say.

She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out the envelope. With trembling hands she opens it and pulls out a sheet of lined paper, unfolds that. I move around to her side so I can read over her shoulder, but Mabel clears her throat and begins to read it aloud, the text adequately visible under the natural light.

"Dear Mabel,

"I have but one instruction left: Look up! What you're witnessing is an entirely undocumented (to my knowledge) natural phenomenon that can most closely be equated to an aurora; we'll refer to it as an aurora for the sake of simplicity, no matter how unjust that feels considering that these bands of light are ten times more intense than that of the Aurora Borealis. I have yet to witness this on any day of the month other than the 15th, suggesting that whatever causes the phenomenon has a coincidental or conscious awareness of the Gregorian calendar, which is very odd. It is only visible at night, from sundown into the early A.M., and perhaps the most peculiar aspect of all: It is only visible from the confines of this clearing. Stepping as far as an inch outside of said clearing conceals the lights from view.

"Now, if your curiosity overwhelms you, you can find my extensive notes on the aurora in my laboratory - should my brother not meddle with said laboratory - filed under A for 'Aurora Mysterialis.' But this letter should not focus on the aurora itself.

"Mabel, in my years studying the oddities of Gravity Falls, I've stumbled upon so many horrors that you'd think my mental health would have taken a bigger hit than it did, things so dangerous that it's a miracle I'm still alive to write you this letter. And yet every once in a while I have been graced with something beautiful, something that shows no trace of any underlying menace, something that makes the grueling process of documenting the supernatural all seem worthwhile. And when I remembered this aurora, my dear, it dawned on me that often times that something-"

Mabel's words turn to a sob, and she covers her mouth with her palm. I'm quick to wrap an arm around her shoulder and lean my head against hers, rubbing her bicep absently.

"It dawned on me that often times that something was you. You were the break that I needed from the darkness. Whether you were spinning on my chair in the lab telling me about your plans for the day, or you were helping me with dinner, or you were providing commentary over the news reporters on the TV (I can't remember the name of the little man with the mustache! You used to do such a good impression of him), you provided an infinite source of optimism in my sometimes bleak life. You're the kind of person that wears a smile on their face through the hardest of times for the sake of those around you. You're the kind of person that can make friends with anyone, even an old hermit struggling to keep up with the modern world.

"So I leave you with this aurora, the most reliable source of happiness in my life - before you came along. I can only hope that the effort you've invested in following this trail has been made somewhat worth it. Trust me when I say that you have a very, very bright future ahead of you, Mabel, because I know that you'll refuse to settle for less. I'm sorry that I won't be there to witness it.

"With love, and awe, and respect, and a conglomeration of other sentiments that I would not be able to fit on this page,

Uncle Ford."