Flying was Awesome.

Of course, there were a lot of awesome things, but flying? Awesome, with a capital "A." It was like having your own personal roller coaster, where you could go as high as you wanted and do as many loop-de-loops as you wanted, without tracks or cars or seat belts or cotton candy to throw up –

Okay, that last bit kinda took the magic out of it, but still, it was Awesome!

With a whoop, Mabel flipped in midair and dived straight down. Wind whistled, clouds went poof behind her as she shot through them, the ground came rushing up, woods, dusted in trees and rocks and a cave entrance in the distance and a little pond right below her, and she landed in the water with a huge SPLASH and a burst of hissing steam.

She surfaced after a moment, and pumped her tiny not-fists in the air, ribbons glowing brighter with cheer.

"WHOOT! That was AWESOME!"

She giggled for a moment, then rose up into the air –

Tried to rise up into the air. She frowned – well, her eyes furrowed the same way they would if she still had a mouth to frown – and looked down. She could barely see her tiny not-feet in the water below her, paddling and keeping her on the surface.

Hadn't they been a lot brighter before? And yellow, not a dull orange-red?

She tried to rise again. Nothing.

And her legs were numb. And her arms too, where they'd been in the water.

Well, that was a bummer. Why couldn't she fly?

She looked around. There was a low-hanging branch nearby, almost right on the surface of the water, and with a thought and a little hup, she sent her hair-ribbons flying out and grabbing ahold of the branch, and reeled herself in.

The instant she scrambled up out of the water, the numbness became a wintery chill, and she realized that she'd been shivering and that she still was.

"W-wow t-th-that's cold." she stuttered out loud. "W-why is i-it so c-cold-d?"

It was still warm out, after all – summer had only been a couple months ago. Why was the water so cold when it was still warm out?

"I'll ask D-Dipper," she decided out loud. After she'd warmed up.

"It was cold?"

"Reeeaaally cold!" Mabel nodded furiously, still rubbing her tiny nub-hands together. She'd wrapped her ribbons around herself, too, and it had helped, but she still felt chilly. She was still shivering, too, and even her ribbons were shivering, which would've been funny if it was somebody else and not her.

Her bro-bro frowned, his face making a loud creaking noise as it moved. "Was there anything in the water?"

"Nope, j-just water! I could even s-see the bottom!"

"Any plants?"

What did plants have to do with anything? Well, Dipper was smarter than her, so maybe it would make sense to him to ask about plants…

"Yep, some s-short grass on the bottom! I didn't know g-grass-s can grow underwater!"

"And it wasn't brown or anything?"

"Nope!"

The frown grew bigger, and one of Dipper's cool arm-branch-hand things reached down so he could chew on it like he did his pens. Man, even Dipper didn't know? He was thinking so hard, too.

"Did anything else happen?"

"Hmmm..." Suddenly she remembered the dull orange her legs had turned. "Oh! My legs changed color in the water, they t-turned orange!"

He blinked. "Orange?"

"Yep! And w-when I was out of the water, t-they started turning yellow again."

Dipdop kept thinking for a few moments. Then he reached out with a branch-hand and poked her.

"H-hey!" she giggled, then yelped as the poke registered as pain, like she'd just touched a hot stove. "Ow!"

The blank sockets – which were both creepy and cool – blinked, and he looked alarmed.

"S-sorry!" he yelped. "Um, that really hurt?"

She nodded.

He started chewing on one hand again. Several saplings burst out of the ground with showers of dirt as he thought.

"You're colder than before. I don't mean you feeling cold, I mean you feel colder to me, you're body heat's gone down…"

He looked worried. Was being colder a bad thing?

"And if you turned from yellow to orange, that's like hot metal or fire cooling down, too. And if that cools down too much..."

Oh. That explained why he was so worried. If fire cooled down too much, it went out.

"So w-water makes me go out? I'm l-like f-fire?"

"I mean, I think so?"

Well, that sucked. She could never go swimming again – and Mermando! She couldn't ever visit him!

Well, not that she could ever visit him anyway, since she was stuck here in Gravity Falls, but still!

"I'm fine, bro-bro," she insisted, seeing his expression. "I just have to stay out of the water, right?"

"Yeah, but –"

"And if I'm fire, then I can throw fireballs and stuff!"

There was a wooden thunk as Dipper slapped a hand to his forehead. "Mabel, I don't think you can shoot fireballs..."

"Sure I can!" She lifted one nub and grinned at it, willing a fireball to burst into life.

Nothing happened.

"Um, let me try again..."

"Mabel –"

"No no, I can totally do this, Dip!"

"Mabel!"

Two weeks later, she determined that she could, in fact, do one better than fireballs, and create firework-like light shows and laser beams instead.

Which was pretty Awesome.