"I'm not off, Abby, I'm not. I dunnae…dunnae what's wrong. I feel…foggy? I dunnae, that's not…"

"…"

"I have to go."

"…"

"You moved mah bin. I dunnae where. I wanted ta take it…"

"…"

"I need to put mah head back together. Dunnae what's what. I just—I just wanna figure that out, y'know?"

"…"

"You'll be here when I come back? You wonnae disappear?"

"…"

"You'll have mah bin?"

"…"

"You'll have it."

"…"

"You'll give it back if I ask."

"…"

"You will, wonnae? If I…am I gonna ask? I…dunnae. Dunnae. Cannae…I cannae think right now. I'm not…am I really off? And I just dunnae?"

"…"

"I feel like I'm addled, here. I'll…I'll see if I'm off. Maybe…maybe with some space…I can figure out what thoughts are mine. If…y'know, if any of 'em are. Maybe they're not. Whose thoughts are in mah head? Mine? Yours? I dunnae…"

"…"

"…I dunnae, either."

"…"

"I'm going. Before ya wake. I'll be back…when I get mahself in order. Er, if I get mahself in order. Donnae fret."

"Would you be more upset if we didn't catch a fairy for you, or if it were dead?" Stan was asking, doing his best not to appear suspicious, despite the video picking up his guilty shift.

Mabel's smile faltered for only a moment while she considered. "I'd probably be less traumatized if you just didn't catch one, instead of bringing me a dead one."

"Good news, pumpkin! Great Uncle Ford here got so wrapped up in his research that he forgot to catch you a fairy—"

"Don't put the blame on me, Stanley." Ford punched his brother in the arm. "You're the one who wanted to catch the ceasg, and that took all afternoon!"

"A what?" Dipper eagerly clicked his pen, pulling out a blue journal.

"A ceasg," Ford explained as he reached for his own journal, resting on the desk behind him. "It's an elusive class of mermaid that seems to be indigenous only to this region: half human, half salmon—"

"Only women," Sean corrected from the cabin's doorway. Busy wringing out his hat, he didn't notice the eyes of the entire Pines family shift to him. He replaced his cap and sloshed his way to the bathroom, carrying on primarily to himself. "Lure sailors or summat. Dumb, really, seeing how they donnae wanna be caught. Guess being half-fish donnae make you too bright, none." The door clicked shut behind him.

Ford nodded, drawing attention back to the conversation. "It's said they grant wishes to whoever catches them." His great nephew scribbled down the information. "Unfortunately, Stan and I were unable to confirm that particular myth. They're quite…slippery."

Stan snorted at the joke. "Awful, Poindexter, just awful."

Rolling his eyes, Ford put a hand up to separate him from his brother so he could chat with the children in the illusion of privacy. "Stan's grumpy because he was outsmarted by a few fish."

"Don't lie, Sixer, they outfoxed you, too!"

"It sounds like you found a lot of new creatures," Dipper awed, looking up from his notes. "I can't wait to hear all your stories!"

"When are you gonna be here?" Mabel's question had a hint of a whine. She shifted the phone so the camera centered on her face. "We miss you! Waddles especially!"

"We'll be there by Christmas," Stan assured, glossing over the reference to the pig (toward whom he still had ambiguous feelings). "Don't worry—"

In the distant background of the phone call, a bell rang. Mabel frowned; over her shoulder, Stan and Ford could see Dipper panic.

"Mabel, we're late!"

"Again? Aw, man."

"Go to class, kids," Ford instructed, his tone taking an authoritarian note. "We'll call you later in the week."

The younger twins nodded. "Bye Grunkle Stan! Bye Grunkle Ford!"

"Bye, kids!"

The video call ended, bringing the phone back to the home screen. Stan pocketed the device before collapsing back against his chair. "You think they're gonna get in trouble for being late, again?"

"Hopefully not. I'll send the school an email—some story about a family matter, they shouldn't ask too many questions." Ford dropped his journal on the desk, flipping through the most recent pages.

"Wow, Sixer, lying to a school? Never thought I'd see the day."

Coughing, Ford adjusted his glasses. "It's not lying, per se, as long as I don't clarify what precisely the family matter is…"

The door clicked open again; Sean shuffled out of the bathroom, drowning in one of Ford's sweaters, mussed hair still damp. He moved to the kitchenette, careful not to trip over the far too long sweatpants he managed to secure around his waist.

"Raining?" Stan asked as he sat up.

"Nae." Sean rummaged through the cabinet, nabbing the bottle of whisky and a glass. Chattering slightly, he downed a shot before pouring himself a glass proper. "Stopped by the time I came in, y'know."

Stan held out a hand, which Sean shortly filled with a glass. "Everything good out there?"

"To mah eye, yea." Sean dropped into the open chair. "Bairnes doing well?"

"Yeah. I guess high school is going well enough."

"Prolly they'd rather be out here with you lot."

Stan chuckled. "I'm sure they would. Dipper's secretly jealous of you—exploring with The Author, teaching him about weird creatures—how do you know so much about these things, anyway?" He sipped at his drink, casual. "You learn it in school or something?"

"Didnae go to school," Sean muttered into his drink. Uncomfortably, he took a sip, mulling over the warm liquor. "I, er, didnae…" His eyes flicked across the cabin to Ford, who had ceased flipping through his journal to eavesdrop. "I didnae live with people but fer the past five years."

Stan said nothing, peering over his glass in anticipation of an explanation.

"Before I start, I'm telling you the ending: I'm not going back to Aberdeen." Sean was firm in that statement, and he was sure that we understood that before telling us his story. Initially, he was evasive with the details, but partway into the second bottle of whisky, his tongue loosened; he wove a colorful tale.

A section of the page had been blotted out beyond distinction.

I had planned to recount the story here, but, following Stanley's advice, I decided that it would be inappropriate to commit it to paper, even in redacted form. Should my research ever be released for academic or public consumption, it may be in poor taste to leave his personal details here.

That being prefaced, however, Sean did give us some intimate details of daily selkie life in Hildaland, and some explanation for his…oddity.

A series of detailed drawings followed—all the subtle visual clues that could be used to distinguish a selkie without skin from a particularly fetching human. Slightly smaller ears and noses, larger eyes, wobbly or flailing movements on land (though quite fluid and graceful in the water, even with legs), elongated appendages (most noticeable in fingers and toes). Though Sean was the rare exception, selkies usually had pitch-black eyes. A note added that selkies often fixated on at least one article of clothing that sat snug against the body, imitating the second skin normally worn.

As can be seen on the earlier drawing, Sean hardly went without his knit cap. Though he did nothing to explain why his everyday clothes could have fit Stanley or me comfortably.

A list of features followed, doodles of seals decorating the corners of that page:

Hearing range mostly overlaps with humans', on the higher end. Lower tones and frequencies are more difficult to hear. According to Sean, selkies often seem to be hard of hearing because of this; it would explain his sharp reactions to the harmonica's sour notes.

Keen eyesight. ("I bet they can see into people's minds—it'd be real easy to scam people with vision like that." -Stan)

Penchant for seafood, though capable of consuming the same foods any human can.

Age at a slower rate—just part of their magical youth properties.

Navigate with senses unknown in humans. Sean had no words to properly describe it (all he could manage to say was that he could "feel" Hildaland one way or another), but the methodology is the same that migratory seals use to return to their breeding grounds. I'll have to do further research on the matter; perhaps it's related to reading the earth's magnetic field, as with other migratory animals?

Sleep upright, whether sitting or standing, as seals sleep vertically in the water. Also sleep with eyes open, at half brain functionality, to keep lookout for predators.

Strangely, selkies have no method to track their own skins; the magical seal skin, which transforms them when on their bodies, is little different than any other article of clothing. They do have some fixation on it that should prevent them from leaving whatever person is in possession of it. Based on Sean's story, I believe the fixation isn't physical (the only physical "harm" that comes to a selkie for losing its skin is the psychosomatic pain of yearning for home); rather this fixation is psychological in nature. A selkie fools itself into thinking it must remain with whoever possesses its skin so that one day it might get it back. As the particulars of Sean's account indicate, a selkie is completely capable of leaving the human who possesses its skin, should it so choose.

Dipper flipped through the pages of notes Ford had accumulated over the last few months, fascinated. He'd tuned out ages ago from the conversation his sister dominated with their grunkles; now, having finished his third read-through of the new journal pages, he looked up. Mabel was in the process of reenacting her dramatic founding of their high school's knitting club (to her credit, the story was far more interesting than it sounded). Stan and Ford sat back on the couch, each holding a glass of eggnog, enjoying the epic unfolding before them. On Stan's other side, between his seat and Mabel's currently abandoned chair, Waddles napped happily, only opening an eye when Mabel screeched.

"And that's how I convinced the principal to let me found the knitting club," Mabel finished, beaming. She held out her arms so their grunkles could fully appreciate her painfully patterened sweater. "That's why it's got a leprechaun tap dancing on Ronald Reagan's grave while getting struck by lightning."

"Makes sense," Stan answered. He sipped from his eggnog. "You did good, stickin' it to the man."

"You shouldn't break into your principal's house," Ford said with a frown. "You could get into trouble. And it's dangerous to rappel from a 10-story apartment building without proper training."

"She pulled it off, Sixer, and that's all that matters."

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing. "That's not the point."

Before the older twins could truly start bickering, Dipper saw his chance to jump in. "Hey, Grunkle Ford?"

"Yes, Dipper?"

He hopped out of his chair and put himself into the space between Ford and the couch's armrest, allowing him to prop up Journal 4 between them. A bit unsure, he pointed to the only blacked-out section in the volume. "What did you have written here?"

Ford read over the page with a frown. "Ah. That was…" He adjusted his glasses, taking a moment to calculate his words. "That was originally Sean's account of his journey from Hildaland to our encounter in the pub." Guilty, his eyes met Stan's momentarily before returning to Dipper's. "It was improprietous of me to commit a personal story like that to my scientific study."

Mabel popped up on the far side of the couch, peering over her brother's shoulder. "Aw, man, I wanted to hear more about him. He was dreamy."

Fortunately, their grunkles were distracted enough with Mabel's comment to allow Dipper to pose a question and startle an answer out of them. He pointed out a particular passage, just below the redacted section. "It says here that he didn't want to go back to Aberdeen, but didn't you say he told you he was from Kirkwall?"

"Yeah, what gives?"

Dipper hushed his sister.

"He was never in Aberdeen." Ford pulled his journal from Dipper's lap, reading over the passage in question, brow furrowed. If he'd noted anything incorrectly—

"No, you got it all down right," Stan said. His brother, great nephew, and great niece looked turned to him. "Aberdeen's the girl that had his skin."

Mabel frowned. "Then why wasn't he with her?"

Neither Stan nor Ford answered her. Both shifted uncomfortably, looking everywhere else in the room. Stan, fortunately, chanced to glance out the window, and a smile came to his face.

"Hey, look, it's snowing."

As he hoped, Mabel took the bait. She lit up and bounced to her feet. "Oh! Let's go play in the snow—we can build a snowman, and a fort, and make snow angels—!" Squealing in delight, she snared Dipper by the arm and dragged him over to the coat rack. She dumped all the coats and hats and gloves and scarves onto him, dove into the pile, and fished out her own things. "Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Ford! Come on! We have to build the best snowman ever before Mom and Dad get home with Grandpa Shermie!"

The older twins exchanged a glance, silently sighing in relief. Before their great niece could again command them, they got to their feet.

"Coming, pumpkin."

Four coats, four hats, eight gloves, and eight boots later, two sets of twins stood in front of the suburban house. The snow came down hard, already covering the yard with a healthy dusting of dense whiteness. It only remained perfectly undisturbed for a moment: Mabel almost immediately darted into the middle of the yard, mouth wide open to the heavens to catch the falling snowflakes; Dipper trailed right after her, making the same face and the same noise. Stan nudged Ford. The pair grinned and chased after the kids, all four happily collapsing in the middle of the yard.

It was soft snow, fluffy, cushioning them as they fell. Good packing snow. Perfect for snowmen, perfect for forts, and perfect for—

A snowball pelted Ford in the side of the head. He searched for its origin, wholly unsurprised to find Stan ready to throw another one at him. Smirking, Ford packed a snowball of his own.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I fought in the Great Snowball War of Tundra Planet 43?"

"What?"