Mabel's hands shook as she sketched, but she wouldn't let that stop her. Her hands moved over the page with her pencil, making scattered marks and lines everywhere until a picture began to emerge. The movements were precise, yet she was hardly paying attention to what she was doing. If anyone were to look closely, they would see her eyes focused a little bit above her sketchbook, her mind lost in another world as she drew.

This trance continued on for about ten minutes, until Mabel finally snapped back into reality and looked down at what she'd created.

The scene depicted a young boy in the center of the page, kneeling over something, his back turned to the viewer. Closer inspection showed some hair, an arm, and a leg of a girl's body, shielded by her brother. A few strokes of carbon depicted a pool of blood. On the side stood a third figure, covered in shadows, their face invisible to detail save one manic eye.

It took Mabel less than a second to take all this in, and she cried out, hitting her head on the wall as she shied away from the drawing.

"Mabel? You all right, kid?"

Mabel hurriedly flipped to a blank page in her sketchbook. Robbie Corduroy had turned around from his post at the checkout counter; he was watching her with a concerned look on his face.

"I-I'm fine," she stuttered, rubbing the back of her head.

Robbie didn't seem convinced. "I dunno, kid: You've been hiding out in corners drawing for, like, three days now. Are you sure you're okay?"

Mabel set her sketchbook down and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her ankles. "I'm fine," she said again, looking away.

Robbie shrugged. "If you wanna lie, I guess I can't stop you. Just know I'm here if you need to talk or anything."

Mabel lifted her eyes from her shoes. "R-really?"

A customer wandered over to Robbie to purchase a Mystery Museum trinket. "Sure, kid," Robbie replied, turning around and taking the money for the product. "Just don't freak me out by hiding in corners, okay?" He shot her a wink.

Mabel's attempt to make herself smaller felt more effective than it probably was.

She knew she could never confide in Robbie. Only Dipper had any idea what she was going through, and right now he was cleaning exhibits back in the Hall of Mysteries. She hadn't shown him the increasingly dark drawings she'd been creating, though he probably knew about them anyway. This wasn't the first time that her favorite escape — drawing out her frustrations — had become her prison.

Her fingers twitched. She had to keep drawing. She had to get it all out: get the nightmares out through her fingers. But it wasn't working, not even after three days. Why wasn't it working?

She picked up her pencil with trembling fingers, stared at it for a moment, and set it down again. What would she draw this time, if she let her fingers go unchecked? She grabbed her sketchbook and flipped through the last ten pages or so that she'd filled over the last few days. The pictures were all similar: shadows and vague figures lurking in the background, glowing auras around people or objects, small details of blood, subtle indications that someone was dead. . . .

"Hey, Robbie!"

Mabel fumbled again to close her sketchbook from prying eyes.

"Hey, Dip-kid," came Robbie's cool reply.

"Have you seen Mabel any—" He stopped as he caught sight of her behind the checkout counter. Mabel drew her knees closer to her chest and rested her forehead on her kneecaps in an obvious gesture of, "Leave me alone, but I actually want you to come over here and comfort me."

She heard a small thunk and footsteps as Dipper set down his cleaning supplies and made his way over to her. "Hey, Mabel," he said softly. "Been drawing again?"

She nodded, her forehead scraping against her jeans.

"Can I see?"

A shake of her head.

"Please?" Proprioception told her that his hand was moving towards her sketchbook. She snatched it and stuffed it under her knees.

Dipper sighed. "Mabel, don't you think it would help if you shared it with me?"

Mabel shook her head again and mumbled into her knees.

"What's that?"

"I don't want you to get the nightmares too."

There was a pause, and then Dipper shifted from his crouch so that he was sitting next to her. "Is drawing it out helping?"

A shake of her head.

"Then maybe showing me will help. C'mon."

Silence.

"Ford's starting to wonder what's wrong. I've been covering for you for work these past couple days. I don't mind, but. . . are you sure you don't want to tell him?"

That got her attention. She looked up sharply. "N-no!"

"He's getting suspicious, Mabel, and I think he might be able to help."

"Oh, sure," Mabel muttered. "'Hey, Grunkle Ford, I almost got myself killed by that apparently fake psychic.' 'Suck it up, Mabel.'"

"That's not what he would say," Dipper replied softly.

Mabel was exaggerating, but she didn't want to admit it. Ford was just so. . . uncaring. About everything.

"Well, speaking of Ford, maybe we could take his journal and go exploring. What do you think?"

Mabel did like that idea. They hadn't really been exploring since their first time, when they'd run into some unfriendly fairies. Mabel didn't like the idea of going out in the cold, but she did like the idea of finding all the magical things described in the Journal.

But then there was a risk of another encounter with someone like. . . like her.

"Mabes?"

"I-I dunno, Dip. What if it happened again? What if one of us really got hurt this time?"

There was a beat of silence.

"Nope!" Dipper suddenly exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "This isn't like you at all. My sister jumps at any opportunity to go find mysteries and magic, no matter what the danger! Remember when we snuck into that high school because you were convinced there were ghosts there, and we almost got caught? But the next day you wanted to go back! 'Cause it was worth it to you! Isn't this worth it?" He held out his hand.

Mabel smiled, though it was small, and took it. Dipper pulled her to her feet. "That's my twin sister!" he said. "Let's go find something supernatural!"

~~~~~

"Dipper! Dipper, wait!" Mabel closed the Journal around her thumb and ran to catch up with her brother. "We need directions!"

Dipper turned around, rolling his eyes as he walked backwards. "That totally ruins the point of the adventure, Mabes! And are there even directions in that thing?"

"Well, not really," Mabel admitted. "It's like Ford made up his own names for all the parts of the forest. They're all kinda cliché." She started flipping through the Journal. "Fairy Haven — we definitely don't wanna go back there — Crystalline Cavern — Harbinger Hollow."

"Woah, what was that last one?" Dipper backtracked so he could look over Mabel's shoulder at the Journal.

"Harbinger Hollow," Mabel repeated. "Looks like it's a system of caves with a bunch of prophecies written all over."

"Woah! Let's go there!"

"We would if we could find it," Mabel replied, a little irritable. "There are only little notes about it, like 'Found a new prophecy in Harbinger Hollow today.' He probably put the directions in a different journal."

"Huh. I wonder where the other Journals are." Dipper walked by Mabel, kicking up snow with each step. (She hurriedly moved the Journal out of the splash zone.) "Maybe they're hidden in other secret compartments around the forest! Hey, is there any clues about where they are in Journal 3?"

"Are there any clues," Mabel said under her breath. The only inclination that Dipper heard her was a slight roll of his eyes. "And no, I haven't seen any clues to the other Journals. He hardly mentions them, other than the occasional footnote that says things like 'See Journal 2 for more information.'" She sighed. "I still don't get why he would hide them in the first place. He still does supernatural research; wouldn't these be helpful?"

"Do magical mushrooms count as supernatural research?" said Dipper, referring to a project Ford had shared with them on their first day in Gravity Rises. Mabel shrugged.

"I wish we could just ask him what happened," Mabel admitted, "but I still have a bad feeling about showing him that we found his Journal. Besides," she added, mustering a smile, "it'll be much more exciting to figure it out ourselves."

"Yeah! We'll solve the mystery!" Dipper grinned at his sister. "Mystery Twins!"

Mabel's forced smile turned genuine. "Yeah, Mystery Twins." It was a name they'd used when they were younger, ghost- and treasure-hunting anywhere they were allowed — and some places they weren't. They hadn't used the name in a couple years, as they'd grown up, and it felt good to be the Mystery Twins again. Mabel had missed it.

It excited her, too. She imagined they would find a lot more mysteries here in Gravity Rises than they ever had before.

Just then, Dipper pointed into the distance. "Mabel, look, some caves! I wonder if that's Harbinger Hollow!"

Grinning, Mabel ran after her brother.