Mabel woke up screaming.

One moment she was asleep lying on her back with her eyes closed. The next, she was sitting upright, her knees drawn halfway to her chest, her eyes wide open, her breathing heavy. Her head throbbed faintly from the sudden movement, but she hardly noticed. She couldn't even remember what she was screaming about—

Then the images came back, and she remembered.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and shut her eyes tightly, trying to squeeze out the memories and the tears. But no tears came, and the memories played behind her eyelids, vivid and rebellious.

"Mabel?"

Mabel opened her eyes and glanced over at her brother without turning her head. In the predawn light, she watched him sit up blearily, his hair sticking out in various angles. She guessed it was about six-thirty in the morning, and it surprised her a little that she didn't wake up like this earlier.

Dipper got up and made his way over to her, sitting down carefully on the bed next to his sister. It took him a couple tries of opening and closing his mouth to say something, but eventually he put his arm around Mabel and said simply, "It's okay now."

Mabel stared straight ahead and wondered why she wasn't crying.

They sat there in silence for a minute. "Do you want me to sleep with you?" Dipper asked.

Mabel considered it. As the twins got older, it became increasingly more awkward for them to sleep in the same bed, what with them being different genders. Their parents generally discouraged this and had recently given them their own rooms, but sometimes one twin would go crawl in bed with the other if they were scared or sad or lonely. More often than not, Dipper would appear in Mabel's doorway, claiming he could sense something was wrong with Mabel — and he was usually right. No, Mabel didn't feel too weird sleeping next to her twin brother. But, she decided, she was done with sleeping for now.

She eased Dipper's arm off her and stood up. "Thanks, Dip," she said, "but I'm going to go for a walk."

"Can I come with you?"

"No."

He didn't push her, and there was a rather tense quiet as Mabel changed out of her pajamas. That was another thing that had grown awkward between the two twins. (Mabel still remembered Dipper freaking out the day she got her first sports bra, just a couple months ago.) But Mabel was fast, and it was only a couple minutes before she was ready to go. She glanced at herself in the mirror, making sure she had her snow boots on over her jeans and her orange jacket over her pine tree shirt; then she grabbed the Journal and her compass off the bedside table and headed for the door.

"Mabes, wait. Why do you have the Journal?"

She stuffed it under her jacket. "No reason."

"Mabel, please, let me come with you."

But she was already gone.

~~~~~

Mabel now knew that a forest in the predawn winter was cold.

Maybe it was for the better this way. The chill seemed to chase away the memories that danced behind her eyes, at least temporarily. All Mabel knew was that she had to keep going: so she forged on, her boots sinking into the deep snow. It didn't feel like she was running away from her problems, since her progress was so slow. It felt like she was. . .

Okay, so she was running away from her problems.

A huge shiver started from her head and radiated to her toes. She pulled out her Journal with cold fingers — why hadn't she brought gloves? — and opened it, hoping to find a warm place described in its pages. She might be running from her problems, but that didn't mean she had to freeze to death.

Finding snowless shelter underneath the boughs of a pine tree, Mabel flipped through the Journal until a picture of a cave caught her eye. Unlike Harbinger Hollow, which was simply mentioned in various places, this cave seemed to be a newer discovery: The page was filled with drawings and descriptions of the crystals found within. The name "Crystalline Cavern" headed the top of the page, and Mabel recognized the entry. She found directions scribbled in a margin and soon realized that they began at the Mystery Museum. Well, she'd just have to find the path from here. She couldn't go back to the Mystery Museum, not yet. Not until she found a way to more permanently chase away the nightmares.

The next ten minutes were a dizzying cycle of looking down at the book for landmarks, looking up at the landscape, and turning around in all directions to find said landmarks. Mabel growled in frustration. Who knows how long ago Ford even wrote this Journal? The guy was ancient! The forest could have completely changed since he wrote these notes.

Finally, she found herself at the entrance of the cave.

"Hey," she said to herself, "this is the same cave Dip and I found yesterday."

She then resolved not to talk out loud again. It felt too lonely.

The cave was as good as any, she supposed. It may not be the cave she was looking for (she hadn't seen any crystals in here yesterday), but it would do. She closed the Journal around her thumb, keeping her spot just in case, and trudged into the cave.

It wasn't much warmer.

But at least there wasn't any snow. Mabel sighed and leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, letting her body sag a bit as she slowly let out a breath.

Her eyes snapped open again.

The images were still there.

A sudden panic overtook her, and Mabel pushed herself off the wall and started running. She dashed deeper into the cave and finally felt like she was making progress without having to sludge through any snow. She didn't pay attention to anything, save the feeling of her feet pounding on the stone, until she realized that it was almost pitch black. She skidded to a stop, noticing for the first time a few other things:

It was warm.

There was no light anywhere to be seen.

And she was completely lost.

Well, maybe it was better this way. Where better to hide than deep in an uncharted cave?

Except, maybe it was charted. Maybe it was somewhere in the Journal. Maybe it was even the Crystalline Cavern she had been reading about.

If only she could see.

She groped carefully for a wall and, finding one, followed it for a while with slow, careful steps. She forced herself to breathe just as slowly as she walked, telling herself she could find her way out.

A light!

It was a tiny dot in the upper left corner of her vision. Her sense of direction must have been all messed up; she could have sworn the way back was to her right. But, light was light, and Mabel changed her course to head towards the dot, now growing into a sliver.

As the glow grew closer, Mabel quickened her pace. This turned out to be a mistake, as she suddenly felt herself flying through the air and hitting the ground face-first. "Ow," she moaned, pushing herself up onto her elbow. Luckily she'd caught herself with her hands, but now they were all scraped up. She rubbed her hands together to loosen some of the grit now lodged there, wincing as she did.

She still couldn't see.

"All right, Mabel, let's try this again. Slowly." The talking that had felt lonely earlier now served to reinforce Mabel's existence in this darkness. How did she get herself into this, again?

Countless minutes of countless careful steps later, Mabel could finally see her hand in front of her face. It didn't look so great: Multiple scrapes lacerated her palms. It wasn't serious, and it didn't hurt that badly; but Mabel could do without scraped-up hands and knees, thank you.

The light was above her head, and a pile of rocks formed a make-shift staircase up to it. This definitely wasn't the way Mabel had come. Great. But it still appeared to be an exit, so Mabel approached the ramp of rocks and started climbing. It didn't take that long, though she slipped a few times and further scraped her hands. A few minutes later, she pulled herself up into the light, which shone on her face brighter than she expected. She squinted and lifted herself up over the last couple of rocks, finding solid ground to stand on. As her vision cleared, she couldn't help but think that something was. . . off. But what?

The light. Her eyes adjusted until she could see the source of the light: and it wasn't the sun. "What the. . . ," Mabel murmured, stepping forward. "What is that?"

A huge blue crystal floated in the air, giving off a bright, pale blue glow.

Mabel looked around the new cavern, vaguely aware that her mouth was hanging open. Crystals lined the walls and speckled the ground and hung from the ceiling, shaded in blues and purples and pinks. A soft ambiance filled the room; the center crystal wasn't the only one giving off light, though it was definitely the biggest in sight. It hovered a few feet off the ground and a few feet under the ceiling, suspended by what seemed to be nothing.

"Well," Mabel said, her voice echoing off the sharp points of the crystals, "it looks like I've found the Crystalline Cavern."