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"Dipper? Do you know where we are?"
The siblings stumbled through the forest together, holding hands so they wouldn't lose each other in the blinding white of the blizzard. Dipper clutched his sister's fingers tight in his, then pressed her palm to his palm and wrapped them firmly around each other. He couldn't tell who was leading who anymore. He might have started in the lead, pulling Mabel forward when they suddenly appeared in this strange, whited-out landscape, but he didn't think he was anymore. He didn't think Mabel was leading, either, though. They were both just scrambling forward, ever forward, neither knowing where or why.
He remembered having a vague idea of where they were going, as if he recognized something of the snow-shrouded forest with its overhanging branches dripping great drops of snow like ill-favored seedpods. But that sensation of familiarity had faded as the cold wind whipped through him, stealing his warmth, his confidence, his sense of the situation. He was so frozen now that he could barely feel himself shivering, and he knew that was a bad sign. They needed to find shelter. They needed to find it soon. The cold had whittled the near-constant thrum of his thoughts down to a bare minimum, but that one, that one thought was clear. They needed to find shelter soon, or they would die.
"Dipper?" Mabel asked again, her voice shivering in the wind. It was hard to hear her over the howling, even though they still walked hand-in-hand. "Do you? Do you know?"
"N-no," Dipper mumbled. She probably wouldn't be able to hear him. He tried again, louder and stronger. "No, I don't know where we are. I lost the journal. I think I dropped it."
His voice fell in misery at this admission. He couldn't believe he'd lost it. That journal was their lifeline, their touchstone between the world of the ordinary, of home, of Mom and Dad and their usual life far away from Gravity Falls, and the paranormal, the strange, the supernatural, the world they had fallen into from the moment they stepped foot in Grunkle Stan's Mystery Shack. The journal had saved their lives more times than Dipper could count, their guide and their advisor through all the strange adventures they'd found or sought or stumbled into headfirst, and now he'd lost it. What was he supposed to do next?
"Do you at least have an idea?" Mabel asked. Still hope in her voice. Mabel always depended on Dipper to know things, because that was what he liked best. He liked to know things, to find things, to learn things, while Mabel liked to create things, to experience things, to sing and breathe and dance and live things. They balanced each other out, that way. But now he didn't know, and she had nothing to create. They were lost in a blizzard and they couldn't find their way out.
He couldn't even remember how they'd gotten here in the first place, for pity's sake. "I don't...I don't kn-kn-know," Dipper half-sobbed, his teeth chattering in the cold. "The trees aren't r-r-right. They aren't. The t-trees around the Mystery Shark are, are coniferous, and all of these are d-deciduous, and th-that's not right. W-We're not in the right forest and I d-don't know where we are!"
"Okay. Okay." Mabel's voice was abruptly calm. She halted their awkward stumble forward and tugged Dipper closer by his hand, the almost numb tether between them. Dipper could feel almost nothing anymore, too lost in the cold and the wind and the blank of the white, white around them, but he could still feel her hand, a single point of warmth in the blizzardy world.
"Okay," Mabel said, and she put her arms around him and pulled him close. Their heads bumped together, knocking his hat askew and mussing up her hair. Her sweater was purple today. It hadn't always been frosted with snow, Dipper remembered. It was, now, it was snowy, speckled white, but still pretty. Still warm and woolly and infinitely Mabel. Her arms around him were chilly, too, but they were still Mabel.
"Okay," Mabel said, her voice another point of warmth. Dipper relaxed against her, suddenly running out of fear. Mabel always did this, sometimes she was the only who could do this, who could pull him down out of whatever cloud of anxiety and obsession and fretfulness he'd evaporated himself into. Sometimes she couldn't—Dipper was a stubborn kid, and his clouds were equally stubborn—but usually she could, and he was grateful.
"Let's figure this out," Mabel said confidently. "So we don't have the journal. So what? We can still figure this out! Mystery Twins, right? We can do this!"
Dipper could practically hear the sparkles in her voice. If she talked any louder, she'd be spitting glitter. He smiled against her shoulder, then carefully pushed back so that she could see his face. "Right. We can do this."
"I believe in us!" Mabel grinned, showing off all of her braces in a brilliant display, then made a big show of putting her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes, looking all around. "Okay, now, where are we? Where do we need to go to get back home?"
Dipper looked around, too. His head was a little clearer now, though his body shivered incessantly. He still didn't recognize anything. The trees were tall and threatening, the twisted branches curling like long, nasty fingers reaching out for them. The entire place gave off a terrible feeling of darkness, of danger. Not to say that the woods around Gravity Falls weren't creepy, too, but they weren't quite like this. Those woods felt like trouble, but they didn't feel like death.
Not usually, anyway.
"Hey, what's that?" Mabel's voice was bright and cheerful. Dipper turned to squint at her, then along the line of her arm pointing somewhere away. "Do you see that?"
Dipper peered into the distance, and suddenly his face lit up in a big grin, too. "A building! It's hard to see through the snow, but maybe we can find help there! Or at least we can get out of the snow, right?"
"Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."
Mabel didn't take off running immediately, though, instead waiting for Dipper to start walking. They kept pace with each other, no longer holding hands since they had a destination to focus on, but walking close enough that their elbows bumped at every other step. But the closer they got to the building, the less hopeful and inviting it appeared.
"That...doesn't look like a house," Dipper said at last, reluctant to admit it.
There were no big windows lit up with light, no low-slung porch, no friendly chimney puffing smoke. No sign of light or life anywhere, actually. It was just a building, somewhat ramshackle, somewhat loose in the boards, open shutters rattling in the wind. They couldn't see anything inside the gaping door yet, just a dark opening like a cavern. Or a mouth.
"Well, at least it's something," Mabel said as optimistically as she could. "Even it's just a barn or a shed, that means someone has been here, right? There has to be a house somewhere around here. Maybe even a whole town!" She spread her arms wide at this last statement, thrilled at the idea of another new discovery, even in this miserable wasteland.
"I don't think there is one," Dipper said.
They were close enough now to see that the building stood alone at the edge of a small clearing now piled high with snow, just under the eaves of the encroaching forest. It was a lot smaller than they had hoped, much too small to be any kind of home. The door Dipper had thought was hanging open was actually torn off its hinges, buried under a huge drift of snow against the side of the building. Snow on the roof made the dark, rough shingles seem like the frosting on a gingerbread house, and icicles hung from the gutters. If Dipper and Mabel weren't currently stuck in a snowstorm doing their best not to freeze to death, the sight would have been kind of pretty, like a painting or something.
"It's still better than nothing," Mabel said stubbornly. She wrapped her hand around Dipper's arm and tugged him along when his steps slowed in weary disappointment. "C'mon, let's get inside. It'll be out of the wind, anyway, and that's worth the price of admission, isn't it?"
Despite his shivering body and chattering teeth, Dipper still had to smile at the aggressive cheer in his sister's voice. "Mabel, there is no price of admission for abandoned sheds out in the middle of nowhere."
"Even better!" Mabel pulled Dipper the last few steps to reach the shed, and they stumbled through the broken door together.
Then they halted, clutching at each other as they stared in confusion and surprise. The shed wasn't empty. Dipper and Mabel weren't the only kids in these woods.
A boy a few years older than them sat against the wall a couple feet inside the door, staring at them in equal surprise and bewilderment. He was wearing a long blue cloak with brass buttons, currently wrapped tightly around his body, and he was topped with a red conical hat that...made absolutely no sense. As Dipper and Mabel watched, a lumpy bulge inside the blue cloak wiggled around, and a small face peeked out. It consisted of fluffy brown hair, enormous eyes, and a tiny nose reddened in the cold.
"Um...hi," Dipper ventured after a moment. "Can we come in?"
"Oh, of course. Please, be my guest," the older boy said sardonically, waving an open hand to encompass the shed. "Make yourself at home. Not that it's my home. Or anything."
Dipper blinked. Despite his outlandish appearance, the boy sounded like any kid they could have met back home. He spoke English, and his accent sounded entirely American. Mabel wrapped her fingers in his shirt and dragged him forward, out of the cutting wind, and they stood in the middle of the shed and stared around in astonishment, though their eyes continually strayed back to the two people who shared the space with them.
The small face peeking out from the red-hatted boy's cloak grinned broadly at them. "Wirt, we have visitors! You have to offer them our hospitality!"
The older boy, Wirt, poked the small red nose of the boy in his cloak, urging him back inside the small shelter it provided. "What, what hospitality, Greg? We don't have anything to offer them. I don't have any tea or cookies, and you gave your last piece of candy to that dog."
"That dog needed that candy!" Greg declared, but he let Wirt shove him back against his side. His chubby little fingers wrapped in the edge of the cloak, though, so he could maintain an opening through which he could peer at their visitors. "Candy makes everything better, doesn't it? Even for dogs!"
"Sure, Greg," Wirt said, his voice equal parts exasperated and indulgent. "That's exactly what every dog needs. Candy from the candypants."
Greg giggled and snuggled into Wirt's side. Wirt narrowed his eyes at the Pines twins, studying them intently. Dipper glanced at Mabel. Her eyes were sparkling, and he wanted to slap his own face, because yes, of course, Mabel had found another kindred spirit in this strange tiny boy hiding inside another boy's cloak, and if Dipper and Wirt didn't control the situation, those two would start talking about candy and never, ever stop.
A gust of wind blew around the tiny shed, sudden and bracing, and Dipper shivered and hugged himself, his eyes widening at the icy shock of it. Suddenly Wirt's choice to sit just inside the door made sense. It was the place best sheltered from the wind, since the edge of the door blunted the force that elsewhere in the tiny building blew without resistance. Dipper's teeth chattered, and Mabel gripped his arm, suddenly staring at him in concern.
None of the four them were dressed for a blizzard, that was obvious, but Dipper was the worst off. It had been summer, the last he knew. He was still in shirt-sleeves and shorts, his lightweight vest and baseball cap completely useless against the wind.
"Hey, can we sit next to you?" Mabel asked the older boy, staring at him almost challengingly.
"Hospitality, Wirt!" Greg piped up from inside the cloak, and Wirt made a face Dipper recognized from the mirror. He was refraining from rolling his eyes.
"No, of course," Wirt said, all sarcasm suddenly gone from his voice. In that moment, he sounded like just another kid, cold and weary and longing for home. He pointed to the wall beside him, away from the door. "There's room for more. Get out of the wind."
Before Dipper could convince his feet to move, Mabel was pushing and shoving him once again, all the way over to the wall next to Wirt. She made him sit next to the strange boy, shoving him down so hard that his knees buckled immediately, then crouched next to him and huddled in, close enough that he could feel the scratchiness of her woolly sweater. Dipper stared at her wordlessly for a moment, then at the boy he was jammed next to, as if belatedly asking for the stranger’s permission.
"Dipper's cold," Mabel said bluntly, as if that was some sort of explanation.
Wirt just nodded. Then his eyes narrowed slightly, and he looked down at Dipper with a touch of humor lightening his face. "Your name is Dipper?"
Dipper glared at him. "Your name is Wirt."
Wirt stuck out his lower lip and nodded, accepting this as a fair point.
"And I'm Mabel," Mabel announced proudly. She always introduced herself as if she was making an important announcement, but this time was even stronger than usual.
"I'm Greg!" exulted the little boy inside Wirt's cloak.
"We know, Greg." Wirt patted the lump that was Greg's head. His voice softened for Greg. Dipper began to think that might be a normal thing for Wirt. The older teen was obviously a bit moody and dramatic and prone to sarcasm, but he was soft on Greg.
"Are you brothers?" Mabel asked bluntly, staring at the strange boys in fascination.
Wirt nodded absently, patting Greg again.
"We're twins," Dipper offered. It seemed to be about the only thing his brain could come up with at the moment. The cold was finally eating away his brain cells, probably. He didn't know how much longer he was going to be able to keep making sense of the situation. He could almost feel his eyes beginning to turn into spinny discs, like a cartoon character's.
"We're lost," Mabel said. "We don't know how we got here. I think we were in the woods around Gravity Falls, and it was summer, and then we were here, and now it's winter."
"You usually wear sweaters in the summer?" Wirt asked.
"They're my summer sweaters," Mabel said. "I made them myself. I'd stand up and show this one to you properly, since it's one of my finest creations, but Dipper is cold."
Mabel had wrapped her arms around him at some point, Dipper realized belatedly. He couldn't remember when it had happened. His brain really was starting to shut off.
Wirt sighed, long and thin and wistful. It was the mating call of the moody teenager, Dipper thought semi-hysterically, but at the moment it seemed entirely sincere. "We're lost, too. We were just trying to get home, and somehow we ended up here, in the Unknown."
"The Unknown?" Mabel asked.
"That's what these woods are called."
"Hey, Dipper and me are all about the unknown. Well, Dipper more than me. Dipper loves the unknown. He's always going looking for it. I mean, like, all the time. I usually go along. Because, you know, we're twins and everything. Mystery Twins."
"That sounds nice," Wirt said. "Greg and I weren't really that good of friends before we got lost out here. I mean, he always wanted to be my friend, but I was kind of a jerk to him."
"Wirt, don't call yourself names!" Greg scolded, his voice less muffled than before.
Dipper wondered if the small boy had stuck his head outside the cloak so he could speak more clearly, but he didn't have the energy to turn his head to look. His face was hidden against Mabel's arm, which was snugged up around his chest. He was so cold.
"It's just the truth," Wirt said gently. "But we're friends now, right?"
"Best brothers for life! And that's a rock fact!"
Something warmer than the cold bare wood of the wall touched Dipper's back. He couldn't for the life of him imagine what it was. Then the warmth of another body began to press against his side, opposite to where Mabel huddled around him. The new warmth felt tall and thin, but it was nice. Sheltering. Comforting.
Dipper had a strange, muffled sense of rustling and jostling, and some of the cold was hidden away as if by a veil. Not all of the cold, not by a long shot, but some.
"You okay, Greg?" Wirt's voice, much closer now.
"Yeah, this is fun! I like making new friends."
The little boy's voice was close, too, a puff of friendly steam on Dipper's bare arm. Were they all wrapped in Wirt's cloak, now? It didn't seem like it would be big enough.
Maybe it was, though. Maybe Wirt's cloak was bigger on the inside than the outside. It made as much sense as anything.
Slowly, slowly, Dipper began to feel warm.